Year: 1986
Type: article
Abstract: Set as a shining jewel in the dark abysses of space, Earth is a unique treasure, exuberant with life. Millions of species have evolved, increasing in variety and complexity over billions of years. By contrast, the space environment seems hostile, cold, empty. Earth is home, a fertile oasis; that is the good news. The bad news is that Earth is lost out there in the stars. A solar system, a galaxy, even a star, is mostly nothing, empty space; and where there is something, it is sterile—frozen or scorched, swirls of gases or inert rockpiles. But an ecosystem, especially one with persons, an Earth, this is something rich and significant, an intricate web of instrumental and intrinsic values. Earthlings live neither at the range of the infinitely small nor of the infinitely large; but humans may well live at the range of the infinitely complex. In a typical handful of humus, which may have ten billion organisms in it, there is a richness of structure, a volume of information (trillions of bits) enormously advanced over anything
Author: Holmes Rolston
Language: English
Subfield: Nature and Landscape Conservation
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2257043917