Science for the Anthropocene - Learning to Fly

If science for the Anthropocene is fundamentally about prioritizing cultivation of wisdom, not just knowledge and/or technical mastery, then it is a matter of research and education concerned with the whole person, both individually and in our relations with others.

In other words, it is about disciplines not just of the head but also of the heart. And surely no discipline of the heart is more important than courage, even as we tend not to think that much about either the role(s) of courage in science or what science tells us about courage.   

But if we do give these key issues attention, it turns out to be hugely illuminating, as I hope you’ll agree after listening to this discussion with executive coach, facilitator and organizational consultant Alessandra Marazzi, who has been conducting fascinating research into courage and its crucial contribution at our moment of metacrisis.

Crucial to Marazzi’s insights are a focus on the actual first-person and embodied experience of being courageous. Ask someone to think of a story about courage from their culture, and they are likely to summon up images of heroes, fearlessness and righteous defiance. But ask someone to describe what it was actually like when they themselves did something they consider courageous, and the answer will be very different.  

It turns out that courage often feels really hard, painful, even wretched, at the time. But also that it is precisely the passing through and staying with that difficulty that is crucial to it being an instance of courage. And, moreover, sticking with and reflecting somatically on that experience reveals all kinds of further surprises: e.g. that courage is not, in fact, so much about the exertion ‘against all odds’ of the individual will, as it is about the holding of a challenging relation; that it is not the exclusive preserve of the exceptional and fearless, but is there in all our lives and open to us all, and often in quite mundane ways; that courage actually needs others to reflect one’s courage while simultaneously being disregarding of other’s approbation; and/or that courage is a mode of action that essentially channels both male and female archetypes.   

Serious scientific attention to courage, and itself conducted in that spirit, thus opens up extraordinary new vistas for scientific, socio-technical and personal growth, including via rewriting such fundamental cultural tropes as the ‘myth of the hero’.

In short, courage is itself intrinsically paradoxical and can even be understood as precisely our capacity to move through paradox: hence, of course, its crucial role at a moment of such disorientation and profound change as the present.

In recent episodes we have discussed the importance of the longstanding cultural ‘missing piece’ of a sense of sacredness and associated modes of thinking – analogical, allegorical, relational – to refit science and higher education as adequate for our new Anthropocene age. But can we simply return to and revive ‘religion’ so easily?

Do we really want to? What about the quite evident down sides and dark sides of religion, including in both history and the turbulent present? In an age of resurgent fundamentalisms, is not a return to religion precisely the wrong turn?

How do we deal with fundamental objections to religion as being not only opposed to, the opposite of, ‘science’, but also opposed to reasonable, constructive, ‘science-informed’, harmonious action… and especially regarding the complex, inter-connected and participatory challenges – amongst massively diverse populations – of the Anthropocene?

And to the extent that a revived culture of faith is indeed defensible and needed, what then does this demand of and illuminate regarding changes in science and education today?

In this episode we discuss a singular lens on all these crucial questions, and so for science and education for the Anthropocene, – interfaith dialogue – with one the UK’s leading thinkers and practitioners on these issues. Dr Edward Kessler MBE is Founder President of the Woolf Institute at Cambridge University, and a leading thinker in interfaith relations, primarily, Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations, as well as Chair of the Commission on Interfaith Relations.

Join us for a straight-talking, moving and ultimately profoundly hopeful discussion on the extraordinary challenges – and opportunities – for cultivating collective wisdom through the hard but ‘quiet’ work of interfaith dialogue. Across a wide range of issues, we discuss the extraordinary experiment of opening oneself to others, the UK’s landmark Muslim-Jewish Reconciliation Accords of January 2025 and the three (or four!) principles of dialogue. In short, a science for the Anthropocene needs us to recognize, as Kessler puts it, that “we are together on a journey across an unknown with nothing to protect us, except one another.  It may not be much…but it is everything."

