Abstract

The Soul of the Cosmos: Understanding Our Bond with the Living Universe is the working draft of a publishable book for a general audience rooted in philosophical and historical scholarship which explores how our philosophical ideas and cosmological models influence the way that we relate to the world and other people. Specifically, the manuscript focuses on the traditional Western idea of the World Soul and the living universe, contrasting it with the mechanistic worldview of the Scientific Revolution. I argue that for many centuries the idea of the living universe helped to maintain a healthy bond between humanity and the larger-than-human world in which we are embedded. The mechanistic worldview of the Scientific Revolution, on the other hand, portrayed the cosmos not as alive, but as a dead, inanimate machine, perpetually grinding along according to eternal laws. While the mechanistic metaphor proved to be fruitful in many ways and gave humanity power over the world through the techniques of mathematical analysis, under its influence nature came to be increasingly seen as a collection of merely functional objects. For some thinkers, organisms came to be envisioned as being akin to self-functioning automatons or "biochemical factories." Moreover, some scientists depicted life as a cosmic accident, essentially contingent in nature, or even a "disease of matter," rather than an intrinsic aspect of the cosmic pattern. In turn, this way of picturing humanity's relationship to the universe caused a great sense of alienation to emerge during the modern era, and also encouraged an exploitive attitude toward nature. ;The Soul of the Cosmos examines the epistemological, anthropological, and cultural implications of the mechanistic and biocentric worldviews. I argue that due to new scientific discoveries in mathematics, physics, cosmology, and biology, the mechanistic worldview is breaking down and coming to be seen as overly reductionistic. Unlike a static machine, we now understand the entire universe to be evolutionary, like an organism; moreover, we humans, rather than being distant spectators, are bonded to its very core and an emergent embodiment of cosmic process. Soul of the Cosmos is dedicated to exploring this new cosmological vision, its ancient roots, and its broad cultural implications