The Web of Life - Fritjof Capra 1

Some years back I read Fritjof Capra's wonderful book, The Tao of Physics (Flamingo, 1992), which explored the parallels between Western (modern) physics and Eastern mysticism.  I have also read his Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with Remarkable People (Flamingo, 1988) and The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter (Flamingo, 1997).  My comments here will mostly focus on this last book as Capra attempts a new synthesis of Mind and Matter.  I am aware that these books are now somewhat dated. Still, their import and insights into the relationship between Spirituality and Science are universal and timeless, a sort of modern Perennial Philosophy. Here we have a highly trained physicist to a Ph.D. level, with an interest in Eastern and Ecological thinking arguing strongly and convincingly for the inherent power in life without taking refuge in either religious or metaphysical metaphor.  He is not setting out to convert anyone.  He merely sets out his stall for us to make of it what we will.  Because he is such an authentic and congruent writer we are instinctively wont to accept what he says.

Fritjof Capra (1939 —) is an Austrian-born American physicist.  He is a founding director of the Centre for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, and is on the faculty of Schumacher College.  The book I am reviewing here, The Web of Life is subtitled A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter (Flamingo, 1997).  It does not surprise us in the least that the great "green" scientist James Lovelock called this rich little book "[t]he first comprehensible account of life since Genesis."

Writing in a recent online journal (2015), Capra avers

“At the very heart of our new paradigm, we find a fundamental change of metaphors: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network.  We have discovered that the material world, ultimately, is a network of inseparable patterns of relationships. We have also discovered that the planet as a whole is a living, self-regulating system. The view of the human body as a machine and of the mind as a separate entity is being replaced by one that sees the brain, the immune system, the bodily organs, and even each cell as a living, cognitive system. And, with the new emphasis on complexity, nonlinearity, and patterns of organization, a new science of qualities is slowly emerging.  We call this new science ‘the systems view of life’ because it involves a new kind of thinking - thinking in terms of relationships, patterns, and context. In science, this way of thinking is known as ‘systems thinking’, or ‘systemic thinking’.” See here.

Interconnections and Intersections

What I love about great writers, artists or creative geniuses like Fritjof Capra is their ability to synthesize insights from different disciplines and explain them in everyday language.  Of course, other scientists and psychologists think in narrower and more "within-the-box" ways, and these scientists and thinkers singly and collectively are important too as they push the frontiers of knowledge ever further into the unknown.  However, the great synthesizers are like conductors who combine disparate instruments to play in unison, creating a magical meaning for humankind that sustains the soul.

In his introductory chapter, Dr Capra manages to interconnect, intersect, overlap and allow to play in unison theories from a diverse body of knowledge, viz., theory of dissipative structures of  Ilya Prigogine - a theory which soon led to pioneering research in self-organizing systems in biological organisms, as well as to philosophical inquiries into the formation of complexity and its mathematics; then chaos theory, which suggests order behind seeming disorder (see this link for an interesting article on order out of chaos and a link with Aristotelian notions of science which apparently are not that crazy after all: here); cybernetics  (the essential goal of cybernetics is to understand and define the functions and processes of systems that have goals); deep ecology (linked obviously with the Gaia theory of James Lovelock) and Ecoliteracy; autopoiesis (literally means "self-creation," which, in short, is a system description that is said to define and explain the nature of living systems); Systems Theory; the concept of Sustainability; the paradigm system, spearheaded by Thomas Kuhn, with respect to scientific revolution which involves "paradigm shifts" in its forward movement; moments of existential crisis and angst (philosophy); economic growth and crisis; linearity versus cyclicality; sum of parts versus whole; deep ecological awareness as ultimately religious or spiritual awareness; the importance of persistent questioning of reality; ecofeminism — nature and fertility; masculinity, paternalism, patriarchy, control and domination; self-assertiveness versus integration; independence versus inter-dependence and finally ethics and power.  He mentions all these great concepts within the space of some fourteen pages.  In doing so he sets forth his canvas and merely paints the background on which he will begin drawing the greater picture of the subject of his book, which is nothing less than the great web of life in a very bold synthesis of mind and matter. 

One of the striking and underlying concepts or ideas in this book is that nothing exists on its own per se, every single thing is defined and is given life within a context of other things, within a whole SYSTEM of things.  In this sense, Dr. Capra's opening sentence can be said to summarise the very core of his argument in this book, namely that there now exists "a new scientific understanding of life at all levels of living systems — organisms, social systems, and ecosystems." (p. 3)

Therefore, it's not just a new scientific understanding at the level of organisms as one would expect from biologists, or on the level of biochemical interactions as one would expect from biochemists, or, indeed on the level of subatomic particles as one would expect from theoretical physicists.  No, the reach of this new scientific understanding extends to our complex social systems, too, as it does to the very ecosystems within which we and our fellow creatures live.  This overarching sense of the myriads of interconnections that exist in all our perceived reality is the same theme of this book.  The world throws many complex problems our way from financial crises to geopolitical disputes, wars, famines, and suffering of all intensities.  What’s needed, according to Capra is the ability to realize that “ultimately, these problems are just different facets of one single crisis, which is largely a crisis of perception.  It derives from the fact that most of us, and especially our large social institutions, subscribe to the concept of an outdated worldview, a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with an overpopulated, globally interconnected world.” (p. 2) And long since Capra wrote these words, some thirty or so years ago, the world is even more overpopulated, more interconnected than ever, and enormously more complex. 

