Discovering Your Journey

Do you possess a meaningful sense of place, an emotional connection to the life and land around you? Or how about a strong sense of history, an affective connection to the deep time story of you? If you’re like most of us, your answer to both questions is no. A little reflection will reveal the immense depth of this problem. How can we ever hope to live sustainably if we don’t care about the places we live? As the late evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould once claimed [1], “We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature—for we will not fight to save what we do not love.”

Until very recently, virtually all cultures were rooted to their native places by origin stories—or cosmologies—that provided explanations for the origin and ordering of the world around them. Although present-day indigenous peoples and most followers of religious traditions have a cosmology, the bulk of us living in Western industrial societies don’t. Previously, I have written in this blog about the scientific Epic of Evolution, that astonishing and staggeringly beautiful account of our deep time evolutionary history that has emerged from within science over the past several decades. Following in the giant footsteps of Thomas Berry [2], I am convinced that this grand narrative, arguably science’s greatest contribution, has the potential to unite humanity and root us in both local places and deep time. Yet to date the evolutionary epic remains virtually absent from our culture. Why?

Some would point to the efforts of religious fundamentalists to suppress evolution. Others would underline Western culture’s myopic focus on the present day, with the implicit message that almost everything that came before is irrelevant. Still others would note that the deep scientific insights at the core of the cosmic story tend be highly counterintuitive; as I've said before, it’s not easy to grasp the notion that we are chunks of starstuff living on the side of a giant, spherical rock hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour! While these factors and others are certainly involved, the single greatest obstacle preventing widespread dissemination of the Epic of Evolution may well be abstraction. To date, the evolutionary epic has been presented as a grand saga uniting all of humanity within a single cosmic unfolding. Yet absent has been a clear means of grounding this story in everyday experience, where it could assert its full emotional (as opposed to merely intellectual) impact.

At first glance it would seem that cosmic evolution has little in common with everyday experience in local places. After all, the former deals with the biggest scales of time and space, whereas the latter is concerned with the very intimate nearby. But imagine for a moment communicating the universe story entirely through reference to local characters and features. To give a few examples from my home, a forest-clad mountain might serve to tell of the origins of galaxies and stars (with all heavy elements in the rocks forged within stellar furnaces); a gurgling creek could become the vehicle for speaking of the birth of molecules (combining oxygen and hydrogen to become water); a majestic redwood could convey the story of life learning to harness the sun’s energy; a spawning salmon could become the entry point for telling of the first back-boned animals and their transition onto land; a raven flying overhead offers a fine protagonist for conveying the story of reptiles, dinosaurs, and birds; and the indigenous Miwok peoples offer a vibrant focus for telling of the birth of humans and their changing relationship to the land. The entire story might be conveyed outdoors in a natural setting, engaging the full range of listeners’ senses. The essential point here is that the key characters of the cosmic journey (galaxies, stars, landscapes, bacteria, plants, animals, culture, etc.) are all present today in one form or another in every place. So any place can be used to convey the full splendor of the cosmic saga.

This “cosmolocal approach” provides the opportunity for reciprocal illumination of place and story. On the one hand, the Epic of Evolution offers a wondrous narrative context that adds meaning to local place. On the other, local places provide the characters and direct experience that makes this evolutionary epic alive, immediate, and engaging. Each version of the story can be tailored not only to place, but also to the age and knowledge base of the audience, from children through adults. Importantly, these stories should not be presented as received ‘truths.’ After all, like science generally, the story of cosmic evolution, although well established in its fundamentals, is still provisional in some aspects, and will undoubtedly “evolve” itself. More importantly, the cosmolocal approach opens the door for each person to construct his/her own unique version of the Universe Story, selecting the most meaningful local characters with which to explore and convey this saga.

The beauty of the evolutionary epic is that it allows for an endless variety of interpretations, each one informed by specific historical, cultural, spiritual, and ecological contexts. Certainly the grand cosmic saga is not compatible with all religious beliefs,particularly fundamentalist notions of creation within the past 6,000 years. But just as the world’s spiritual traditions have adapted to the reality that the Earth does not exist at the center of the universe, so too must we now accept, indeed embrace, the fact that we live in a dynamic universe that has been unfolding for billions of years.

Ultimately, the cosmolocal approach has potential to simultaneously foster both a deep sense of place and history. This way of understanding the universe is not new, of course. Indigenous peoples have used it for many thousands of years to root their origin myths in intimate details of their homelands. It’s high time that we married this ancient wisdom with modern science to root ourselves in both local place and the greater cosmos.

In closing, I strongly recommend that you check out a spectacular, newly released documentary, Journey of the Universe, created by my very wise and talented friends, Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker (together with a team of others). "JOTU," as the project is labeled, is the amazing culmination of many years work, offering a brief, jaw-dropping synopsis of the evolutionary epic. Go to: http://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/

References

1. Gould, S. J. 1993. Unenchanted evening. Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History. Norton, New York. (p. 40)

2. Berry, T. 1990. The Dream of the Earth. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco.

All images derived from National Geographic: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

The Nature of Love

Albert Einstein, that seemingly endless fount of quotations, once said, “gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.” Ok, fair enough, but who or what is responsible? Why do we fall in love? Most of us think of love as an inspired feeling, but it turns out that our passions and attachments owe more to chemistry than to Cupid.

