Lestheprof's Blog

I’ve had a great deal of respect for Arran Gare for quite some time now, having read some of his philosophy while working on my (and Plamen Simeonov’s) Inbiosa project. Fairly recently, I had read a review of this book, and I thought it would be good to read it. I had to get it on inter-library loan, as my first impression was that it was rather expensive… but now I’ve found there’s a paperback version too, and I’ve just received it.

This is an important book. It styles itself as a “manifesto of the future”, and it is an attempt to push philosophy back into the mainstream of thought, an attempt to move away from the fashionable reductionism that mainstream science takes, and an attempt to make this new world-view able to deal with the real problems that face society. I’m not a professional philosopher (though I did study two years of Natural Philosophy many years ago at Glasgow University), but I have been a professional University scientist, and his critique of the managerial and impact-led modern University struck home.

How can I encourage you to read this book? It gives a philosophical backdrop to the recent upsurge in environmental politics, it provides a philosophical explanation of the commodification of people, of the way in which democracy has been attacked, and liberty and freedom have been turned into purely financial issues. It’s not always an easy read, but it is certainly much more readable than other philosophy books that I have looked at.

Why should you read it?

• If you are a scientist it helps you to understand the universe as interacting processes, rather than attempting a totally reductionist understanding, which is impossible, because the universe is always interacting and interconnected. (Pure reductionism only works if you can control all the circumstances, like , for example, in the LHC at CERN: but it’s not much use if you want to understand biology or societies or economics).
• If you are concerned with ecology, it provides a philosophical backdrop to why we have the ecological problems that we do, and perhaps some hope that there might be some ways of going forward to tackle some of the underlying issues that led to the ecological problems, rather than looking for purely technical solutions, that will almost certainly not work.
• If you are involved in politics, because it might help you to see a different way forward from the purely economic measurements that dominate current politics,. at least in the UK.
• If you’re an economist, because it might help you to realise that it’s time to re-train (!)
• … and if you’re simply a living human being, because it will help you to understand how you have been being sent down the garden path by corporations and politicians over the years.

I’ve read about half of it now: the introduction, chapters 1,5, and 6, and the Conclusion. I strongly recommend you read it too!