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EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution
A wonderfully fascinating journey through the history of EarthLife (biological evolution) and then through the history of humanity to see how we humans have seen ourselves in relation to our living planet and what that means for us now. Will we learn from Nature's amazing four billion years of experience in creating healthy living systems to give ourselves the future of which we dream?
432 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 24, 2022
A brilliant book that explains the broad picture of life, recommended reading for everyone alive. “The argument of this book is that our maturity as a species depends on our accepting the responsibility for our natural heritage of behavioral freedom by working consciously and cooperatively toward our own health along with that of our planet.”
The argument begins, as any proper argument should, at the beginning by explaining the direction of cosmic evolution and plugging us into the overall current of life. What we see when we view life from this grand perspective is the increase in holism, love, and cooperation as individual units of selection are gradually expanded in ever larger chains of cooperative units. Life itself evolves as the essential process of the cosmos as a whole; there is no radical discontinuity between life and non-life. “Earthlife may be described as autopoetic-self-creating-holons forming within the great Earth holon.” Further, we see nature using the same patterns over and over again, albeit at different levels of emergence, suggesting a unity of purpose concerning the universe as a whole.
There are two conflicting, and both necessary, facts that we need to integrate. We need to have a map to act in the world (a map broadly construed; a worldview is a particularly integrated, 3-dimensional map) AND there is no such thing as objective reality which we can map directly since we always have a hand in cocreating our reality, whether we are aware of this fact or not, meaning that reality isn’t merely a perception waiting to happen, but also a concept waiting to be thought. As Peterson states, we are always embedded in a story of sorts, so we need to make sure that the map is as accurate as possible but there is no such thing as a single true and complete worldview; how do we then solve disputes? How do we integrate these two views?
Brief history lesson: a few thousand years before Christ, humanity underwent a change in view. From cooperation we came to favor competition and from seeing life as embedded within nature we came to view man and God as separated from it and therefore able to manipulate it for our own purposes (from female to male, right to left brain.) The old view might have persisted among the laypeople right up until the Middle Ages (at least in Europe) had it not been for the Church’s teaching and the advent of the scientific worldview, by rational understanding and mathematical description. To simplify drastically, this is the organism vs machine debate; we reduced ourselves and everything in existence to machines. But it still remains, as it has always been, true that a dance is a better way of understanding the natural world than a mechanism, since the former is a spontaneous, living, self-creative, and improvised process whereas the latter is a predictable, dead, and utterly boring one.
So how does history help integration? By recognizing the eternal pattern of differentiation and integration of the evolutionary process, and by seeing the differentiation of the human from its natural environment, we can recognize the necessary integration that needs to take place between self and environment, self and other, and self and self. Evolution helps us recognize the importance and requirement of integration; this is not mere opinion or conjecture, but that which needs to happen for the health of the whole. The lack of objective map doesn’t mean that anything goes; far from it. It merely means that there is no reality that stands apart from the viewer, that man and woman are not truly separate from the world in which they live; that is a metaphor which has long ago expired. The map that we now need recognizes humanity as embedded within a larger holon, namely the earth, to which we have to direct our energy and attention. It recognizes that we are individual cells in bigger cells in yet bigger turtles all the way up (and down).
Integration: we are NOT separate from anything else, but are firmly embedded within the world. Everything we think and do and feel has ramifications that ripple out in every conceivable spatio-temporal direction therefore the map that we construct, based on the available evidence, necessarily needs to take into account everything that we experience. “As we open awareness to our interbeing, our ecological self, we can experience ourselves as ‘life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live’, and realize the deep purpose of our existence on Earth – to tend Gaia and participate fully in its ancient, sacred insurgence against the forces of entropy.” (From the Web of Meaning by Jeremy Lent.)
“The purpose of this book is to put human life into just this kind of perspective -- to see ourselves within the whole evolving world, even within the whole evolving cosmos. When we look at things broadly this way, we see that the problems we humans have created may not be as great as problems other species have created, for which life found solutions. What could be more interesting, more exciting, than to be alive in the very age when we as a species have the opportunity to mature, to solve the adolescent problems we have caused ourselves and others?”
The argument begins, as any proper argument should, at the beginning by explaining the direction of cosmic evolution and plugging us into the overall current of life. What we see when we view life from this grand perspective is the increase in holism, love, and cooperation as individual units of selection are gradually expanded in ever larger chains of cooperative units. Life itself evolves as the essential process of the cosmos as a whole; there is no radical discontinuity between life and non-life. “Earthlife may be described as autopoetic-self-creating-holons forming within the great Earth holon.” Further, we see nature using the same patterns over and over again, albeit at different levels of emergence, suggesting a unity of purpose concerning the universe as a whole.
There are two conflicting, and both necessary, facts that we need to integrate. We need to have a map to act in the world (a map broadly construed; a worldview is a particularly integrated, 3-dimensional map) AND there is no such thing as objective reality which we can map directly since we always have a hand in cocreating our reality, whether we are aware of this fact or not, meaning that reality isn’t merely a perception waiting to happen, but also a concept waiting to be thought. As Peterson states, we are always embedded in a story of sorts, so we need to make sure that the map is as accurate as possible but there is no such thing as a single true and complete worldview; how do we then solve disputes? How do we integrate these two views?