Of the theories I’ve seen on love, the one I find most compelling comes from anthropologist Helen Fisher [1]. Fisher speaks of three varieties of human bonding with the opposite sex, each mediated by a different neurochemical system. There’s the sex drive, linked in both males and females to that infamous hormone testosterone. Next comes romantic love, triggered by a brain chemical called dopamine. And finally there’s that deep, persistent feeling of attachment, governed by a pair of pituitary gland hormones: oxytocin and vasopressin. Think of this passionate trio as lust, love, and longing, respectively.

Why the three flavors of love? Fisher argues that the answer involves an evolutionary solution to the ancient problem of reproduction. Lust motivates us to seek sex with an assortment of partners. Love (of the romance variety) keeps us focused on just one partner at a time. And longing glues us to one partner long enough to raise a child through infancy. The three systems collaborate, . . . well, . . . shall we say, imperfectly, allowing us simultaneously to feel a deep sense of attachment for a spouse and a desire to romance another, while fighting off lustful thoughts of nameless others.

Of course, intersexual relationships are not the only kind of human bonding. There’s also mother-infant bonding as well as bonds with fathers, more distant kin, and nonkin, all of which appear to serve the function of bolstering infant survival rates. (Bonds between kin and nonkin can facilitate the formation of social networks as well). Looking beyond the human realm, we discover that chemically mediated bonding—particularly between mothers and infants, and between males and females—is rampant among birds and mammals, and for the same reasons: reproduction and survival. In the competition to pass one’s genes on to the next generation, evolution, it seems, leaves little to chance [2].

What I find especially fascinating is that some of the same chemicals are involved in these other forms of bonding. For example, oxytocin, the hormone linked to long-term attachment, shows up as a major player in the mother-infant bond. Mothers with higher levels of oxytocin in the first trimester of pregnancy tend to form stronger bonds with their infants postpartum than mothers with lower levels [3]. Oxytocin also turns out to be a primary ingredient of mother’s milk, helping baby bond with Momma. And what hormone is involved with bonding pets to their respective human counterparts? That’s right—oxytocin [4]. Although research into the chemical basis of love remains in its infancy [5], it’s no wonder that some folks call oxytocin “the love drug.”

Now, I am certainly no neurochemist. Indeed chemistry has never been one of my strong suits. (For some inexplicable reason, concepts like covalent bonding and oxidation states have always made my eyes glaze over and my brain turn to mush). Nevertheless, I’m going to make a prediction about the nature and neurochemistry of bonding. I predict that future research will reveal solid evidence of a human bond with (nonhuman) nature—what people have referred to as “biophilia” (see my previous post)—and that this bond will be facilitated by none other than our hormonal friend oxytocin.

Going further out on the limb of theory, I speculate that this effect will turn out to be strongest if strengthened by abundant childhood experience in local nature. In other words, I think that this human-nature bond will have a cultural component (plenty of time as a child exploring local natural environs) and a genetic component (neurochemical mediation by oxytocin). To my knowledge, no solid evidence exists to support any of this, but I’m sticking with it until proven otherwise.

Part of my reasoning relates to the bevy of studies that report the stress-reducing effects of being in nature, or even gazing at it out a window or on a screen [6,7]. I am suspicious that such feelings have a neurochemical basis related to human-nature bonding. But what eco-evolutionary function might such a bond serve? In other words, why on Earth would humans evolve an emotional attachment to the more-than-human world? Reproduction? Survival? Something else? The answer (or at least my current best answer) must await a future post. Thanks for staying tuned.

References

1. Fisher, H. 2004. Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. Henry Holt, New York.

2. Broad, K. D., Curley, J. P., and Keverne, E. B. 2006. Mother-infant bonding and the evolution of mammalian social relationships. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B., 361:2199-2214.

3. Feldman, R., Weller, A., Zagoory-Sharon, O., and Levine. A. 2007. Evidence for a neuroendocrinological foundation of human affiliation: plasma oxytocin levels across pregnancy and the postpartum period predict mother-infant bonding. Pscyhol. Sci., 18(11):965-70.

4. Odendaal, J. S. J. and Meintjes, R. A. 2003. Neurophysiological correlates of affiliative behaviour between humans and dogs. Veterinary Journal, 165:296−301.

5. Campbell, A. 2010. Oxytocin and human social behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(3):281-295.

6. Ulrich, R. S. 1993. Biophilia, biophobia, and natural landscapes. Pp. 73-137 in S. R. Kellert, S. R. and E. O. Wilson (eds.), The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

7. Kahn, P. H., Jr. 1999. The Human Relationship with Nature: Development and Culture. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

All images derived from National Geographic: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

Loving Life

About 4:30 am this morning, amidst a coastal downpour, my wife Toni and I awoke to the sound of two young raccoons having a WWF-style wrestling smackdown in the gathering pool of water on the skylight overhead. Smiling at the rambunctious pair going head to head, trying to toss each other “out of the ring,” I paused to wonder whether or not I really cared about raccoons—or any other “wild” animals for that matter.

So how about it? Do you love life? I’m not talking here about the concept of living; rather I refer to your emotional bond with other, nonhuman forms of life. Nothing kinky here folks. The question is whether or not you, and people generally, feel some sort of deep-felt connection to the more-than-human world.

The term “biophilia”—literally, a love of life—was first used by psychologist Erich Fromm [1] in 1964 to describe a particular psychological orientation—a vital attraction to nature, both human and nonhuman. Use of this term became much more widespread two decades later following publication of a thin volume from biologist E. O. Wilson [2]. Wilson’s “biophilia hypothesis” proposed that humans possess an instinctive tendency to affiliate with other life forms. According to this idea, biophilia is no less than a genetically mediated need resulting from numerous millennia of human evolution living in direct contact with the nonhuman world.

