All Knowledge Is Orientation: Marjorie Grene’s Ecological Epistemology

Abstract

AbstractIn the course of a more than 70-year philosophical career and over 100 publications, Marjorie Grene (1910–2009) developed an original and coherent philosophical position that placed situated organic life at the center of the interpretation of reality and human affairs. Grene sometimes described this position as an “ecological epistemology” and summarized its central thrust in the expression “all knowledge is orientation.” However, Grene’s view incorporated a set of apparently or potentially opposed commitments such as naturalism and anti-reductionism, pluralism and realism, and both a critique and affirmation of Darwinian evolutionary theory. This raises questions about precisely where Grene stood on the issues over which she argued and the coherence of her “ecological epistemology” as a whole. Here I review Grene’s work in the main research areas for which she is best known – history of philosophy, philosophy of biology, epistemology, and philosophical anthropology – with an eye to how these tensions were ultimately resolved in her account.KeywordsMarjorie GreneLifeOrganismsHistory of philosophyDarwinismPhilosophy of biologyPerceptionReductionEpistemologyRené DescartesImmanuel KantMichael PolanyiMaurice Merleau-PontyHelmuth PlessnerJ.J. Gibson