2024 Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal Winner: Restorative Earth Practices
"A brilliant book [that] shows a way out of the destructive trap of Anthropocentric arrogance."-Vandana Shiva, author of Terra Viva
"An unusually thought-provoking and ambitious book."-Dr. James A. Shapiro, author of Evolution: A View from the 21st Century
Biocivilisations is an important, original rethinking of the mystery of life and its deep uncertainty, exploring the complex civilisations that existed on Earth long before humans.
What is life? Many scientists believe life can be reduced to 'mechanistic' factors, such as genes and information codes. Yet there is a growing army of scientists, philosophers and artists who reject this view. The gene metaphor is not only too simplistic but deeply misleading. If there is a way to reduce life to a single principle, that principle must acknowledge the creativity of life, turning genetic determinism on its head.
The term biocivilisations is the acknowledgement of this uncertainty of life, as opposed to a quasi-certainty of the human position governed by a narrow time window of the scientific revolution. Life existed without humans for more than 99.99 percent of the Earth's existence. Life will also continue without humans long after our inevitable extinction.
In Biocivilisations, Dr Predrag Slijepčević shows how bacteria, amoebas, plants, insects, birds, whales, elephants and countless other species not only preceded human beings but demonstrate elements of how we celebrate human civilisation – complex communication, agriculture, science, art, medicine and more.
Humans must try to adopt this wisdom from other biocivilisations that have long preceded our own. By rethinking the current scientific paradigm, Dr Slijepčević makes clear that a transformation – from a naïve young species into a more mature species in tune with its surroundings – will save us from our own violence and the violence we inflict on the rest of our living planet.
"Read this book if you would like to understand the intelligence of living systems."-Dr Denis Noble, University of Oxford "A prodigious synthesis and a great, ambitious and informative book dovetailing multiple fields in its effort – largely successful I think – to light a match – and then blow on the fires of the coming 'Copernican biological revolution.'"-Dorion Sagan
"Read this book if you would like to understand the intelligence of living systems. Civilisation did not just start with Homo sapiens. Life cannot be reduced to pure mechanism."-Dr Denis Noble, Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology, University of Oxford; Fellow of the Royal Society; 2022 Lomonosov Grand Gold Medal laureate
"In Biocivilisations, Predrag Slijepčević tells stories about animals that create art, insects that do battlefield surgery, trees that perform scientific research, bacteria that create intelligent networks, and whole ecosystems that are organized with an efficiency that surpasses any human supply chain. Maybe you thought humans were the crown of creation. Maybe we humans have to learn humility and respect for the biosphere that birthed us. Maybe our future depends on it."-Josh Mitteldorf, PhD, coauthor of Cracking the Aging Code
"Predrag Slijepčević's Biocivilisations: A New Look at the Science of Life offers a powerful and welcome synthesis of what we ought by now to be happy to call Gaian science. It brings together crucial developments in biological systems thinking – such as symbiogenesis, epigenetics, biosemiotics, Gaia theory and autopoiesis – under a comprehensive vision founded on the cosmological longevity and cognitive acumen of the bacterial microcosm and its planetary offspring: multicellular life in all of its forms and alliances. Biocivilisations vigorously dismantles modern strains of scientific and cultural anthropocentrism and their current avatars peddling the futurist delus
