David Abram - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by David Abram

The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

This in depth interview comprises the opening chapter of The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Id... more This in depth interview comprises the opening chapter of The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, edited by Tema Milstein and Jose Castro-Sotomayer, Routledge, 2020.

David Abram is a cultural ecologist and geophilosopher whose work helped catalyze the emergence of several fields of study. He is author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (Vintage, 1996) and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Vintage, 2011). Abram’s work explores, first and foremost, the ecology of perception, the manifold ways that sensory experience binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem. This ongoing exploration leads him to engage, ever more deeply, with the ecology of language – the manner in which our ways of speaking profoundly influence and constrain what we see, hear, and even taste of the Earth around us. Through the weave of his own words, David's writing brings the world alive in ways that nourish both sensual and spiritual earthly engagements and identifications. For instance, while writing in the mid-1990s, he found himself frustrated by problematic terminology within environmentalist movements that reinforced the dominant culturally-constructed divide between humankind and what commonly is referred to as ‘nature’ or ‘the environment.’ In response, in 1996 Abram coined the phrase ‘the more-than-human world’ to signify the broad commonwealth of earthly life, a realm that both contains humankind and yet also, necessarily, exceeds humankind and human culture. The term has been gradually adopted by many other scholars and theorists (you will see ‘more-than-human world’ informing the discussion of ecocultural identity throughout this Handbook) and has crossed into the practitioner realm to become a key term within the paradigm-shifting phrasing of activists, theorists, and practitioners within the broad ecological movement.

Abram’s work is deeply resonant with the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity’s intention of understanding and addressing contemporary ecocultures and ecocultural identities, offering alternative ways of thinking and feeling at once ancient and strangely new. As a pivotal contemporary thinker who lectures and teaches around the world, both within and outside academia, we asked Abram to join and help frame the ecocultural identity conversation. The following is a transcript of a conversation with the Handbook’s editors, Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, in Abram’s home in the southern foothills of the North American Rocky Mountains.

Emergence Magazine, 2018

This essay reflects upon the contemporary juxtaposition of two simultaneous trends, and the appar... more This essay reflects upon the contemporary juxtaposition of two simultaneous trends, and the apparently contrary collective moods that they engender. One is the rapid (and rapidly accelerating) growth in digital technologies, and the forthright optimism that this provokes in many sectors of society. The other is rapidly intensifying ecological breakdown and disarray, and the attendant despondency and gloom felt by many persons in response to the seeming inability of contemporary society to change course. What are the precise relations between these two large-scale trends? Certainly there are a wide range of connections and hidden causal relations that might be drawn between these two collective moods. This essay focuses, in particular, on some of the unnoticed perceptual dynamics at play within and between these two apparently contrary trends.

Emergence Magazine, 2018

This essay wades into the remarkable conundrums (scientific and otherwise) regarding the long dis... more This essay wades into the remarkable conundrums (scientific and otherwise) regarding the long distance migrations of various animal species. Engaging, in particular, with the migratory behavior of wild Pacific salmon (genus Oncorhynchus), of Sandhill cranes (Antigone canadensis), and of Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus), the essay opens an audacious new angle of approach to understanding the mind-bending navigational feats of these creatures.

Coming To Our (Animal) Senses: a conversation between David Abram and Dougald Hine, 2011

In the opening pages of The Spell of the Sensuous , David Abram stands in the night outside his h... more In the opening pages of The Spell of the Sensuous , David Abram stands in the night outside his hut in Bali, the stars spread across the sky, mirrored from below in the water of the rice paddies, and countless fireflies dancing in between. This disorientating abundance of wonder is close to what many of his readers have felt on encountering Abram's words and his way of making sense of the world.

In the Depths of a Breathing Planet, 2010

By providing a new way of viewing our planet -one which connects with some of our oldest and most... more By providing a new way of viewing our planet -one which connects with some of our oldest and most primordial intuitions regarding the animate Earth -Gaia theory ultimately alters our understanding of ourselves, transforming our sense of what it means to be human. For much of the modern era, earthly nature was spoken of as a complex yet mechanical clutch of processes, as a deeply entangled set of objects and objective happenings lacking any inherent life, or agency, of its own. Such a conceptual regime helped sustain the cool detachment that was generally deemed necessary to the furtherance of the natural sciences. Yet the thorough objectification of earthly nature also served to underwrite the sense of human uniqueness that has permeated the modern era. As long as the Earth had no life, no agency, no subjectivity of its own, then we humans could continue to ponder, analyze, and manipulate the natural world as though we were not a part of it; our own sentience and subjectivity seemed to render us outside observers of this curious pageant, overseers of nature rather than full participants in the biotic community. The thoroughgoing objectification of the Earth thus enabled the old, theological presumption -that the Earth was ours to subdue and exploit for our own, exclusively human, purposes -to survive and to flourish even in the modern, scientific era.

