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"Grounded in science, yet eloquently narrated, this is a groundbreaking book. Weber’s visionary work provides new insight into human/nature interconnectedness."
--- Richard Louv, author, The Nature Principle and Last Child in the Woods
"Written with poetic elegance and interwoven with a rich vein of personal narrative, this extraordinary book takes the central idea of the subjectivity and interior life of all living beings and gives it concreteness…"
--- Shierry Weber Nicholsen, author of The Love of Nature and the End of the World
"Weber reorients us scientifically, poetically and morally, from insufficent reductionism."
--- Stuart Kauffman FRSC, Emeritus Professor The University of Pennsylvania, author of At Home in the Universe, The Origins of Order, Reinventing the Sacred, and Humanity in a Creative Universe
"Weber moves biology beyond reductionism into a new expanded view of life that includes ... the interactive cooperation, beauty, and vital force that complete the picture of our living world.
--- David Ehrenfeld, Distinguished Professor of Biology at Rutgers, and author, The Arrogance of Humanism and Becoming Good Ancestors: How We Balance Nature, Community, and Technology
The disconnection between humans and nature is perhaps the most fundamental problem faced by our species today. The schism between us and the natural world is arguably the root cause of most of the environmental catastrophes unravelling around us. Until we come to terms with the depths of our alienation, we will continue to fail to understand that what happens to nature also happens to us.
In The Biology of Wonder author Andreas Weber proposes a new approach to the biological sciences that puts the human back in nature. He argues that feelings and emotions, far from being superfluous to the study of organisms, are the very foundation of life. From this basic premise flows the development of a "poetic ecology" which intimately connects our species to everything that surrounds us, showing that subjectivity and imagination are the prerequisites of biological existence.
The Biology of Wonder demonstrates that there is no separation between us and the world we inhabit, and in so doing it validates the essence of our deep experience. By reconciling science with meaning, expression and emotion, this landmark work brings us to a crucial understanding of our place in the framework of life — a revolution for biology as groundbreaking as the theory of relativity was for physics.
"In Andreas Weber's vision, nature is beautiful, and ecology is poetry. Follow his beautiful words into a science that investigates the Earth as a breathing, sensitive planet…"
--- David Rothenberg, author of Survival of the Beautiful and Bug Music
"The Biology of Wonder is a wonderfully eclectic and wide-ranging book that clearly shows that all beings and landscapes on our fascinating and magnif- icent planet are deeply interconnected. In the spirit of personal rewilding, Professor Weber writes about interbeing, ecological commons, first-person ecology, and non-duality in ways that will make sense to readers with differ- ent interests, and his ideas about “poetic ecology” show clearly that we are not alone — indeed, we are one of the gang — and must not behave as if we are the only show in town."
--- Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado, and author, Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence
"... a wonderful biology, even a transformational one. Weber leads us into a radiant world which is sensuous, interconnect- ed and always communicating in a bio-poetical symphony. Had we ears to hear the language and eyes to see the vision revealed in this book we would surely be made more alive and deeply thankful. is is more than a book; it is a revelation, and it joins the very few works I would take into the wilderness with me. Beautiful, wise, and grounded, I am grateful as much for the vision Prof Weber elucidates as for the love with which he clearly expresses it all."
--- Kaleeg Hainsworth, author, An Altar in the Wilderness
"Weber guides us toward discerning that value, meaning, ex- perience, creativity, and freedom exist within and constitute the living world. Previously dismissed as “romantic,” this viewpoint, at once clearheaded and compassionate, is tenaciously represented by Andreas Weber as deep re- alism. To come to grips with the understanding he communicates — to recognize the ubiquity of subjectivity in the world and the feeling-unity of the human with all creation — is to glimpse what biodiversity destruction heralds for the human soul. e work of protecting and restoring nature simultaneously recovers and rescues our innermost being.
--- Eileen Crist, coeditor, Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth
"The Biology of Wonder is a wonder. Schrodinger asked “What is Life” with brilliance, but misses “What IS life”. Weber sees aliveness as functional wholes, self-creative, and self-generating, that co-create their worlds. The “aliveness” of all life, emotional, sentient, adgentival, interested, co-mingled, “entangled with all of life”, reorients us scientifically, poetically and morally, from the rich but insufficient reductionism Schrodinger helped spearhead."
--- Stuart Kauffman FRSC, Emeritus Professor, University of Pennsylvania