Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science

Critical supporter of New Age thinking, Thompson ( At the Edge of History ; Pacific Shift ) envisions ``a planetary culture in which myth is understood to be isomorphic, but not identical, to science.'' Weighted down by portentousness and self-sustaining rhetoric, these five loosely related essays, in part, defend the Gaia hypothesis, which posits planet Earth as a single living organism. Thompson offers insightful commentary on the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, the ``illusory conservatism of Ronald Reagan,'' the gropings of New Age visionaries; the essays also interweave a self-indulgent tribute to four friends who influenced the author's thought: neurophysiologist Francesco Varela, mathematician Ralph Abraham, and co-inventors of the Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. Thompson links ``the plagues of AIDS and pollution'' as he discusses responses of living systems to ``the emerging planetary bioplasm.'' (July)