Welcome to my website FredSpier.com

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 surface of the beautiful but limited planet Earth. This very thin and delicate layer covering our planet that we call home is known as the biosphere. It is 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, present, and future, the first roots of which began to take shape in January of 1969 after seeing the famous Apollo 8 Earthrise photo (see: upper left on this web page, photo credit: NASA).
 
This photo showed for the first time Earth rising above the barren lunar surface as seen by humans, the astronauts of Apollo 8. Most notably it showed how special and vulnerable our tiny home in space is, while many people began to realize that humanity was rapidly degrading it. Watching this photo made clear that safeguarding our common future on Earth was, and still is, the largest and most urgent issue facing humanity.
 
All my subsequent explorations and investigations described on this web site were motivated by my growing concern about how humanity had got itself into its current ecological predicament. This is mentioned in more detail in  Career Description. At the beginning of my research, ecological history did not yet exist.
 
What is the issue in a nutshell? Our common home in space is the very thin layer covering the Earth known as the biosphere. If the Earth were an apple, this layer is, in fact, thinner than its skin. Down below it, regular human life as we know it is not possible, while as soon as we ascend to some five kilometers, 3.5 miles, above sea level, humans are not able to live their regular lives either. This thin layer is all there is for human survival and prosperity in the known universe.
 
How well do we know how our common home, the biosphere, works? Not very well, I think. This worrying situation is first of all the result of academic specialization, which rewards specialized studies, while the production of general interdisciplinary overviews is rarely rewarded, if at all. Yet to understand how the biosphere works, we urgently need a combination of good interdisciplinary overviews and specialized knowledge.
 
The famous dictum by the English philosopher of science Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1526 CE) “nature is only to be commanded by obeying her” is also very much applicable to the biosphere. We can only manage the biosphere well by taking into account (obeying) its very nature. Doing so requires sufficient knowledge of the biosphere's functioning.
 
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. All of this is the subject of my most recent book How the Biosphere Works: Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers (2022).
 
Reaching that level of understanding has taken me more than fifty years. After receiving my M.Sc. in chemistry in 1978, followed by a few years of general orientation, exploration, and reflection, 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 and institutes: first-rate interdisciplinary research institutes dedicated to studying all biospheric issues in relation to each other by combining all the available knowledge into one single interdisciplinary integrated view of how the biosphere works, while offering policy recommendations for how to address all the current and future ecological and social issues in an integrated fashion.
 
Strangely, such a global network of biosphere stations and institutes 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 our future challenges, many of which are increasingly visible today.
 
Much like in the 19th century the implementation of a global network of weather stations and institutes 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 and institutes.
 
The task of this novel biospheric network would be to carefully monitor the biosphere worldwide in all its aspects by making use of all the available information, including, for instance, the current climate change studies, in doing so collaborating with all the institutes and indivudual scientists that are already working on more specialized biospheric issues.
 
The novel task of the biosphere institutes would be to integrate all of that knowledge into a single coherent image of the biosphere as a whole. Based on that, those institutes should produce biospheric forecasts and policy recommendations, most notably all the necessary ways and means that are needed to protect ourselves and the biosphere against inclement biospheric changes.
 
The remarkable success of the global weather stations and institutes network is first of all due to the fact that all involved see an interest in cooperating in the best possible ways to produce the best possible weather forecasts and recommendations for protecting all of us against inclement weather. The same could could happen with the implementation of a global network of biosphere stations and institutes, which could 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. It is also an AI free zone. All possible errors are mine.
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