<p>
	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Jonathon-Schramm-BioPhotoPlants-250pxl.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 200px; float: right;" />We all live in it, move in it, feel it solidly under our feet daily, and yet we don&rsquo;t often think of ourselves as creatures of it. What is it? Place.&nbsp;</p>
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	How is it that we have been so able to overlook the basic point of connection that we have as material creatures to the material world around us? Many authors have described some of the causes of detaching from our home place: globalizing society, culture and markets, advances in technology and communication, and the mobility of most citizens. Deeper and subtler influences such as the schism between physical and mental work and abstraction in the sciences and arts have also driven us to minimize the value we place on a good understanding of our physical place in the world. The clearest symptom of this lack of place in our lives might simply be the increasing homogeneity of our buildings and developments across the country: recently-built housing looks much the same in Phoenix, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Birmingham, despite the wide range of biomes those cities are located in.</p>
<p>
	In the last several centuries, we&rsquo;ve learned an immense amount about the world by lumping places together and minimizing their differences. &nbsp;Abstraction and generalization have led to breakthroughs in many different fields. But this begs the question: what effect does moving our culture from a place-specific to a place-general approach have? Emerging conclusions from two fields close to my heart &ndash; ecology and education - are pointing towards the need to return to thinking in depth about our specific places in the world if we hope to have functioning places to pass on to those who will follow us.&nbsp;</p>
