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 Praise for Biodiversity and Climate Change: Transforming the Biosphere

“The evidence assembled in Biodiversity and Climate Change leaps out at us like a scene from a
3-D movie. It’s warning us—compelling us—to act. Nowhere is the science clearer or the
facts more compelling than in this meticulously researched volume. When conservationists
and scientists of Lovejoy’s and Hannah’s caliber warn that if we don’t press forward faster,
we’ll see greater species extinction, more ocean acidification, more biodiversity loss, more
strains on agriculture and fishing—let me tell you: we need to listen. This book isn’t just a
call to heed the science; it’s a call to citizens everywhere to live up to their responsibilities
and protect this fragile planet we share.”
—John Kerry, United States Secretary of State, 2013–2017

“Mankind’s heedless extraction and pollution of our planet’s resources is tearing apart the
web of natural systems that has sustained our species throughout the long course of human
development. Tom Lovejoy and Lee Hannah have assembled a book that chronicles these
emerging ecological and climatic disasters yet gives hope that we can still help Earth’s sys-
tems heal and blunt the suffering of coming generations.”
—Sheldon Whitehouse, United States Senator for Rhode Island

“Biodiversity and Climate Change: Transforming the Biosphere serves as a comprehensive account of this
greatest of threats to humanity’s future. It will serve both as a textbook and a call to action.”
—From the Foreword by Edward O. Wilson

“An authoritative analysis of the increasing speed and scale of climate-change impacts on
our biodiversity, together with an illuminating set of specific ways to use our biodiversity to
address climate change. A powerful coupling.”
—Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, 2010–2016

“In Biodiversity and Climate Change, the renowned Tom Lovejoy and Lee Hannah blend leading
voices to form a clear case for climate action, highlighting a powerful though underutilized
natural defense: ecosystem restoration.”
—Henry M. Paulson Jr., Chairman of Paulson Institute, and United States Secretary of the
Treasury, 2006–2009

“Biodiversity and Climate Change lays out the latest science on the central challenges of our time.
It is clear, comprehensive, and utterly compelling—an essential addition to the literature.”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
“We’ve all heard the clanging alarms about climate change. This book is an extraordinary
scientific portrait, expert, multifaceted, and up-to-date, of how those changes are affecting
biological diversity—upon which we humans depend, of which we are part. Don’t send to
know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for us.”
—David Quammen, author of The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life

“Lovejoy and Hannah generate a compelling story of the species extinctions that will ac-
company ongoing, rapid changes in Earth’s climate, coupled with the unrelenting pressure
of human population growth.”
—William H. Schlesinger, President Emeritus of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

“As the global community prepares a post-2020 Global Deal for Nature, this book reminds
us of the importance of ecosystems and nature-based solutions to advance the Paris Agree-
ment, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the 2050 Biodiversity Vision.”
—Dr. Cristiana Paşca Palmer, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Sec-
retary of the Convention on Biological Diversity

“Come explore this comprehensive and insightful synthesis that underscores the intimately
interconnected nature of biodiversity and climate change—its past, present, and future.”
—Jane Lubchenco, Oregon State University

“Escape to Mars is not a realistic option for any species. Lovejoy and Hannah’s assessments
will help us chart a feasible pathway to preservation of our remarkable world.”
—James Hansen, Columbia University Earth Institute
Biodiversity and
Climate Change
This page intentionally left blank
Biodiversity
and E DI T E D BY
T H O M A S E . L OV E J OY
& L EE H A NNA H

Climate
Change
Transforming the Biosphere

F O R E WO R D B Y E DWA R D O . W I L S O N

N E W H AV E N & L O N D O N
Published with assistance from Gordon and Betty
Moore, Conservation International, and with assistance
from the foundation established in memory of Calvin
Chapin of the Class of 1788, Yale College.

Copyright © 2019 by Yale University.

All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in
part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that
copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public
press), without written permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quan-
tity for educational, business, or promotional use. For
information, please e-mail sales.press@yale.edu (U.S.
office) or sales@yaleup.co.uk (U.K. office).

Set in Joanna type by Newgen.

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954278

ISBN 978-0-300-20611-1 (paperback : alk. paper)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the

British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO

Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Betsy, Kata, Annie, Tia, and Jay—
and the generations to come
This page intentionally left blank
 Foreword xi
Contents E DWA R D O . W I L S O N

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xv

PA RT I OV E RV I E W: W H AT I S
C L I M AT E C H A N G E B I O L O G Y ?

O N E Changing the Biosphere 3

T H O M A S E . L OV E J OY A N D
L E E H A NNA H

T WO What Is Climate Change? 12

M IC H A E L C . M ACC R AC K E N

PA RT I I W H AT C H A N G E S A R E
W E O B S E RV I N G ?

THREE Range and Abundance

Changes 25
C A M I L L E PA R M E S A N

Case Study 1: The Bering Sea and

Climate Change 39
L E E W. C O O P E R

F O U R Phenological Dynamics
in Pollinator-Plant Associations
Related to Climate Change 42
E R I C P O S T A N D M I C H A E L AV E RY

F I V E Coral Reefs: Megadiversity

Meets Unprecedented Environmental
Change 55
OV E H O E G H - G U L D B E R G

SIX Genetic Signatures of Historical

and Contemporary Responses to
Climate Change 66
BRETT R. RIDDLE
viii CONTENTS

Case Study 2: Climate Change and Salmon PA RT I V W H AT D O E S T H E

Populations 77 FUTUR E HOLD?
D ONA L D J. NOA K E S
T W E LV E Modeling Species
SEVEN Rapid Broad-Scale Ecosystem and Vegetation Distribution under
Changes and Their Consequences for Climate Change 157
Biodiversity 80 PA B L O I M B A C H , P E P S E R R A - D I A Z ,
D AV I D D . B R E S H E A R S , J A S O N P. F I E L D , L E E H A N N A H , E M I LY F U N G , A N D
D A R I N J . L AW, J UA N C . V I L L E G A S , E L I Z A B E T H H . T. H I R OYA S U
CR A IG D. A L L E N, N E IL S. COBB, A N D
JOHN B. BR ADFOR D Climate Change and
T H I RT E E N
Marine Biodiversity 168
Case Study 3: Rapidly Diverging Population W I L L I A M W. L . C H E U N G A N D
Trends of Adélie Penguins Reveal Limits to M I R A N DA C . JON E S
a Flexible Species’ Adaptability to Anthropogenic
Climate Change 91 Case Study 5: Anticipating Climate-Driven
GRANT BALLARD AND Movement Routes 183
D AV I D A I N L E Y J O S H UA J . L AW L E R

PA RT I I I W H AT D O E S T H E F O U R T E E N Impacts of Ocean
PA S T T E L L U S ? Acidification on Marine Biodiversity 185
J O A N A . K L E Y PA S
E I G H T A Paleoecological Perspective
on Sudden Climate Change and FIFTEEN Tropical Forests in a
Biodiversity Crises 97 Changing Climate 196
J E F F R E Y PA R K J A M E S E . M . WAT S O N , D A N I E L B .
S E G A N , A N D J O S H UA T E W K S B U RY
N I N E Climate Change, Conservation,
and the Metaphor of Deep Time 114 Case Study 6: Postponing the Amazon
R IC H A R D B. A RONSON Tipping Point 208
D A N I E L N E P S TA D
Case Study 4: The Effects of Sea-Level Rise
on Habitats and Species 125 SIXTEEN Temperate and Boreal
C É L I N E BE L L A R D, Responses to Climate Change 211
C A M I L L E L E CL E RC , A N D L AU R E N B . B U C K L E Y A N D
F R A NCK COU RC H A M P JA N N E K E H IL L E R ISL A M BE R S

