*Kazuhiko W. Nakamura1
(1.The University of Tokyo)
Keywords:Cyberforest, environmental education, image archive
In recent years, awareness of the importance of the connection between human society and natural environments, including forests, has been increasing. In this regard, it has become difficult to present the desirable state of this increasingly complex relationship based only on scientific evidence. Within this context, the significance of facing natural phenomena, which includes scientific uncertainty, is sometimes discussed in terms of the concept of wonder, especially in the field of pedagogy from the perspective of fostering the next generation. Schinkel (2017) has discussed the educational importance of wonder not only as a motivational effect but also as a way of making us aware of the limits of our understanding and has distinguished the latter as “deep wonder.” From a similar perspective, L’ Ecuyer (2014) considered the scope of wonder to be beyond mere curiosity and mentioned the visible expression called “beauty” as one of the properties of the environment that evokes wonder. When addressing issues at large spatio-temporal scales, such as climate change and biodiversity, which are important aspects for building a sustainable society, the perspective of "deep wonder" is important because it is difficult to avoid scientific uncertainty in this regard. However, it is extremely difficult to directly experience “deep wonder” as a visual expression. In this presentation, I will discuss the possibility of a virtual expansion of “deep wonder” using forest image archives since 1995. This is a case study of a method used to visualize phenomena virtually at a large temporal and spatial scale.
References:
L’Ecuyer, C. (2014): The Wonder Approach to learning. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8:764. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00764
Schinkel, A. (2017): The Educational Importance of Deep Wonder. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 51: 538-553. doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12233