They realize that the more technology allows us to study life on a micro-level, the stronger the evidence of life’s complexity and intelligence becomes. Today, however, biologists are learning innumerable new details about how an organism brings forth itself and its experiences, and are trying not only to dissect but to reimagine developmental pathways. Until now researchers, eager to discover the structure and behavior of organisms, had glossed over the problem of an organism’s interior reality.

Darwinism and 'free markets' have grown up together.īiology, which has made so many efforts to chase emotions from nature since the 19th century, is rediscovering feeling as the foundation of life. Biology of Wonder explains how political thinkers like Locke, Hobbes and Adam Smith have provided a cultural framework that has affected biological inquiry, and how the standard Darwinian biological narrative, for its part, has projected its ideas about natural selection and organisms-as-machines on to our understanding of human societies. (Full disclosure requires me to mention my modest role in helping Andreas improve the “natural English” of his translation of his original German writings.)įuture historians will look back on this book as a landmark that consolidates and explains paradigm-shifting theories and research in the biological sciences. Check out his lyrical yet scientifically rigorous book, Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Consciousness and the Metamorophosis of Science, just published by New Society Publishers. So it is a thrill that some of his core ideas have now been published in English. The heart of the evolutionary drama, Weber insists, is the quest of all living systems to express what they feel and experience, and adapt to the world - and change it! - as they develop their identities.Įxcept for a few essays and public talks, most of Weber’s writings are available only in his native German. (See Weber’s fantastic essay on “Enlivenment” for more on this theme.)ĭrawing upon a rich body of scientific research, Weber outlines a different story of evolution, one in which living organisms are inherently expressive and creative in a struggle to both compete and cooperate. He proposes that science study a very radical yet unexplained phenomenon - aliveness! He rejects the neoDarwinian account of life as a collection of sophisticated, evolving machines, each relentlessly competing with maximum efficiency for supremacy in the laissez-faire market of nature. When I met biologist and ecophilosopher Andreas Weber several years ago, I was amazed at his audacity in challenging the orthodoxies of Darwinism. NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed.

The Biology of Wonder by Andreas Weber