Positing Cartesianism as an Ontology Within Science Education: Towards a More Response-Able Inheritance with Dr. Frédérique Apffel-Marglin

AbstractThe purpose of this chapter is to archeologically dig into the historicity and operationalization of science education’s ontological inheritance: Cartesianism. Attention is brought to how Cartesianism plays, has played, and will play an active role in the (fore)closure of response-ability. To undertake this work, I draw from a series of expert interviews with Dr. Frédérique Apffel-Marglin that unpack the historical, geographical, political, economic, and religious forces of the “birth of modernity” and reveal the ways in which this “common sense” went from being uncommon to common and continues to persist. In turn, these insights are read, through the multicultural science education debate in order to (re)open the space for responsiveness therein. In thinking with Apffel-Marglin, it is argued that the making common of Cartesianism not only (fore)closes the possible possibilities for responding to Indigenous science to-come, but also to account for and be accountable to the ontology of WMS and what it produces.