By Andreas Weber, Hildegard Kurt, Spring | Summer 2016

A ground-breaking new vision of humankind is quickly spreading into the mainstream of our self-understanding. We are no longer standing apart from nature, so the new belief goes: We are enmeshed in it. Some authors even assert that nature and humans are one and the same. This comes not just as a philosophical claim but rather as an empirical realization. The cultural image man has of himself has become a scientific issue. Traces of pesticides, nuclear fallout, and nitrogen fertilizer can be found in the Arctic ice crystals and in the soils of the Amazon. Climate change has proven that humans are inescapably connected to Earth and its systems.