Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In the world of biocivilisations, humanity must seek to understand and adopt the best practices of other biocivilisations to the depth and degree that we can convincingly address the academy of life and its principal authority: Gaia.
The goal of this essay is to reignite a conversation with the Post Carbon Institute’s own Richard Heinberg about music and change in planetary systems, a conversation which began in the fall of 2017. I’m captioning this second stage of the conversation “What’s musical about biology and why does that matter?”
Biotime, or biological time, runs at a very different pace and rhythm to human time. It can be observed by recording events in the natural world. These can be as varied as the day the first spring bulb opens, the last frost before summer, or the first sighting of a species of bird or insect in a new habitat.
There’s a lot in Cary Neeper’s Archives of Varok novels. They are by turns wondrous, wise, witty, tense and gripping—all in service of a heartfelt environmental polemic.
Biology today is undergoing a profound reassessment of its core premises.
Ecological economics of course has roots in ecology and biology as well as in economics. Most of ecological economists’ and steady-state economists’ time has been well-spent correcting economics in the light of biology and ecology. And there is still more to do in this direction. However, we should be careful to avoid importing some deep metaphysical biases frequent in biology, along with its scientific truths.
