The Naturing Cosmos

The transformation of our environment is now taking place at a faster rate and on a larger scale than we are capable of tracking. The recent surge of concern about the so-called inatural world has led to little more than a proliferation of bromides about conservation. Theoretical notions like the Anthropocene may pose as critical advances, but from the point of view of changing the grim trajectory on which we are presently set they are extraordinarily unambitious. The contributors to The Naturing Cosmos argue that only by going beyond the cultural and metaphysical frameworks that brought us to this point can we ever hope to address the crises that now face us. What is required of us is nothing short of a change of mind: a fundamental reassessment of the intellectual patterns that determine our attitudes towards and relationship with the world around us.

In pursuit of just such a transformation, The Naturing Cosmosinaugurates a major new dialogue between philosophy, design theory, and ecology. The opening essays in this collection build on the work of three philosophers of nature—Baruch de Spinoza, Alfred Whitehead, and Gilbert Simondon—whose thought shares a powerful commitment to removing the false separation of human being from the wider being of the world. The contributors then place those singularly modern thinkers in relation to animist and Indigenous worldviews in order to develop an understanding of the world as abundant in beauty and value, and as demanding to be put in service to itself and not only to us. The essays also engage the ways in which worldmaking practices—art, design, cosmovision—can orient themselves toward life, thereby expanding our sensory enjoyment of the world rather than simply degrading it. Proposing as it does a radical revaluation of existing ways of thinking and being, The Naturing Cosmos is a crucial intervention in some of the most urgent debates of our time.