This website is dedicated to my life-long efforts of seeking to improve our knowledge about our common past, present, and future as
inhabitants of the beautiful but limited planet Earth, our one and only home in the otherwise inhospitable cosmos.
In the menus
above and on the left, information about me, my work, and my publications (books and articles) can be accessed. At first sight they
may look disconnected. But all of them came as a result of my research into our common human past, the first roots of which began
to take shape in January of 1969 after watching the famous Apollo 8 Earthrise photo for the first time.
All my investigations
that followed were motivated by my growing concern about the question of how humanity had got itself into its current ecological predicament. This
is described in more detail under
Career Description. At the beginning of my research, ecological history did not yet exist.
Why
would we need to know all of that? The famous dictum by the English philosopher of science Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1526 CE) that
“nature is only to be commanded by obeying her” is also very much applicable to the pressing issue of how to secure humanity’s best
possible future within Earth’s biosphere with as much wisdom as we can muster.
That is why it is of such great importance to
understand how the biosphere works. And to know that, we need to understand its history, including all the human influences within
it.
In a short summary, my research into this theme has, so far, consisted of three phases:
1982-1997: Religion, Politics,
and Ecology in Andean Peru
This research has led to the publication of two books:
Religious Regimes in Peru (1994): a long-term historical
study of this theme focusing on the village of Zurite, and
San Nicolás de Zurite (1995): a collection of case studies that I
witnessed myself.
1993- Present: Big History
This research has led to two books as well as numerous articles about various aspects
of big history. These books are
The Structure of Big History (1996) in which a general structure for big history is proposed, and
Big History and the Future of Humanity (2010, 2015), in which underlying patterns are outlined that help to explain big history.
2017-Present:
The Biosphere
A series of chance discoveries starting in 2017 allowed me to discern general principles in our biosphere’s history
that had been overlooked so far. This led to my most recent book
How the Biosphere Works (2022), in which this subject is explored
using those general principles together with established knowledge. The book also offers a novel history of the biosphere
including human history, focusing on its influence within the biopshere, while it also contains considerations about the future.
After
having done all of that, I feel to have completed my initial
research project that I embarked upon in 1982. To be sure, a great many
questions remain to be solved. Building on the studies of a great many illustrious scholars, I see my work hopefully, to some extent,
as a fresh beginning.
Any serious feedback will be greatly appreciated.
The knowledge acquired as a result of my life-long
efforts is intended for assisting to make the best possible choices for assuring humanity’s best possible survival and prosperity
in the foreseeable future.
For doing so effectively, we urgently need to establish a global network in every nation on Earth
consisting of biosphere stations: first-rate interdisciplinary research institutes dedicated to studying all biospheric
issues in relation to each other by combining all the available knowledge, while offering policy recommendations for how to address
all those issues in an integrated fashion.
Strangely, such a global knowledge network of biosphere stations does not yet exist. Founding
it is one of the most urgent priorities, if not the most urgent one, that will help humanity to survive the future challenges,
many of which are increasingly visible today.
Much like in the 19th century the implementation of a global network of weather
stations was begun, leading to today’s worldwide weather forecasts including ways to protect ourselves against inclement weather,
we now must establish a similar global network of biosphere stations that produces biospheric forecasts, most notably ways to protect
ourselves and the biosphere against inclement biospheric changes.
The remarkable success of the global weather stations network
is first of all due to the fact that all involved see an interest in cooperating as well as possible to produce the best possible
weather forecasts for all of us. The same ought to be the case for the implementation of a global network of biosphere stations, which
would make it similarly successful. The time to act is now.
If you would like to take a look at our home planet from space almost
in real time, from a distance of about 900,000 miles (about 1.5 million km), you might want to visit:
https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/
To
the best of my knowledge, this website will not place
cookies on your device or track it in any other ways. No advertisements
or other third-party Internet-based materials will appear on this website either.