Our Planetary Mirror: Reimagining Humanity on the Scale of the Earth

Our Planetary Mirror: Reimagining Humanity on the Scale of the Earth with Boris Shoshitaishvili, PhD

What can the Earth, which is four and a half billion years old, teach us about what it means to be human in the 21st century?

Boris Shoshitaishvili, author of Our Planetary Mirror (University of Chicago Press), leads us on a journey through the planetary imagination the Earth sciences have quietly nurtured for over a century. Studied closely enough, the Earth becomes a mirror. What we’ve found reflected there is far stranger than the creature we thought we were.

We’ll explore three archetypes from the natural sciences that present the human species not just as primates but as a planetary phenomenon:

• the noosphere: the idea that humans form a layer of thought and culture covering the Earth, a planetary sphere like the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. This idea of a global layer of consciousness was powerful enough to influence Mikhail Gorbachev’s political thinking.
• the Anthropocene: the vision of humans as a planetary force that can cause disruptions on the scale of volcanic eruptions or tectonic activity. Whether we know it or not, the Anthropocene shapes how we think about climate change and other Earthscale effects.
• Gaia theory: the idea that Earth, as a whole, acts like a living body; that the Earth system is a self-sustaining physiology. Do humans belong within the body of this living Earth? (Are we its nervous system? Or the cause of illness?) Or are we a “child of Gaia,” a collective form of life differentiating from our planetary parent?

Along the way, we’ll look at how these three stranger-than-science-fiction ideas can give us new perspectives on some of today’s pressing issues, including the rise of AI, the debate around geoengineering, and the resurgence of competing nationalisms.

A book signing will follow the presentation!

Tickets: $12 (in person & online options available)
If you have any questions please email events@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167.