Knowledge and sustainability: can the planet survive human cognition?

Abstract

Earth has run a successful biosphere for about three billion years. While the Earth process has experienced both periods of stability and periods of transition the overall process has been one of growing creativity and complexification. The emergence of human consciousness and reflective thought offered a unique mode of planetary self-awareness and self-expression. Can the planet successfully integrate the consciousness to which it has given birth? Can it survive the emergence of human thinking and incorporate it into its ongoing creativity? I explore the human presence and human activity as a subset of the more comprehensive activity of the biosphere. I consider both the risks and benefits of human cognition in the short and longer term. The stability of the biosphere which is ensured by the unconscious efforts of millions of species provides a platform on which or in which the human species can explore its creative potentialities.