{"id":598,"date":"2011-05-25T09:58:45","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T08:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=598"},"modified":"2011-05-25T09:58:45","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T08:58:45","slug":"the-higher-education-academy-meets-the-ellen-macarthur-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/05\/25\/the-higher-education-academy-meets-the-ellen-macarthur-foundation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Higher Education Academy meets the Ellen MacArthur Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This encounter took place on Monday in a very wild and wet Edinburgh. \u00a0Not quite the Festival (there wasn't even a Fringe), just a great deal about the circular economy [CE] \u2014 the Foundation has now produced a broad-ranging set of references to literature exploring this. \u00a0 \u00a0The session began with a substantial input from Ken Webster and Craig Johnson from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org\/\">EMF<\/a> on ideas underpinning the CE way of thinking. \u00a0This was followed by an exploration by Heather Luna from the HEA of CE concepts in practice: biomimicry, cradle to cradle, green chemistry, the blue economy and natural capitalism. \u00a0Following a brief 'on table' discussion, there was a modest lunch which didn't appear to be particularly circular \u2013 and I don't just mean the stark linearity of the baguettes. \u00a0 After this, we got to talk to each other in (sort of) cognate groups\u00a0about what we'd seen and its relevance to our work. \u00a0There was much discussion and a positive feel throughout \u2013 and there will be a rematch in London on June 6th.<\/p>\n<p>Ken Webster has a good line from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebigview.com\/greeks\/heraclitus.html\">Heraclitus<\/a>: <em>Everything flows; nothing abides<\/em>, which is troubling to those of a conservative mind. \u00a0He also likes to quote <a href=\"http:\/\/linguistics.berkeley.edu\/people\/person_detail.php?person=21\">Lakoff<\/a>, in particular that: [1]\u00a0thought is mostly unconscious; [2] the mind is inherently embodied; and [3] abstract concepts are largely metaphoric. \u00a0The first of these ought to be troubling to those of us of a liberal and rational disposition because it raises questions about the premise that underpins much of our curriculum thinking (and beyond): if only we can provide (young) people with opportunities to consider, explore and think about the issues ... . \u00a0 As Ken (nearly) says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Liberal education provides a poor fit with reality as new ideas bounce off a fixated mind<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ken puts it better than this, but you get the (Lakoffian) point.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0Enlightenment tends to get a bit of a bashing in such meetings as well (a risky tactic in Edinburgh where they seem to think they own its genesis) with our view of nature's <em>linearity, understandability, \u00a0predictability, <\/em>&amp;\u00a0<em>controllability <\/em>seen as the core problems in our thinking. \u00a0 However, such problems are, to my mind,\u00a0no reason to throw out the whole Enlightenment project (as some with their Old Testament future certainties\u00a0would do), and retreat into a time when we relied on experts to interpret matters and tell us what to think. \u00a0I get up every day thinking this \u2013 which is why I never listen to the BBC's flagship\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/today\/hi\/default.stm\">Today<\/a> programme, much preferring my own prejudices to start the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This encounter took place on Monday in a very wild and wet Edinburgh. \u00a0Not quite the Festival (there wasn't even a Fringe), just a great deal about the circular economy [CE] \u2014 the Foundation has now produced a broad-ranging set...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}