A diverse range of evidence has been cited in support of the biophilia hypothesis. One group of studies examined the health benefits of interacting with nature. To give an example, a group of patients who had just had gall bladder surgery were placed either into a room with windows looking out onto a natural setting or a room lacking windows [4]. By several measures—for example, pain medication needed and length of hospital stay—individuals in the former group fared significantly better than those in the latter. Health benefits following exposure to natural settings have also been reported for dental patients, prison inmates, and individuals recovering from stress [e.g., 4,5,6]. Similarly, a summary of more than 100 studies [4] reported benefits for individuals who have spent time in a wilderness area. In short, exposure to natural settings—whether through direct experience, looking out a window, or observing a photograph or video—appears to have measurable positive effects on health, both physiological and psychological.

A second group of studies looked at habitat preferences. Ecologist Gordon Orians [7] proposed that

humans have an innate tendency to prefer an “ideal” habitat with a particular trio of characteristics: 1) a savannah or park-like landscape with a mixture of forest and grasslands; 2) a body of water such as ocean or a lake; and 3) a prominence, offering a view of the surrounding terrain. In proposing the biophilia hypothesis, E. O. Wilson grabbed onto on this concept, claiming that our inherited preference for savannah settings cascades from our lengthy evolutionary heritage on the African savannah. Plenty of subsequent research [e.g., 5] has supported the existence of an innate landscape bias, although the idea has also had its detractors. For example, Jared Diamond [8] noted that humans have occupied a diverse range of habitats in the tens of thousands of years since we departed the African savannah, allowing plenty of time for inherited preferences to evolve in other landscapes. It is feasible, then, that we do not necessarily possess a genetic bias for savannah settings, but rather an innate preference for landscapes that, for much of our history, provided key elements for survival (i.e., prospect, refuge, food, and water).

Yet another group of studies has addressed the human propensity to affiliate with some animals and avoid others. As in the case of natural landscapes, exposure to animals—from fish in aquariums to birds, cats, and dogs—tends to promote physiological health and a sense of well being [e.g., 6]. Much research into so-called “human-animal bonds” has documented the great health benefits in

particular of companion animals [9].

Without doubt, the biophilia hypothesis has struck a chord with a range of environmentally minded people, from activists, educators, and conservationists to psychologists, architects, and landscape designers [e.g., 10.11,12]. Adherents have particularly embraced the implication that abundant, direct experience outdoors is an innate need, essential for a healthy childhood [e.g., 13,14]. E. O. Wilson himself [2,3] has suggested that biophilia might serve as no less than the foundational concept of a new conservation ethic. Unsurprisingly, the biophilia hypothesis has also garnered widespread support from within ecopsychology [15]. An innate propensity to affiliate with life has been seen as a framework for investigating the troubled human-nature relationship, and even a vehicle to redefine this relationship.

Yet biophilia has attracted its share of critics as well [e.g., 8,16,167], and, to be frank, has received minimal attention within scientific circles. Most telling of all is that biophilia—an evolutionary hypothesis pertaining to the human mind—has been all but ignored by the rapidly growing field of evolutionary psychology. A pair of recent books reviewing the latter discipline [18,19] lacks so much as an index listing for biophilia (although, to be fair, there are discussions of certain elements, such as habitat preferences).

Among the problems with Wilson’s hypothesis is the fact biophilia is continually defined as the human affinity for other organisms, despite the fact that people also affiliate and bond with nonliving aspects of nature. Indeed one of Wilson’s key examples of biophilia, the putative “ideal” savannah habitat, is based largely on physical elements of environment (e.g., topographic relief, water). Perhaps the most intractable problem for biophilia is its apparent lack of testability. Biophilia is generally regarded as an umbrella term designated to cover a diverse range of inherited behaviors involving our interactions with the nonhuman world. So it is difficult, if not impossible, to test the concept as a whole. One thing is clear. If we do possess an innate proclivity to affiliate with other life forms (and with nature more generally), cultural overprinting can prevent the development (or at least the persistence) of a bond with the living world. Evidence for this fact can be found in the rapidly increasing numbers of “biophobics” [10].

This debate over biophilia is not merely an intellectual exercise. Make no mistake; the stakes are high. As evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould [20] claimed, “We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional

bond between ourselves and nature as well—for we will not fight to save what we do not love.” In my view, the theoretical underpinnings of biophilia are not sufficiently robust to serve as the foundation for understanding the human bond with nature. In coming posts, I will propose an alternative hypothesis that addresses many of the key criticisms of biophilia and outlines a pathway for fostering emotional bonds with the more-than-human world.

Lying there in bed unable to get back to sleep after the big event, I decided that I really do care about raccoons, and the myriad other creatures with whom I share this place in northern California. Now if only I could figure out a way to stop those masked wrestlers from using their best moves on our garbage can!

References

1) Fromm, E. 1964. The Heart of Man. Harper & Row, New York.

2) Wilson, E. O. 1984. Biophilia: The Human Bond with other Species. Harvard University Press, Boston.

3) Wilson, E. O. 1993. Biophilia and the conservation ethic. Pp. 31-41 in S. R. Kellert, S. R. and E. O. Wilson (eds.), The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

4) Ulrich, R. S. 1993. Biophilia, biophobia, and natural landscapes. Pp. 73-137 in S. R. Kellert, S. R. and E. O. Wilson (eds.), The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

5) Heerwagen, J. H. and Orians, G. H. 1993. Pp. 138-172 in S. R. Kellert, S. R. and E. O. Wilson (eds.), The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

6) Kahn, P. H., Jr. 1999. The Human Relationship with Nature: Development and Culture. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

7) Orians, G. H. 1980. Habitat selection: General theory and applications to human behavior. In J. S. Lockard (ed.), The Evolution of Human Social Behavior. Elsevier, New York.