Mainstream approaches to the unprecedented challenges of the Anthropocene and ‘global sustainability transition’ often focus on a geographical context of modern urban areas where new technologies will primarily be developed and used. But the front lines of the Anthropocene are frequently in regions of the world far from these shiny hi-tech centres; places, moreover, that may well already be burdened by longstanding assaults on and exploitation of their endogenous, indigenous ways of life. And science too often plays a key, and often deeply problematic, role in these dynamics.

So it is small wonder that we are seeing a surge of interest, both political and academic, in taking greater account not only for non-modern-Western ways of life, but also and explicitly for ‘Indigenous’ ones (with a capital I, connoting a particular, and often sub-altern, identity category). Indeed, if ‘Western’ modernity is read as the cataclysmic ‘boom and bust’ underpinning the emergence of the Anthropocene and its existential threats, ‘Indigenous’ ways of life can be read, seemingly empirically, as rich with alternative, and better, ‘answers’, supporting humans to live sustainably with other non-humans and local ecologies over tens of thousands of years.  

Even accepting this agenda, though, how can we best engage with, learn from and support Indigenous communities in this way? And what, then, is the role or space – or necessary redefinition – of ‘science’? To discuss these crucial issues, we are joined by leading anthropologist Mario Blaser, whose latest book, ‘For Emplacement’, sets out his hugely illuminating reflections, drawing on 30 years of relationship with and research amongst two Indigenous communities in the Americas: the Yshiro nation of Paraguay, and the Innu nation of Labrador, Canada.

Join us to hear about: the problems of ‘reasonable politics’ and a ‘Science-plus’ of conventional science supplemented with a well-meaning intent to be more inclusive of ‘Indigenous perspectives’; a profoundly different way of looking, that foregrounds the crucial and long-neglected importance of ‘small stories’ and ‘uncommoning’; the crucial distinction between a stance that avows ‘pluriversalism’ and a living world of many, concrete ways of life that are practically and experimentally negotiating both the ‘pluriversal’ and ‘universal’ as inseparably twinned and ceaseless movements, not metaphysical realms ‘out there’; and, crucially, whether science can ever be more than part of the problem. In short, for a science – and society – that is moving beyond the self-aggrandizing and violent triumphalism of Modernity we need rebalancing to practices of emplacement, not the self-flagellating rejection of all things modern while idolizing an identity politics of ‘Indigeneity’ that ends up being no less destructive.

The built environment accounts for some 40% of GHG emissions and profoundly shapes a further 25% from transport, while contributing around a third of unrecyclable waste. So transforming it through redesign is a key lever of environmental action. But redesigning it how and with what goals or inspirations? Does not design itself need to be fundamentally transformed, given that the existing built environment was also ‘designed’, albeit drawing on principles, methods and materials that generated, and continue to generate, the very problems we are now trying to address? This is, indeed, precisely the call of ‘regenerative design’, which sees that aiming simply for more ‘sustainability’ is not enough; just being ‘less bad’ while leaving fundamental problems unchecked.

One compelling response to these issues of transforming architectural and design ‘knowledge’ is biomimicry – drawing on inspiration from living creatures and examples in nature.  Moreover, as a whole design philosophy, biomimicry evokes design that not only ‘mimics’ natural forms and ingenuity but also aims to shape ways of life and practices that manifest more profound respect for, connection to and wonder of the living world… all of which are attitudes that themselves are likely necessary conditions for broader societal transformation towards a new common-sense, in everyday practical life, of a ‘bio-inclusive’ ethos.  In short, biomimicryhas the potential to be a singular lever of practical intervention in the seeming catch 22 of systemic change, where A is needed before B can happen, but also A presupposes B.

To discuss the exciting opportunities, the philosophical education, the practical challenges and the sheer beauty of biomimicry, we are joined by leading architect and advocate for biomimicry, Michael Pawlyn, founding director of Exploration Architecture Ltd and TED talk speaker (watched over 2 million times). Join us to discuss how we must learn to design not just FOR nature but AS nature; the key distinction between ‘bio-inclusive’ and ‘bio-centric’ design, and the priority of the former; how biomimicry and a complex systems approach mutually illuminate each other; a whole new aesthetics of ‘form follows abundance’ not ‘form follows function’; the wonders of the lobster shell, the spookfish, the clusterwink snail and bastard hogberry; and much more!

