Mycosophy

Mycosophy is the philosophy that comes from seeing the World through the lens of fungal biology, ecology and evolution, and asking how our understanding of nature, evolution, life on Earth and our place in nature, can be improved through a rebalancing of a previous innate bias that arose from our past ignorance of fungi and their symbiotic modes of existence. Until 10th January 1969, mycology, the biological study of fungi, was considered a niche area of Botany (study of plants) of little relevence or importance to the life sciences as a whole. Although the specialist study of fungi (mycology) had existed for several generations, fungi had in fact been miss-classified during this time as peculiar plants. It turns out that fungi were always far closer to animals, having shared common ancestors with animals when life was confined to the oceans, much more recently than the last common ancestor between fungi and plants. On 10th Januray 1969 a paper was published in the international journal Science that proposed that a third multicellular Eukaryotic Kingdom of life, Fungi, be added to the pre-existing Kingdoms Plantae and Animalia. The paper proposed moving from a 4 Kingdon classification to a 5 Kingdom classification of life on Earth, fitting an additional branch into the evolutionary tree of life that had previously been accepted. The sequence of evolution proposed from the origin of life 3.7 Billion years ago, to present, starts with Kingdom Monera (Bacteria), then Kingdom Potoctista (Protista), followed by the three Eukaryotic multicellular Kingdoms of Fungi, Plants and Animals. More recently, Kingdom Monera has been sub-divided into two bacterial Kingdoms; Kingdom Archybacteria and Kingdom Eubacteria, making the current total of 6 accepted Kingdoms of life. The significance of the belated recognition that we have been living on a planet unaware that fungi are a unique Kingdom of life is that for the most part of history, going back to the ancient Greeks, we were always wrong to have seen the world principly through the lens of Zoology and Botany - as being the only important branches of Biological Science. Re-assessing wrong and limited assumptions, biases and beliefs that have arison from this historical error of under-rating the importance of fungi is therefore a part of mycosophy. Re-writing this wrong has enabled us to appreciate more fully the importance of mycelial symbiotic relations of different kinds as underpinning many of the most important evolutionary transitions during the history of life on this planet. Another aspect of mycosophy is to appreciate the versatile biochemistry of fungi in their prolific production of chemicals, medicines, antibiotics and psychedelics, and the benefits which these have brought humans through the ages, since the dawn of humanity itself. With the knowledge of fungi, their mycelial ecology and evolution, and their great benefits, it is indeed possible to see the World in a new light.

Philosophy of nature

Development of the philosophy of environmental conscience. A historical approach to a philosophical argument that would enable our species to relate to nature more profoundly and sustainably than it currently does, would stem from a philosophy of ecology (ecosophy), as part of a philosophy of biology (biosophy), and would have historical roots going back to the ancient Greeks Aristotle, Anaximander, and Heraclitus, but possibly even before this to even more ancient Vedic texts which influenced Hindu and Budhist belief systems. After the enlightenment, we could trace such thinking through St Augustine, Francis of Assisi, David Hume and Immanuel Kant. However, ecosophy might also be strengthened by more recent scientifically influenced and ecologically relevent writings such as those by Peter Kropotkin (mutual aid), Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, Bertrand Russel, Alfred North Whitehead, Rene Thom, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Bauvoir. More recently Joanna Macey (World as Lover, World as Self), Rachel Carson (Silent Spring), Lynn Margulis (Symbiosis and symbiogenesis), Alan Rayner (Natural Inclusion). Natural Inclusion could be described as a philosophy arising from the scientific discoveries of the ecological behaviours of fungal mycelia in relation with other beings (mycosophy). In addition, cosmological philosophies that strengthen relations between nature and our species come from Alexander von Humboldt (and his French biologist friend and companion Aime Bonpland, whose teacher was the French forerunner of Charles Darwin (Natural Selection), none other than Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (role of environment in evolution and also known to be the founder of the notion of Biology as a science). Also, there is the wonderful Carl Sagan (Cosmos) and the physicist Professor Brian Cox (Wonders of Life) whose works on the physics of energy flows through biological and ecological systems have some philosophical implications relevent to this blog's title.