8) Diamond, J. 1993. New Guineans and their natural world. Pp. 251-271 in S. R. Kellert, S. R. and E. O. Wilson (eds.), The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

9) Walsh, F. 2009. Human-animal bonds I: The relational significance of companion animals. Family Process, 48:462-480.

10) Kellert, S. R. 1997. Kinship to Mastery: Biophilia in Human Evolution and Development. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

11) Orr, D. W. 1994. Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

12) Suzuki, D. 1997. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. Greystone Books, Vancouver.

13) Nabhan, G. P. and Trimble, S. A. 1995. The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places. Beacon Press, Boston.

14) Louv, R. 2006. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, NC.

15) Roszak, T., Gomes, M.E. Kanner, A.D. 1995. (eds.). Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco.

16} Sagan, D. and Margulis, L. 1993. God, Gaia, and biophilia. Pp. 345-364 in S. R. Kellert, S. R. and E. O. Wilson (eds.), The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

17) Fischer, C. S. 1994. Widespread likings: Review of The Biophilia Hypothesis. Science, 263:1161–1162.

18) Buss, D. M. (ed.). 2006. The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. Wiley, New York.

19) Buss, D. M. 2008. Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, Third Edition. Pearson, New York.

20) Gould, S. J. 1993. Unenchanted evening. Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History. Norton, New York. Quotation from p. 40.

All images derived from National Geographic: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

Interbeing

Author Note: Today, I offer a short essay posted a few days ago on Edge.org. It represents my answer to John Brockman's annual question, which this year is: What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Check out other people's answers to this question.

___________________________

Humanity’s cognitive toolkit would greatly benefit from adoption of “interbeing,” a concept that comes from Vietnamese Buddhist monk

Thich Nhat Hanh. In his words:

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in [a] sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either . . . “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud, we cannot have a paper, so we can say that the cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are. . . . “To be” is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.”

Depending on your perspective, the above passage may sound like profound wisdom or New Age mumbo-jumbo. I would like to propose that interbeing is a robust scientific fact—at least insomuch as such things exist—and, further, that this concept is exceptionally critical and timely.

Arguably the most cherished and deeply ingrained notion in the Western mindset is the separateness of our skin-encapsulated selves—the belief that we can be likened to isolated, static machines. Having externalized the world beyond our bodies, we are consumed with thoughts of furthering our own ends and protecting ourselves. Yet this deeply rooted notion of isolation is illusory, as evidenced by our constant exchange of matter and energy with the “outside” world. At what point did your last breath of air, sip of water, or bite of food cease to be part of the outside world and become you? Precisely when did your exhalations and wastes cease being you? Our skin is as much permeable membrane as barrier, so much so that, like a whirlpool, it is difficult to discern where “you” end and the remainder of the world begins. Energized by sunlight, life converts inanimate rock into nutrients, which then pass through plants, herbivores, and carnivores before being decomposed and returned to the inanimate Earth, beginning the cycle anew. Our internal metabolisms are intimately interwoven with this Earthly metabolism; one result is the replacement of every atom in our bodies every seven years or so.You might counter with something like, “Ok, sure, everything changes over time.So what? At any given moment, you can still readily separate self from other.”

Not quite. It turns out that “you” are not one life form—that is, one self—but many. Your mouth alone contains more than 700 distinct kinds of bacteria. Your skin and eyelashes are equally laden with microbes and your gut houses a similar bevy of bacterial sidekicks. Although this still leaves several bacteria-free regions in a healthy body—for example, brain, spinal cord, and blood stream—current estimates indicate that your physical self possesses about a trillion human cells and about 10 trillion bacterial cells. In other words, at any given moment, your body is about 90% nonhuman, home to many more life forms than the number of people presently living on Earth; more even than the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy! To make things more interesting still, microbiological research demonstrates that we are utterly dependent on this ever-changing bacterial parade for all kinds of “services,” from keeping intruders at bay to converting food into useable nutrients.

So, if we continually exchange matter with the outside world, if our bodies are completely renewed every few years, and if each of us is a walking colony of trillions o f largely symbiotic life forms, exactly what is this self that we view as separate? You are not an isolated being. Metaphorically, to follow current bias and think of your body as a machine is not only inaccurate but destructive. Each of us is far more akin to a whirlpool, a brief, ever-shifting concentration of energy in a vast river that’s been flowing for billions of years. The dividing line between self and other is, in many respects, arbitrary; the “cut” can be made at many places, depending on the metaphor of self one adopts. We must learn to see ourselves not as isolated but as permeable and interwoven—selves within larger selves, including the species self (humanity) and the biospheric self (life). The interbeing perspective encourages us to view other life forms not as objects but subjects, fellow travelers in the current of this ancient river. On a still more profound level, it enables us to envision ourselves and other organisms not as static “things” at all, but as processes deeply and inextricably embedded in the background flow.

One of the greatest obstacles confronting science education is the fact that the bulk of the universe exists either at extremely large scales (e.g., planets, stars, and galaxies) or extremely small scales (e.g., atoms, genes, cells) well beyond the comprehension of our

(unaided) senses. We evolved to sense only the middle ground, or “mesoworld,” of animals, plants, and landscapes. Yet, just as we have learned to accept the non-intuitive, scientific insight that the Earth is not the center of the universe, so too must we now embrace the fact that we are not outside or above nature, but fully enmeshed within it. Interbeing, an expression of ancient wisdom backed by science, can help us comprehend this radical ecology, fostering a much-needed transformation in mindset.

