Themes Overview
EcoTypes themes gather together the fifteen EcoTypes axes into three underlying groups. Themes tell us the most important patterns and differences in EcoTypes axes. Themes thus offer a clearer way to get at our most significant environmental ideas underlying the axes.
The three resultant themes were derived using a procedure called factor analysis, which reduces many variables to fewer variables based on their most common differences. The details of factor analysis are a bit complicated, but can also be suggested via a network visualization of the axes, and the basic correlations between axes.
Based on its contributing axes, each theme embodies a key question and poles, and may suggest key paradoxes or deep differences underlying the fifteen axes—you’ll see the well-known Chinese paradox icon next to each.
We thus recommend you explore these themes with an eye toward deep difference and creative tension—the hallmarks of engagement that arise when one cannot simply agree or disagree when our environmental ideas differ.
Click on any theme below for details.
Three Themes
What world do we want, and what would be the place of nonhumans vs. humans?
What old vs. new ways of knowing will help us build the world we want?