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The currently unfolding ecological catastrophe is the result of more than just deforestation, fossil fuel extraction, and factory farming. Behind the immediate causes of the degradation of our environment lies something else: a deeply rooted but ultimately absurd understanding of our place in the universe. Through a series of encounters with a striking array of protagonists - from revolutionary physicists and embattled philosophers to subsistence hunters and Himalayan shamans - The Soul in the Stone exposes the incoherence of the barren, human-centered perspective dominant in most societies today. It recommends instead an alternative worldview: one that acknowledges and honors non-human experience and, precisely because it does, is both more logically consistent and more fulfilling. And might just save the planet.
About the author
Ashley Curtis was born in California in 1959. He studied Chinese and biblical literature at Yale and physics and physics pedagogy at Smith College. He taught for many years at the Ecole d’Humanité in Hasliberg, Switzerland, where he served as co-director from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Error and Loss: A Licence to Enchantment and the mystery novel Hexeneinmaleins, both published by the Kommode Press, and the cultural history “O Switzerland!” (Bergli). He lives just outside the Val Grande National Park in northern Italy.
Summary
The currently unfolding ecological catastrophe is the result of more than just deforestation, fossil fuel extraction, and factory farming. Behind the immediate causes of the degradation of our environment lies something else: a deeply rooted but ultimately absurd understanding of our place in the universe.
Through a series of encounters with a striking array of protagonists-from revolutionary physicists and embattled philosophers to subsistence hunters and Himalayan shamans-The Soul in the Stone exposes the incoherence of the barren, human-centered perspective dominant in most societies today. It recommends instead an alternative worldview: one that acknowledges and honors non-human experience and, precisely because it does, is both more logically consistent and more fulfilling. And might just save the planet.
