Thesis blog post #7 - Earth as Living Organism

EARTH AS LIVING ORGANISM

At its extreme, the old mechanical worldview denies life in nearly all organisms except humans, and then, limited to our faculty of reason. Plants and even animals were not spared this deadly analytical knife. Today, it seems most people acknowledge that the organic world is truly living, that animals do have feelings, and that plants do respond to our care. So either we have regained some sensitivity or the dominant view has never been fully accepted. Yet we still may feel understandably perplexed when trying to consider the inorganic world of rocks, minerals, and myriad things as being alive as well.

In contrast to the modern view, Chukchi shamans of Siberia say, “Everything that is, is alive.” Indigenous people believe that we humans need to do our part to keep the Earth living. They say that to ensure her vitality, we must have reciprocal relations with our environment. Viktor Schauberger, in Living Energies, writes that, “Our primeval Mother Earth is an organism that no science in the world can rationalize.”

In Europe, the mechanical worldview was represented by Isaac Newton, who as the story goes, discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head. That which is less well known is that the holistic tradition continued as a minority voice. This perspective was articulated by Johann Goethe’s reply to Newton, ”How did that apple get up into the tree in the first place?”

Hugh Lovel, a Biodynamic farmer, writes that mechanist science has been unbalanced in its investigations. Lovel says that by considering only gravitational force, this science has looked at just one side of existence, the component that is biologically dead or dying. The other side of existence, which Goethe suggests in his response to Newton, is that which is biologically alive and growing. Lovel, as well as George Adams, and Olive Whicher, before him, introduce the concept of levity as the appropriate counterpart to gravity. They define levity as the quality or state of being light and buoyant. Levity explains how the apple did get up into that tree in the first place. Plants continually display the force of levity as the Sun attracts and ‘pulls’ them up and away from Earth.

Indeed, even animals and us humans experience both forces of gravity and levity in the form of emotional moods. When we feel pessimistic or depressed, we may experience more heavily the weight of gravity. Yet when optimistic or excited, we often experience a feeling of lightness and a perception that life has no bounds. Materialist science, however, has invented all kinds of hormones and substances to explain living growth while refusing to acknowledge that a spiritual lifeforce does indeed exist.

In The Plant Between Sun and Earth, Adams and Whicher expand the study of levity by mapping it onto the framework of projective geometry. Developed as a reaction to the increasing influence of algebra on European mathematics by the end of the nineteenth century, projective geometers reject the use of cartesian coordinates claiming that they reduce, rather than stimulate, thinking. Just as levity complements gravity, Adams and Whicher develop projective geometry as a counterpart to euclidean geometry. By beginning with the point and then extending lines out from it, euclidean geometry provides a map for gravity and earthly (physical) force. Projective geometry, on the other hand, begins with the periphery and then ‘intends’ planes from there toward the center. This complementary process provides a map for levity and cosmic (spiritual) force.

A popular saying among Biodynamic farmers is “Matter is never without Spirit; Spirit is never without Matter.” Physical and cosmic forces are always intertwined. Yet how can we bring out, or enliven, the spiritual component of seemingly dead matter? Vishu Magee asks, “By what alchemy does a pile of stones come to life?” Christopher Day, in Places of the Soul, answers by describing art as the imbuing of matter with spirit. Pyotr Uspenskii claims that a stone from the wall of a church and a stone from a prison wall are two completely different things. Items made from the same material but serving different functions are truly different.

So apparently then, it is ultimately up to us, through our intentions, to create beauty and truth in the world that we build. Our ability to create both truth and beauty, to connect Heaven with Earth, may determine to a large extent whether or not the result is good.