Texas Tech University

Earth, Life, and System

Earth Life System

Book Description: 

Developed from a symposium held at Texas Tech University in 2012 and edited by Bruce Clarke, Earth, Life, and System: Evolution and Ecology on a Gaian Planet (Fordham University Press, 2015) brings together specialists across a range of disciplines to explore the broad implications of evolutionary theorist Lynn Margulis's work. Earth, Life, and System addresses the multiple themes that animated Margulis's science: astrobiology and the origin of life, ecology and symbiosis from the microbial to the planetary scale, the coupled interactions of earthly environments and evolving life in Gaia theory and earth system science, and the connections of these newer scientific ideas to cultural and creative productions.

Bruce Clarke

Author Bio: 

Bruce Clarke is Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Literature and Science in the Department of English at Texas Tech University, and the 2019 Baruch S. Blumberg NASA Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress. His research focuses on systems theory, narrative theory, and Gaia theory. He was chair of TTU's Department of English (2012-17), and president of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (2007-08). His books include Gaian Systems: Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), Neocybernetics and Narrative (Minnesota 2014), Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems (Fordham 2008), and Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics (Michigan 2001). His edited volumes include Posthuman Metamorphosis: The Science Fiction of Joan Slonczewski (Palgrave 2020); The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman, with Manuela Rossini (Cambridge 2017); and Earth, Life, and System: Evolution and Ecology on a Gaian Planet (Fordham 2015).