Geology Reference
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er. These perceptions of intrinsic value have practical consequences—they draw holistic
scientists into public debates that concern their areas of research.
Holistic science is thus about reuniting fact and value in ways that enable our culture
to explore new possibilities of living harmoniously with the Earth. This work involves
integrating an animistic relationship with the Earth back into Western culture; clearly
a difficult challenge, since the objectivist view opposes any notion that the universe is
alive, creative and intelligent. This is where holistic science could be of great value by
showing how it is possible to embed animistic insights into an expanded science that
combines qualities with quantities whilst taking into account the ethical dimensions of
participating in a living cosmos.
Language is a key aspect of this work, and so in this topic we will experiment with a
new kind of narrative that tries to explore the dynamics of our living Earth in a way that
uncovers the beauty, way of being and vitality of her processes without falling into the
dull mechanistic style that so dominates modern science, and that so deadens the world
with its desiccating touch. This language is still struggling to be born, and so I ask you
to be patient with my faltering efforts to articulate it in various ways.
In searching for this language, we need to fearlessly adopt what James Hillman, the
founder of Archetypal Psychology, has called “personifying”, which he defines as the
spontaneous experiencing, envisioning and speaking of the configurations of existence
as psychic presences . We need to allow ourselves to be open to the subjective agency
at the heart of every 'thing' in the world so that we can speak and act appropriately in
their presence and on their behalf. We must keep alive and nurture a sense of the 'oth-
erness' of whatever phenomenon we might be considering, allowing a strange kind of
intimacy to develop in which the urge to control is replaced by a quickening awe at the
astonishing intelligence that lies at the heart of all things. We must oppose the tenden-
cy of conventional science to de-personalise the world and hence to control it. We must
oppose its desire to scrape away all subjectivity and to make us feel that science is value
neutral—for if the world truly feels, then we cannot look at the world as outsiders—we
are related to it and embedded in it, and the ethical dimension is there with us right from
the start. This way of speaking recognises that for our sensing, feeling and intuition the
whole of nature is a vast encompassing being, whereas for our thinking it is also a com-
plex, interconnected system . Thus, holistic science attempts to develop a language which
talks about the being or life of things—of their felt, existential quality, without alienat-
ing the rational mind.
Hillman points out that in personifying we recognise that the world at large is a com-
munion of persons in the widest more-than-human sense, that subjectivity is not just
the prerogative only of human beings. The emphasis on an expanded notion of person-
ality is a key aspect of the new animism, which, in the words of philosopher Graham
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