Primo Levi's Gaia-Hypothesis

Primo Levi has a view that humans have a complex relationship with the earth. In his writing he portrays the awareness of humans place on earth. In order to be a scientist, one has to cultivate between predictability (mechanistic philosophy) and the earth being alive (Gaia-hypothesis). Without predictability, one would not have any knowledge on anything; if the world was pure randomness, there would be no meaning to anything and nothing would matter. The Gaia-hypothesis enables us, humans, to care for the world. If one is able to perceive the world as a living thing, and not as a machine, then you can care for it. Levi also incorporates David Abram phenomenology of perception that our senses help us connect with the world. Perception is the way we interpret the information we sense. The way we interpret the world in many ways dictates our sense of reality. If our perception is distorted we will not understand the information we sense. The mechanistic view implies that “the material world is, at least in principle, entirely predictable” (Abram 1). The world is portrayed as something that is not spontaneous. The world is perceived as a repetition and that everything happens as expected. The world operates like a machine, “It has no creativity, no spontaneity on it’s own” (Abram 1). The world was formed in a way it alters around laws …show more content…
Levi is a scientist, and as a scientists, one needs to cultivate between predictability and the earth being alive in order to learn and succeed in the science world. Levi wants to bring the senses to science, we think of since asn dry and detached (mechanistic view), but he adds another layer of insight on how to think about science. Man posses the qualities that allows us to switch back and forth from being able to interact with science and nature but also be the creator of