Gary Snyder and the Renewal of Oral Culture, 2015

Depth Ecology, 2005

From: The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Taylor and Kaplan, ed., published by Continuum, 20... more From: The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Taylor and Kaplan, ed., published by Continuum, 2005 Deep ecology, as a movement and a way of thinking, has commonly been contrasted to conventional environmentalism, and especially to approaches that focus only on alleviating the most obvious symptoms of ecological disarray without reflecting upon, and seeking to transform, the more deep-seated cultural assumptions and practices that have given rise to those problems. Rather than applying various 'band-aid' solutions to environmental problems, adherents of deep ecology ostensibly ask "deeper" questions, and aim at deeper, more long-range solutions. Yet some stalwart environmental activists have taken offense at the implication that their own strenuous efforts merely amount to a kind of "shallow" ecology. In fact, the implicit contrast between "deep" and "shallow" approaches to ecological problems has led various folks to suspect a kind of arrogance in the very idea of "deep ecology;" and such suspicions have served to somewhat weaken, and marginalize, the deep ecology movement in recent years.

Storytelling and Wonder: on the rejuvenation of oral culture, 2005

In the prosperous land where I live, a mysterious task is underway to invigorate the minds of the... more In the prosperous land where I live, a mysterious task is underway to invigorate the minds of the populace, and to vitalize the spirits of our children. For a decade, now, parents, politicians, and educators of all forms have been raising funds to bring computers into every household in the realm, and into every classroom from kindergarten on up through college. With the new technology, it is hoped, children will learn to read much more efficiently, and will exercise their intelligence in rich new ways. Interacting with the wealth of information available online, children's minds will be able to develop and explore much more vigorously than was possible in earlier eras -and so, it is hoped, they will be well prepared for the technological future.

Between the Body and the Breathing Earth - A Reply to Ted Toadvine, 2005

Between the Body and the Breathing Earth: a Reply to Ted Toadvine -David Abram Toadvine's critiqu... more Between the Body and the Breathing Earth: a Reply to Ted Toadvine -David Abram Toadvine's critique, several of which I will take up, albeit briefly, in this paper. I will first engage his contention that I disparage reflection on behalf of a pre-reflective position, and that I denigrate the alphabet in favor of an ostensibly pre-literate stance. Then I will take up the remarkable assertion, to which Toadvine returns again and again, that I "exclude the symbolic" from my account, and indeed that I seek to eliminate the symbolic from our interactions with others. [3] Finally I will address his claim that the eco-phenomenology of The Spell of the Sensuous leaves no room for resistance, contradiction, and incompossibility. My reply to this curious claim will lead me directly into a discussion of one of the most crucial concerns of

Animism, Perception and Earthly Craft of the Magician, 2005

from: The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Taylor and Kaplan, ed., published by Continuum, 20... more from: The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Taylor and Kaplan, ed., published by Continuum, 2005 Although the term "animism" was originally coined in the nineteenth century to designate the mistaken projection of humanlike attributes -such as life, mind, intelligence -to nonhuman and ostensibly inanimate phenomena, it is clear that this first meaning was itself rooted in a misapprehension, by Western scholars, of the perceptual experience of indigenous, oral peoples. Twentieth-century research into the phenomenology of perception revealed that humans never directly experience any phenomenon as definitively inert or inanimate. Perception itself is an inherently relational, participatory event; we say that things "call our gaze" or "capture our attention," and as we lend our focus to those things we find ourselves affected and transformed by the encounter -the way the blue sky, when we open our gaze to it, reverberates through our sensing organism, altering our mood and even the rhythm of our beating heart. When we are walking in the forest, a particular tree may engage our awareness, and if we reach to feel the texture of its bark we may find that our fingers are soon being tutored by that tree. If the bark is rough and deeply furrowed our fingers will begin to slow down their movements in order to explore those ridges and valleys, while if the trunk is smooth, like a madrone, even the palm of our hand will be drawn to press against and caress that smooth surface. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in his classic work, Phenomenology of Perception , suggests that the primordial event of perception is always experienced as a reciprocal encounter between the perceiver and the perceived, a open dialectic wherein my sensing body continually responds and adjusts itself to the things it senses, and wherein the perceived phenomenon responds in turn, disclosing its nuances to me only as I allow myself to be affected by its unique style, its particular dynamism or active agency.