As we release this episode, Michael has also had an important and relevant comment article published in Nature, which we also wanted to share: How buildings and cities can be aligned with life

We can theorize the problems of the metacrisis forever, but the only way forward is to get stuck in to the practical issues, getting our hands into the mud – proverbial and literal – of transformation.  In this wonderful, wide-ranging discussion, we explore precisely this predicament from a number of perspectives, guided along the way through exploration of the impressively diverse, and yet still richly coherent, work of Jessica Bockler, co-founding Director of the Alef Trust and principal investigator on the ‘Calmer Farmer’ project.

Regarding the literal ‘mud’, we explore a key site at the cutting-edge of the metacrisis, namely farming and the increasingly challenging lives of farmers (with a focus on the UK). The ‘Calmer Farmer’ project has set out to co-develop with farmers ways and practices through which they can draw on the growing arsenal of ‘inner development for outer change’ approaches in their exceptionally busy lives, forging new and stronger connections – with their land, each other and themselves.

We also discuss the ground-breaking educational work of the Alef Trust, the transpersonal psychology on which it is based, and hence the metaphorical ‘mud’ of deeper exploration and understanding of self and mind that this approach enables; again, all as key dimensions of ‘inner development for outer change’.  Perhaps most importantly, though, this discussion is not just more advocacy for that slogan. Rather, we really dig into the challenges and opportunities of taking this approach seriously, including regarding the need (or not) for explicit spiritual orientation, the dangers of ‘spiritual bypassing’ and the importance of play, not only earnest seriousness. Crucial here, it turns out, is a distinction that is poorly recognized, let alone acted on, in society at large, between the apophatic and kataphatic. Don’t know what those words mean? Listen on! Their importance for ‘science for the Anthropocene’ cannot be overstated.

How do we scale the transformative change we evidently need to respond to the unprecedented ecological challenges of our time? Global challenges, on tight timelines of necessary change, regarding profound destabilization of natural systems…: all this adds up to a clear need for rapid, scaled action in response, and, at one remove, for determined strategic prioritization of this agenda. Yet this, in turn, is increasingly clear, backed by ever-growing demand and initiative, and still change is still dispiritingly slow and so lacking in evidence. Why?!?

This podcast is about ideas, and the power of ideas.  And perhaps the problem here is not just, or even primarily, a practical problem – e.g. of lack of will or energy, of missing resources or massive obstacles – but rather a conceptual one? What if we struggle even to think the very possibility of ‘practical’ responses – i.e. individual actions and initiatives – being able to aggregate up to the kinds of global scaling and system transformation we know we need? If so, we are stuck in a kind of paradox: human actions are unintentionally changing the planet… and yet deliberate human action seems to be unable to do anything about that?!

Rebelling against this defeatist conclusion, we are joined for episode 27 by a scholar who has been taking the lead in formulating a different and more positive way forward precisely by thinking deeply – both in practice, as co-lead of a major report on transformative change for the International Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and conceptually, regarding that foundational block to our understanding of scaling.

Professor Karen O’Brien, an internationally recognized expert on the human and social dimensions of global environmental change at the University of Oslo, is also a pioneering thinker regarding long overdue engagement with the implications forthe social sciences of the quantum revolution in our understanding of the physical world. As she sets out in her remarkable book ‘You Matter More than You Think’ (cChange Press, 2021), if we are prepared simply to update our understanding of the nature of physical reality, from a ‘classical’ Newtonian to a quantum perspective, the resulting world of entanglement, potentiality and indeterminacy radically shifts our capacity to conceptualize global scaling of transformative change.

