19. The Human Quest to Live in a Cosmos

This chapter reflects on the enduring quest of human beings to inhabit and understand the universe. Weaving together an account of the exterior (objective) and interior (subjective) facets of the cosmos, Heather Eaton finds the unique qualities of human subjectivity in symbolic consciousness and in the worldviews, narratives, and other systems of symbols through which humans interpret and respond to their surroundings. Along with symbols and narratives, learning about ecology involves attention to systems and interrelationships at multiple scales, from ecosystems to the biosphere.

6. The Obligations of a Biologist and Eden No More

Thomas Lovejoy elaborates on the importance of biodiversity for the Earth community, with particular attention to Latin American forests. Bringing science together with ethical and political issues, Lovejoy articulates the responsibilities of biologists and other scientists for promoting biodiversity and addressing contemporary ecological crises.

9. Confucian Cosmology and Ecological Ethics

Mary Evelyn Tucker presents contributions to ecological ethics in Confucianism, highlighting the importance of Confucian cosmology for understanding the material world as vibrant and lively, not passive and inert. Confucianism facilitates an approach to ethics for which personal and social concerns are embedded in the Earth community and the whole cosmos, such that ecological concern is not separate from the practice of self-cultivation.

8. Affectual Insight

Focusing on religion and ecology in Hinduism, this chapter elucidates the value of love and devotion as ways of connecting to the natural world. In contrast to the detachment that characterizes abstractly intellectual forms of knowledge, these ways of connecting to nature yield emotional or affective knowledge, which promotes care for the beauty and vulnerability of the natural world.

7. Fluid Histories

In Chapter 7, Prasenjit Duara thinks with the circulating waters of oceans to articulate the complex confluence of human and natural histories, particularly with reference to Asian contexts. Whereas the fragmentation of human and natural histories contributes to ethical and political failures to address environmental issues, Duara’s oceanic metaphor demonstrates how human history, including the study of history (i.e., historiography), overlaps with natural history, while these histories nonetheless operate on different temporal scales.

5. Reanimating the World

This chapter advocates for integral ecological healing, particularly by attending to the practices of indigenous Amazonian communities. The use of psychedelic plant medicines in Amazonian shamanism exemplifies the kind of non-rational ways of knowing that expand human consciousness beyond the individual ego and into intimate communion with the more-than-human world.

1. Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet

Reflecting on species dynamics within the planetary biosphere, this chapter suggests that new insight into the uncanny navigational feats of migratory animals may be gleaned by recognizing the broad Earth not as a passive background upon which these movements occur, but as a dynamic, agential player in these migrations. The long-distance movements of various animals can readily be understood as metabolic processes within the body of the living planet, not unlike the rhythmic systole and diastole of a heartbeat.

15. Indigenous Language Resurgence and the Living Earth Community

Drawing attention to the contemporary resurgence of indigenous languages, Mark Turin describes the collaborative work of linguistic and cultural revitalization in response to the destruction of indigenous communities in settler colonial nations. While recuperating the vitality of languages, this process also facilitates the recuperation of the well-being of indigenous communities as well as the lands within which those languages and communities are embedded.