TEN Past Abrupt Changes in SEVENTEEN Climate Change

Climate and Terrestrial Ecosystems
J O H N W. W I L L I A M S A N D
K E V IN D. BU R K E
E L E V E N A Neotropical Perspective
on Past Human-Climate Interactions
and Biodiversity
MARK B. BUSH
128 Impacts on Mountain Biodiversity 221
A N TOIN E A. GU ISA N, OL I V IE R
BROE N N I M A N N, A L I N E BU R I,
CARMEN CIANFRANI, MANUELA
D ’A M E N , VA L E R I A D I C O L A , RU I
F E R N A N D E S , S A R A H M . G R AY, RU B É N
142 G . M AT E O , E R I C P I N T O , J E A N -
N I C O L A S P R A D E RVA N D , D A N I E L
S C H E R R E R , PA S C A L V I T T O Z , I S A L I N E
VO N D Ä N I K E N , A N D E R I K A YA S H I R O
 CONTENTS ix
Case Study 7: Climate Change and Frost Effects Climate Change
T W E N T Y- F O U R
in Rocky Mountain Plant Communities 234 Mitigation Using Terrestrial
D AV I D I N O U Y E Ecosystems: Options and
Biodiversity Impacts 310
EIGHTEEN Climate Change: Final M O N I K A B E R T Z K Y, R E B E C C A C .
Arbiter of the Mass Extinction of BRO CK, L E R A M I L E S, A N D
Freshwater Fishes 237 VA L E R I E K A P O S
L E S K AU F M A N
Case Study 10: Connectivity by Design: A
NINETEEN The Asymmetrical Multiobjective Ecological Network for
Impacts of Climate Change Biodiversity That Is Robust to Land Use and
on Food Webs 246 Regional Climate Change 323
L AU R E N J A RV I S , K E V I N M C C A N N , A N D R E W G O N Z A L E Z , C E C I L E A L B E R T,
A N D M A RY O ’C O N N O R B R O N W Y N R AY F I E L D , A N D
M A R I A D U M I T RU
Case Study 8: Dynamic Spatial Management
in an Australian Tuna Fishery 255 Regreening the
T W E N T Y- F I V E
JA S ON R . H A RTO G A N D Emerald Planet: The Role of
A L I S TA I R J . H O B D AY Ecosystem Restoration in
Reducing Climate Change 326
TWENTY Invasive Species and T H O M A S E . L OV E J OY
Climate Change 258
E L I Z A B E T H H . T. H I R OYA S U A N D Case Study 11: Enlisting Ecological
JE S SICA J. H EL L M A NN Interactions among Animals to Balance
the Carbon Budget 332
T W E N T Y- O N E Climate Change O S WA L D J . S C H M I T Z
and Disease 270
L I N D S AY P. C A M P B E L L , A . T OW N S E N D Increasing Public
T W E N T Y- S I X
P E T E R S O N , A B D A L L A H M . S A M Y, A N D Awareness and Facilitating Behavior
C A R L O S YA Ñ E Z - A R E N A S Change: Two Guiding Heuristics 336
E DWA R D M A I B A C H
PA RT V H O W C A N C O N S E RVAT I O N
AND POLICY R E SPOND? T W E N T Y- S E V E N Climate Change,
Food, and Biodiversity 347
Protected-Area
T W E N T Y-T WO C A RY F OW L E R A N D
Management and Climate Change 283 OLA TVEITEREID WE STENGEN
PA B L O A . M A R Q U E T, J A N E T H
L E S S M A N N , A N D M . R E B E C C A S H AW Saving Biodiversity
T W E N T Y- E I G H T
in the Era of Human-Dominated
Case Study 9: Extinction Risk from Ecosystems 356
Climate Change 294 G . D AV I D T I L M A N , N I K O H A R T L I N E ,
GU Y MIDGL E Y A N D L EE H A NNA H AND MICHAEL A. CLARK

T W E N T Y-T H R E E Ecosystem-Based List of Contributors 367

Adaptation 297
C A I T L I N L I T T L E FI E L D, E R I K N E L SON, Index 373
BENJA M IN J. DIT T BR EN N E R, JOH N
W I T H E Y, K AT I E K . A R K E M A , A N D Color plates follow page 174
J O S H UA J . L AW L E R
This page intentionally left blank
 Biodiversity and Climate Change: Transforming the
Foreword Biosphere is the definitive statement com-
posed by a large percentage of the leading
EDWAR D O. WILSON
scientific experts on the most urgent global
problem short of the destruction of Earth
by a planet-sized asteroid. A remark cited
in Biodiversity and Climate Change states the issue
cogently: if nothing is done about climate change,
you can forget about biodiversity. Let me expand
on that fundamental truth with different
words: you can forget about millions of
species, thus about the living part of nature,
about the stabilizing power of ecosystems,
and not least about an autonomously secure
future for the human species.
The world has already lost irrevocably a
substantial portion of the natural biosphere.
The consequences, now and increasingly
into the future, are outlined in this book.
To assist the nontechnical readers of the
current status, allow me to offer a primer
of some of the essential facts and concepts.
First, what is biodiversity? The word,
short for “biological diversity,” means the
commonality of all heritable (gene-based)
variation, both natural and domestic—in
other words, globally the biosphere. Biodi-
versity consists of a biological hierarchy. At
the top are the ecosystems, such as forest
patches, ponds, coral reefs, and the bac-
terial flora of your intestine. Next are the
species that compose the ecosystems; and
finally, at the base, are the genes that pre-
scribe the traits that define the species that
compose the ecosystems.
Species are the units on which conserva-
tion biology is most concretely based. Most
biological research starts with known spe-
cies and ends with them, including disci-
plines as different from each other as ecol-
ogy and molecular biology. Species further
have the greatest exactitude and the most
relevant information for conservation sci-
ence. In contrast, the boundaries of eco-
systems, which are vitally important to

xi
xii FOR EWOR D
understand, are nevertheless characteristi-
cally more subjective. “Ecoregions,” which
are based in part on geographic data, are
even more subjective and more difficult to
classify.
How many species still exist on Earth?
A bit more than two million have been
discovered, formally named, and given a
Latinized name. (The common housefly is
denoted, for example, as Musca domestica.) We
recognize that understanding of this ele-
ment of biodiversity, begun by the Swed-
ish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1735, is still
woefully incomplete except for plants and
vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, am-
phibians, fishes). The actual number of spe-
cies on the planet, deduced statistically, is
roughly 10 million.
Of the species known, how fast are spe-
cies disappearing due to human activity?
The estimates range between one hundred
and one thousand times the rate that existed
before humanity spread around the world.
And it is accelerating.
What exactly are the causes of extinction?
They are often summarized by the initial-
ism HIPPO, with the position of each letter
representing an extinction factor and (usu-
ally) in the order of its importance: thus,
habitat reduction, invasion by nonnative spe-
cies, pollution of habitat, population increase of
humanity, and overhunting by excessive fish-
ing, or hunting, or removal for other pur-
poses. Climate change is perhaps the most
important dimension of pollution impact.
Finally, how well are conservation proj-
ects doing? In the case of land-dwelling ver-
tebrates globally assessed at the time of this
writing, approximately one-fifth of land-
dwelling vertebrate species are classified as
threatened to some degree, and within that
only one-fifth of the one-fifth have been
stabilized or improved in status.
The authors of the present work agree
overall that climate change is the principal
threat to the survival of biodiversity even in
its early stages. Biodiversity and Climate Change:
Transforming the Biosphere serves as a compre-
hensive account of this greatest of threats
to humanity’s future. It will serve both as a
textbook and a call to action.
 The field of climate change biology dates to
Preface the mid-1980s, when the first symposium
was held on the subject at the National Zoo
in Washington, DC. The World Wildlife
Fund convened that meeting, and one re-
sult was the book Global Warming and Biodiver-
sity, edited by Robert L. Peters and Thomas
E. Lovejoy and published by Yale University
Press in 1992. At that point, the contribu-
tors and editors were largely confined to
examining how past biological responses
to climate change might predict change to
come. It was nonetheless clear, as one of us
remarked to Mostafa Tolba at a 1987 gather-
ing to help plan the Convention on Biologi-
cal Diversity, that if nothing was done about
climate change, one “could forget about
biological diversity.”
As the field grew and the imprint of cli-
mate change on the planet’s biodiversity
became more apparent, little more than a
decade after that initial meeting it was al-
ready clear that a completely new synthe-
sis of the field was in order. In 2001, we
began several years of gathering the best
authors and writing, a process that culmi-
nated in Climate Change and Biodiversity, which
we coedited and which was published by
Yale University Press in 2005. That volume
highlighted many of the numerous ways
climate change was affecting biodiversity
and biological systems. But change was still
happening, both in the real world and in
our understanding of impacts, faster than
it could be synthesized into print. Ocean
acidification was recognized as a major
global environmental problem by the time
the book appeared in bookstores, but it was
treated in part of only one chapter.
With the passage of another decade, a
truly staggering body of evidence suggested
that the planet was headed for serious bio-
logical trouble, so in 2014 we realized that
a new overview of this centrally impor-
tant topic was once again needed. Indeed,

