Ways of knowing

Modes of cognition

Stephen Harrod Buhner, a herbalist and nature writer, describes two modes of cognition. The one that is dominant in the West is the “verbal/intellectual/analytical…mode defined by its linearity, its tendency to reductionism, and its insistence on the mechanical nature of Nature.” However, he explains that there is another mode of cognition:

“one our species has used as our primary mode during the majority of our time on this planet. This can be termed the holistic/intuitive/depth mode of cognition. Its expression can be seen in how ancient and indigenous peoples gathered their knowledge about the world in which they lived, for example, and in how they gathered knowledge of the uses of plants as medicines….[using] their hearts as organs of perception.” 

For millennia, our ancestors learnt through a process called “biognosis” or “knowledge from life.” Through spending time in deep connection with plants, Buhner explains that humans learnt which plants had medicinal properties, which were safe to eat, and which ones were poisonous. As described in our article on Nature, this intuitive wisdom is still the primary mode of cognition for the many indigenous peoples who still live in a way that’s deeply connected with our Earth. The advent of science fundamentally changed how humans perceived nature and how we came to learn about the world. He writes:

“We have been colonised by a particular kind of thinking. For if the things we experience outside ourselves are only matter, dumb, unfeeling, insentient life forms – rocks, or atoms, or air – then there is no need to truly notice them. No need to merge with them in a participatory consciousness… For human cultures to allow scientists to dissect Nature as much as they have, Nature had to become a dead, unalive thing, otherwise no one would have put up with it.” 

Buhner describes how the way we’ve come to think of things as being ‘scientific’, ‘true’ and ‘reliable’ are actually so far removed from real life. For example, he writes about how maps try to measure coastlines but they don’t take in all the tiny turns and bends; they assume an imagined, smoother line, a bit inland from the actual coastline. If you imagined a mouse, or even then an ant, walking along the very edge, the measurements would be very different to a human walking it. The measurement will always 

“approach infinite size as the magnification of measurement increases. (There is no linearly measurable length, width, or height. No quantity to them at all.) Euclid’s world is not the real world, and his system of measurement only works accurately in his imaginary world. In Nature, something much different is going on, and trying to understand it with the linear mind gets complicated, for nature is as far beyond lines as the stars are from the sun.”

He’s emphatic about the fact that there are no straight lines in nature, as much as the human mind tries to imagine that to be the case.

Nowhere has this kind of thinking been more prominent and more powerful in dismantling the intuitive ways of knowing that children naturally have, than the institution of school. Howard Gardner, the famed American psychologist who developed the theory of multiple intelligences, argues that current schooling doesn’t actually lead to proper understanding, just the ability to pass tests, as students can’t apply their knowledge to new situations. Sometimes, as in the example below, the early concepts taught at school can actually override logic and commonsense. 

“The young child will show an intuitively correct response to a problem, whereas a somewhat older child will allow this common sense to be overridden by a compulsive application of a rule that happens to be inappropriate. For example, in probing children’s conceptions of intensive quantities like temperature, Sidney Strauss has shown children two beakers of water, each 10 degrees in temperature, and then combined the contents of the two beakers. When the young child is asked the heat of the now-comingled bodies of water, each 10 degrees, he unhesitatingly answers that the water remains the same temperature and he may be able to quantify the answer as ’10 degrees.’ He succeeds because he knows – indeed, understands – that water added to water of the same temperature does not change temperature. A somewhat older schoolchild, however, posed the same problem, is likely to respond ’20 degrees.’ Upon reflection, the reason for this response seems patent….children evince a strong urge, almost a compulsion, to add any two numbers presented together in a school context. Thus, notational fluency ends up overriding common sense.” 

Dan Siegel, the American psychiatrist, describes these 2 different ways of knowing and perceiving as follows:

“Experience is the flow of energy. Sometimes that flow is direct, as bottom-up conduition, like water through the conduit of a hose: raw, unfiltered, without re-presenting or symbolising something. Other times this flow of energy gets constructed based on our prior learning, as a top-down form of filtering what we sense as we build categories, concepts, and symbols.” 

