Another familiar ancient Greek word, philosophy (philosophia from philos sophias), meant love of wisdom and was used to designate the pursuit of wisdom by studying the natural world for guidance in human affairs. The Greeks assumed that the study of nature would reveal patterns of relationships applicable to human society - patterns that would help people organize and conduct their own lives, the lives of their families and their society wisely. Thus, philosophy included all the studies later given the designation of natural science, the term ‘science’ coming into use only in the Middle Ages.
When I discovered this ancient Greek goal of science, well after becoming a scientist, it resonated deeply within me as the very mission that had driven me to the study and practice of science. I believed that scientific understanding of nature, including our own human nature, would help us live on Earth more intelligently and peacefully. Sadly, science had abandoned that mission long ago when philosophy became an independent field while the systematic study of nature became ‘science,’ from the Latin scientia, a word implying knowledge and the analytical separation or division of things into parts to understand them.
Wisdom went with the name - out of science and (presumably) into philosophy. Philosophy became a very broad pursuit in its own right, based on thinking instead of experimentation or other formal research. Its foundation is widely accepted as reason and logic, but it also includes values, beliefs and principles in its domain. In everyday use, it is the way we think about and reflect on life and how we steer our lives in terms of our values. In that sense, we all are - or should all be - philosophers.
The ancient Greeks were like many indigenous cultures have been, and like some still are, in their recognition of levels - individual, family/household, society, cosmos - as repeating the same patterns and principles as embedded living systems at different scales. As the perennial philosophy mentioned earlier has it, ‘As above, so below’ - now even becoming part of western science via the fractals and holograms increasingly used by physicists and biologists in describing nature.
Ecosophy can not only unite our separate categories of economics, ecology, finance, politics and governance, but can also unite science and spirituality, and bring human values into the entire human enterprise. In its core focus on wisdom, it must especially draw upon the feminine concerns with well-being, with caring and sharing as long promoted by, for example, Hazel Henderson and Riane Eisler.
Wisdom
Studying physiology in a PhD program in the 1950’s, J.B. Cannon’s book The Wisdom of the Body (1932) was still a text, though a term such as ‘wisdom’ was soon after dropped as anthropomorphic - a human-centered view to be eschewed by ‘objective’ scientists. I pointed out that we were expected to take a mechanomorphic view of things- to see nature as machinery, which was actually illogical as machinery was the invention of humans (anthropos), making mechanomorphism secondary to anthropomorphism. Such commentary was not very welcome in graduate school.
Nevertheless, the wisdom and even ethics of the body - of all our bodies - are remarkable in endless ways. Some 50 to 100 trillion cells, each as complex as a large human city, get along amazingly well. All are agreed to send aid to any ailing part of the body immediately. No organ dominates - not even the brain - or expects other organs to become like itself. While blood is made from raw material cells in bone marrow ‘mines’ all over the body and becomes a ‘finished product’ when purified and oxygenated in the lungs, the heart distributes it equally to all those trillions of cells with no hoarding or profit.
Further, the ATP (adenosine triphosphate) ‘currency’ in our cells is given out freely by the mitochondria as banks - thus never as debt money - but carefully regulated to prevent both inflation and deflation. One can go on and on through all the interdependent systems of the body to show it is a genuine ecosophy and a clear corroboration of the Greeks’ belief that studying nature can bring wisdom to how we run our human affairs.
The wisest, most ethical human ecosophy I know is Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne’s Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka. Founded over half a century ago on the Buddhist principles of inner peace and generosity, this equitable rural development project now involves 15,000 villages, with 5,000 of them running their own banking system and helping the others develop. Businesses, schools, orphanages, community centers and agriculture are all developed to care for everyone’s need and no one’s greed.
In high technology societies, many people are now promoting the observation of nature to learn clean, non-toxic production, full recycling, ‘Natural Capitalism,’ ethical markets and fair finance. Integrating all of these with a myriad peacekeeping and human potential efforts we can see it is possible for us to develop ecosophies.
The perfect storm of crises we now face may well prove to be the challenge that drives us into our greatest evolutionary leap. Economy must be made subservient to ecology if we want to continue our life on Earth as a healthy, embedded global human society. Economy based on principles of a conscious universe’s mature ecosystems, including that of our bodies, becomes Ecosophy. We know deep in our hearts and souls that this must be done; all we need is the courage to lead the way for all!
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The ideas in this article are profound and the message is full of hope. I've only read the article once, so my most honest comments right now are just, "WOW!" and "Thank you!" And Dr. Sahtouris' writing is beautiful. So many gems in here, such as, "Love and other values lost to consumerism are pouring back into our lives like fresh water." I'm greatly looking forward to re-reading this and exploring more within the ecosophy movement. It does indeed seem the way forward.