Join us for an insightful exploration of these key conceptual shackles holding back transformative change, how we can begin to break them and thereby find new strategic motivation, and what doing so looks like regarding the key ‘planetary boundary’ of biodiversity.

This podcast explores how we need to change science so that it is part of the ‘solution’ not part of the ‘problem’ regarding our contemporary meta-crisis. But how much science offers fundamental reflections on the predicament of the meta-crisis itself and as a whole, rather than just crucial elements of it like climate change, biodiversity loss or the seeming crisis of democracy? One particular theory – and one particular proponent of that theory – is doing just that, and with both a breadth and depth of vision that is understandably attracting enormous and ever-growing interest because of the extraordinary insight and synthetic coherence it offers. 

This theory draws primarily on a close and expert reading of the contemporary neurosciences, building up its case for a breakthrough in our understanding – of ourselves, not just of our ‘brains’ – over more than three decades of research. But it stands out in also then marshalling in its support, and thereby reciprocally illuminating, cutting-edge science from physics and the life sciences, and, indeed, literature and cultural history.

The theory in question is the hemispheric theory of the divided brain, and the fundamentally different – contrasting, complementary but not tidily coherent – perspectives of left and right hemispheres. And the polymathic advocate of this theory is Iain McGilchrist, whose latest work (The Matter with Things - Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2023) has been described by an Oxford professor as “one of the most important books ever published. And, yes, I do mean ever.”

Join us for this extended episode in which we set out: the basic building blocks of Iain’s argument regarding hemispheric differences; the crucial issue and insight regarding the way in which these two ways of being in the world themselves interact (viz. as a ‘coincidence of opposites’); how this illuminates the nature of the metacrisis regarding dysfunctional domination of the left hemispheric perspective; and, last and by no means least, what all this tells us about how we are doing science (wrongly), how we should be doing science and what science can and cannot contribute to the urgently needed rebalancing towards right hemispheric perspectives.

We know this is a long episode, but it’s published with excitement not apology. Every minute in Iain’s company is illuminating, given both the beautiful incisiveness of his overall thesis and the mind-stretching breadth of issues it draws on and, in turn, illuminates.  So we wanted to cover as much ground as possible with him while he was with us. We trust you’ll agree, the result is a treat (for both hemispheres of your brain!).

Reforming the scholarly disciplines so that we are developing knowledge adequate for our age of seismic change is evidently not a project limited only to the ‘hard’, physical sciences. Indeed, according to Professor Jeffrey J. Kripal, unless we pay specific and particular attention to reviving the beleaguered humanities, such an objective will continually elude us. But the humanities are not just neglected in today’s academy and society (and increasingly so as policy celebrates productivity of ‘STEM’ subjects alone).  They are also in a very bad way – with at least a major element of the blame for this situation sitting with the humanities themselves.

So what can be done about this? And why is rejuvenating the humanities, as a crucial (maybe even central?) pillar of the university and higher education of our societies, so important – in itself, and especially today?

 In considering both of these questions with Kripal we follow his ground-breaking lead by diving in with perhaps a surprising – but certainly arresting – starting place, namely what he calls, in his excellent 2020 book (reviewed as ‘mindblowing’ by Michael Pollan), ‘the Flip’.  This phrase refers to life-changing experiences amongst hard-headed, materialist scientists that ‘flip’ their view, convincing them that mind, and not matter, is the real stuff of the cosmos. While unspeakable in the respectable world of contemporary scientific materialism, it turns out that pausing and taking such experiences seriously – as, at least, posing crucial questions, if not presenting straightforward answers – opens up a whole new vista of understanding, that simultaneously: affirms that same ontological priority of mind over matter, and thereby highlights and punctures our current self limitation of view; thereby reviving and asserting the reality of meaning and the meaning(fulness) of reality; and, in turn, reclaiming the modes and disciplines for the study and illumination of meaning – i.e. the humanities – as indispensable tools in the education and edification of modern society.

