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Fritjof Capra

Fritjof Capra worked in theoretical high-energy physics at the University of Paris, the University of California, Stanford University, and Imperial College, London, England. He is also the author of Uncommon Wisdom.

We can control the soft landings of space craft on distant planets, but we are unable to control the polluting fumes emanating from our cars and factories. We propose Utopian communities in gigantic space colonies, but cannot manage our cities. The Turning Point, 1982.

Rational thinking is linear, whereas ecological awareness arises from an intuition of nonlinear systems. Ibid.

, , , Linnaeus, the great classifier of the eighteenth century, was not only a botanist and zoologist but also a physician, and in fact botany itself developed from the study of plants with healing powers. Ibid.

Exploitation of nature has gone hand in hand with that of women, who have been identified with nature throughout the ages. Ibid.

Feminist spirituality is based on awareness of the oneness of all living forms and of their cyclical rhythms of birth and death, thus reflecting an attitude toward life that is profoundly ecological. Ibid.

Ever since antiquity natural philosophers had entertained the idea of a "great chain of being." This chain, however, was conceived as a static hierarchy, starting with God at the top and descending through angels, human beings, and animals, to ever lower forms of life. Ibid.

When scientists reduce an integral whole to fundamental building blocks - whether they are cells, genes, or elementary particles - and try to explain all phenomena in terms of these elements, they lose the ability to understand the coordinating activities of the whole system. Ibid.

Out of the huge population of bacteria on the earth, only a small number is capable of generating diseases in human organisms, and these are usually destroyed in due course by the organism's immune mechanisms. As (Lewis) Thomas says, "The man who catches a meningococcus is in considerably less danger for his life, even without chemotherapy, than the meningococci with the bad luck to catch a man." Ibid.

Gestalt psychology, founded by Max Wertheimer and his associates, was based on the assumption that living organisms do not perceive things in terms of isolated elements but in terms of Gestalten, that is, as meaningful wholes which exhibit qualities that are absent in their individual parts. Ibid.

I was sitting by the ocean one late summer afternoon, watching the waves rolling in and feeling the rhythm of my breathing, when I suddenly became aware of my whole environment as being engaged in a gigantic cosmic dance, The Tao of Physics, 1991.

Whenever the essential nature of things is analyzed by the intellect, it must seem absurd or paradoxical. Ibid.

The natural world . . . is one of infinite varieties and complexities, a multidimensional world which contains no straight lines or completely regular shapes, where things do not happen in sequences, but all together, a world where - as modern physics tells us - even empty space is curved. Ibid.

Modern physics has confirmed most dramatically one of the basic ideas of Eastern mysticism; that all the concepts we use to describe nature are limited, that they are not features of reality, as we tend to believe, but creations of the mind; parts of the map, not of the territory. Ibid.

The new paradigm that is now emerging can be described in various ways. It can be called a holistic world view, seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts. It can also be called an ecological world view, and this is the term I prefer. Ibid.

The ecological paradigm is supported by modern science, but it is rooted in a perception of reality that goes beyond the scientific framework to an awareness of the oneness of all life, the interdependence of its multiple manifestations, and its cycles of change and transformation. Ibid.

The central aim of Eastern mysticism is to experience all phenomena in the world as manifestations of the same ultimate reality. Ibid.

Our science and technology are based on the belief that an understanding of nature implies domination of nature by man. Ibid.

. . . our own spiritual traditions will have to undergo some radical changes in order to be in harmony with the values of the new paradigm . . . an ecological, earth-oriented, postpatriarchal spirituality. Ibid.