Life, the universe, and our place in it

“The essence of life is what sages and poets throughout the ages have called the breath of life.” That’s Fritjof Capra’s response to the question, ‘what is the nature of life?’ in an interview with Patricia Hemminger for Science & Spirit.

Prof Capra, an eminent physicist and systems theorist, author and founder of the Center for Ecoliteracy, believes we need to look at the universe and life from a holistic point of view, rather than proposing traditional mechanistic models in an attempt to quantify everything. While talking about the natural environment – what he calls ‘the web of life’ – he suggests that, to understand life, we need to see it from an ecological perspective.

Explaining the basic fact that no living organism can exist in isolation, he feels “we need to focus on processes and we need to focus on relationships between the components of living organisms to capture the essence of life.” In his vision, human beings are actually a part of a larger living system.

Prof Capra’s vision is greatly influenced by the Gaia Theory, which proposes that the Earth itself is a single self-regulating biological entity. Of course, the scientific community is not entirely convinced about this, and many scientists argue that the Gaia Theory is more mystical than scientific in nature.

Whatever be the controversy, some things seem to be clear: that life and the physical environment significantly influence one another. And, “as far as humans are concerned we are, biologically speaking, animals and we evolved from the other mammals through primates and the great apes. And so we are part of a whole chain of evolution and the whole web of life.”