Theoretical Individual

How can the one influence the many? From posing seminal questions about what comprises a human individual, to asking whether human evolution is alive and well, favoring individuals or the species, this work is a daring, up-to-the-minute overview of an urgent, multidisciplinary premise. It explores the extent to which human history provides empirical evidence for the capacity of an individual to exert meaningful suasion over their species, and asks: Can an individual influence the survival of the human species and the planet? If there is a personage whose dedication throughout any given life cycle recommends the possibility of a human individual who will see us past the eschewal-the Anthropocene-towards an anthrozoological orientation that reveres all those Other Individuals, what might such an individual look like? Readers are invited to explore how such a person might behave; what motives, aspirations and methodologies they would be likely to embrace in order to make a profound difference for life on Earth. Chapters provide both experiential material on the part of the authors, as well as an ambitiously broad digest of research from two-dozen disciplines. Many areas of thought including ecodynamics, biosemiotics, and work on neural plasticity, all saliently converge on a futurist set of scenarios. Case studies of individuals, works of philosophy, natural history, anthropology, paleontology, ethics and spirituality, among others, are all drawn upon. This tightly woven treatise addresses scientists, students and all those who are concerned about the state of the earth, climate change and the future of the biosphere. It is highly readable and well suited to use in a university classroom or seminar. Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison are ecological philosophers and animal liberationists who have worked for decades to help enrich our understanding of ecosystem dynamics and humanity's inordinately inflictive situation with respect to the mysterious rhythms of this great orchestra that is nature.