Thomas Berry’s New Cosmology and the Ecozoic Era
Jai-Don Lee
Graduate School for Life
The Catholic University of Korea
The twenty-first century is said to be a time of great change in human history. The Industrial Revolution along with the modernity values of progress and reason, three hundred years ago, brought many positive contributions to human life such as liberation from oppressive human labour and promotion of the understanding on the human self, but it also had unparalleled negative consequences. The most ruinous of these has been the ruthless destruction of nature, which has begun to threaten the survival of all ecosystems including the human. It is of vital importance, therefore, that human culture change from an industrial and capitalistic one to one that will assure the survival of all ecosystems.
Many scholars give distinctive names to this transitional period of the twenty-first century. Ewert Cousins, for example, calls it the Second Axial Period,[1] comparing it with the First Axial Period coined by Karl Jaspers. Hans Küng characterizes the present-day change as a Macro-Paradigm-Shift period,[2] and Leonard Swidler describes it as humankind slipping out of the Shadowy Age of Monologue into the dawn of the Age of Dialogue.[3] For Thomas Berry, the present-day transition is not only a cultural change of human history but it is also a geological change of earth history. Berry contends that the twenty-first century is a transitional period between the Cenozoic and the Ecozoic Era.[4]
From a cultural historian’s perspective, Berry maintains that every age has its own historical task. He characterizes this task as “the Great Work” of history. Berry explains the Great Work of history:
History is governed by those overarching movements that give shape and meaning to life by relating the human venture to the larger destinies of the universe. Creating such a moment might be called the Great Work of a people.[5]
In listing some examples of the Great Work of history, Berry cites the work of classical Greece in the creation of the Western humanist traditions; the work of Israel in expressing a new experience of the divine in human affairs; the work of Rome in gathering the diverse peoples of the Mediterranean and Western Europe under the rule of law; the work of the medieval period in giving the Western world its first Christian shape as symbolized by the great Gothic cathedrals. In India, he says, the Great Work was to lead human thought into the spiritual experience of time and eternity and their mutual presence to each other, while Chinese Confucianism created its Great Work as one of the most elegant and human civilizations humanity have ever known.[6]
Unlike the previous Great Works which involved mainly cultural achievements within human history, Berry holds, the Great Work of the twenty-first century is more than cultural achievement. It involves a geological achievement which “is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.”[7] In order to achieve this Great Work, Berry contends that four systems of society – political, economic, intellectual, and religious – should change their functional principles. These four systems must discard their assumption of “discontinuity between the nonhuman and the human modes of being, with all the rights and all inherent values given to the human.”[8] Instead, these four systems should develop a new relationship between the human and the nonhuman. Religions also must develop eco-friendly teachings in which the human can coexist with the nonhuman in a mutually enhancing manner. This change of the four systems towards the Ecozoic, Berry claims, is the Great Work of the twenty-first century.
1. Need for a New Cosmology
The most serious problem humanity now face is the ecological destruction resulting from the industrial culture based on an anthropocentric cosmology. The destruction of the ecological system threatens not only human culture but also the whole life system on the earth. The strength of Berry’s ecological thought rests in its capacity to identify the reason that human culture has reached this destructive situation and to suggest the remedy for ecological healing from a cosmological perspective. The immediate reason for ecological devastation is the misuse of science and technology, but the primary reason is, Berry holds, that there is no appropriate and functional cosmology which explains and guides a just relationship between the human and nature.
Cosmology provides a context which accounts for where the human comes from and where the human is going.[9] Human beings find the meaning and goal of their lives in a cosmological context. Without a functional cosmology, human beings cannot find their proper role in relationship with other human beings and with nature. Berry’s life-long task is to provide a new and functional cosmology.
Berry asserts two main reasons for the need for a new cosmology. For an ecological reason, Berry holds that the cause of mass extinction happening on the earth is that the human has no suitable cosmology. The anthropocentric cosmology presupposed by modern technological culture is a primary reason for the mass extinction of natural species everywhere. Therefore, Berry contends that a new ecological cosmology is needed. For a religious reason, he holds that while the understanding of the universe has been changed by the new insights of science and technology from cosmos to cosmogenesis, religions have not understood the meaning of this new scientific discovery. Since they still cling to an old anthropocentric cosmology, they cannot provide an appropriate cosmological explanation and cannot guide human beings to establish a proper relationship with the nature.[10] As a result, human scientific and technological culture which was supposed to bring about development and prosperity, on the contrary, is fostering extinction.
