The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity’s Future

Dartmouth College physicist Gleiser (The Island of Knowledge) comes up short in this underwhelming call to “reinvent ourselves as a species.” To unite humanity in the fight against climate change, he urges readers to view themselves as sharing a “spiritual connection” with all other life on Earth, suggesting that the planet’s unique status in the universe makes it “a sacred realm that deserves respect and veneration.” He laments the pragmatic focus of the “orthodox scientific worldview,” positing that Copernicus’s discovery that Earth isn’t the center of the universe led people to disregard the planet as “irrelevant in the big scheme of things” and that Isaac Newton’s mechanistic explanations of the laws of motion and gravity undermined humanity’s reverence for the natural world. Unfortunately, Gleiser’s plan for a brighter future, which hinges on forging a “spiritual reconnection with Earth and the biosphere,” is vague and simplistic, and his assertions of humanity’s need for “engagement of body and mind with the land” do little to clarify what such a reconnection would look like. The hazy bromides grate and Gleiser isn’t persuasive in claiming that learning to appreciate the rarity of life in the cosmos will suffice in making people better stewards of the environment. Earth deserves a better defense. (Aug.)