Inclusional Nature: Bringing Life and Love to Science

This book offers a radical transformation in our understanding of evolutionary processes, giving hope of liberation from currently alienating ideas about human and non-human nature. It describes the author’s experiences of pain and joy, strengths and frailties, alongside his quest to make sense of the world in a way that brings together scientific, artistic and spiritual views so that they complement rather than oppose one another. It treats individual consciousness as a vital inclusion of the wider collective realm from which we all emerge and into which we all subside like ripples at the interface of water and air. It may even help us to find more creative, peaceful and environmentally sustainable ways of living together, through a deeper understanding of our natural neighbourhood.

At the heart of the book is a distinctive way of understanding the dynamic geometry of human and non-human nature, based on modern scientific evidence of the inextricability of space from energy, time and matter. This ‘inclusional logic’ treats all natural form as receptive-responsive flow-form, lacking any fixed executive centre or centres. Correspondingly, space and boundaries are envisaged as connective, reflective and co-creative rather than divisive. They therefore play a vital role in producing varied and dynamic natural form.

This understanding leads in turn to some new and exciting ideas about what it means to be human in a complex, rapidly changing world. These ideas are based on regarding the human ‘Self’ as a dynamic coupling of inner and outer through intermediary aspects, in much the same way that we can understand a river system as a creative interplay of stream with landscape mediated through its banks and valley sides. Each aspect simultaneously shapes the other.

This form of reasoning makes sense of many long held human emotional values and principles. With it, we can appreciate our complex self-identities as receptive neighbourhoods in dynamic, loving and responsive relationship.