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Increasing concerns about the future of humankind that arise from threats of terrorism, nuclear war, and environmental destruction dramatize the fact that we must begin working collectively to change our ways of interacting with one another and with our habitat. In Global Intelligence and Human Development, Mihai Spariosu argues that the best way to bring about this change is through education. We need, he says, to create learning environments that help us to develop a "global mindset".
Spariosu presents a new conceptual framework for dealing with globalization from an intercultural perspective and outlines an innovative model of learning based on an ethics of global intelligence, which he defines as the ability to understand and work toward what will benefit all life on earth. This kind of understanding, he argues, can emerge only from ongoing intercultural dialogue and cooperation. He identifies the problems that pervade today's education system and then proposes concrete ways to begin moving toward global intelligence.
To overcome the adverse global consequences of prevalent Western scientific practices, Spariosu proposes a non-reductionist ecological model of science that draws on nonlinear concepts from general systems theory. He concludes that there is only one kind of science: human science, which incorporates the physical and the social sciences as well as the humanities and the arts, engaged in continuous dialogue and cooperation. In the final sections of Global Intelligence and Human Development he discusses ways in which universities could be reoriented toward promoting the kind of local-global leaning environments needed for sustainable human development. He proposes a new field of studies, intercultural knowledge management, that would encourage intercultural and transdisciplinary dialogue and teamwork.
Mihai I. Spariosu is Distinguished Research Professor and Academic Director at the Institute for European Studies at the University of Georgia.
"A deeply researched, thoughtful assessment of existing global educational resources and how they can be reconfigured to address the requirements of ecologically aware paths to human development. Spariosu draws on worldwide cultural knowledge, wisdom traditions, and twenty-first century science in his design for a transdisciplinary and experiential program – Intercultural Knowledge Management – which offers an inspiring and viable way forward."
– Hazel Henderson, author of Building a Win-Win World, Beyond Globalization, and Planetary Citizenship
"This book is a rare flash of intellectual creativity and an important contribution to the study of global transformation. An excellent handbook for those bewildered by the intricacies of social change."
– Calestous Juma, Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
"Global Intelligence and Human Development is a remarkable achievement. Combining sophisticated environmental politics with genuinely intercultural sensibilities, Spariosu's book sounds an urgent call for the development of a pedagogy that stresses global learning and global intelligence. His project provides a much needed normative direction for recent debates concerning globalization, as well as an important alternative to reductionist-style 'consilience' theories of unified learning."
– Matthew Calarco, Chair and Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Sweet Briar College