xiii
xiv PR EFACE
what we first thought of as a second edi-
tion very quickly morphed into an entirely
new book. Today, as the world is pushed
through the critical barrier of 1° centigrade
of global warming, the fingerprints of cli-
mate change can be seen in biodiversity ev-
erywhere. Already some major ecosystems
are experiencing abrupt change, and major
portions of the planet’s biology such as the
Amazon are approaching tipping points.
The impact of climate change in unfor-
tunate synergy with other forms of human-
driven change means that humanity is, in
fact, changing the biosphere. This picture
is laid out well by this new team of lead-
ing scholars in the following pages, as are
some of the possible forms of adaptation
that might lessen the biological impact.
This volume opens with an introduc-
tion to the topic and the relevant climate
changes. Our chapter authors then look
at the world around us and the mounting
body of evidence that climate change is
already rewriting biological history. From
hundreds of millions of tree deaths to mas-
sive mortality in coral reefs, the evidence of
climate change is already all around us, and
it is writ large.
Placing these stunning changes in con-
text requires understanding the past, and
that perspective is provided by an out-
standing set of paleoecological research-
ers, examining both marine and terrestrial
realms. Movement has been the hallmark of
past biotic response to climate change, but
genetic responses may manifest themselves
when bottlenecks are tight, as they will be
in the future thanks to human conversion
of natural habitats to other uses.
We then move from the past to the fu-
ture. Our learning from models of the fu-
ture and theory are explored in a series of
chapters exploring possible biotic conse-
quences of change in a variety of systems.
The evidence in these chapters suggests the
importance of questioning the global target
of limiting climate change to 2° centigrade.
Many systems will be past tipping points
or past acceptable limits of change at that
point.
Finally, we and our contributors exam-
ine the importance of being more proac-
tive in conservation and policy. Where in
the world can protected areas be placed for
climate change? How should the protected-
area estate be redesigned to be resilient in the
face of climate change? How can we man-
age systems through extraordinary change,
and which policies are needed to facilitate
that process? These chapters recognize the
positive contribution that biodiversity can
make; for instance, transforming the bio-
sphere through ecosystem restoration at a
planetary scale can reduce the amount of
climate change that biodiversity and hu-
manity must cope with in the future. The
volume concludes by drawing all the pieces
together at a planetary scale and asking how
we can feed the still-increasing billions of
people, maintain robust biodiversity, and
still accommodate change in both.
This book presents a current assess-
ment of knowledge about climate change
and biodiversity. More will continue to be
learned and understood on an ongoing ba-
sis about the interaction between human-
driven climate change and the biological
fabric and systems of the planet. It is our
fervent hope that this synthesis will lead to
a widespread understanding that our planet
works as a linked biological and physical
system, and therefore will lead to less cli-
mate change and more surviving biological
diversity than would otherwise be the case.
 We would like to extend our deepest thanks
Acknowledgments to all those who have contributed to the
creation of this book. The participants in a
special meeting called by the Science and
Technical Advisory Panel of the Global En-
vironment Facility provided inspiration,
including Camille Parmesan, Joshua Tewks-
bury, Gustavo Fonseca, Miguel Araújo, Mark
Bush, Rebecca Brock, Joanie Kleypas, Re-
becca Shaw, and Tom Hammond. Elizabeth
Hiroyasu went above and beyond, oversee-
ing and coordinating much of the produc-
tion of the book. Deepest thanks go to Jean
Thomson Black and Michael Deneen for
their support through the editing process.
We are indebted to Ed Wilson for his
continuing inspiration and insights con-
tained in the foreword to this book. We are
grateful to the Moore Center for Science and
the Climate Change Strategy Team at Con-
servation International for their insights
and support. For hard work on coordinat-
ing figures and assisting with graphics, we
thank Monica Pessino and the rest of the
Ocean o’ Graphics team at the University
of California, Santa Barbara. Funding from
Cary Brown and the Fiddlehead Fund has
supported many aspects of this project. The
National Science Foundation, the National
Science and Engineering Research Council
of Canada, and the Belmont Forum pro-
vided support that enabled major insights
in freshwater biology and ecological theory
presented here. Special thanks to Carmen
Thorndike for all that she does. And finally,
we thank a long list of colleagues, includ-
ing those who contributed chapters, with-
out which this endeavor would have been
impossible.

xv
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 PA RT I

Overview:
What Is Climate
Change Biology?
This page intentionally left blank
CHAPTER ONE People are changing the biosphere. Expand-
ing agricultural production, growing cities,
Changing the and increasing resource use and disposal are
among the human activities that are hav-
Biosphere ing profound effects on our planet. Some
of these effects are exerted and felt locally,
THOMAS E. LOVEJOY AND LEE HANNAH whereas others have global reach. Some hu-
man impacts, such as pollution, have been
effectively addressed at local or national
scales, and others, such as depletion of the
ozone layer, have been effectively addressed
through global cooperation. But many of
the effects people are having on the bio-
sphere have not been fully addressed, and
some of these have global consequences of
unprecedented proportion.
Two global environmental problems—
biodiversity loss and climate change—are
the preeminent environmental issues of
this millennium. Biodiversity loss—the
extinction of millions of species—is a very
real consequence of increasing human use
of the planet. Climate change due to green-
house gas emissions threatens to alter the
composition of the atmosphere and the liv-
ing conditions on the surface of the planet
for both people and all other species.
The purpose of this book is to explore
multiple dimensions of the interaction be-
tween climate change and biodiversity. Cli-
mate change biology is an emerging disci-
pline that boasts an explosion of literature
reflecting the importance and abundance of
climate change effects on the natural world.
The great interest in this topic, and the
large number of research findings emerg-
ing about it, combine to make a synthesis
of the whole field invaluable for research-
ers and students, as well as for professionals
in land use and conservation who increas-
ingly need to understand the field in broad
overview.

Copyright © 2019 by Yale University. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-0-300-20611-1.