Siegel explains that as children grow and and their brains develop, more and more of these top-down filters impact on how they see the world. As described in the Howard Gardner example above, Siegel thinks that learning, ironically, limits what we perceive and what can arise out of our potential. “The more we know, the less we may see.” The way our brain categorises new information into pre-existing schemas means that we automatically put new information into one of these schemas, without truly taking the time to see and understand what’s in front of our eyes. He argues that even language seriously constricts our perception and conception, as words act as another one of these filters, actually shaping how we experience life. This is mirrored beautifully by the nature writer Rachel Carson, who believed that naming a plant or tree in nature can sometimes remove the wonder and magic that young children experience when they first encounter that plant or tree. We need more than language to fully experience another being; we need our whole bodies to perceive and respond to it. As Siegel says, “It is a rare teacher who invites us to embrace nonknowing as a way to respond.” 

The American writer and speaker, Charles Eisenstein, explains that the mode of cognition associated with indigenous and traditional cultures, from which profound theories and practices such as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) have evolved, “emphasise pattern logic over linear logic, synthetic thinking over analytic thinking, and teleology over reductionism.” He argues that we must

“Adopt the humility necessary to relearn about folk medicine, local food systems, gift economics, experiential education, ways of ceremony and prayer, and the mindset and perceptions necessary to live in harmony with each other and the earth.” 

The brain

In order to really adopt this different (in the Westernised world, anyway) mode of cognition, requires us to think differently about how we take in and process information. The conventional scientific view of the brain is fairly narrow. But various researchers have shown that our understanding of how the brain works and, interestingly, where it’s located in our bodies, is much more complex and far-reaching than we might imagine. Dan Siegel explains, 

“in our bodies, we have three “brains,” or parallel distributed processing (PDP) networks: one around the gut, one around the heart, and one in the head. The only PDP processor with linguistic abilities is the head brain, so later, as we grow and develop language, the head brain names itself, not surprisingly, the brain. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio (2018) notes, the head brain evolved in our lives as the third brain, in service of the other two and of the whole body.” 

As described in our article on Nature, Buhner has shown that we actually perceive first with our heart before our brain, as the heart is the organ with the larger electromagnetic field and therefore, ability to perceive the electromagnetic field of others, including nature. Furthermore, he explains that,

“Between 15 and 25 percent of the cells in the heart are neural cells…They are the same kind as those in the brain and they function in exactly the same way…The heart is, in fact, directly wired into the central nervous system and brain, interconnected with the amygdala, thalamus, hippocampus, and cortex.”

The neuroscientist and pharmacologist, Candace Pert, has proved from a biomolecular point of view how much more widespread the brain is throughout the body. Her pioneering research into neuropeptides and receptors (she was the first to discover the brain’s opiate receptor) are the basis for our emotions; what she calls “the molecules of emotion.” It's these peptides which act as biochemical messengers communicating information between all of our body systems. This means that information is perceived, processed and communicated not just by the skull-encased brain, but by a whole-body information network system made up of these peptides.

And in his work with Tina Payne, Dan Siegel has shown that our brains are actually constructed by our social relationships. He’s developed a whole field around this called interpersonal neurobiology.

“[T]he brain is a social organ, made to be in relationship. It’s hardwired to take in signals from the social environment, which in turn influence a person’s inner world…what happens between brains has a great deal to do with what happens within each individual brain. Self and community are fundamentally interrelated, since every brain is continually constructed by its interactions with others.” 

In order to access the richness and full potential of our brains, or what we might prefer to call our bodymind, at Wildwood Nature School, we give children the space to stay connected to their bodies. Infants and young children are naturally in their bodies and are always responding to the sensations and signals from their guts and hearts more so than the brain in their skulls. Schools tend to fixate on the head brain and de-prioritise, if not create negative associations, with the body. By spending so much time in nature, and allowing children to move their bodies freely, as well as explicitly teaching them about these elements, we hope that they’ll maintain their deep connection to their whole-body perception and processing. 

