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The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of nature have been continually developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name 'Gaia' for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on 'natural religion,' Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime.… (more)
User reviews
So many books about climate change feel that they need to trade entirely upon facts: of course, facts are important but, as the rise of President Trump in the USA shows, facts can be overrated. Passion counts for far more than a host of percentages. Bruno Latour demonstrates
The book is based upon eight lectures and there is a slight air of being lectured but, when the lecturer is as knowledgeable as this, I am not complaining. We must get away from this idea that any fact concerning climate change is challengeable. A fact is a fact and, when 97% scientists accept something, it should not be used as a 50:50 statement with as much time given to the skeptic's view.
Read this book!
Over the course of the book Latour discusses the history of both science and religion, the limitations to seeing the world as full of deanimated "things", why we need apocalypse but not the Apocalypse and the necessity for science to get political. His argumentation is rigorous and provocative. The writing is engaging, although some might find the tone of the book distracting. At times, the tone borders on flippancy and imprecision (the metaphor of "madness" in the introduction is, for instance, pretty ill considered). There are places, too, where more conceptual clarity would have been welcome. That said, these are minor quibbles and across the book's three hundred plus pages there is more than enough sustenance, new ideas and radical thinking to make it essential reading for anyone interested in what the consequences of climate change might be for the humanities.