Towards Solutions

In our journey towards solutions, what's needed is a change in perception of these complexities.  This change in perception can be called yet another revolution of Copernican proportions.  That's essentially what Dr Thomas Kuhn meant by “paradigm shifts.”  Let me return once again to Dr Capra's words, and remember that these words were written as early as 1996:

Not only do our leaders fail to see how different problems are interrelated; but they also refuse to recognize how their so-called solutions affect future generations.  From the systemic point of view, the only viable solutions are those that are "sustainable". The concept of sustainability has become a key concept in the ecology movement and is indeed crucial.  Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute has given a simple, clear, and beautiful definition: "A sustainable society satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations." This, in a nutshell, is the great challenge of our times: to create sustainable communities, i.e., social and cultural environments in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the chances of future generations. (p.4)

Perceptions and Paradigms

In a recent lecture, a presenter psychologist stressed that our narrow and conditioned perception is our biggest block to potential.  If we can learn to see the world and indeed ourselves from a different angle, we will be able to take the risk to come out of our comfort zone and begin to see and do things that will expand that zone rather than leaving it as it is or shrinking it through growing fears.

Similarly, Dr Fritjof Capra is arguing essentially that as a collectivity, we humans must also change our perception of the world.  The old perceptions, while in some certain senses still valuable and true, are simply no longer adequate to deal with the complex nature of the interconnectedness of the Web of Life.  The new perception that we need is nothing short of a change in paradigm - in our collective ways of thinking.  It is to this notion of paradigm that I wish now to turn my thoughts and considerations.

The historian of science Professor Thomas Kuhn defined a paradigm thus: "a constellation of achievements - concepts, values, techniques, etc., - shared by a scientific community and used by that community to define legitimate problems and solutions." (Quoted in The Web of Life, p. 5) The ancient astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, (AD 90 — c. AD 168), who was a Roman citizen who lived in Egypt and who authored his books in Greek, had argued that our solar system was geocentric, that is, that our world was the centre of it.  He estimated the Sun was at an average distance of 1210 Earth radii, while the radius of the sphere of the fixed stars was 20,000 times the radius of the Earth. The Ptolemaic system was a Paradigm that remained valid until the era of Copernicus some 13 centuries later.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 — 1543) was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the centre of the solar system and placed the sun firmly there.  In other words, it took 13 hundred years for this "Paradigm shift" or change in perspective to take place.  Changes in Paradigms, according to Thomas Kuhn, occur in discontinuous, revolutionary breaks called "paradigm shifts."  A noticeably clear pictorial presentation of this astronomical paradigm shift from geocentric to heliocentric can be seen here.

Another paradigm shift would be that from a Newtonian and Cartesian conception of science and scientific method to a holistic and ecological view of these phenomena in Quantum Physics.  Not alone was this a paradigm shift for science, but it also paralleled an existential crisis at the heart of humankind itself, argues Capra. (p. 5) He goes on to translate this Kuhnian idea of scientific paradigm over into what he calls a "social paradigm" which he defines as follows: "a constellation of concepts, values, perceptions and practices shared by a community, which forms a particular vision of reality that is a basis of the way a community organizes itself." (p. 6)

From the Enlightenment forward we have worked from the following social paradigm: very entrenched ideas and values where we saw (even some of us still see) the universe as a mechanical system in accord with Newtonian physics; a view of the human body as a machine, the brain as a computer; the view of life as a society based on competition for survival; a capitalist and almost materialist take on economy.  We could argue that it was such a paradigm that has led to global financial crises over the years, namely that this competition for survival, accelerated by naked greed and ambition, became nothing short of a sophisticated gambling game for bankers and speculators at the expense of every little working minion in the world.  It is the workers worldwide who have to pay for the sins of these capitalist gamblers.  Capra also adds the various levels of the oppression of women to this social paradigm.  However, all these assumptions have been and are being challenged.

The New Social Paradigm

Capra calls his new social paradigm Deep Ecology.  That means that there is a new and radical way of seeing things abroad today.  Another weltanschauung, or worldview, is there for us to embrace if we dare to so do.  This worldview invites us to see the world as an integrated whole [(w)holism] rather than an association of disparate parts.  This is an ecological view, but one that is even deeper still than ecology as it is defined. Hence, Capra uses the adjective "deep" with the substantive: his concept of Deep Ecology.  Such deep ecology recognizes the fundamental interdependence or interconnectedness of all phenomena.  Indeed, we are all embedded in the cyclical processes of nature.  The biblical weltanschauung or worldview which we have inherited from the Judaeo-Christian tradition is very much an anthropocentric one with man firmly at the centre, or more correctly at the top of creation, literally lording it over the lesser beings.  Within this newer paradigm, we are merely part of the whole, enmeshed in this deeper ecology. Deep ecology as a way of thinking was originally suggested by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (1912 — 2009).

Shallow ecology, Capra argues is anthropocentric or human-centred.  In light of this, one could argue that a fundamentalist take on theology, which has an anthropocentric understanding of the Godhead, is equally shallow.  "Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life." (p.7)