Image Credits

All images courtesy of National Geographic: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

The Psychology of Sustainability

This past weekend I attended an inspiring three-day conference in San Rafael, California, called Bioneers. Bioneers is an annual gathering of people with a shared passion for environmental and social justice issues. The meeting highlights truly remarkable individuals and groups doing great things for humanity and the planet. To give just an example from this year’s program, one of the plenary speakers was renowned primatologist Jane Goodall. “Dr. Jane,” as she is known by millions of youth around the world, is arguably the most famous living scientist; these days, however, her efforts are concentrated on Roots and Shoots, a worldwide program that engages youth in community service.

In addition to the many wonderful speakers, Bioneers features afternoon panel sessions on a spectrum of topics, from permaculture and gender equity to environmental education and protecting wildlands. One session that particularly caught my eye this past weekend was titled “Ecopsychology Emerging.”

My father was a psychologist and university professor whose primary passions were family and teaching. Perhaps because of this early connection, I have always had a strong interest in matters of the mind. Nevertheless, from childhood I felt drawn even more to nonhuman nature, which took me down a wholly different path, one that wound up in the Age of Dinosaurs. Today, that same path has meandered back to the present day, and, perhaps surprisingly, to psychology.

As the name suggests, ecopsychology sits at the juxtaposition of ecology and psychology. It is a relatively new field of inquiry, tracing its origins back less than two decades [1, 2]. Although psychology has traditionally concerned itself solely with the human realm, ecopsychologists seek to explore the relationship between humans and nonhuman nature. (It is worth noting that, strictly speaking, the notion of a “relationship” between humans and nonhuman nature is nonsensical, equivalent to speaking of a person’s relationship with humanity. However, this terminology is effective in underlining the perceived disjunction between humanity and the “more-than-human,” and thus I perpetuate it here.) One of the discipline’s central ideas is “biophilia,” E. O. Wilson’s notion that humankind possesses an innate affinity with the living world, honed over many thousands of years of existing in intimate contact with other life forms [3].

In my view, and that of growing numbers of people from a variety of fields, the roots of our present sustainability crisis lie in a dysfunctional relationship between humanity and nonhuman nature. So repairing that relationship with a transformed worldview, one that reinserts humans inside nature, may just be the central challenge of our time. If so, ecopsychology—the field designated to explore the human-nature relationship—is poised to become one of the most critical and pressing areas of inquiry in this century. It was with great interest, then, that I attended the Bioneers session, which featured five prominent ecopsychologists. And, I’m sorry to say, it was with a strong sense of disappointment that I departed that same session 90 minutes later.

One by one the speakers discussed their perspectives and practices. The bulk of the discussion focused on eco-therapy, underlining the healing power of nature for individuals and small groups. The audience heard about the health benefits of outdoor therapy sessions and wilderness immersion programs. I became more hopeful when the discussion turned to the cognitive dissonance surrounding global warming, but here the consensus among the panel members seemed anything but hopeful, let alone proactive. One speaker concluded that it would take a very long time indeed to convince most people of the risks posed by climate change.

Don’t get me wrong. I fully applaud the gains made by eco-therapy, and agree wholeheartedly that we need to devote attention to such programs. But these efforts simply are not enough—not even close. We have perhaps a generation to turn things around and establish a sustainable course, not only technologically but cognitively. To be fair, the panelists did outline key elements of our disillusionment with the living world. Yet they proposed few, if any, meaningful solutions.

We need ecopsychology to do much more. Our dire situation demands bold vision and creative “backcasting,” in which we determine a set of goals and then figure out how to achieve them. With regard to remedying the human-nature divide, we must transform our perception of the natural world from “a collection of objects to a communion of subjects,” to use Thomas Berry’s poignant phrase [4].

This gargantuan revolution in thinking, almost certainly the greatest challenge our species has faced, is well beyond the transformative capacities of adults. Albert Einstein famously noted that, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” How are we to shift to a wholly new way of thinking, a new worldview, if we remain stuck in an out-dated worldview? More specifically, by what means do we get a significant chunk of humanity to adopt a perspective that regards other life forms as relatives rather than resources? The answer to this paradox, I am convinced, lies in children and education.

As I’ve written elsewhere in this blog, one of the key elements in the needed education transformation (as opposed to mere “reform”) will be revamping the curriculum core to insert place and story. By place I refer to local bioregions, with much learning occurring outdoors. The kind knowledge gained by such learning has been called “ecoliteracy” [5]. By story I mean the Epic of Evolution, the grand saga of Big Bang to present day that encompasses cosmos, life, and culture. Here we can speak of “evoliteracy” [6]. With place and story as the intimate and grand contexts for education, respectively, we can begin to shift our perspective, transforming nature from exploited resources to mentor and partner.

What is ecopsychology’s role? In the 21st Century, this nascent field must undergo radical expansion to become more theoretical and analytical, including an abundance of hypothesis testing, experimentation, and data analysis. The challenge of transforming education is daunting. With school boards largely under local control, formal schooling is one of the most entrenched systems within modern culture. Before we can make the kinds of sweeping changes in education necessary to shift perspectives, it must first be demonstrated that any proposed alternatives in curriculum and pedagogy perform better than existing models. Much more than a form of therapy, then, ecopsychology must emerge as a major analytical field, testing key concepts and answering root questions. Most fundamentally, how do children form lasting bonds with nonhuman nature? Here we will benefit from studies of child development in indigenous cultures, the only societies today that possess worldviews embedding humanity within nature. My strong hunch is that developing a sense of place and cosmos will turn out to be pivotal elements, along with such practices as ritual and ceremony.