Extinction: End of Cenozoic Era
Above all, Berry’s concern with cosmology begins with his observations on the ecological destruction happening on the earth. Berry pays special attention to the mass extinction of species. Humans “are probably extinguishing some ten thousand species each year,”[11] and the human “will extinguish possibly between one-half and one million species out of the five to ten million species that we believe presently to exist,”[12] if we continue to destroy nature as we are doing at present. Based on the magnitude and speed of the present mass extinction, Berry estimates that current extinction is one of the most intensive extinctions which have happened in the earth’s evolutionary history.
According to scientists, there have been several mass extinctions in the 4.5 billion years of earth history. For example, the Paleozoic Era ended with the mass extinction which happened 245 million years ago,and the Mesozoic ended with the mass extinction which happened 67 million years ago.[13]Berry claims that the present-day human capacity to extinguish species can be compared with the forces that terminated the Mesozoic and introduced the Cenozoic Era in earth history.[14]He is one of the first scholars who predicts that the Cenozoic Era is ending, and many biologists who doubted Berry’s assertion up to now are beginning to agree with him.
Based on the mass extinction happening on the earth, Berry claims that human beings now live in a transitional age, “not another historical change but a geological and biological change.”[15] Therefore, in order to understanding the current transition, a cultural perspective is not enough; a geological perspective is needed. Berry evaluates the change taking place on the earth and in our minds as “one of the greatest changes ever to take place in human affairs, perhaps the greatest.”[16]
Furthermore, diversity and extinction of life species, for Berry, has not only ecological implications but religious ones also. He explains the meaning of extinction with a religious tone:
[Extinction] is an eternal concept. It’s not at all like the killing of individual lifeforms that can be renewed through normal processes of reproduction. Nor is to simply diminishing numbers….It is rather an absolute and final act for which there is no remedy on earth or in heaven. A species once extinct is gone forever.[17]
Once a species is extinguished, no power in heaven or on the earth can bring about a revival.[18] Extinction of one species means its eternal disappearance from the universe. It is an eschatological event.
Following the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, Berry explains the diversity of species in relation to the completeness of the universe, and extinction, to a defect in that completeness. Answering the question of why there are many species in the universe, Aquinas explains that it is because God’s completeness can be expressed through a multitude of things so that if one thing is defective, other things can supplement.[19] In addition, Berry holds that human beings have a beautiful image of God because they experience the beauty of the universe. Therefore, when the universe loses its beauty and completeness, the basis of religious experience disappears.[20] For Berry, the universe is not just a material world, but instead it is the world permeated by the numinous revelation of God.
In order to overcome this current ecological crisis, Berry holds, human beings should develop a new relationship with the natural world. This is why the human needs a new cosmology. Moreover, if the human succeeds in establishing a proper relationship with nature based on a new cosmology, according to Berry, the human can advance towards a more evolved stage in earth history, the Ecozoic Era. For this reason, Berry sees the current ecological disaster not only as a crisis but also as a kairos for the human and for the earth. He envisages a new hope in this crisis situation.[21] For him, crisis means kairos. Just as the Mesozoic Era began after the Paleozoic, and just as the Cenozoic began after the Mesozoic, Berry proclaims, the Ecozoic must begin after the Cenozoic. The Ecozoic is a more evolved form not only in human cultural history but also in the earth history. In the Ecozoic Era, the human and nature coexist and co-evolve in a mutually enhancing manner. Berry declares that to achieve the Ecozoic is the Great Work of our time.[22]
Cosmogenesis: Evolutionary Universe
The change in the human understanding of the universe, according to Berry, is another main reason for a new cosmology. A mythic, static, and cyclical cosmology has been discarded and substituted with an empirical, dynamic, and evolutionary cosmology discovered by modern science and technology. That is, the universe is no longer seen as cosmos, but cosmogenesis. This conceptual change regarding the universe is so influential in every part of human ways of thinking that without it the human cannot properly understand the magnitude of the ecological crisis or provide an efficient remedy for it.[23]
Accepting the new insights of modern science, Berry reinterprets and narrates them in a story-telling method. Scientists explain that the universe began with the big bang of the fireball 13.7 billion years ago. Accepting this scientific data, Berry explains it as primordial flaring forth or creative energy. Creative energy is a driving force which makes the universe begin, be sustained, and evolve.
