Category:Eco-Spirituality

Noel Preston: On my study wall there hangs a beautiful photograph taken by the crew of Apollo 17 during their space journey to the moon. It shows Earth our home, the blue planet set against the inky blackness of space. Earth appears as a ball-like, single organism.

We are a privileged generation to have this image and, associated with it, an understanding of the cosmos in its magnificence. But we are also the generation that is responsible for unprecedented damage to Earth‟s life systems – a system that has been almost five billion years in the making. In our time, the collision between our human story and the Universe story demands some accounting and reconciliation, as well as a revision of the narratives by which we live.

Keywords: eco-spirituality; ecopsychology; environmental security; new ways of seeing; planet citizens

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The Big Picture

Fritjof Capra -- Is There Room for Spirit in Science?

Charlene Spretnak -- Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics

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Book Review: Fritjof Capra and Pier Luisi

The Systems View of Life

September, 2014

I am sure Fritjof Capra will need no introduction for the vast majority of you, as he is one of the world’s leading thinkers in systems theory, and the author of so many influential books such as The Tao of Physics -- The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter -- The Turning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture -- The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living and Learning from Leonardo: Decoding the Notebooks of a Genius.

Fritjof has described The Systems View of Life as “the realisation of a dream” and it has been written with his friend and long-time collaborator Pier Luigi Luisi who is one of the world’s leading authorities on the origin of life and self-organisation of synthetic and natural systems. The result is a text-book which presents, for the first time, a coherent systemic framework which integrates four dimensions of life – biological, cognitive, social and ecological.

It then discusses the profound philosophical, social and political implications of this new paradigm...

If we begin with some basics, this is first and foremost a textbook written in an academic style with numbered sections for easy cross-referencing, and is therefore targeted at undergraduate and post-graduate university students. It will of course also be of interest to researchers, practitioners and enquiring readers who are interested in discovering more about the profound shift in the scientific conception of living systems, the primary insight of which is the move from the machine metaphor of life to one where life is perceived as a network of inseparable relationships.

This primary insight looks quite innocuous in the written word, and it may be that people, in our highly-networked world, may wonder what the fuss is about. The shift becomes more pronounced when understood in terms of autopoiesis, one of the major foundations of the systems view of life, developed by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in the 1970s.

In this view, living systems continually recreate themselves by transforming or replacing their components. They go through structural changes while preserving their web-like pattern of organisation. Hence there is both stability and change – a key characteristic of life. Instead of thinking of “mind” we change to a conception of the process of cognition. This has developed into a rich field known as cognitive science which transcends the traditional frameworks of biology, neuroscience, psychology, epistemology etc.

In his recent presentation of The Systems View of Life at Schumacher College last week, Fritjof explained the importance of understanding this new multidisciplinary approach:

- The central insight is the identification of cognition (the process of knowing) with the process of life. Cognition is the activity involved in the self-generation and self-perpetuation of living networks. The interactions of a living organisation with their environment are cognitive actions. Cognition is immanent in matter at all levels of life.

- The brain is not the only structure through which the process of cognition operates, the entire structure of the organism participates in the process of cognition. The first scientific theory which overcomes the Cartesian split of mind and matter which are now seen as two complementary aspects of life which are inseparably connected.

- Physics, together with chemistry, is essential to understand the behaviour of the molecules in living cells, but it is not sufficient to describe their self-organising patterns and processes. At the level of living systems, physics has thus lost its role as the science providing the most fundamental description of reality. This is still not generally recognised today. p15

This book can be seen as a synthesis of all of Fritjof’s previous works into one unifying framework, perhaps notably The Web of Life. It is also an integration of the last couple of decades’ scientific developments. The contribution of Pier Luigo Luisi cannot be underestimated, especially having previously studied the work of Lynn Margulis in this area (see for example his 2006 work The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology).

Part II develops within the reader an appreciation of the systems view at a biological level, which form part of the earlier sections of the book on the origins of life on Earth. The reader is then guided into an intuitive understanding of autopoiesis, which entails the re-conceptualisation of “cognition”. This explanation unfolds across a number of chapters into the cognitive domain, and are both articulate and well-structured.

To read The Systems View of Life is to journey through a study of order and complexity in the living world, understanding the shift from a mechanistic world view where quantification is primary, to understanding the behavioural qualities of complex and chaotic systems, arriving at the understanding the patterns of organisation and processes of living systems. In systems thinking therefore, “organization, structure and process are three different but inseparable perspectives on the phenomenon of life.” The problem though, for many scientists, and also people who are involved in modeling complex systems, is that they do not give these three perspectives equal importance “because of the persistent influence of our Cartesian heritage.”

There is a fourth perspective which is added to these three domains, and that is the domain of meaning. Social networks are “first and foremost networks of communication involving symbolic language, cultural constraints, relationships of power and so on.” In adding this domain, the systems view of life in extended into an analysis of power, social structures, leadership, communities and the concept of the living organisation.

A chapter is dedicated to the inexhaustible topic of the relationship between science, religion and spirituality. While there are frameworks such as the integral theory of Ken Wilber which make claim of being a “theory of everything”, The Systems View of Life takes a measured and contemplative path looking at the areas of agreement, and also disagreement, such as the Buddhist perspective on consciousness whereby consciousness is seen as not emerging from either the brain or matter.

The important insight in this section is the way in which spirituality is defined as something separate from religion, thereby integrating human values into the overall systems approach. This includes the concept of ecoliteracy – “our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology, or principles of sustainability” – not just an intellectual understanding, but the:

... deep ecological awareness of the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and of the fact that, as individuals and societies, we are embedded in, and dependent upon, the cyclical processes of nature. Since this awareness, ultimately, is grounded in spiritual awareness, it is evident that ecoliteracy has an important spiritual dimension.

Part IV of The Systems View of Life examines the ecological dimension, and this includes a look at how sustainability is defined and taught, the manner in which global problems are interconnected, the fallacy of unlimited economic growth, global finance, as well as offering a number of systemic solutions to the problems of energy, climate change, industrial agriculture and biomimicry and ecodesign. As the authors note, many of these solutions are technically and financially viable, the impediments are political will and the lobbying power of the US fossil-fuel industry...

A unified approach of a 'Systems of View of Life' can contribute greatly to an analysis of the interrelations, especially as it has at a fundamental level both cognition and consciousness, a dimension which is vital...

The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision is a book which it is hard to do justice to.

With collaboration across governments, businesses and civil society, we can make the transition to a sustainable future, one which embraces “qualitative growth” enriching humanity and the environment with prosperity and a higher level of conscientiousness, one that truly understand the rich web of life.

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