Many other questions face ecopsychologists. Exactly how effective, relative to traditional approaches, are new methods in promoting the formation of bonds with the nonhuman world? Equally important, how do these methods, including the insertion of place and story as core elements, perform relative to existing reductionist models when it comes to communicating other skills and knowledge (e.g., reading, math, writing, science)? This investigative work will need to be undertaken in partnership with progressive institutions willing to undertake such curricular experimentation, including independent and charter schools. Institutions of informal learning, particularly natural history museums, will also have a pivotal place in this process, since they possess expertise and resources unavailable to teachers. Another key prerequisite to any form of transformation will be educating the general public about the perils of our current worldview, together with the need to foster healthier alternatives through new forms of education. Here, too, ecopsychologists can help in ringing the alarm bell and getting the message out.

In the so-called “Great Turning,” moving from an “industrial growth society to a life-sustaining society” [7], ecopsychology must emerge as an intellectual powerhouse, working in partnership with educators and with Mother Nature herself to help bring about the needed transformation in worldview.

References
1. Roszak, T. 1993. The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology. Touchstone, New York.
2. Roszak, T., Gomes, M.E. Kanner, A.D. 1995. (eds.). Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco
3. Wilson, E. O. 1986. Biophilia: The Human Bond with other Species. Harvard University Press, Boston.
4. Berry, T. 1999. The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. Bell Tower, New York.
5. Stone, M. K. and Z. Barlow (eds.). 2005. Ecological Literacy: Educating our Children for a Sustainable World. University of California Press, Berkeley.
6. Sampson, S. D. 2009. Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life. University of California Press, Berkeley.
7. Macy, J. 2007. World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal. Parallax Press, Berkeley.

Photo Credits

All images courtesy of National Geographic: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

New Horned Dinosaurs!

Thanks to a recent spate of papers describing new species, 2010 has been unofficially dubbed “the year of horned dinosaurs.” This past week, my colleagues (Mark Loewen, Andrew Farke, Eric Roberts, Joshua Smith, Catherine Forster, and Alan Titus) and I added two more to the list, formally announcing a pair of amazing ceratopsids discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah. The giant plant-eaters were inhabitants of the “lost continent” of Laramidia, formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, isolating eastern and western portions of the continent for about 27 million years during the Late Cretaceous Period. The newly discovered dinosaurs, close relatives of the famous Triceratops, were announced in PLoS ONE, the online open-access journal produced by the Public Library of Science.

The bigger of the two new dinosaurs, with a skull 2.3 meters (about 7 feet) long, is Utahceratops gettyi. The first part of the name combines the state of origin with ceratops, Greek for “horned face.” The second part of the name refers to Mike Getty, paleontology collections manager at the Utah Museum of Natural History and the discoverer of this animal. Mike has been the driving force behind the UMNH paleo field program, and it is a great pleasure to be able to honor him in this way. In addition to a large horn over the nose, Utahceratops has short and blunt eye horns that project strongly to the side rather than upward, much more like the horns of modern bison than those of Triceratops or other ceratopsians.

Second of the new species is Kosmoceratops richardsoni. Here, the first part of the name refers to kosmos, Latin for “ornate,” and ceratops, once again meaning “horned face.” The latter part of the name honors Scott Richardson, the volunteer who discovered two skulls of this animal. In contrast to most scientific disciplines, volunteers make a major, fundamental contribution to paleontology, helping to find and excavate specimens, prepare and curate them in museum collections, and sometimes do the research. Scott Richardson has been a one-man fossil-finding powerhouse in GSENM, discovering stunning new specimens for about a decade.

Like Utahceratops, Kosmoceratops has sideways oriented eye horns, although much longer and more pointed. In all, Kosmoceratops possesses a total of 15 horns—one over the nose, one atop each eye, one at the tip of each cheek bone, and ten across the rear margin of the bony frill—making it the most ornate-headed dinosaur known. This ancient beast is one of the most amazing animals known, with a huge skull decorated with an assortment of bony bells and whistles. For obvious reasons, we avoided use of the term “horniest dinosaur” as a descriptor when announcing this animal. The media, it seems, had no such reluctance and immediately jumped on the opportunity.

Much speculation has ensued about the function of ceratopsian horns and frills, from fighting off predators to recognizing other members of the same species or controlling body temperature. Nevertheless, the dominant—and, to my mind, most likely—hypothesis is that these features functioned first and foremost to enhance reproductive success. Certainly most of these exaggerated bone structures of dinosaurs—including hooks, horns, crests, bosses, and spikes—would have made poor weapons to fend off predators. It’s far more probable that they were used to intimidate or do battle with rivals of the same sex, as well as to attract individuals of the opposite sex. Best we can tell, both males and female ceratopsid dinosaurs had horns. But this relative lack of sexual differences does not take away from the mate competition hypothesis; females of large-bodied (> 300 kg), gregarious, open-living mammals alive today, like bison and caribou, also tend to have headgear similar to that of males, likely to reduce the risk of being preferentially selected by predators.

