We're all seeking to feel whole, we're all searching for connection, peace, understanding. This short and excellent book is about just that, so is one to stash in your pocket to accompany on your journey along that path. I highly recommend it as one for the road.
Gaia theory, developed in the 1970's by microbiologist Lynn Margulis and atmospheric chemist James Lovelock, states that all life on Earth is a part of a unified, self-regulating system. Gaia describes a living Earth: a holistic body in the form of a planet.
Gaia resonates with and has been preceded across millennia by the deepest thought and ideas within natural science, metaphysics and ancient Chinese Daoist ideas that all is one. It is therefore an extremely useful and valuable way to think about living within nature, rather than apart from it. Initially derided, Gaia now plays a key role in climate science today.
The sticky bit of Gaia theory is the tendency for it to be wilfully misunderstood by proper idiots. They cling to the 'self-regulating' part in order to absolve humans and their idle arses from doing anything about climate change and fossil fuel dependency. They dribble on that nature will correct itself, that humans aren't the cause of collapsing systems, that climate change isn't a thing, and there's no need to get off the sofa or stop treating the world like a tacky all-you-can-eat restaurant.
Gaia and Philosophy fuses science, mathematics, philosophy, ecology and mythology, challenges Western anthropocentrism and proposes a symbiotic planet. In its striking philosophical conclusion, the revolutionary Gaia paradigm holds important implications not only for understanding life's past but for shaping its future.
Published in April 2023 by Ignota for their Terra Ignota series.