3
4 OV E RV I E W: W H AT I S C L I M AT E C H A N G E B I O L O G Y ?
We present the fundamentals of cli-
mate change for biologists in Chapter 2.
The headline is that human burning of fos-
sil fuels for heat, transportation, and other
purposes, combined with releases of other
pollutants, is altering the thermal balance of
the atmosphere. These pollutants, including
carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and others,
are collectively known as greenhouse gases,
because they absorb and reradiate outgoing
longwave radiation, effectively warming the
Earth’s atmosphere. This warming has ef-
fects on atmospheric circulation, resulting in
a vast number of changes to climate, such as
changes in precipitation, seasonality, storm
intensity and frequency, and many other fac-
tors, in addition to a pronounced warming of
the planet’s surface. Increases in atmospheric
concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse
gases have been measured beyond question,
and the warming of the atmosphere and its
consequences are now being observed.
The next twenty chapters address the
past, present, and future of biodiversity re-
sponse to climate change. Plants and ani-
mals all have climatic conditions that limit
their distribution, so this major and com-
plex change in climate will result in mas-
sive shifts in the distribution of species and
ecosystems across the planet. Many shifts
in individual species are already being ob-
served. Observations of changes in ecosys-
tems and changes in interactions between
species are more complicated and there-
fore more difficult to document, but they
are now being recorded in many regions.
Marine, terrestrial, and freshwater systems
are all being affected, and the conservation
consequences of these biological changes
are of major significance.
We explore the conservation and pol-
icy responses to these challenges in Part V
(Chapters 22–28). Understanding climate
change biology can be a complex task for
policy makers and resource managers, par-
ticularly when the international response to
climate change and biodiversity loss is seg-
regated into separate international conven-
tions and separate national policy-response
streams. The need for integrated response
to climate change and biodiversity has
never been greater, because changes in the
biological world have profound implica-
tions for regional and global climate. The
way in which people relate to nature will be
forever altered by climate change.
A new synthesis is needed—a manage-
ment-relevant analysis of climate change
and biodiversity that transcends categories
and conventions—to arrive at solutions that
provide a robust future for both people and
ecosystems. We now offer four themes that
set the stage for the chapters that follow.
PL A N E TA RY BOU N DA R IE S
Planetary boundaries represent the “safe op-
erating space” for the Earth system (Rock-
ström et al. 2009). Climate change and
biodiversity are two of the nine planetary
boundaries defined to date and represent
half of the planetary boundaries that are es-
timated to have already been exceeded (the
others being deforestation and nitrogen de-
position). The planetary boundary for bio-
diversity is being exceeded because we are
losing genetic diversity and robust popula-
tions of various species, which means there
are ongoing and expected extinctions (Ur-
ban et al. 2016; Steffen et al. 2015).
In many ways, all four of the planetary
boundaries that have been exceeded to date
are related to climate change and biodiver-
sity. The third exceeded boundary (after
climate and biodiversity) is deforestation,
a major contributor to both climate change
and biodiversity loss (Steffen et al. 2015).
The final exceeded boundary is disruption
of nutrient cycles, especially that of nitro-
gen. One of the leading causes of nitrogen
release into the atmosphere is the burning
of fossil fuels, and species loss is one of the
major consequences of a disrupted nitro-
gen cycle. Nitrogen overuse in agriculture,
especially in developed countries, is lead-
ing to nitrogen runoff impacts on freshwa-
ter systems and massive dead zones in the

oceans. Biodiversity loss and climate change
are thus strongly linked to deforestation and
the disruption of nutrient cycling.
In this most global sense, biodiversity
loss and climate change are intimately con-
nected and affect all people on the planet. It
is important that we find solutions to these
two great environmental problems that
are commensurate with the global scale of
the problems and that integrated solutions
are pursued, not solutions in isolation. Al-
though local and regional solutions are crit-
ical for affected populations, true success
in conserving biodiversity and combating
climate change can be achieved only when
the results are measurable at a global scale.
Extinction rates need to be lowered so that
they are commensurate with background
rates, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations
need to be rapidly stabilized and probably
gradually decreased thereafter.
We will see in the chapters that follow
that many parts of the solution space in-
clude both climate and biodiversity ben-
efits. For example, reducing deforestation
maintains habitats and also reduces CO2
releases into the atmosphere, while lower-
ing greenhouse gas emissions mitigates cli-
mate change, which reduces the magnitude
of species range shifts and thus the conflict
between species needs for movement and
human land uses, such as agriculture, that
stand in the way of those movements.
Although the climate-biodiversity nexus
is deep and affects all people on the planet,
this is only the first and highest-order di-
mension of the need for integrated re-
sponse. Integrated responses are needed
that address the global dimension but also
the relationship of people with nature in lo-
cal situations, where ecosystems are an ef-
fective tool to meet adaptation needs.
PE OPL E A N D NAT U R E A DA PTI NG
TO GE T H E R
Adaptation is a response to climate change
that seeks to maintain individual or soci-
CHANGING THE BIOSPHERE 5
etal goals. There are many dimensions to
adaptation, including maintenance of living
space in societies challenged by sea-level
rise, incomes for individuals and families
facing adverse impacts of climate change,
and ecological functioning and services.
These dimensions are all often addressed
in isolation—for instance, through engi-
neering responses such as building dams to
respond to water shortage—but there are
major advantages to addressing the needs
of people and nature in a more integrated
fashion.
Wherever they live, people have a rela-
tionship with nature. That relationship may
be close and intimate, as in communities
that grow or harvest their own food, or it
may be remote and less obvious, as in cit-
ies or highly structured economies. What-
ever the relationship, people and nature are
closely tied together, which involves food
(produced locally or grown elsewhere and
then transported to where we consume it),
living space, recreation, spiritual connect-
edness, climatic conditions, and clean air
and water.
Climate change will alter the relationship
between people and nature everywhere on
the planet. People in rural settings may find
that the food they can grow and where they
can grow it are changed, resulting in differ-
ent patterns of agricultural use and natural
lands. People in cities may find that there
are higher costs for importing fuel for heat-
ing or cooling, and that supply chains for
goods that are consumed have greatly dif-
ferent environmental impacts.
Nature provides both tangible and in-
tangible benefits that accrue to people near
and far in complex ways. Nature may have
benefits for people far away (e.g., sequestra-
tion of carbon for climate stabilization, bio-
diversity existence value) at the same time
that it has benefits for people close at hand
(e.g., fresh water, tourism revenue) (Kre-
men et al. 2000).
This makes understanding the effect of
climate change on the relationship between
people and nature complex and important.
6 OV E RV I E W: W H AT I S C L I M AT E C H A N G E B I O L O G Y ?
The effects of climate change occur in an
already-dynamic situation, in which hu-
mans and their activities are intercon-
nected locally, nationally, regionally, and
internationally. Maintaining positive out-
comes for people and ecosystems across all
of these spheres as the climate changes is a
major goal for people and nature adapting
together.
For example, communities living with
coral bleaching may need to adjust to both
reduced fisheries output and reduced op-
portunities for tourism income. Although
the extent of coral bleaching suggests that
completely maintaining current levels of
fishery output and tourism income may be
impossible, a new balance may be struck
in which protecting reefs most able to sur-
vive bleaching can help in the recovery of
neighboring reefs and fisheries following
bleaching while still maintaining tour-
ism revenues. Actions to create habitats for
remaining coral reef fish species may be
important in maintaining fisheries produc-
tion. Life with climate change may look
considerably different for a community that
is dependent on a coral reef. People’s rela-
tionship with nature may change, through
changes in fisheries livelihoods and through
reduced reef extent. But a new relationship
may maintain some reef fishery, some reef
tourism, and a coastal lifestyle with sound
planning, whereas an unplanned response
may result in total loss of the reef and its
tangible and intangible benefits.
Similar scenarios are played out across
other coastal environments, rangelands,
forests, lakes, and rivers. For instance, ar-
eas denuded of mature trees due to climate-
driven bark-beetle outbreaks may see tim-
ber revenues, recreational opportunities,
and habitat quality decline. A fundamental
restructuring of the relationship between
people and nature may be required on mul-
tiple levels in such settings.
Understanding the relationship between
people and nature and how it is affected
by climate change can help policy makers,
managers, and communities living with
nature understand how the best elements
of a relationship with nature can be main-
tained to the greatest extent possible and
where new relationships with nature will
be needed because of climate change.
E CO SYST E M-BASE D A DA P TATION
One aspect of people and nature adapting
together is the use of ecosystems to help
meet human adaptation goals, or ecosystem-
based adaptation (Jones et al. 2012). This is
a second example of the interaction of solu-
tions to both climate change and biodiver-
sity loss. It is the special case of ecosystems
being a functional part of needed human
responses to climate change, with benefits
that are usually focused locally or regionally.
Examples of ecosystem-based adapta-
tion include coastal protection provided
by mangroves and coral reefs, freshwater
provisioning provided by cloud forests,
flood control provided by upland habitats,
and drought resistance provided by healthy
range and natural wetlands. The scope of
ecosystem-based adaptation literally covers
all ecosystems in all regions of the world,
even though it is only one small part of peo-
ple and nature adapting together.
Whereas the mechanisms of ecosystem-
based adaptation are direct, the manage-
ment actions needed to maintain or improve
it may be complex (Vignola et al. 2009). For
instance, offshore coral reefs provide pro-
tection from rising sea levels and increas-
ing storm surges along many coastlines in
the world. But coral bleaching also affects
these reefs. Reef recovery after bleaching is
critical to the continued provision of coastal
protection services. After bleaching, reef re-
covery is a race between recolonizing cor-
als and the algae that grow on the dead reef
(McClanahan et al. 2001). Healthy popula-
tions of fish that eat the algae are required to
help the corals win the race and outcompete
algae in the battle to recolonize the dead
reef. Large parrotfish are among the most
effective consumers of algae, but they are

