Our Planetary Mirror: Reimagining Humanity on the Scale of the Earth

Our Planetary Mirror: Reimagining Humanity on the Scale of the Earth with Boris Shoshitaishvili, PhD

What can the Earth, which is four and a half billion years old, teach us about what it means to be human in the 21st century?

Boris Shoshitaishvili, author of Our Planetary Mirror (University of Chicago Press), leads us on a journey through the planetary imagination the Earth sciences have quietly nurtured for over a century. Studied closely enough, the Earth becomes a mirror. What we’ve found reflected there is far stranger than the creature we thought we were.

We’ll explore three archetypes from the natural sciences that present the human species not just as primates but as a planetary phenomenon:

• the noosphere: the idea that humans form a layer of thought and culture covering the Earth, a planetary sphere like the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. This idea of a global layer of consciousness was powerful enough to influence Mikhail Gorbachev’s political thinking.
• the Anthropocene: the vision of humans as a planetary force that can cause disruptions on the scale of volcanic eruptions or tectonic activity. Whether we know it or not, the Anthropocene shapes how we think about climate change and other Earthscale effects.
• Gaia theory: the idea that Earth, as a whole, acts like a living body; that the Earth system is a self-sustaining physiology. Do humans belong within the body of this living Earth? (Are we its nervous system? Or the cause of illness?) Or are we a “child of Gaia,” a collective form of life differentiating from our planetary parent?

Along the way, we’ll look at how these three stranger-than-science-fiction ideas can give us new perspectives on some of today’s pressing issues, including the rise of AI, the debate around geoengineering, and the resurgence of competing nationalisms.

A book signing will follow the presentation!

Tickets: $12 (in person & online options available)
If you have any questions please email events@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167.

Heading Image by Michael Misof

Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash

Boris Shoshitaishvili is an author, editor, and former USC-Berggruen Fellow with a background in evolutionary biology, comparative literature, and classical studies. His work brings together the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences to examine how humans understand their relationship to the planet.

His first book, Our Planetary Mirror: Earth Science and the Reimagining of Humanity, is forthcoming in the fall of 2026 with the University of Chicago Press. An interdisciplinary volume he edited, Planetary Metaphysics: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Perspectives on the Human-Earth Relationship, is under contract with Indiana University Press. He has published academic and public-facing articles on planetary thought in Anthropocene, The Anthropocene Review, Counterpoint, Earth’s Future, and Noema, and scientific papers in Ageing Research Reviews and The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

He currently works with the Berggruen Institute and New America on a project updating International Relations pedagogy to address the role of Earth system dynamics in world politics. He is also developing a science-fiction screenplay with writer-director Rubén Navarro in collaboration with the Berggruen’s Studio B., and a podcast series with Nonzero’s Nikita Petrov. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in UC Berkeley’s Anthropology Department after earning his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University, M.A. in Classics from the University of Arizona, and Sc.B. in Biology and A.B. in Classics from Brown University.

CONTENT DISCLAIMER

The views, opinions, and thoughts expressed by the presenters are solely those of the presenter and may not represent those of the Philosophical Research Society (PRS), its affiliates, or any individuals associated with PRS. Presentations are intended for informational and entertainment purposes.

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