deep ecology
practices for awakening and resilience in a changing world
“Deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the fact that, as individuals and societies we are all embedded in (and ultimately dependent on) the …
“Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else - from the natural environment. It does see the world not as a collection of isolated objects but as a network of phenomena that are …
“Gradually, physicists began to realise that nature, at the atomic level, does not appear as a mechanical universe composed of fundamental building blocks, but rather as a network of relations, and …
“Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs …
“Systems thinking is “contextual,” which is the opposite of analytical thinking. Analysis means taking something apart in order to understand it; systems thinking means putting it into the context of …
“There are solutions to the major problems of our time; some of them even simple. But they require a radical shift in our perceptions, our thinking, our values. And, indeed, we are now at the …
Autopoiesis is the mechanism that makes living systems autonomous.
Cognition is not the representation of a pre-given world by a pre-given mind, but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind.
Contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently?
Information is a difference that makes a difference.
Nothing has meaning except it be seen as in some sort of context.
The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.
The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named.
The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns.
The sacred is certainly related to the beautiful. And both are related to that which is outside the reach of language.
We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong.
Wisdom is knowing the pattern which connects.
Fritjof Capra (born 1939) is an Austrian-born American physicist and systems theorist. His work examines connections between physics, biology, systems theory, and ecological philosophy. Born in …
Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal Australian scholar and member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He founded the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University and wrote Sand Talk: …
Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) was an anthropologist, biologist, and cyberneticist whose groundbreaking work on systems thinking, learning theory, and the “ecology of mind” provided …
“All the world’s systems are interconnected; nothing exists in isolation.” – Joanna Macy Source: World as Lover, World as Self (1991)
Elisabet Sahtouris is an American and Greek evolution biologist, futurist, and author whose work emphasises how cooperation and symbiosis, rather than competition alone, drive evolutionary processes. …
James Ephraim Lovelock (1919-2022) was an independent scientist who formulated the Gaia hypothesis in the early 1970s. Working outside academic institutions, he proposed that Earth functions as a …
Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) was an American evolutionary biologist whose endosymbiotic theory proposed that complex cells arose through symbiotic mergers of simpler organisms. Her work emphasized …