INTRODUCTION

The detonation of the first atomic weapons manifested in a simulacrum of a life form: a tall, straight mushroom. Mushrooms typically grow out of dead and decaying matter, given life through the death of another (or tens of thousands of others). Like the mushroom-shaped cloud, an elegant irony accompanied the splitting of the atom: the perception and feeling of a deep connection to nature which many bomb scientists reported while laboring on one of the most destructive tools ever devised. Physicists and life scientists have contributed to sustainability movements a sense of awe and reverence derived from their professional work.

Such perceptions and beliefs are typically grounded in an understanding of biological or cosmological relationality, and are typically communicated to others with language drawn from science, although often stretched beyond its accepted scientific usage. The suggestion that the cosmos is “evolving,” for example, is an application of a biological term to a particular (and in some cases normative) depiction of astrophysical spacetime. Such affectively oriented language gleaned from scientists has been deployed within the sustainability milieu by many people to describe the central themes of sustainability discourse: interconnectedness, awareness of limits, and interpersonal empathy or risk. While biophilic affinities (those couched in language derived from the life sciences and directed at biological entities) extend to the carbon-based world, some scientists imagine human well-being against the backdrop of a larger cosmological narrative and argue that humans must develop “cosmophilic” affinities.