Join us in discussion about the necessary revival of a sense of ‘perennial philosophy’, unifying all humanity as so much more than the individualized and differentiated rational egoistic consumer of the contemporary imagination, and hence paving routes beyond the depressed meaninglessness characteristic of our current collective crisis.

We need a new science for and in the Anthropocene – that is the whole premise of this podcast. But what if we’re trying to build that new science on broken and/or inadequate foundations? What if the whole massive global enterprise of ‘science and technology’ as it is today is marked by a fatal blind spot, which is not only hobbling the productivity of scientific advancement, but even distorting science such that it is currently a massive part of the problem – i.e. of our contemporary meta-crisis – to which it claims to be contributing solutions? This is the rousing claim of a major new book by leading scientists and philosophers of science, Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser and Evan Thompson: ‘The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience’ (MIT Press, 2024). But what is this crucial ‘blind spot’? Exactly how does it hold back and twist the scientific enterprise? And what can we do about it?

Join us, in discussion with the decorated physicist and astronomer Marcelo Gleiser, Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy at Dartmouth College, to explore these key questions.  We unpack the key ways in which we are all harmed by the dominant self-conception of science today as not only self-justifying and in no need of philosophical underpinning, but also a way of knowing that is justifiably focused exclusively on the objective gaze, with no role or place for the first-person experience of consciousness and aliveness. Discussing current challenges and roadblocks in the sciences of cognition/AI and consciousness, we unpack some daunting philosophical jargon that is nonetheless crucial for understanding the existential crisis of our contemporary scientific civilisation, e.g. Whitehead’s ‘bifurcation of nature’, Husserl’s ‘surreptitious substitution’, the crucial error of the ‘amnesia of experience’, and the ‘strange loop’ of consciousness.

In short, Gleiser and his co-authors present us with some bracing and much-needed clarity, posing a challenge to everyone involved in science today: we are at a civilisational cross-roads with existential stakes where either we continue business as usual with the Blind Spot, or we choose to confront it and open up to the ‘strange loop’. Join us to work out what all of this means and what you can yourself can do to tackle the Blind Spot.

It’s been a while since our last episode (apologies!) and much has changed in the interim. In particular, the transition from 2024 to 2025 has witnessed a shift in political mood across much of the ‘Western’ world, with a liberating new sense of fearless truth-telling, including a striking return to serious concern with issues of a more-than-materialist metaphysics and the sacred. Variously termed ‘post-liberalism’ or ‘post-secular liberalism’, this exciting ‘vibe shift’ is attracting active development from a broad spectrum of political and cultural opinion, all committed to a newly self-assured affirmation and reconstruction of ‘civilisation’, including the specific and unique contributions of ‘Western’ civilisation.  And this is a political – but more so, a cultural – shift that has significant implications for our concern on this podcast, regarding a new science for the Anthropocene. 

But is there a snag? A surface glance at much ‘post-liberal’ commentary seems to suggest a reluctance regarding, or even an allergic reaction against, serious consideration of the unprecedented ecological challenges of the present. Moreover, much ‘environmentalist’ politics seems equally knee-jerk in its reaction against post-liberalism.  And yet is there also not a profound opportunity for the opposite outcome here, with post-liberalism underpinning breakthroughs in serious political concern for the environment that have proven long – ever more! – elusive, while grappling with a changing planet presents the key need for a post-liberal transformation?

Joining us to discuss this crucial agenda are two luminaries of their respective worlds.  John Milbank is a leading philosopher-theologian and theorist of post-liberalism, including as co-author (with Adrian Pabst) of the landmark ‘The Politics of Virtue: Post-liberalism and the Human Future’.  Robin Grove-White is a giant of the environmental NGO sector, as former Director of the Council for the Protection of Rural England and former Chairman of Greenpeace, as well as former Director of the ground-breaking Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, at Lancaster University.  John and Robin discuss the challenges and opportunities of bringing post-liberalism and environmentalism together, including the shared need for both projects of a re-connection to senses of belonging and sacredness in the natural, living world.

(Apologies for a few wobbles in the sound quality at points in the podcast.)