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Restoring the Soul of the World
$18.95 CAD |
David Fideler, editor of The Pythagorean Sourcebook and also the journal Alexandria has written a beautiful book exploring humanity’s creative role within the living pattern of nature.
The primordial response to the vitality and mystery of creation is the beginning of all science, art, philosophy, and religion. As Socrates said, “Wonder is the beginning of all philosophy.” This living response to the world is still something within our grasp.
For millennia the world was seen as a creative, interconnected web of life, constantly growing, developing, and restoring itself. But with the arrival of the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries, the world was viewed as a lifeless, clocklike mechanism, bound by the laws of classical physics. Intelligence was a trait ascribed solely to human beings, and thus humanity was viewed as superior to and separate from nature. Today new scientific discoveries are reviving the ancient philosophy of a living, interconnected cosmos, and humanity is learning from and collaborating with nature’s intelligence in new, life-enhancing ways, from ecological design to biomimicry.
Drawing on important new scientific discoveries, Fideler explores the self-organizing intelligence at the heart of nature and humanity’s place in the cosmic pattern. He examines the ancient vision of the living cosmos from its roots in the world soul of the Greeks and the alchemical tradition, to its eclipse during the Scientific Revolution, to its return today. He explains how, even at the molecular level, natural systems engage in self-organization, self-preservation, and creative problem-solving, mirroring the ancient idea of a creative intelligence that exists deep within the heart of nature.
Living organisms don’t resemble machines at all; like human beings, they are embodiments of life’s evolutionary intelligence, which is an outgrowth of the greater natural intelligence of the world in which we are all rooted.
Revealing new connections between science, religion, and culture, Fideler explores how to reengage our creative partnership with nature and new ways to collaborate with nature’s intelligence.