José Luis San Miguel de Pablos

Philosophy of Nature

Original title:

Filosofía de la Naturaleza. La otra mirada

About the book:

Philosophy of nature

The other view

- The text is a brilliant and instructive synthesis of the history of philosophy.

- The book is in line with the work of Edgar Morin, Carl Jung, and Ervin Laszlo.

- Reading it, we will discover that we are nature, and that the wellspring of the serious collective disease we suffer from consists precisely in thinking that we are something else apart.

The prevailing image of Nature since the onset of the scientific revolution is one of machinery whose movements can be predicted and thus controlled. As a consequence the old reverence and wonder felt toward the natural world has progressively deteriorated into a purely quantificatory, and thus coldly mercantile, attitude. But it is possible to turn a different gaze on Nature: one which, recognising our involvement in it, perceives it as a sensitive and dialoguing subject that draws on the same vitality as animates us. Such a view can be supported by the natural sciences and its results (arguably restoring this view is made possible by some of these very results).

What we have here is a type of science that is closer to philosophy, in the original and profound sense of the word, anchored in reference points as admired as Edgar Morin, Ilya Prirogine, Carl G. Jung, Henri Bergson and Advaita philosophy. Contributing to the expansion of this vital view of the complex and enveloping reality which we call Nature is the avowed main objective of this enthralling book.

About the author:

José Luis San Miguel de Pablos is a geologist and gained his doctorate with a thesis on the Earth as a focus of paradigms. He lectures at the universities for seniors at the U.P. Comillas and the CEU in Madrid, where he gives classes on the Philosophy of Nature, Geobiology and Geological History.