Guy Claxton, a cognitive scientist who created the Building Learning Power model of education, describes this as “embodied cognition.” He quotes research from Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach who’ve shown that thought evolved “as an extension of the ability to act effectively.” As Daniel Wolpert explains in his TED talk The real reason for brains, “Movement is the only way you have of affecting the world around you…There can be no evolutionary advantage to [knowing or perceiving things] if they aren’t going to affect the way you act.” Furthermore, Claxton explains that movement has an effect on cognition and learning, by sending more oxygen to the brain and releasing chemicals that stimulate the growth of new blood vessels.

At Wildwood Nature School, we prioritise embodied cognition throughout all of our teaching and learning. And we do this while deeply embedded in relationship and community, honouring the co-construction of the brain that happens in social contexts.

Left and right brain

When looking at these 2 modes of cognition, many have described the left and right hemispheres of the brain as broadly correlating to these different ways of perceiving the world. This is a somewhat simplistic view (especially given the previous section on a wider understanding of the brain), but there are truths about the abilities and perceptions governed by each hemisphere.

Siegel and Payne explain that the left brain is “logical, literal, linguistic…and linear”, loves order, and is about “the letter of the law.” While the right brain is 

“holistic and nonverbal, sending and receiving signals that allow us to communicate, such as facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice, posture, and gestures. Instead of details and order, our right brain cares about the big picture – the meaning and feel of an experience – and specialises in images, emotions, and personal memories…the right brain is emotional, nonverbal, experiential, and autobiographical…cares about the spirit of the law…the right brain is more directly connected to our bodily sensations and the input from lower parts of the brain that combine together to create our emotions.”

Taken from The Whole-Brain Child by Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson

In quite a good example of the hemispheres in action, Betty Edwards explains in Drawing on the right side of the brain that the people who are good at drawing are those who access the right side of the brain when drawing. As discussed, the left hemisphere of the brain governs language, is logical and analytical, while the right hemisphere is nonverbal, global and governs images, space and perception. She goes on to say that unless people engage the right hemisphere, or R-mode, the left hemisphere will take over and impose the symbols it knows from when first learning to draw as a child, rather than allowing true and direct perception to take place.

“The central problem of teaching realistic drawing to individuals from age ten or so onward is the persistence of memorised, stored drawing symbols when they are no longer appropriate to the task. In a sense, L-mode unfortunately continues to “think” it can draw long after the ability to process spatial, relational information has been lateralised to the right brain. When confronted with a drawing task, the language mode comes rushing in with its verbally linked symbols. Then afterward, ironically, the left brain is all too ready to supply derogatory words of judgement if the drawing looks childlike or naive.”

Edwards’ book and courses which teach people how to access the right side of the brain, have been hugely popular since the 1970s, because of the radical improvements in drawing that this technique encourages.

Image taken from Drawing on the right side of the brain by Betty Edwards showing a student’s self-portrait before a 5 day course (on the left) and one from after the course (on the right).

What this example shows is how the overly analytical part of the mind can dominate in situations, when actually, it’s the intuitive, perceptive part of our brain that would actually lead to better results. At Wildwood Nature School, we try as much as possible to support children to maintain their connection with the right hemisphere of their brain, so that they have access to a more rounded perception and engagement with the world.

Integration

The answer to how to achieve a more well-rounded perception of the world is integration. While it’s helpful for us to see the distinctions between these 2 modes of cognition, so that we can understand how much the analytical mode has dominated a more natural, intuitive mode of knowing in recent times in Westernised cultures, we need to find a way to integrate both. As Siegel and Payne explain,

“The key to thriving is…integration…linking different elements together to make a well-functioning whole…your brain can’t perform at its best unless its different parts work together in a coordinated and balanced way…[integration] coordinates and balances the separate regions of the brain that it links together.”

As Siegel goes on to explain in his more recent book, IntraConnected,

 “Integrated brains enable optimal regulation to unfold: how we regulate our attention, how we experience our emotions and moods, how we manage our thoughts, memories, relationship, behaviours and morality – each of these depends on neural integration.” 