The dinosaurs were discovered in sediments of the Kaiparowits Formation within Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. GSENM encompasses almost two million acres of high desert terrain in south-central Utah. This vast and rugged region, part of the National Landscape Conservation System administered by the Bureau of Land Management, was the last major area in the lower 48 states to be formally mapped by cartographers. Today GSENM is the largest national monument in the United States, and now of the country’s last great, largely unexplored dinosaur boneyards.
For most of the Late Cretaceous, exceptionally high sea levels flooded the low-lying portions of several continents around the world. In North America, a warm, shallow sea called the Western Interior Seaway extended from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, subdividing the continent into eastern and western landmasses, known as Appalachia and Laramidia, respectively. Whereas little is known of the plants and animals that lived on Appalachia, the rocks of Laramidia exposed in the Western Interior of North America have generated a plethora of dinosaur remains. Laramidia was less than one-third the size of present day North America, approximating the area of Australia.

Most known Laramidian dinosaurs were concentrated in a narrow belt of plains sandwiched between the seaway to the east and mountains to the west. Today, thanks to an abundant fossil record and more than a century of collecting by paleontologists, Laramidia is the best known major landmass for the entire Age of Dinosaurs, with dig sites spanning from Alaska to Mexico. Utah was located in the southern part of Laramidia, which has yielded far fewer dinosaur remains than the fossil-rich north. The world of dinosaurs was much warmer than the present day; Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops lived in a subtropical swampy environment about 100 km from the seaway. It’s strange to contemplate giant dinosaurs making a living in a place that shares much in common with a Louisiana swamp, but that’s the emerging picture.

Beginning in the 1960’s, paleontologists began to notice that the same major groups of dinosaurs seemed to be present all over this Late Cretaceous landmass, but different species of these groups occurred in the north (for example, Alberta and Montana) than in the south (New Mexico and Texas). This finding of “dinosaur provincialism” was very puzzling, given the giant body sizes of many of the dinosaurs together with the diminutive dimensions of Laramidia. Currently, there are five giant (rhino-to-elephant-sized) mammals on the entire continent of Africa. Seventy-six million years ago, there may have been more than two dozen giant dinosaurs living on a landmass about one-quarter that size. How could so many different varieties of giant animals have co-existed on such a small “island continent?” One option is that there was a greater abundance of food during the Cretaceous. Another is that dinosaurs did not need to eat as much, perhaps because of slower metabolic rates intermediate between those of modern day lizards and crocodiles on the one hand, and mammals and birds on the other. Whatever the factors permitted the presence of so many dinosaurs, it appears that some kind of barrier near the latitude of northern Utah and Colorado limited the exchange of dinosaur species north and south. Possibilities include physical barriers such as mountains or, more likely, climatic barriers that resulted in distinct northern and southern plant communities. Testing of these ideas have been severely hampered by a dearth of dinosaurs from the southern part of Laramidia. The new fossils from GSENM are now filling that major gap.

During the past decade, crews from the University of Utah and several partner institutions (e.g., the Utah Geologic Survey, the Raymond Alf Museum of Paleontology, and the Bureau of Land Management) have unearthed a new assemblage of more than a dozen dinosaurs in GSENM. In addition to Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops, the collection includes a variety of other plant-eating dinosaurs—among them duck-billed hadrosaurs, armored ankylosaurs, and dome-headed pachycephalosaurs—together with carnivorous dinosaurs great and small, from “raptor-like” predators to mega-sized tyrannosaurs (not T. rex but rather its smaller-bodied relatives). Also recovered have been fossil plants, insect traces, clams, fishes, amphibians, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and mammals, offering a direct glimpse into this entire ancient ecosystem. Most remarkable of all is that virtually every identifiable dinosaur variety found in GSENM turns out to be new to science, offering dramatic confirmation of the dinosaur provincialism hypothesis. Previously, our team has described two other dinosaurs from GSENM: the giant duck-billed hadrosaur Gryposaurus monumentensis and the raptor-like theropod Hagryphus giganteus. Several other animals are still under study, and will be announced in the future.

Without doubt, however, many more dinosaurs remain to be unearthed in the Western Interior of North America, once part of the island continent of Laramidia. Equally certain is the fact that some of those dinosaurs will be found within the remote canyons and badlands of GSENM. So stay tuned! (Oh, and for any fans of Dinosaur Train out there, plans are to feature Kosmoceratops early in the second season of episodes!)

Acknowledgements: I would like to express sincere thanks to the Bureau of Land Management and to the National Science Foundation, the pair of federal organizations that supplied the bulk of the funding for this project. Thanks also to the Utah Museum of Natural History for a decade of devoted support, and to all the volunteers and students who worked on this project.

Image Credits:
All dinosaur artwork, both skull images and fleshed out head reconstructions, were skillfully executed by our Italian colleague and friend, Lukas Panzarin. Reconstruction of Late Cretaceous North America by Ron Blakey (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/RCB.html).

Additional Materials:

Check out the video that describes this story.

Cosmological Concerns

The word “cosmology” has at least two meanings. One is strictly scientific: “The scientific study of the origin, evolution, and structure of the universe.”[1] The second is cultural: “A system of beliefs that seeks to describe or explain the origin and structure of the universe.”[2] Whereas cosmology in the first sense is an intellectual pursuit that aims to unravel the laws that govern the physical universe, in the latter sense it is a wisdom tradition that seeks insights not only through science but also via religion, art, and philosophy.[3] Scientific cosmologists make observations, gather facts, and advance theories, with a focus on the celestial. Conversely, the aim of cultural cosmology is much more down to Earth, no less than the transformation of the aesthetic, affective, and moral dimensions of being human. In short, although both cosmological forms may attempt to explain the origins of stars, planets, and other celestial phenomena, the latter mode seeks to apply this understanding in constructing a framework for living.