Earth in Eclipse: an essay on the philosophy of science and ethics, 2003

Reciprocity and the Salmon , 2001

My first encounter with spawning salmon gleams with a cool, moonlit radiance in my memory. I'd gr... more My first encounter with spawning salmon gleams with a cool, moonlit radiance in my memory. I'd grown up in the suburban east coast and knew nothing of this wild fish and its mysterious ways. It was in the mid-eighties, and I was kayaking in the Prince William Sound a year or two before the taut, ever-shifting surface of that life-filled sea was generously layered with a glistening blanket of oil by the Exxon company. This was my first time in Alaska, and I was stunned by the vastness of the mountains laced with glaciers and the abundance of bald eagles that seemed to gaze down at me from every overhanging branch and snag. We had beached our kayaks on one of the larger islands for the night, and after a simple meal I went walking off along the coast as the sun was slipping down toward the horizon, drinking the salt air and listening to the lapping of the small waves and the wind in the needles. After some time I came to the edge of a surging stream about twelve feet across, whose surface was rippling and splashing in the fading light -and without paying much attention I sat down on a mossy rock a ways back from the stream's edge just to bask in the rushing speech of those waters, and to gaze out into the oncoming night. And I lost myself in some reverie or other, until my awareness was brought back to the place by a pale glow beginning to spread into the sky from the rocks on the far side of the stream. The glow got steadily more intense until, as I watched, the full moon was hatched from those rocks, huge and round as a ripe peach, pouring its radiance across the stony beach and the gleaming waves and the rustling spruce needles and generally casting a kind of spell over the whole place. Now, I have never, of course, seen a cow jump over the moon. But that night I did see a fish jump over the moon. A great streamlined silhouette, its tail flapping, arced right over the full moon, and splashed back into the water. Whaa?! I couldn't believe what I'd just seen, and so was still staring at the after-image -and then another silhouette leapt right over the moon! I got up and walked over to the water's edge: the stream was thick with salmon, boiling with salmon, all jostling and surging against the current in fits and starts -it was as if the stream was made of salmon! I gazed and gazed for a couple hours. Then went back to my tent and tried to sleep, but couldn't. So I came back in the middle of the night, and stood staring into that moon-illuminated river of fish, and then I waded out into the middle of that mass of silvery, sparkling muscles all surging and lunging against the current. In the middle of the stream I

This paper was also published as: Abram, D. & Jardine, D. (2001). Afterword: All knowledge is ... more This paper was also published as:
Abram, D. & Jardine, D. (2001). Afterword: All knowledge is carnal knowledge: A conversation. In Hocking, B., Linds, W., & Haskell, J., eds., Unfolding Bodymind: Exploring Possibility Through Education. Brandon, VT: Psychology Press / Holistic Education Press, 325-333.

The Boundary Keeper - David Abram interviewed by physicist Jeremy Hayward, 1997

Jeremy Hayward : Maybe we could begin by talking a little bit about animism. It seems to me that ... more Jeremy Hayward : Maybe we could begin by talking a little bit about animism. It seems to me that the main thing you are trying to communicate in The Spell of the Sensuous is a sense that the world is not made of dead matter-that there's actually abundant life and intelligence everywhere.