also the targets of fishing. Helping protect
enough parrotfish to let corals recolonize
the reef maintains coastal protection and in
the long run improves the overall fishery.
This example illustrates that sometimes
there are trade-offs inherent in achieving
ecosystem-based adaptation benefits. In
this case, a short-term reduction in fishing
is required to maintain both the long-term
health of the overall fishery and coastal pro-
tection (McClanahan et al. 2001). Establish-
ing mechanisms for benefits transfer across
time and between beneficiaries can there-
fore be critical to the success of ecosystem-
based adaptation.
Ecosystem-based adaptation approaches
are now being combined with engineering
approaches in “green-gray adaptation.” This
combination allows for the delivery of ben-
efits in the near and long terms, improving
utility through time and across generations
(Bierbaum et al. 2013). An example might
be the combination of upland forest pro-
tection with a downstream flood-retention
dam. The forest provides flood ameliora-
tion benefits for small and medium-sized
storms, whereas the retention dam provides
added capacity to cope with large storms.
In this setting, ecosystem-based adaptation
can provide part of the adaptation solution
while capturing many biodiversity benefits.
Although ecosystem-based adaptation is
just one dimension of people and nature
adapting together, it is a critically impor-
tant part of that spectrum, with the most
obvious benefits for people who live in
close proximity to ecosystems. As ecosys-
tem-based adaptation matures, the benefits
of capitalizing on the nexus of biodiversity
and climate change will become more ap-
parent, and the extension of this principle
to broader elements of people and nature
adapting together will emerge.
RU N N I NG OU T OF TIM E
A third example of mutual benefits from
addressing biodiversity and climate change
CHANGING THE BIOSPHERE 7
together comes from the global race to
protect the world’s last remaining natural
habitats. As global population increases, the
footprint needed to feed the planet expands.
As a result, the amount of natural habitat
remaining in the world is progressively dis-
appearing. The world’s population roughly
doubled between 1890 and 1950, doubled
again by 1970 and again by 2010 (Gonzalo
and Alfonseca 2016). The space required for
people and their material needs is rapidly
squeezing out space for natural habitats ev-
erywhere on the planet.
At the same time, the world is moving
to protect natural habitats. The area of na-
tional parks and other protected areas on
the planet has doubled approximately ev-
ery 40 years, until now about 17 percent
of the terrestrial surface of the planet is in
some form of protection (Costelloe et al.
2016). Although this protection ensures the
existence of remaining natural habitats, it
also reduces the amount of natural habi-
tat available for protection. So the amount
of remaining natural habitat available for
protection is a function of decreases due to
habitat destruction to provide for agricul-
ture and other human needs and increases
in land that is already protected.
Climate change and biodiversity come
together in this race to protect remain-
ing natural habitat, because these habitats
are critical for the survival of species at
the same time that they are critical stores
of carbon for climate stabilization. When
forests or other ecosystems are destroyed
for conversion to agriculture or cities, the
carbon contained in the vegetation often
enters the atmosphere during burning as-
sociated with land clearing. Burning con-
verts the carbon in vegetation to CO2 in
the atmosphere, a process that contributes
about one-third of the greenhouse gases
entering the atmosphere each year. So by
protecting natural habitats from destruc-
tion, we can both avoid the extinction of
species living in those habitats and make a
substantial contribution to constraining cli-
mate change.
8 OV E RV I E W: W H AT I S C L I M AT E C H A N G E B I O L O G Y ?
The time remaining to capture these dual
benefits is limited, however. Based on cur-
rent rates of habitat loss to human uses and
protection of habitat, the estimates are that
by 2050 or shortly thereafter, remaining
unprotected primary tropical habitat on the
planet will be gone (Hannah et al. 2018).
Including secondary, recovering habitats
extends the amount of time remaining to
protect habitat on the planet by 20 to 30
years, but by the end of this century the
window of opportunity for new protection
will be closed in both primary and second-
ary habitats.
After opportunities to protect large, land-
sparing protected areas have closed, there
will be opportunities to protect smaller
parcels of natural or seminatural habitat in
productive landscapes. These land-sharing
approaches are an important component
in preserving biodiversity and responding
to climate change, as is land restoration.
Restoration of ecosystems (Chapter 25) is
an important way to sequester carbon and
provide more habitat for biodiversity. But as
human populations continue to grow and
resource use intensifies, increasing pres-
sure will be put on productive landscapes
and degraded lands. The window for these
types of win-win activities for biodiversity
and climate change is closing as well un-
less we change our approach to planetary
management.
Across conservation mechanisms, the
scope for constructive action to have bio-
diversity conservation and climate change
mitigation and adaptation work together
will narrow as the century progresses. The
greatest opportunity to identify manage-
ment actions that help prevent extinctions
and biodiversity loss while helping people
adapt to climate change and reduce green-
house gas emissions is therefore right now.
AC T ION F OR A N I N T E GR AT E D F U T U R E
Staying within planetary boundaries, peo-
ple and nature adapting together, ecosys-
tem-based adaptation, and the limited time
for action are all examples of the challenges
and synergies operating at the nexus of cli-
mate change and biodiversity. Capitalizing
on opportunities and responding to those
challenges involve science, awareness, pol-
icy, and management action. Action on each
of these fronts is needed to realize a world
in which the relationship between people
and nature remains positive.
Science creates the understanding of
biodiversity-climate relationships needed
to generate awareness, policy, and manage-
ment action. The first sections of this book
are devoted to the insights that science has
already generated, from current observa-
tions to understanding of the past, and how
those past and present insights can be ap-
plied as we manage change. The chapters of
the later sections look at how we can under-
stand and manage the future.
Many of our existing insights come from
systems for which data are fortunately avail-
able. For instance, our understandings of
climate change responses of birds and but-
terflies are particularly well understood be-
cause these taxa are particularly well stud-
ied, allowing for distributional responses to
climate change to be tested. Despite a large
number of biological responses to climate,
however, these cases are not necessarily the
most important ones, either for people or
for biodiversity. There is an urgent need
to generate information about particularly
valuable systems and to generate policy and
management action based on those findings
(see Box 1.1). For example, how elephants
respond to climate change is a complex
mixture of habitat change due to climate
change, changing human land uses, and an
often-delicate balance in human-elephant
relations. Illegal hunting for the ivory trade
may be the major threat to elephants in the
near term, but assuming that the threat of
illegal trade can be addressed, in the long
term it is habitat access and connectivity that
are likely to determine the number of el-
ephants that can be sustained on the planet.
Scientific understanding of these and other