For more than 99% of human history, all cosmology was of the cultural variety, and every culture had its own cosmological origin story that informed their daily life. Only with the advent of modernism was the practice of cosmology split into two spheres. The scientific sphere became the realm of objective facts, whereas the religious sphere was deemed the realm of subjective meaning. The persistent tragedy of this split is that the two spheres became isolated from each other. Whereas science (and later, science education) divorced itself from meaning and purpose, the religious search for meaning and value in the universe was no longer informed by direct reference to our changing understanding of the universe! Even today, when conducted by major religious traditions, this search generally occurs within the context of a pre-scientific cosmos dominated by classical scriptures.

Meanwhile, science has radically and irrevocably changed our conception of who we are and how we fit into the scheme of things. For about four centuries now, we have known that the Earth revolves around the sun instead of the opposite. One and a half centuries have passed since we came to understand that all life on this planet, including us, shares common ancestry, evolving from single-celled lifeforms over unfathomable spans of time. Only during the past century, a single human lifetime, have we learned that we live in a galaxy of billions of stars, in turn merely one of billions of galaxies. For less than half a century have we realized that the earth’s surface consists of a dozen or so crustal plates that move about, bumping into each other before being resorbed into the planet’s interior. At about the same time, astronomers discovered that we are constantly bombarded with faint radiation that has traveled 14 billion years from the cataclysmic birth of the universe. And only in the past decade have biologists determined that the bacterial cells on and in our bodies outnumber human cells by a factor of about 10 to 1, which means that each of us is walking colony of trillions of lifeforms rather than an isolated self of one.

Most profoundly, science has taught us that we are living in a dynamic, evolutionary universe. We now speak of the origin and evolution of particles, galaxies, stars, planets, life, and culture. It is more than poetry to claim that we humans, offspring of this evolutionary process, are the universe becoming conscious of itself. Thus, it’s horribly ironic that we, who have arguably the most accurate understanding of the history of the cosmos, are members of the first culture to lack a cosmology.

Indeed few of us today have even the most meager comprehension of the astounding insights generated by science. Why have we failed to communicate these profound ideas more broadly? A major obstacle to dissemination is that the deepest scientific insights tend to be counterintuitive. Some of the most brilliant minds of recent history have struggled mightily with notions that scientists now take for granted. (Take, for example, Albert Einstein’s famous refusal to initially accept his own finding that the universe is expanding.) So it should come as no surprise that it requires considerable work to garner meaning from science. To grossly understate matters, it’s not easy to grasp intellectually, let alone bodily or emotionally, that we are chunks of starstuff living on the side of a giant, spherical rock hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour.

Nevertheless, if we are to address the sustainability crisis and shift the course of civilization so as to come into harmony with nonhuman nature, an entirely new worldview is required, one that reinserts humanity inside nature. This moment in history demands no less than a transformation of what it means to be human.[4] If this pressing transformation is to occur, we must reunite the scientific and religious spheres of cosmology in order to establish a revitalized sense of meaning and purpose based upon our best understanding of the cosmos. On the one hand, success will depend on religions embracing the new view of the universe revealed by science. On the other, science must not shy away from its central role in defining who we are and where we come from, presenting this story in a grand narrative rather than a meaningless staccato of “facts.”

Critical to this endeavor will be the transformation of education. One legacy of the scientific enterprise has been the minimizing of subjective experiences in favor of objective observations. Only the latter have been considered “real,” worthy of our attention and value. At present, science education strictly adheres to its modernist heritage, concerning itself almost solely with quantifiable facts. If we are to learn to live sustainably in this world, facts alone are not enough. We must revamp science education to address the aesthetic and affective dimensions so long avoided. I see no reason why science learning cannot foster a vivid sense of mystery, wonder, and awe.

In particular, if science is to inform the meaning of our lives, we must experience key concepts bodily. Among other things, this will require that we venture outside classrooms into natural settings. Scientific ideas become meaningful when we experience and reflect upon them directly with multiple senses. An understanding of nature must enter our bodies through our pores as well as our minds. Alongside ecological literacy, or ecoliteracy[5], we must foster evolutionary literacy, or evoliteracy—that is, an understanding of the Epic of Evolution, the story of the Big Bang to the present day[6].

Let me be clear. I am not arguing that we change the way we do science, but rather the way we teach science. Nor am I advocating that humanity embrace a single, global cosmology. The beauty of the Epic of Evolution is that it allows for an endless variety of interpretations, with and without God(s). So every culture can still fashion its own unique cosmology, informed by its own unique historical, cultural, and ecological context.

I will explore experiential education in a future post, discussing the contributions of John Dewey and others. For the moment, suffice it to say that the acquisition of knowledge must be accompanied by an inner transformation.[3] Only then can we hope to raise a generation that regards the world as a meaningful place worthy of respect and nurturing. Only then can we establish new, more accurate cosmologies that reflect what we actually know of the universe. Only then can we begin the move toward a new, more viable form of human existence.

References
1. The American Heritage® Science Dictionary. Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
2. The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
3. Swimme, B. 1996. The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story. Orbis, New York, 115 pp.
4. Berry, T. 1999. The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. Bell Tower, New York, 242 pp.
5. Stone, M. K. and Z. Barlow (eds.). 2005. Ecological Literacy: Educating our Children for a Sustainable World. University of California Press, Berkeley, 275 pp.
6. Chaisson, E. 2006. Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos. Columbia University Press, New York, 479 pp.


Images
All images courtesy of National Geographic: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/