Waking Our Animal Senses: Language and the Ecology of Sensory Experience, 1997

The Mechanical and the Organic - On the Impact of Metaphor in Science, 1991

from Scientists On Gaia , edited by Stephen Schneider and Penelope Boston; M.I.T. Press, 1991. Ma... more from Scientists On Gaia , edited by Stephen Schneider and Penelope Boston; M.I.T. Press, 1991. Many scientists and theorists claim that the Gaia hypothesis is merely a fancy name for a set of interactions, between organisms and their presumably inorganic environment, that have long been known to science. Every high school student is familiar with the fact that the oxygen content of the atmosphere is dependent on the photosynthetic activity of plants. The Gaia hypothesis, according to such researchers, offers nothing substantive. It is simply a new-and unnecessarily obfuscating-way of speaking of old facts. In the dismissive words of biologist Stephen Jay Gould: "the Gaia Hypothesis says nothing new-it offers no new mechanisms. It just changes the metaphor. But metaphor is not mechanism!" (1) What Gould failed to state is that "mechanism," itself, is nothing more than a metaphor. It is an important one, to be sure. Indeed the whole process of modern science seems to get underway with this metaphor. In 1644 the brilliant philosopher Rene Descartes wrote, "I have described the earth, and all the visible world, as if it were a machine." (2) In his various writings Descartes (developing a notion already suggested by other philosophers) effectively inaugurated that tradition of thought we call "mechanism," or, as it was known at that time, the "mechanical philosophy." And his metaphor is still with us today.' But let us explore how this metaphor operates upon us. What are the assumptions, explicit and implicit, that we wittingly or unwittingly buy into when we accept the premise that "the visible world" and, most specifically, the earth, is best understood as a very intricate and complex machine?

Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth, 1988

The Perceptual Implications of Gaia, 1985

The Gaia hypothesis represents a unique moment in scientific thought: the first glimpse, from wit... more The Gaia hypothesis represents a unique moment in scientific thought: the first glimpse, from within the domain of pure and precise science, that this planet might best be described as a coherent, living entity. The hypothesis itself arose in an attempt to make sense of certain anomalous aspects of the Earth's atmosphere. It suggests that the actual stability of the atmosphere, given a chemical composition very far from equilibrium, can best be understood by assuming that the atmosphere is actively and sensitively maintained by the animals, plants, oceans, and soils all acting collectively, as a vast, planetary metabolism. In James Lovelock's own words, the hypothesis states that:

The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

This in depth interview comprises the opening chapter of The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Id... more This in depth interview comprises the opening chapter of The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, edited by Tema Milstein and Jose Castro-Sotomayer, Routledge, 2020.

David Abram is a cultural ecologist and geophilosopher whose work helped catalyze the emergence of several fields of study. He is author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (Vintage, 1996) and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Vintage, 2011). Abram’s work explores, first and foremost, the ecology of perception, the manifold ways that sensory experience binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem. This ongoing exploration leads him to engage, ever more deeply, with the ecology of language – the manner in which our ways of speaking profoundly influence and constrain what we see, hear, and even taste of the Earth around us. Through the weave of his own words, David's writing brings the world alive in ways that nourish both sensual and spiritual earthly engagements and identifications. For instance, while writing in the mid-1990s, he found himself frustrated by problematic terminology within environmentalist movements that reinforced the dominant culturally-constructed divide between humankind and what commonly is referred to as ‘nature’ or ‘the environment.’ In response, in 1996 Abram coined the phrase ‘the more-than-human world’ to signify the broad commonwealth of earthly life, a realm that both contains humankind and yet also, necessarily, exceeds humankind and human culture. The term has been gradually adopted by many other scholars and theorists (you will see ‘more-than-human world’ informing the discussion of ecocultural identity throughout this Handbook) and has crossed into the practitioner realm to become a key term within the paradigm-shifting phrasing of activists, theorists, and practitioners within the broad ecological movement.

Abram’s work is deeply resonant with the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity’s intention of understanding and addressing contemporary ecocultures and ecocultural identities, offering alternative ways of thinking and feeling at once ancient and strangely new. As a pivotal contemporary thinker who lectures and teaches around the world, both within and outside academia, we asked Abram to join and help frame the ecocultural identity conversation. The following is a transcript of a conversation with the Handbook’s editors, Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, in Abram’s home in the southern foothills of the North American Rocky Mountains.

Emergence Magazine, 2018

This essay reflects upon the contemporary juxtaposition of two simultaneous trends, and the appar... more This essay reflects upon the contemporary juxtaposition of two simultaneous trends, and the apparently contrary collective moods that they engender. One is the rapid (and rapidly accelerating) growth in digital technologies, and the forthright optimism that this provokes in many sectors of society. The other is rapidly intensifying ecological breakdown and disarray, and the attendant despondency and gloom felt by many persons in response to the seeming inability of contemporary society to change course. What are the precise relations between these two large-scale trends? Certainly there are a wide range of connections and hidden causal relations that might be drawn between these two collective moods. This essay focuses, in particular, on some of the unnoticed perceptual dynamics at play within and between these two apparently contrary trends.

