The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference —Richard Dawkins

ne of the four axiomatic intuitions that grounds Edgewood Wild is the understanding that any call for Gaian Reconciliation in a secular culture like our own must harmonize with the findings of modern science while at the same time leaving space for a sense of the mystical.

In this section, I review several science-based insights (and permissible mystical inferences) into the nature of the Universe, God, Life, Emergence, the Earth, Gaia and Lichens. In all cases my focus prioritizes their top-down shape rather than the bottom-up arrangement of their constituent parts – an approach very different from that taken by Dawkins, above, and one that accordingly yields very different insights.

To keep me grounded in this exercise, I invoke three commonly accepted scientific principles, namely, consistency with the findings of scientific research, exclusive dependence on naturalistic process, and pride of place for the more straightforward of any two competing hypotheses.

The final test of the ideas advanced in the following essays isn’t always their objective truth value, which in some cases is unknowable, but rather the extent to which they resonate with common sense – a quantity much easier to adjudicate, at least by those who attend closely to the ways of the Living Earth That Sustains Us.

Next up: Terms & Concepts