He explains that relational integration is absolutely key to neural integration. An integrated community is one where each individual’s differences are honoured and celebrated while developing deep and compassionate linkages between all those individuals. In the same way, each of the different parts of our brain must be allowed to flourish and do its particular job, while also having strong links within the network of the brain and body.

Ken Robinson, the author, speaker and education advisor who advocated for a more creative approach to schools explained,  

“The dominant Western worldview is not based on seeing synergies and connections, but on making distinctions and seeing differences. This creates sharp distinctions between the mind and the body and between human beings and the rest of nature…education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds – the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you – the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people.”

A really powerful tool for supporting integration - of the right and left hemispheres of the brain, of the personal and global, of the body and mind - is through storytelling. Storytelling is such an important part of the Forest School ethos, one that derives from the indigenous and traditional cultures that remain more connected to the land. At Wildwood Nature School, our teachers tell stories often, and encourage the children to tell their own stories. As Siegel and Payne describe, storytelling 

“allows us to understand ourselves and our world by using both our left and right hemispheres together. To tell a story that makes sense, the left brain must put things in order, using words and logic. The right brain contributes the bodily sensations, raw emotions, and personal memories, so we can see the whole picture and communicate our experience. This is the scientific explanation behind why journaling and talking about a difficult event can be so powerful in helping us heal.” 

Buhner also talks about the power of integration. When you dissect a sentence, the meaning of the whole sentence can’t be found in its parts i.e. the words. 

“[T]he meaning resides someplace else. It is embedded within the sentence, but it is not present in its parts. Those parts, in a sense, have “self-organised” to generate the meaning. The meaning is not the word, just as the territory is not the map…All life is like this. There is a tension between the parts, something connecting them together, a pattern that emerges into consciousness that is not contained within any of the parts when they are considered separately.” 

At Wildwood Nature School, our teachers are there to encourage children to see the world as an integrated whole, of which we, and nature, are a part. We look for meaning in everything we do because learning doesn’t happen unless there is some connection between the child and what they’re learning. As Guy Claxton explains,

“the brain [is]…like a tangled organic undergrowth of associations and connections – and if new knowledge is not anchored meaningfully to existing structures, it is hard to learn, easily forgotten and unlikely to be retrieved when needed.”

Conventional schooling was purposefully designed to be abstract and removed from children’s daily life so that learning could be free from feelings that would complicate the process. That was why subjects such as Latin and algebra were taught which had very little relevance to any child’s home or later working life. Claxton rails against the traditional educationalists who argue for a knowledge-rich (which they see as pure facts) curriculum taught by direct instruction. But this rarely leads to meaningful learning which can be applied in the real world. It’s only useful for passing exams, and many are now questioning the value of exams. True learning and understanding comes from experiential discovery that’s rooted in children’s lived lives. It’s about integrating their experiences of life so far with what they’re learning at school, so that learning has personal meaning and relevance. This kind of integrated, embodied way of knowing is how we approach learning at Wildwood Nature School.

References:

Buhner, S. H. (2004) The Secret Teachings of Plants. The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature. Rochester: Bear & Company.

Carson, R. (1998) The Sense of Wonder. A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children (2nd edition - previous edition 1965). New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Claxton, G. (2021) The future of teaching and the myths that hold it back. London: Routledge.

Edwards, B. (2008) 5th ed. The new drawing on the right side of the brain. London: HarperCollins Publishers.

Eisenstein, C. (2020) ‘The banquet of whiteness’ Essay. Website accessed 24.06.23 [https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-banquet-of-whiteness/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email]

Gardner, H. (1995) The unschooled mind: How children think and how schools should teach. New York: Basic Books.

Pert, C. (1999) Molecules of emotion. London: Pocket Books.

Robinson, K. & Robinson, K. (2022) Imagine If… Creating a future for us all. Penguin Books: Great Britain

Siegel, D. J. (2023) IntraConnected. MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Siegel, D. J. & Bryson, T. P. (2012) The Whole-Brain Child: 12 proven strategies to nurture your child’s developing mind. London: Robinson.