Emergence Magazine, 2018

This essay wades into the remarkable conundrums (scientific and otherwise) regarding the long dis... more This essay wades into the remarkable conundrums (scientific and otherwise) regarding the long distance migrations of various animal species. Engaging, in particular, with the migratory behavior of wild Pacific salmon (genus Oncorhynchus), of Sandhill cranes (Antigone canadensis), and of Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus), the essay opens an audacious new angle of approach to understanding the mind-bending navigational feats of these creatures.

Coming To Our (Animal) Senses: a conversation between David Abram and Dougald Hine, 2011

In the opening pages of The Spell of the Sensuous , David Abram stands in the night outside his h... more In the opening pages of The Spell of the Sensuous , David Abram stands in the night outside his hut in Bali, the stars spread across the sky, mirrored from below in the water of the rice paddies, and countless fireflies dancing in between. This disorientating abundance of wonder is close to what many of his readers have felt on encountering Abram's words and his way of making sense of the world.

In the Depths of a Breathing Planet, 2010

By providing a new way of viewing our planet -one which connects with some of our oldest and most... more By providing a new way of viewing our planet -one which connects with some of our oldest and most primordial intuitions regarding the animate Earth -Gaia theory ultimately alters our understanding of ourselves, transforming our sense of what it means to be human. For much of the modern era, earthly nature was spoken of as a complex yet mechanical clutch of processes, as a deeply entangled set of objects and objective happenings lacking any inherent life, or agency, of its own. Such a conceptual regime helped sustain the cool detachment that was generally deemed necessary to the furtherance of the natural sciences. Yet the thorough objectification of earthly nature also served to underwrite the sense of human uniqueness that has permeated the modern era. As long as the Earth had no life, no agency, no subjectivity of its own, then we humans could continue to ponder, analyze, and manipulate the natural world as though we were not a part of it; our own sentience and subjectivity seemed to render us outside observers of this curious pageant, overseers of nature rather than full participants in the biotic community. The thoroughgoing objectification of the Earth thus enabled the old, theological presumption -that the Earth was ours to subdue and exploit for our own, exclusively human, purposes -to survive and to flourish even in the modern, scientific era.

Gary Snyder and the Renewal of Oral Culture, 2015

Depth Ecology, 2005

From: The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Taylor and Kaplan, ed., published by Continuum, 20... more From: The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Taylor and Kaplan, ed., published by Continuum, 2005 Deep ecology, as a movement and a way of thinking, has commonly been contrasted to conventional environmentalism, and especially to approaches that focus only on alleviating the most obvious symptoms of ecological disarray without reflecting upon, and seeking to transform, the more deep-seated cultural assumptions and practices that have given rise to those problems. Rather than applying various 'band-aid' solutions to environmental problems, adherents of deep ecology ostensibly ask "deeper" questions, and aim at deeper, more long-range solutions. Yet some stalwart environmental activists have taken offense at the implication that their own strenuous efforts merely amount to a kind of "shallow" ecology. In fact, the implicit contrast between "deep" and "shallow" approaches to ecological problems has led various folks to suspect a kind of arrogance in the very idea of "deep ecology;" and such suspicions have served to somewhat weaken, and marginalize, the deep ecology movement in recent years.

Storytelling and Wonder: on the rejuvenation of oral culture, 2005

In the prosperous land where I live, a mysterious task is underway to invigorate the minds of the... more In the prosperous land where I live, a mysterious task is underway to invigorate the minds of the populace, and to vitalize the spirits of our children. For a decade, now, parents, politicians, and educators of all forms have been raising funds to bring computers into every household in the realm, and into every classroom from kindergarten on up through college. With the new technology, it is hoped, children will learn to read much more efficiently, and will exercise their intelligence in rich new ways. Interacting with the wealth of information available online, children's minds will be able to develop and explore much more vigorously than was possible in earlier eras -and so, it is hoped, they will be well prepared for the technological future.

