I was hooked in quickly by this conversation featuring astrophysicist Adam Frank, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, and biologist Michael Levin. Barrett, the neuroscientist, had this to say:

“I’m not sure that materialism is actually the culprit here. … For a long time, the main alternatives to traditional realism were idealism. This is the idea that reality is all in your head. Empiricism is the idea that we can only study what we can sense and we shouldn’t even be making metaphysical um assumptions. But there is a third option which is the idea that there is a single reality, but that reality exists in relation to some perspective. So it’s inherently perspectival. And this is the notion of relational realism. It’s the belief that reality consists of the relations between interacting signals that can constrain or enhance one another.”

And I absolutely agree. All life is interrelated. We cannot understand reality until we grasp the complex interactions between biological organisms and their environments. Those interactions shape how living beings function, evolve, and adapt in a changing world. Rather than the universe being created for humans, humans are just one of millions of living things shaped by the environment. This insight is validated by common ancestry, as our shared DNA demonstrates, and our dependance on the biosphere for our survival and well-being.