Box 1.1. Ecosystem Experiments Are Important
Ecosystem experiments can be of ma-
jor value in revealing potential climate
change impacts and mechanisms. With-
out them we would be left in the defen-
sive position of being able to understand
effects only as they occur rather than an-
ticipate them with preemptive policies as
well as adaptation measures.
In many senses ecosystem experi-
ments came of age with the Hubbard
Brook experiment (Holmes and Likens
2016), although there had been impor-
tant precursors, such as the Brookhaven
Irradiated Forest and the Luquillo Forest
of Puerto Rico (Odum 1970).
The first climate change experiment
was initiated by John Harte at the Rocky
Mountain Biological Laboratory, where
an alpine meadow has been, and con-
tinues to be, artificially warmed (Harte
and Shaw 1955), revealing changes in the
plant community and soil biota. Since
complex systems are needed to help guide
stewardship of the planet through an era of
unprecedented climate change.
Awareness is needed to complement sci-
entific understanding, both about climate
change itself and especially about how cli-
mate change and biodiversity interact. Be-
yond accepting the obvious—that climate
change is real and is having real impacts
today—the general public and policy mak-
ers alike need to be aware that the inter-
face of biodiversity and climate change is
complex and has a vitally important role to
play in shaping people’s relationship with
nature. The latter sections of this book ex-
plore what is needed in policy, awareness,
and management action.
Climate change biology is not just about
the extinction of polar bears, or even just
about extinction. Although the elevated risk
of extinction due to climate change is a
major international concern, there is much
CHANGING THE BIOSPHERE 9
climate change will also include changes
in precipitation, another experiment
has involved simulating such changes in
grasslands in northern California (Suttle,
Thomsen, and Power 2007).
Other relevant ecosystem experiments
have endeavored to understand the im-
pacts that higher CO2 levels might have
on ecosystems. Will there or will there
not be a “fertilization” effect, or if there
is one, will it be short-lived because the
ecosystem will encounter some other
limitation (e.g., a key nutrient)? There
have been a number of such experi-
ments and some are ongoing. One Oak
Ridge experiment showed a short-lived
fertilization response (Norby et al. 2010),
whereas others have not. The new free-air
concentration enrichment (FACE) experi-
ment in the central Amazon may reveal
a similar nutrient constraint (in that case
from phosphorous).
more at stake than just bringing along the
full complement of nature’s bounty with us
as we move into the future. At stake is the
relationship of all humans with nature, the
ability to capitalize on ecosystems to help
us adapt to climate change, and the ability
to move quickly to realize the remaining
scope for solutions before it is too late.
Policy is needed at the interface of these
two great environmental concerns, to avoid
having climate change biology and its
consequences for people fall between the
cracks. Since 1992, the world has had in-
ternational conventions that deal with bio-
diversity and with climate change. These
international conventions hold separate
meetings and are often administered by
separate agencies within individual coun-
tries. What has been lacking in the policy
world has been an ability to work between
and across the conventions. Mitigation and
adaptation of climate change have massive
10 OV E RV I E W: W H AT I S C L I M AT E C H A N G E B I O L O G Y ?
implications for avoiding extinctions and
conserving biodiversity, whereas main-
taining biodiversity has major implications
for managing the planet’s atmosphere and
helping people adjust their relationships
with nature and use ecosystems to adapt to
climate change.
Now that fundamental progress has
been made on each issue in its own right,
it is particularly critical that collaborative
work at the interface of climate change and
biodiversity occur. Just as in science at the
interface, policy at this interface is begin-
ning to emerge. For instance, the Green Cli-
mate Fund recognizes ecosystems as one of
the four pillars of climate adaptation.
Managers, scientists, policy makers, and
the public are not separate teams that lob
questions or insights back and forth to one
another. Rather, they need to form a single
integrated team in which scientific under-
standing and awareness drive policy that
supports sound management action. Because
of this need for integration, it is critical that
the climate change and biodiversity com-
munities work together for mutual under-
standing and for the evolution of awareness,
policy, and management that responds to the
full scope of the implications climate change
carries for ecosystems and biodiversity.
The role of climate change biology is to
provide an understanding of the responses
of the natural world to climate change. In-
sights from changes already being observed
(Part II) put us on alert about possible dis-
ruptions to the balance in the relationship
between people and nature. Understand-
ing how species and ecosystems have re-
sponded to past climate change, both in
deep time and in near time (Part III), pro-
vides a window onto how species and eco-
systems have responded in a fully natural
world, which we must now interpret, and
landscapes increasingly dominated by hu-
man land uses. Modeling and experimenta-
tion to estimate future change (Part IV) can
be combined with knowledge and models
of changes in human production to help in-
form policy and management actions that
maintain a healthy balance between people
and nature as the climate changes (Part V).
The combined power of these insights is to
give humanity the opportunity to create a
healthy relationship with nature of multiple
scales—from planetary boundaries to eco-
system-based adaptation—that will endure
as the climate changes.
R E FE R E NCE S
Bierbaum, Rosina, Joel B. Smith, Arthur Lee, Maria Blair,
Lynne Carter, F. Stuart Chapin, Paul Fleming, Susan
Ruffo, Missy Stults, Shannon McNeeley, Emily Wasley,
and Laura Verduzco. 2012. “A comprehensive review
of climate adaptation in the United States: More than
before, but less than needed.” Mitigation and Adaptation
Strategies for Global Change 18 (3, October): 361–406.
Costelloe, Brendan, Ben Collen, E. J. Milner-Gulland, Ian
D. Craigie, Louise McRae, Carlo Rondinini, and Em-
ily Nicholson. 2016. “Global biodiversity indicators
reflect the modeled impacts of protected area policy
change.” Conservation Letters 9 (1, January): 14–20.
Gonzalo, Julio A., and Manuel Alfonseca. 2016. “World
population growth.” World Population: Past, Present & Future
29.
Hannah, Lee, Patrick Roehrdanz, Guy Midgley, Jon
Lovett, Pablo Marquet, Richard Corlett, Brian Enquist,
and Wendy Foden. “Last call for tropical protected ar-
eas.” In review.
Harte, John, and Rebecca Shaw. 1995. “Shifting domi-
nance within a montane vegetation community:
Results from a climate-warming experiment.” Science
267: 876–880.
Holmes, Richard T., and Gene E. Likens. 2016. Hubbard
Brook: The Story of a Forest Ecosystem. Yale University Press.
Jones, Holly P., David G. Hole, and Erika S. Zavaleta.
2012. “Harnessing nature to help people adapt to cli-
mate change.” Nature Climate Change 2 (7): 504.
Kremen, Claire, John O. Niles, M. G. Dalton, Gretchen
C. Daily, Paul R. Ehrlich, John P. Fay, David Grewal,
and R. Philip Guillery. 2000. “Economic incentives
for rain forest conservation across scales.” Science 288
(5472): 1828–1832.
McClanahan, T., N. Muthiga, and S. Mangi. 2001. “Coral
and algal changes after the 1998 coral bleaching: In-
teraction with reef management and herbivores on
Kenyan reefs.” Coral Reefs 19 (4): 380–391.
Norby, Richard J., Jeffrey M. Warren, Colleen M. Iversen,
Belinda E. Medlyn, and Ross E. McMurtrie. 2010. “CO2
enhancement of forest productivity constrained by
limited nitrogen availability.” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 107: 19368–19373.
Another random document with
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performance, is as a whole only the intensification of this being-
human. Henceforward all that resists our sensations is not mere
resistance or thing or impression, as it is for animals and for children
also, but an expression as well. Not merely are things actually
contained in the world-around but also they possess meaning, as
phenomena in the world-view. Originally they possessed only a
relationship to men, but now there is also a relationship of men to
them. They have become emblems of his existence. And thus the
essence of every genuine—unconscious and inwardly necessary—
symbolism proceeds from the knowledge of death in which the
secret of space reveals itself. All symbolism implies a defensive; it is
the expression of a deep Scheu in the old double sense of the word,
[179]
and its form-language tells at once of hostility and of reverence.
Every thing-become is mortal. Not only peoples, languages, races
and Cultures are transient. In a few centuries from now there will no
more be a Western Culture, no more be German, English or French
than there were Romans in the time of Justinian. Not that the
sequence of human generations failed; it was the inner form of a
people, which had put together a number of these generations as a
single gesture, that was no longer there. The Civis Romanus, one of
the most powerful symbols of Classical being, had nevertheless, as
a form, only a duration of some centuries. But the primitive
phenomenon of the great Culture will itself have disappeared some
day, and with it the drama of world-history; aye, and man himself,
and beyond man the phenomenon of plant and animal existence on
the earth’s surface, the earth, the sun, the whole world of sun-
systems. All art is mortal, not merely the individual artifacts but the
arts themselves. One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last
bar of Mozart will have ceased to be—though possibly a coloured
canvas and a sheet of notes may remain—because the last eye and
the last ear accessible to their message will have gone. Every
thought, faith and science dies as soon as the spirits in whose
worlds their “eternal truths” were true and necessary are
extinguished. Dead, even, are the star-worlds which “appeared,” a
proper world to the proper eye, to the astronomers of the Nile and
the Euphrates, for our eye is different from theirs; and our eye in its
turn is mortal. All this we know. The beast does not know, and what
he does not know does not exist in his experienced world-around.
But if the image of the past vanishes, the longing to give a deeper
meaning to the passing vanishes also. And so it is with reference to
the purely human macrocosm that we apply the oft-quoted line,
which shall serve as motto for all that follows: Alles Vergängliche ist
nur ein Gleichnis.
From this we are led, without our noticing it, back to the space-
problem, though now it takes on a fresh and surprising form. Indeed,
it is as a corollary to these ideas that it appears for the first time as
capable of solution—or, to speak more modestly, of enunciation—
just as the time-problem was made more comprehensible by way of
the Destiny-idea. From the moment of our awakening, the fateful and
directed life appears in the phenomenal life as an experienced
depth. Everything extends itself, but it is not yet “space,” not
something established in itself but a self-extension continued from
the moving here to the moving there. World-experience is bound up
with the essence of depth (i.e., far-ness or distance). In the abstract
system of mathematics, “depth” is taken along with “length” and
“breadth” as a “third” dimension; but this trinity of elements of like
order is misleading from the outset, for in our impression of the
spatial world these elements are unquestionably not equivalents, let
alone homogeneous. Length and breadth are no doubt,
experientially, a unit and not a mere sum, but they are (the phrase is
used deliberately) simply a form of reception; they represent the
purely sensuous impression. But depth is a representation of
expression, of Nature, and with it begins the “world.”
This discrimination between the “third” and the other two
dimensions, so called, which needless to say is wholly alien to
mathematics, is inherent also in the opposition of the notions of
sensation and contemplation. Extension into depth converts the
former into the latter; in fact, depth is the first and genuine dimension
in the literal sense of the word.[180] In it the waking consciousness is
active, whereas in the others it is strictly passive. It is the symbolic
content of a particular order as understood by one particular Culture
that is expressed by this original fundamental and unanalysable
element. The experiencing of depth (this is a premiss upon which all
that follows is dependent) is an act, as entirely involuntary and
necessary as it is creative, whereby the ego keeps its world, so to
say, in subordination (zudiktiert erhält). Out of the rain of impressions
the ego fashions a formal unit, a cinematic picture, which as soon as
it is mastered by the understanding is subjected to law and the
causality principle; and therefore, as the projection of an individual
spirit it is transient and mortal.
There is no doubt, however reason may contest it, that this
extension is capable of infinite variety, and that it operates differently
not merely as between child and man, or nature-man and townsman,
or Chinese and Romans, but as between individual and individual
according as they experience their worlds contemplatively or alertly,
actively or placidly. Every artist has rendered “Nature” by line and by
tone, every physicist—Greek, Arabian or German—has dissected
“Nature” into ultimate elements, and how is it that they have not all
discovered the same? Because every one of them has had his own
Nature, though—with a naïveté that was really the salvation of his
world-idea and of his own self—every one believed that he had it in
common with all the rest. Nature is a possession which is saturated
through and through with the most personal connotations. Nature is
a function of the particular Culture.