Between the Body and the Breathing Earth - A Reply to Ted Toadvine, 2005

Between the Body and the Breathing Earth: a Reply to Ted Toadvine -David Abram Toadvine's critiqu... more Between the Body and the Breathing Earth: a Reply to Ted Toadvine -David Abram Toadvine's critique, several of which I will take up, albeit briefly, in this paper. I will first engage his contention that I disparage reflection on behalf of a pre-reflective position, and that I denigrate the alphabet in favor of an ostensibly pre-literate stance. Then I will take up the remarkable assertion, to which Toadvine returns again and again, that I "exclude the symbolic" from my account, and indeed that I seek to eliminate the symbolic from our interactions with others. [3] Finally I will address his claim that the eco-phenomenology of The Spell of the Sensuous leaves no room for resistance, contradiction, and incompossibility. My reply to this curious claim will lead me directly into a discussion of one of the most crucial concerns of

Animism, Perception and Earthly Craft of the Magician, 2005

from: The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Taylor and Kaplan, ed., published by Continuum, 20... more from: The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Taylor and Kaplan, ed., published by Continuum, 2005 Although the term "animism" was originally coined in the nineteenth century to designate the mistaken projection of humanlike attributes -such as life, mind, intelligence -to nonhuman and ostensibly inanimate phenomena, it is clear that this first meaning was itself rooted in a misapprehension, by Western scholars, of the perceptual experience of indigenous, oral peoples. Twentieth-century research into the phenomenology of perception revealed that humans never directly experience any phenomenon as definitively inert or inanimate. Perception itself is an inherently relational, participatory event; we say that things "call our gaze" or "capture our attention," and as we lend our focus to those things we find ourselves affected and transformed by the encounter -the way the blue sky, when we open our gaze to it, reverberates through our sensing organism, altering our mood and even the rhythm of our beating heart. When we are walking in the forest, a particular tree may engage our awareness, and if we reach to feel the texture of its bark we may find that our fingers are soon being tutored by that tree. If the bark is rough and deeply furrowed our fingers will begin to slow down their movements in order to explore those ridges and valleys, while if the trunk is smooth, like a madrone, even the palm of our hand will be drawn to press against and caress that smooth surface. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in his classic work, Phenomenology of Perception , suggests that the primordial event of perception is always experienced as a reciprocal encounter between the perceiver and the perceived, a open dialectic wherein my sensing body continually responds and adjusts itself to the things it senses, and wherein the perceived phenomenon responds in turn, disclosing its nuances to me only as I allow myself to be affected by its unique style, its particular dynamism or active agency.

Earth in Eclipse: an essay on the philosophy of science and ethics, 2003

Reciprocity and the Salmon , 2001

My first encounter with spawning salmon gleams with a cool, moonlit radiance in my memory. I'd gr... more My first encounter with spawning salmon gleams with a cool, moonlit radiance in my memory. I'd grown up in the suburban east coast and knew nothing of this wild fish and its mysterious ways. It was in the mid-eighties, and I was kayaking in the Prince William Sound a year or two before the taut, ever-shifting surface of that life-filled sea was generously layered with a glistening blanket of oil by the Exxon company. This was my first time in Alaska, and I was stunned by the vastness of the mountains laced with glaciers and the abundance of bald eagles that seemed to gaze down at me from every overhanging branch and snag. We had beached our kayaks on one of the larger islands for the night, and after a simple meal I went walking off along the coast as the sun was slipping down toward the horizon, drinking the salt air and listening to the lapping of the small waves and the wind in the needles. After some time I came to the edge of a surging stream about twelve feet across, whose surface was rippling and splashing in the fading light -and without paying much attention I sat down on a mossy rock a ways back from the stream's edge just to bask in the rushing speech of those waters, and to gaze out into the oncoming night. And I lost myself in some reverie or other, until my awareness was brought back to the place by a pale glow beginning to spread into the sky from the rocks on the far side of the stream. The glow got steadily more intense until, as I watched, the full moon was hatched from those rocks, huge and round as a ripe peach, pouring its radiance across the stony beach and the gleaming waves and the rustling spruce needles and generally casting a kind of spell over the whole place. Now, I have never, of course, seen a cow jump over the moon. But that night I did see a fish jump over the moon. A great streamlined silhouette, its tail flapping, arced right over the full moon, and splashed back into the water. Whaa?! I couldn't believe what I'd just seen, and so was still staring at the after-image -and then another silhouette leapt right over the moon! I got up and walked over to the water's edge: the stream was thick with salmon, boiling with salmon, all jostling and surging against the current in fits and starts -it was as if the stream was made of salmon! I gazed and gazed for a couple hours. Then went back to my tent and tried to sleep, but couldn't. So I came back in the middle of the night, and stood staring into that moon-illuminated river of fish, and then I waded out into the middle of that mass of silvery, sparkling muscles all surging and lunging against the current. In the middle of the stream I

This paper was also published as: Abram, D. & Jardine, D. (2001). Afterword: All knowledge is ... more This paper was also published as:
Abram, D. & Jardine, D. (2001). Afterword: All knowledge is carnal knowledge: A conversation. In Hocking, B., Linds, W., & Haskell, J., eds., Unfolding Bodymind: Exploring Possibility Through Education. Brandon, VT: Psychology Press / Holistic Education Press, 325-333.

