Environmental Philosophy

Volume 8, Issue 1, Spring 2011

Henry Dicks

The Self-Poetizing Earth
Heidegger, Santiago Theory, and Gaia Theory

Although Heidegger thinks cybernetics is the “supreme danger,” he also thinks that it harbours within itself poiēsis, the “saving power.” This article provides a justification of this position through an analysis of its relation to Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s Santiago theory of cognition and James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’ Gaia theory. More specifically, it argues that Maturana and Varela’s criticism of cybernetics and their concomitant theory of “autopoiesis” constitutes the philosophical disclosure of “Being itself,” and that the extension of Santiago theory’s various different conceptualizations of poiēsis to Gaia theory makes possible the rise of the “saving power.”