Tell me your Scientific Animist reading list! (now with more collaboration!)
Help build the Scientific Animist reference library
Scientific Animism is happening. It’s out there.
Let me back up. (Let me recede.)
This project; this newsletter; this me-talking-at-you—
I never meant this to be about me.
I don’t think I have good ideas so much as I:
Noticed that a thing is happening.
And that thing should maybe be called Scientific Animism.
And I also noticed that:
Given this name; this label:
I started noticing it
all . over . the . place
The Overstory; Braiding Sweetgrass:
These might be the most essential reading;
the core texts of the emerging canon;
the truest expression of these ideals
( this marrying of, on the one hand:
“Rigorous, reproducible science, which always requires the renunciation of personal wish, ego, and prior belief in favor of empirical reproduction.”1
and on the other hand
“a common thread of species humility; an understanding that we’re not the only beings that are alive. Not the only beings that have feelings and stories. And that we live in a world, a kaleidoscope, of voices and perspectives.”2
)
but surely there are others.
Surely these texts did not spring, whole-cloth, from nothing.
Nothing comes from nothing!
(ain’t no creatio ex nihilo)
For all their intellectual preeminence,
surely even Richard Powers and Robin Wall Kimmerer took inspiration from somewhere.
So help me trace it back further
And help me trace it wider
There’s an explosion of people exploring these ideas now.
Certainly, like this newsletter, there are many people inspired by the same source texts.
But there’s also all the stuff that was concurrent-with
and all the stuff that came before.
Since starting this newsletter,
I’ve learned of Joanna Macy and
The Work That Reconnects,
work stretching back to the 1970s
I’ve learned of The Emerald podcast and
The Mythic Body course,
exploring global animist traditions and history.
There is so much happening.
And there is so much I miss.
Let’s help each other find this stuff
I wrote a post with this title before:
and I asked you to share your reading list with me in the comments.
Comments are cool i guess
But you know what’s cooler?
A shared board.
A pinboard.
Like a Pinterest board, say, but not destroyed by venture capital and AI.
Introducing Are.na
Pronounced “arena” but the URL is literally are.na
The site Internet hipsters use to find the parts of the web that are still
living that 90’s dream
esoteric / whimsical / unexpected / DIY
worth visiting
A site where you are the customer and not the product,
where you can use it for free and pay them when you’re able,
where you can pin more than just images,
and you can have boards (aka Channels) that are
totally . open
anyone can post!
Let chaos reign 🤘🏼
This is perfect for us
a tiny group of internet people,
converging on a shared interest,
documenting and exploring together.
No need to lock things down prematurely.
No need to have a platform that celebrates the cult of the individual creator.
Let’s see what happens if we all add things together.
All add our picks.
If trolls wreck us later,
we can lock things down then
But for now:
DEFAULT TO OPENNESS.
Let’s build a reference library together.
In a venue where you are
not a second-class citizen
not locked in the comment section of some Almighty Content Creator’s blog
but an equal
as i have always viewed you
→ check it out ←
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are.na/scientific-animism
↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
It looks like this!
There are many categories / channels!
We can make more categories / channels!
If you have things in mind now, please add them!
If you think of things later, please add them!
This is a living resource that we can all create together,
to document the large and growing
mycelium network
growing between all these things that seem
maybe separate
but once you have the label you see
they’re all one organism,
we’re all growing together
we’re growing it together
Let’s trace the contours together
of this emerging philosophy
this spiritual pathway
this hopeful lifeway
this inchoate superstructure
Let’s play.
Let’s have fun.
Richard Powers defined science this way, as quoted in the very first post here:
Sophie Strand defined animism this way, as quoted in the interview here: