This text demonstrates how tightly humans are connected with the fabric of life and suggests that it is imperative to organize the world according to a different set of values and beliefs, not only for the well-being of human organizations, but for the survival of humanity as a whole.

He brings together recent scientific developments such as Fuzzy logic and Chaos theory to create a new synthesis of mind and matter.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin was one of the most distinguished thinkers and scientists of our time. He fits into no familiar category for he was at once a biologist and a paleontologist of world renown, and also a Jesuit priest. He applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect and his great spiritual faith to building a philosophy that would reconcile Christian theology with the scientific theory of evolution, to relate the facts of religious experience to those of natural science. The (...) Phenomenon of Man, the first of his writings to appear in America, Pierre Teilhard's most important book and contains the quintessence of his thought. When published in France it was the best-selling nonfiction book of the year. (shrink)

First published in 1926 but long neglected in the West, Vladimir I. Vernadsky’s The Biosphere revolutionized our view of Earth. Vernadsky teaches us that life has been the transforming geological force on our planet. He illuminates the difference between an inanimate, mineralogical view of Earth’s history, and an endlessly dynamic picture of Earth as the domain and product of living matter to a degree still poorly understood. What Darwin did for life through time, Vernadsky did for all life through space. (...) With this milestone publication, the first English translation of the entire text, English-speaking readers can at last read one of the great classics of modern science in their own language. Mark A. S. McMenamin, Professor of Geology at Mount Holyoke College, has written extensive annotations to explain the structure of Vernadsky’s arguments and their modern relevance. Jacques Grinevald, the world’s leading authority on the idea of the biosphere, has provided an introduction that places the book in historical context. (shrink)

A re-issue of Gregory Bateson's classic work. It summarizes Bateson's thinking on the subject of the patterns that connect living beings to each other and to their environment.

Focusing on the rise of the mechanistic idea that we can know the natural world only by distancing ourselves from it, Berman shows how science acquired its ...