The Boundary Keeper - David Abram interviewed by physicist Jeremy Hayward, 1997

Jeremy Hayward : Maybe we could begin by talking a little bit about animism. It seems to me that ... more Jeremy Hayward : Maybe we could begin by talking a little bit about animism. It seems to me that the main thing you are trying to communicate in The Spell of the Sensuous is a sense that the world is not made of dead matter-that there's actually abundant life and intelligence everywhere.

Waking Our Animal Senses: Language and the Ecology of Sensory Experience, 1997

The Mechanical and the Organic - On the Impact of Metaphor in Science, 1991

from Scientists On Gaia , edited by Stephen Schneider and Penelope Boston; M.I.T. Press, 1991. Ma... more from Scientists On Gaia , edited by Stephen Schneider and Penelope Boston; M.I.T. Press, 1991. Many scientists and theorists claim that the Gaia hypothesis is merely a fancy name for a set of interactions, between organisms and their presumably inorganic environment, that have long been known to science. Every high school student is familiar with the fact that the oxygen content of the atmosphere is dependent on the photosynthetic activity of plants. The Gaia hypothesis, according to such researchers, offers nothing substantive. It is simply a new-and unnecessarily obfuscating-way of speaking of old facts. In the dismissive words of biologist Stephen Jay Gould: "the Gaia Hypothesis says nothing new-it offers no new mechanisms. It just changes the metaphor. But metaphor is not mechanism!" (1) What Gould failed to state is that "mechanism," itself, is nothing more than a metaphor. It is an important one, to be sure. Indeed the whole process of modern science seems to get underway with this metaphor. In 1644 the brilliant philosopher Rene Descartes wrote, "I have described the earth, and all the visible world, as if it were a machine." (2) In his various writings Descartes (developing a notion already suggested by other philosophers) effectively inaugurated that tradition of thought we call "mechanism," or, as it was known at that time, the "mechanical philosophy." And his metaphor is still with us today.' But let us explore how this metaphor operates upon us. What are the assumptions, explicit and implicit, that we wittingly or unwittingly buy into when we accept the premise that "the visible world" and, most specifically, the earth, is best understood as a very intricate and complex machine?

Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth, 1988

The Perceptual Implications of Gaia, 1985

The Gaia hypothesis represents a unique moment in scientific thought: the first glimpse, from wit... more The Gaia hypothesis represents a unique moment in scientific thought: the first glimpse, from within the domain of pure and precise science, that this planet might best be described as a coherent, living entity. The hypothesis itself arose in an attempt to make sense of certain anomalous aspects of the Earth's atmosphere. It suggests that the actual stability of the atmosphere, given a chemical composition very far from equilibrium, can best be understood by assuming that the atmosphere is actively and sensitively maintained by the animals, plants, oceans, and soils all acting collectively, as a vast, planetary metabolism. In James Lovelock's own words, the hypothesis states that:

Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

Pantheon Books/Vintage Books, 2010

As the climate veers toward catastrophe, the innumerable losses cascading through the biosphere m... more As the climate veers toward catastrophe, the innumerable losses cascading through the biosphere make vividly evident the need for a metamorphosis in our relation to the living land. For too long we’ve ignored the wild intelligence of our bodies, taking our primary truths from technologies that hold the living world at a distance. Abram’s writing subverts this distance, drawing readers ever closer to their animal senses in order to explore, from within, the elemental kinship between the human body and the breathing Earth. The shape-shifting of ravens, the erotic nature of gravity, the eloquence of thunder, the pleasures of being edible: all have their place in this book.

Finalist for the inaugural PEN E. O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World

Pantheon Books/Vintage Books, 1996

Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind ... more Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in a book that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us.

For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and earthly elements (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth?

In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. This book is a major work of ecological philosophy, one that startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception.

Winner of the international Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction