Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: An Epistemological Transition

Part I. Gaia Discourse

1. A Paradigm Shift

2. Thinkers of Gaia

3. Neocybernetics of Gaia

Part II. The Systems Counterculture

4. The Whole Earth Network

5. The Lindisfarne Connection

6. Margulis and Autopoiesis

Part III. Gaian Enquiries

7. The Planetary Imaginary

8. Planetary Immunity

9. Astrobiology and the Anthropocene

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Bruce Clarke is Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Literature and Science in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. He is the author or editor of ten books, among them Neocybernetics and Narrative (Minnesota, 2014) and Posthuman Metamorphosis.

Reviews

"Where William Blake found the world in a grain of sand, Gaia finds the planet in a bacterial cell. Bruce Clarke, eminent scholar of literature and science, leads us through the evolution and elaboration of the notion—where complex systems can easily get complicated and cybernetics loopy—with sustained precision and clarity. The necessity to understand is evident throughout."—Douglas Kahn, author of Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts"Gaian Systems is a brilliant labor of love. Intellectual love for a major system of thought and for those who have built it, especially the towering figure of Lynn Margulis. But also profound love for our living planet as a whole, for the complexity and subtlety of the complex assemblages that compose it. Combining rigor with generosity, Bruce Clarke explores the genealogy, the key concepts, and the major implications of a symbiogenetic vision of our planetary system. Humble and yet visionary, this remarkable study instructs, illuminates, and gives us hope."—Rosi Braidotti, Utrecht University