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INTRODUCTION TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES 17 is needed to be able to trigger off the change, the process of social adaptation” (Emmett — Nye 2017: 8). This, in turn, needs an inter- and transdisciplinary approach which cannot succeed without the help of the humanities. EH is in a sense translation: it translates natural scientific and technological results into texts, sociocultural discourses that can capture the attention of both the public and the political and economic actors more intensely than scientific explanation (Oppermann - Iovino 2017: 6). EH is not a new academic discipline but rather an area of and attitude towards research that aims to integrate the disciplines that study nature with environmental issues. The general idea is that these themes belong to the field of the natural sciences, and that the humanities cannot competently address them. EH challenges the relevance of this statement, proving its untenability by adducing contemporary environmental-social problems and demonstrating that these highly complex problems also demand complex approaches. “The truth is we can’t afford to look at problems in narrow ways anymore.” Hubbell and Ryan emphasize (Hubbell — Ryan 2022: 4) in their explanation that we have arrived at the contemporary environmental crisis precisely because we looked at every aspect of a given problem separately and studied it using different scholarly disciplines, with the consequence that the resultant knowledge also remained isolated. “What happens to the climate of the Earth today happens at all — material, social and cultural — levels, including the individuals microlevel, his way of living. That is why EH declares that the environmental problems do not solely belong to the Earth sciences” (Castree 2021: 2-3). The humanities (along with the majority of social sciences) apply an interpretive approach: they conceive of the world as one of diverse truths and possibilities where different, often contradictory views arise concerning moral, existential, and aesthetic questions, and where the plurality of views also applies to the environment. EH integrates the natural sciences and their findings, while at the same time attaching great importance to an interpretation of the actors’ living space. The humanities’ critical thinking through questions such as “How should we live?”, “What is justice?”, “How should we see and interpret the world?” etc., take us closer to understanding not only the relationship between human beings and nature, but also natural scientific information as well (Castree 2021: 1-3). “While the sciences may be unmatched in describing environmental change and crisis, the humanities enable us to think more critically about the moral, ethical, social, and cultural dimensions of environmental change and crisis. They enable us to respond to ecological degradation and the dangers of human development and progress in ways that complicate, complement, and extend scientific inquiry” (Hubbell — Ryan 2022: 10). EH cannot do without self-reflection: it is aware, and it emphasizes, that it is a cultural product, so it is also influenced by the cultural perspective and historical viewpoint in which it is embedded. Consequently, it conceives of the notions of key importance (nature, environment, the human being, etc.) not as something given but as something interpreted (see Schmidt — Soentgen — Zapf 2020: 228). It is assisted by such contemporary critical studies and theories as post-colonialism, ecofeminism, etc.'? ® Post-colonialism: a critical trend which emerged from literary and cultural studies, it addresses
