The Biology of Wonder - by Andreas Weber (Paperback)

About the Book

What is life? In The Biology of Wonder, scientist Andreas Weber resolves this fundamental enigma, arguing that humans, like all living beings, are creative, evolutionary forces who cannot exist apart from nature.

Book Synopsis

What is life? In The Biology of Wonder , scientist Andreas Weber resolves this fundamental enigma, arguing that humans, like all living beings, are creative, evolutionary forces who cannot exist apart from nature.

From the Back Cover

Understanding our place in the web of life

"Grounded in science, yet eloquently narrated, this is a groundbreaking book. Weber's visionary work provides new insight into human/nature interconnectedness and the dire consequences we face by remaining disconnected."
--Richard Louv, author, The Nature Principle and Last Child in the Woods

What is life? In The Biology of Wonder , scientist Andreas Weber reframes this fundamental enigma by arguing that all living beings, like humans, are not biological machines, but living, creative agents fueled by meaning and expression.

The schism between us and the natural world is arguably the root cause of most of the environmental catastrophes unravelling around us. Until we come to terms with the depths of our alienation, we will fail to understand that what happens to nature also happens to us.

This landmark work demonstrates that our connection to Earth's complex web of dynamic, interconnected relationships underpins the entire range of human experience, giving rise to a new ecological ethos, and demonstrating that subjectivity and imagination are the prerequisites of biological existence.

"Written with poetic elegance and interwoven with a rich vein of personal narrative, this extraordinary book takes the central idea of the subjectivity and interior life of all living beings and gives it concreteness..."
--Shierry Weber Nicholsen, author, The Love of Nature and the End of the World

"Weber reorients us scientifically, poetically, and morally from insufficient reductionism."
--Stuart Kauffman FRSC, Emeritus Professor, University of Pennsylvania

"In Andreas Weber's vision, nature is beautiful, and ecology is poetry. Follow his beautiful words into a science that investigates the Earth as a breathing, sensitive planet..."
--David Rothenberg, author, Survival of the Beautiful and Bug Music

Dr. Andreas Weber is a German academic, scholar and author, and is a leader in the emerging fields of biopoetics and biosemiotics. His work has been translated into several languages and published around the globe.

Review Quotes

"The Biology of Wonder is a wonderfully eclectic and wide-ranging book that clearly shows that all beings and landscapes on our fascinating and magnificent planet are deeply interconnected. In the spirit of personal rewilding, Professor Weber writes about interbeing, ecological commons, first-person ecology, and non-duality in ways that will make sense to readers with different interests, and his ideas about "poetic ecology" show clearly that we are not alone - indeed, we are one of the gang - and must not behave as if we are the only show in town."

- Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado, and author, Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence

"Weber moves biology beyond reductionism into a new expanded view of life that includes not only reductionism itself, but also the interactive cooperation, beauty, and vital force that complete the picture of our living world."

- David Ehrenfeld, Distinguished Professor of Biology at Rutgers, and author, The Arrogance of Humanism and Becoming Good Ancestors: How We Balance Nature, Community, and Technology

"The Biology of Wonder is a wonder. Schrodinger asked "What is Life" with brilliance, but misses "What IS life". Weber sees aliveness as functional wholes, self-creative, and self-generating, that co-create their worlds. The "aliveness" of all life, emotional, sentient, adgentival, interested, co-mingled, "entangled with all of life", reorients us scientifically, poetically and morally, from the rich but insufficient reductionism Schrodinger helped spearhead."

- Stuart Kauffman FRSC, Emeritus Professor, University of Pennsylvania

"Written with poetic elegance and interwoven with a rich vein of personal narrative, this extraordinary book takes the central idea of the subjectivity and interior life of all living beings and gives it concreteness by grounding it in the findings of modern biology. In articulating the Laws of Desire inherent in all organic life, it goes far toward reframing the debate about the relationship between mind and body."

- Shierry Weber Nicholsen, author, The Love of Nature and the End of the World

"In Andreas Weber's vision, nature is beautiful, and ecology is poetry. Follow his beautiful words into a science that investigates the Earth as a breathing, sensitive planet that welcomes us with story and song."

- David Rothenberg, author, Survival of the Beautiful and Bug Music

"The Biology of Wonder guides us toward discerning that value, meaning, experience, creativity, and freedom exist within and constitute the living world. Previously dismissed as "romantic," this viewpoint, at once clearheaded and compassionate, is tenaciously represented by Andreas Weber as deep realism. To come to grips with the understanding he communicates - to recognize the ubiquity of subjectivity in the world and the feeling-unity of the human with all creation - is to glimpse what biodiversity destruction heralds for the human soul. The work of protecting and restoring nature simultaneously recovers and rescues our innermost being."

- Eileen Crist, coeditor, Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth.

"The Biology of Wonder is a wonderful biology, even a transformational one. Beautiful, wise, and grounded, I am grateful as much for the vision Prof Weber elucidates as for the love with which he clearly expresses it all."

- Kaleeg Hainsworth, author, An Altar in the Wilderness

About the Author

Dr. Andreas Weber is a German academic, scholar and writer who holds degrees in Marine Biology and Cultural Studies. He is the author of eight non-fiction books and dozens of magazine features and is highly respected for his work in the fields of popular science and environmental sustainability. Andreas explores new understandings of life-as-meaning or "biopoetics" and "biosemiotics" in science and in the arts, and his work has been translated into several languages and published around the globe.