The creative energy of the evolutionary universe, according to Berry, has the three cosmogenetic principles: differentiation, subjectivity, and communion.[24]These principles are functioning from the beginning of the universe not only with material dimensions but also social and spiritual ones. He describes these principles exhibited in the form-producing structures of the universe as follows:
Were there no differentiation, the universe would collapse into a homogeneous smudge; were there no subjectivity, the universe would collapse into inert, dead extension; were there no communion, the universe would collapse into isolated singularities of being.[25]
Without these principles, therefore, it would be impossible for the universe to exist.
His first principle of cosmogenesis is differentiation. Berry describes it as “the primordial expression of the universe,”[26] since the universe emerges as a differentiation process. Differentiation shows itself when the universe evolves into a variety of forms from atoms to humans.
This diversity manifests itself everywhere, both on the subatomic levels of elementary particles as well as the cosmic, galactic levels of existence. The primordial fireball energy of fifteen billion years ago differentiated itself into all that has come into being since then, electrons and protons, stars and galaxies, multicellular organisms, the immense variety of flora and fauna, as well as the rich diversity of humans.[27]
Each form in the universe is a unique manifestation of existence. Because of the differentiation process, the more we come to know a particular reality, the more we discover its uniqueness. For example, when we meet two identical twins for the first time it is hard for us to tell them apart, especially if they are dressed alike. However, as we come to know them over time, we begin to observe and recognize the subtle differences between them.[28] Their uniqueness will manifest itself in a myriad of ways. Some other words for differentiation include diversity, complexity, variation, multiform nature, heterogeneity, articulation and disparity.[29]
Berry’s second principle of cosmogenesis is subjectivity. It relates to the interior dimension of things. Even the simplest atom cannot be understood by considering only its physical structure or external relationships with other things, because it emerges with an inner capacity for self-manifestation. An atom possesses a quantum of radical spontaneity in itself.[30] As Kovats explains,
When we observe our universe which is so rich in chemical processes, cells, living beings, stars and galaxies, we find diverse manifestations of structures which display self-organizing dynamics. When we see stars organizing hydrogen and helium and producing other elements and light, we are observing the autopoiesis of the star. There is a power of organization within the star’s “self.” This self-organization is evidenced on the atomic and galactic levels as well.[31]
Berry describes subjectivity as “the articulation of the individual reality…an interior depth, a special quality, a mystery that expresses not only a phenomenal mode, but also an archetypal realization.”[32] Some synonyms of subjectivity include autopoiesis, self-manifestation, sentience, self-organization, interiority, presence, identity, dynamic centre of experience, and inner principle of being and voice.[33]
Berry’s third principle of cosmogenesis is communion. This cosmic principle reflects the universal communion of all things that have existed from the beginning of the fireball 13.7 billion years ago. In the fireball all was connected, and this relationship of mutual inter-being continues as the universe emerges into being today: “The universe advances into community – into a differentiated web of relationships.”[34] Berry explains the communion principle of the universe.
[E]very reality of the universe is intimately present to every other reality of the universe and finds its fulfillment in this mutual presence. The entire evolutionary process depends on communion. Without this fulfillment that each being finds in beings outside itself, nothing would ever happen in the entire world.[35]
Communion refers to the interrelatedness among all existing things. We experience this communion of the universe in the phenomenon of the gravitational attraction that holds all things together. Some synonyms of communion include interrelatedness, interdependence, reciprocity, complementarity, interconnectivity, affiliation, kinship, and mutuality. This principle of communion affirms the intricate web of relationships that exist throughout the universe.[36]
The creative energy and the three cosmic principles of Berry’s cosmology can be compared to the cosmic principle of Taoism – Tao, yin and yang. In Berry’s cosmology, the universe begins from the creative energy, while the universe begins from the Tao in Taoist philosophy.[37] And like this yin/yang principle in Asian philosophy, Berry’s cosmogenetic principles are basic principles which explain the developmental process of everything in the universe.[38] Yin and yang are two polar energies and causes of the universe, two complementary and interdependent principles. Yin and yang are usually observed and discussed as two opposite principles. But this is an observation of yin and yang from a static perspective. When yin and yang are observed from a dynamic perspective, they have three phases: yin, yang, and yin/yang interaction. In my understanding, creative energy pertains to Tao, differentiation to yang, subjectivity to yin, and communion to yin/yang interaction.[39]
As the yin/yang principle is a universal principle explaining not only the physical world but also in Asian culture, as Confucianism and Taoism demonstrates, the social and religious phenomena, Berry’s cosmogenetic principles are also universal principles addressing not only the evolutionary physical world but also social and religious developmental processes.