Gaian Systems

Bruce Clarke is Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Literature and Science in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. He is the author or editor of ten books, among them Neocybernetics and Narrative (Minnesota, 2014) and Posthuman Metamorphosis.

• ContentsIntroduction: An Epistemological TransitionPart I. Gaia Discourse1. A Paradigm Shift2. Thinkers of Gaia3. Neocybernetics of GaiaPart II. The Systems Counterculture4. The Whole Earth Network5. The Lindisfarne Connection6. Margulis and AutopoiesisPart III. Gaian Enquiries7. The Planetary Imaginary8. Planetary Immunity9. Astrobiology and the AnthropoceneAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

"Where William Blake found the world in a grain of sand, Gaia finds the planet in a bacterial cell. Bruce Clarke, eminent scholar of literature and science, leads us through the evolution and elaboration of the notion-where complex systems can easily get complicated and cybernetics loopy-with sustained precision and clarity. The necessity to understand is evident throughout."-Douglas Kahn, author of Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts"Gaian Systems is a brilliant labor of love. Intellectual love for a major system of thought and for those who have built it, especially the towering figure of Lynn Margulis. But also profound love for our living planet as a whole, for the complexity and subtlety of the complex assemblages that compose it. Combining rigor with generosity, Bruce Clarke explores the genealogy, the key concepts, and the major implications of a symbiogenetic vision of our planetary system. Humble and yet visionary, this remarkable study instructs, illuminates, and gives us hope."-Rosi Braidotti, Utrecht University