We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment.
Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large.
Inhoudsopgave
Introduction
1. The Flow of Matter
2. The Fold of Elements
3. The Planetary Field
4. Centripetal Minerality
5. Hadean Earth
6. Centrifugal Atmospherics
7. Archean Earth I: Pneumatology
8. Archean Earth II: Biogenesis
9. Tensional Vegetality
10. Proterozoic Earth
11. Elastic Animality
12. Phanerozoic Earth I: Kinomorphology
13. Phanerozoic Earth II: Terrestrialization
14. Kinocene Earth
15. Kinocene Ethics
Conclusion: The Future
Over de auteur
Thomas Nail is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. He is the author of
The Figure of the Migrant (Stanford, 2015) and
Being and Motion (2018).
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