III

Kant believed that he had decided the great question of whether

this a priori element was pre-existent or obtained by experience, by
his celebrated formula that Space is the form of perception which
underlies all world impressions. But the “world” of the careless child
and the dreamer undeniably possess this form in an insecure and
hesitant way,[181] and it is only the tense, practical, technical
treatment of the world-around—imposed on the free-moving being
which, unlike the lilies of the fields, must care for its life—that lets
sensuous self-extension stiffen into rational tridimensionality. And it
is only the city-man of matured Cultures that really lives in this
glaring wakefulness, and only for his thought that there is a Space
wholly divorced from sensuous life, “absolute,” dead and alien to
Time; and it exists not as a form of the intuitively-perceived but as a
form of the rationally-comprehended. There is no manner of doubt
that the “space” which Kant saw all around him with such
unconditional certainty when he was thinking out his theory, did not
exist in anything like so rigorous a form for his Carolingian ancestors.
Kant’s greatness consists in his having created the idea of a "form a
priori," but not in the application that he gave it. We have already
seen that Time is not a “form of perception” nor for that matter a form
at all—forms exist only in the extended—and that there is no
possibility of defining it except as a counter-concept to Space. But
there is the further question—does this word “space” exactly cover
the formal content of the intuitively-perceived? And beyond all this
there is the plain fact that the “form of perception” alters with
distance. Every distant mountain range is “perceived” as a scenic
plane. No one will pretend that he sees the moon as a body; for the
eye it is a pure plane and it is only by the aid of the telescope—i.e.
when the distance is artificially reduced—that it progressively obtains
a spatial form. Obviously, then, the “form of perception” is a function
of distance. Moreover, when we reflect upon anything, we do not
exactly remember the impressions that we received at the time, but
“represent to ourselves” the picture of a space abstracted from them.
But this representation may and does deceive us regarding the living
actuality. Kant let himself be misled; he should certainly not have
permitted himself to distinguish between forms of perception and
forms of ratiocination, for his notion of Space in principle embraced
both.[182]
Just as Kant marred the Time-problem by bringing it into relation
with an essentially misunderstood arithmetic and—on that basis—
dealing with a phantom sort of time that lacks the life-quality of
direction and is therefore a mere spatial scheme, so also he marred
the Space-problem by relating it to a common-place geometry.
It befell that a few years after the completion of Kant’s main work
Gauss discovered the first of the Non-Euclidean geometries. These,
irreproachably demonstrated as regards their own internal validity,
enable it to be proved that there are several strictly mathematical
kinds of three-dimensional extension, all of which are a priori certain,
and none of which can be singled out to rank as the genuine “form of
perception.”
 It was a grave, and in a contemporary of Euler and Lagrange an
unpardonable, error to postulate that the Classical school-geometry
(for it was that which Kant always had in mind) was to be found
reproduced in the forms of Nature around us. In moments of
attentive observation at very short range, and in cases in which the
relations considered are sufficiently small, the living impressions and
the rules of customary geometry are certainly in approximate
agreement. But the exact conformity asserted by philosophy can be
demonstrated neither by the eye nor by measuring-instruments. Both
these must always stop short at a certain limit of accuracy which is
very far indeed below that which would be necessary, say, for
determining which of the Non-Euclidean geometries is the geometry
of “empirical” Space.[183] On the large scales and for great distances,
where the experience of depth completely dominates the perception-
picture (for example, looking on a broad landscape as against a
drawing) the form of perception is in fundamental contradiction with
mathematics. A glance down any avenue shows us that parallels
meet at the horizon. Western perspective and the otherwise quite
different perspective of Chinese painting are both alike based on this
fact, and the connexion of these perspectives with the root-problems
of their respective mathematics is unmistakable.
Experiential Depth, in the infinite variety of its modes, eludes every
sort of numerical definition. The whole of lyric poetry and music, the
entire painting of Egypt, China and the West by hypothesis deny any
strictly mathematical structure in space as felt and seen, and it is
only because all modern philosophers have been destitute of the
smallest understanding of painting that they have failed to note the
contradiction. The “horizon” in and by which every visual image
gradually passes into a definitive plane, is incapable of any
mathematical treatment. Every stroke of a landscape painter’s brush
refutes the assertions of conventional epistemology.
As mathematical magnitudes abstract from life, the “three
dimensions” have no natural limits. But when this proposition
becomes entangled with the surface-and-depth of experienced
impression, the original epistemological error leads to another, viz.,
that apprehended extension is also without limits, although in fact
our vision only comprises the illuminated portion of space and stops
at the light-limit of the particular moment, which may be the star-
heavens or merely the bright atmosphere. The “visual” world is the
totality of light-resistances, since vision depends on the presence of
radiated or reflected light. The Greeks took their stand on this and
stayed there. It is the Western world-feeling that has produced the
idea of a limitless universe of space—a space of infinite star-systems
and distances that far transcends all optical possibilities—and this
was a creation of the inner vision, incapable of all actualization
through the eye, and, even as an idea, alien to and unachievable by
the men of a differently-disposed Culture.