Brief history lesson: a few thousand years before Christ, humanity underwent a change in view. From cooperation we came to favor competition and from seeing life as embedded within nature we came to view man and God as separated from it and therefore able to manipulate it for our own purposes (from female to male, right to left brain.) The old view might have persisted among the laypeople right up until the Middle Ages (at least in Europe) had it not been for the Church’s teaching and the advent of the scientific worldview, by rational understanding and mathematical description. To simplify drastically, this is the organism vs machine debate; we reduced ourselves and everything in existence to machines. But it still remains, as it has always been, true that a dance is a better way of understanding the natural world than a mechanism, since the former is a spontaneous, living, self-creative, and improvised process whereas the latter is a predictable, dead, and utterly boring one.
So how does history help integration? By recognizing the eternal pattern of differentiation and integration of the evolutionary process, and by seeing the differentiation of the human from its natural environment, we can recognize the necessary integration that needs to take place between self and environment, self and other, and self and self. Evolution helps us recognize the importance and requirement of integration; this is not mere opinion or conjecture, but that which needs to happen for the health of the whole. The lack of objective map doesn’t mean that anything goes; far from it. It merely means that there is no reality that stands apart from the viewer, that man and woman are not truly separate from the world in which they live; that is a metaphor which has long ago expired. The map that we now need recognizes humanity as embedded within a larger holon, namely the earth, to which we have to direct our energy and attention. It recognizes that we are individual cells in bigger cells in yet bigger turtles all the way up (and down).
Integration: we are NOT separate from anything else, but are firmly embedded within the world. Everything we think and do and feel has ramifications that ripple out in every conceivable spatio-temporal direction therefore the map that we construct, based on the available evidence, necessarily needs to take into account everything that we experience. “As we open awareness to our interbeing, our ecological self, we can experience ourselves as ‘life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live’, and realize the deep purpose of our existence on Earth – to tend Gaia and participate fully in its ancient, sacred insurgence against the forces of entropy.” (From the Web of Meaning by Jeremy Lent.)
“The purpose of this book is to put human life into just this kind of perspective -- to see ourselves within the whole evolving world, even within the whole evolving cosmos. When we look at things broadly this way, we see that the problems we humans have created may not be as great as problems other species have created, for which life found solutions. What could be more interesting, more exciting, than to be alive in the very age when we as a species have the opportunity to mature, to solve the adolescent problems we have caused ourselves and others?”
March 18, 2025
Seeing the universe as fractals. Everything repeating itself from bacteria (our eldest sisters) to solar systems.
"First the ancient bacteria solved their energy crisis by developing solar technology, then they discovered that recycling supplies is the best way to avoid running out of them."
"Mechanical systems may be more vulnerable to breakdown as they become more complex, but the opposite seems to be true of living systems."
"Variety gives nature, among other things, the resilience to survive disasters."
"Oddly, while we humans fight for our individual right to be different from others, not to be forced into the same social mold, we cause ourselves a good deal of trouble as a species by thinking there is something wrong with people who are different from us."
"First the ancient bacteria solved their energy crisis by developing solar technology, then they discovered that recycling supplies is the best way to avoid running out of them."
"Mechanical systems may be more vulnerable to breakdown as they become more complex, but the opposite seems to be true of living systems."
"Variety gives nature, among other things, the resilience to survive disasters."
"Oddly, while we humans fight for our individual right to be different from others, not to be forced into the same social mold, we cause ourselves a good deal of trouble as a species by thinking there is something wrong with people who are different from us."
February 4, 2018
I wanted to like this book more. There were sections that really resonated with me, but then others that felt bogged down and repetitive. That evolution is a cosmic dance and we are all made of stardust is awesome. Some great comments on how we need to learn from nature around us how to care for our planet before it is too late.
May 14, 2019
Interesting theory! Repetition sustains the point throughout the teachings of this book, but I feel that is because Lovelock wants to grind the information into our brain and create an easily digestible read. Though, In my opinion only part of this book reads smoothly, while other parts are choppy and painful to follow. However, it is far from boring.
November 7, 2018
Too much integral theory and not enough specificity for me.
February 28, 2017
I love this book! I read it the first time in 2013, but now see it in a new light. The book is also well written and a pleasure to read. I will come back with a fuller review.
May 31, 2016
This is one of those books where ultimate rationality and remarkable visionary gift meets such a degree of naïveté that one actually might start to believe in social utopia. However, Sahtouris' message should not be ignored, neither ridiculed for she has a great point indeed. This book certainly serves a complementary value, too, to show an example of how beautifully, poetically science could and should be told to kids. And to adults, too.
March 12, 2015
Eesti keeles ilmunud "Maailmatants (Koolibri 2009)"
Elisabet Sahtourise vaatenurk evolutsioonile võib mõnele tunduda värske (ehk isegi uskumatu), teise jaoks aga harjumuspärane ja ainuvõimalik. Üks paljudest Gaia teooria käsitlustest.
Elisabet Sahtourise vaatenurk evolutsioonile võib mõnele tunduda värske (ehk isegi uskumatu), teise jaoks aga harjumuspärane ja ainuvõimalik. Üks paljudest Gaia teooria käsitlustest.
February 2, 2008
this is a good one. You can read it for free online.
December 27, 2012
It was amazing; I still think about the book and should really read it again.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews