Elisabet Sahtouris
Living on the Edge of Evolution
I have gained and sustained my optimism as a humble student of our living universe, our living Earth, which clearly shows us the way out of our adolescent crisis into a mature global future. The sooner we create our vision of all we desire, set our intention to implement it together, and put our individual capacities into collective action, the greater our chances of success.
In updating scientific models and theories such as our conception of a non-living universe in entropic expansion and decline, as well as the Darwinian hypothesis of endless struggle in scarcity, we discover a living self-organizing universe and an evolutionary process in which hostile competition gives way to mature collaboration in species after species throughout the living history of Earth. It then becomes clear that the Globalisation of humanity is a natural, biological, evolutionary process we cannot escape.
In many ways this process already shows evidence of mature planetwide cooperation, yet we face an enormous crisis because the most central and important aspect of globalization — global economics — is still organized in a manner that so gravely violates the fundamental principles by which healthy living systems operate that it threatens the demise of our whole civilization. Understanding biological evolution from macrocosm to microcosm, including the amazingly complex evolution of our own bodies, we find ample clues for moving forward in human social/political/economic evolution. This permits us to see clearly how to overcome current obstacles and ensure that our global family and all other species may thrive.
Video of her presentation, Living on the Edge of Evolution
Recorded at The Great ReThinking Prophets Conference
Bath, England 2005
Internationally known as a dynamic speaker, ELISABET SAHTOURIS (1936-2024) was an evolution biologist, futurist, professor, author and consultant on Living Systems Design. She showed the relevance of biological systems to organizational design in business, government, and globalisation. She was a Fellow of the World Business Academy, an advisor to EthicalMarkets.com and the Masters in Business program at Schumacher College, also affiliated with the Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s MBA program for sustainable business.
Dr. Sahtouris has made live and media appearances in a wide variety of venues on all five continents including governments, universities, conferences, churches and multinational businesses. She has convened two International Symposia on the Foundations of Science in Hokkaido and Kuala Lumpur and has written about integral cosmologies.
She has appeared in films including Occupy Love, I Am, Femme, Love Thy Nature, and Money & Life. Her books include EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution (2000), A Walk Through Time: from Stardust to Us (1998), Biology Revisioned with Willis Harman (1998), Gaia’s Dance: The Story of Earth & Us (2018), and most recently Vista (2024).
She was currently Professor in Residence at Chaminade University in Honolulu, Hawaii, teaching in the School of Business & Communication MBA Program and helping redesign it for entrepreneurship in local living economies. She was a member of the Evolutionary Leaders and a founding member of Rising Women; Rising World. She promoted a vision she believes will result in the sustainable health and well-being of humanity within the larger living systems of Earth and the cosmos.