Notes to the Reader

I hope to use these notes to flag things that I want to remember, think through some ideas in an informal way, and generally take note of anything that seems important or interesting to me that relates in any way to what I like to call human ecology, though that term has generally been co-opted by the natural and social sciences. I hope to keep it free for a truly transdisciplinary approach to understanding the place of humans in the natural world. My primary areas of interest include the function of imagination in the world and in human life, the various uses of language, and the relation between the "inner" world of the psyche and the "outer"  worlds of nature and society. I am interested in what Jerome Rothenberg (I think) called the "primary human potential" which gets channeled, restricted and eventually blocked by different cultures in different ways. And, as a biologist and naturalist, and an eater of food, I am a lover of plants an animals for several reasons.

I have in mind a series of notes towards a "natural history of the psyche" - not as a branch of the natural sciences, but as a way of learning to move among all the various ways of experiencing and understanding the world, regardless of their place in any disciplinary scheme. The world does not divide itself so neatly.