IV

The outcome, then, of Gauss’s discovery, which completely altered

the course of modern mathematics,[184] was the statement that there
are severally equally valid structures of three-dimensional extension.
That it should even be asked which of them corresponds to actual
perception shows that the problem was not in the least
comprehended. Mathematics, whether or not it employs visible
images and representations as working conveniences, concerns
itself with systems that are entirely emancipated from life, time and
distance, with form-worlds of pure numbers whose validity—not fact-
foundation—is timeless and like everything else that is “known” is
known by causal logic and not experienced.
With this, the difference between the living intuition-way and the
mathematical form-language became manifest and the secret of
spatial becoming opened out.
As becoming is the foundation of the become, continuous living
history that of fulfilled dead nature, the organic that of the
mechanical, destiny that of causal law and the causally-settled, so
too direction is the origin of extension. The secret of Life
accomplishing itself which is touched upon by the word Time forms
the foundation of that which, as accomplished, is understood by (or
rather indicated to an inner feeling in us by) the word Space. Every
extension that is actual has first been accomplished in and with an
experience of depth, and what is primarily indicated by the word
Time is just this process of extending, first sensuously (in the main,
visually) and only later intellectually, into depth and distance, i.e., the
step from the planar semi-impression to the macrocosmically
ordered world-picture with its mysterious-manifest kinesis. We feel—
and the feeling is what constitutes the state of all-round awareness
in us—that we are in an extension that encircles us; and it is only
necessary to follow out this original impression that we have of the
worldly to see that in reality there is only one true “dimension” of
space, which is direction from one’s self outwards into the distance,
the “there” and the future, and that the abstract system of three
dimensions is a mechanical representation and not a fact of life. By
the depth-experience sensation is expanded into the world. We have
seen already that the directedness that is in life wears the badge of
irreversibility, and there is something of this same hall-mark of Time
in our instinctive tendency to feel the depth that is in the world uni-
directionally also—viz., from ourselves outwards, and never from the
horizon inwards. The bodily mobility of man and beast is disposed in
this sense. We move forward—towards the Future, nearing with
every step not merely our aim but our old age—and we feel every
backward look as a glance at something that is past, that has
already become history.[185]
If we can describe the basic form of the understood, viz., causality,
as destiny become rigid, we may similarly speak of spatial depth as
a time become rigid. That which not only man but even the beast
feels operative around him as destiny, he perceives by touching,
looking, listening, scenting as movement, and under his intense
scrutiny it stiffens and becomes causal. We feel that it is drawing
towards spring and we feel in advance how the spring landscape
expands around us; but we know that the earth as it moves in space
revolves and that the duration of spring consists of ninety such
revolutions of the earth, or days. Time gives birth to Space, but
Space gives death to Time.
Had Kant been more precise, he would, instead of speaking of the
“two forms of perception,” have called time the form of perception
and space the form of the perceived, and then the connexion of the
two would probably have revealed itself to him. The logician,
mathematician, or scientist in his moments of intense thought, knows
only the Become—which has been detached from the singular event
by the very act of meditating upon it—and true systematic space—in
which everything possesses the property of a mathematically-
expressible “duration.” But it is just this that indicates to us how
space is continuously “becoming.” While we gaze into the distance
with our senses, it floats around us, but when we are startled, the
alert eye sees a tense and rigid space. This space is; the principle of
its existing at all is that it is, outside time and detached from it and
from life. In it duration, a piece of perished time, resides as a known
property of things. And, as we know ourselves too as being in this
space, we know that we also have a duration and a limit, of which
the moving finger of our clock ceaselessly warns us. But the rigid
Space itself is transient too—at the first relaxation of our intellectual
tension it vanishes from the many-coloured spread of our world-
around—and so it is a sign and symbol of the most elemental and
powerful symbol, of life itself.
For the involuntary and unqualified realization of depth, which
dominates the consciousness with the force of an elemental event
(simultaneously with the awakening of the inner life), marks the
frontier between child and ... Man. The symbolic experience of depth
is what is lacking in the child, who grasps at the moon and knows as
yet no meaning in the outer world but, like the soul of primitive man,
dawns in a dreamlike continuum of sensations (in traumhafter
Verbundenheit mit allem Empfindungshaften hindämmert). Of course
the child is not without experience of the extended, of a very simple
kind, but there is no world-perception; distance is felt, but it does not
yet speak to the soul. And with the soul’s awakening, direction, too,
first reaches living expression—Classical expression in steady
adherence to the near-present and exclusion of the distant and
future; Faustian in direction-energy which has an eye only for the
most distant horizons; Chinese, in free hither-and-thither wandering
that nevertheless goes to the goal; Egyptian in resolute march down
the path once entered. Thus the Destiny-idea manifests itself in
every line of a life. With it alone do we become members of a
particular Culture, whose members are connected by a common
world-feeling and a common world-form derived from it. A deep
identity unites the awakening of the soul, its birth into clear existence
in the name of a Culture, with the sudden realization of distance and
time, the birth of its outer world through the symbol of extension; and
thenceforth this symbol is and remains the prime symbol of that life,
imparting to it its specific style and the historical form in which it
progressively actualizes its inward possibilities. From the specific
directedness is derived the specific prime-symbol of extension,
namely, for the Classical world-view the near, strictly limited, self-
contained Body, for the Western infinitely wide and infinitely profound
three-dimensional Space, for the Arabian the world as a Cavern. And
therewith an old philosophical problem dissolves into nothing: this
prime form of the world is innate in so far as it is an original
possession of the soul of that Culture which is expressed by our life
as a whole, and acquired in so far that every individual soul re-
enacts for itself that creative act and unfolds in early childhood the
symbol of depth to which its existence is predestined, as the
emerging butterfly unfolds its wings. The first comprehension of
depth is an act of birth—the spiritual complement of the bodily.[186] In
it the Culture is born out of its mother-landscape, and the act is
repeated by every one of its individual souls throughout its life-
course. This is what Plato—connecting it with an early Hellenic belief
—called anamnesis. The definiteness of the world-form, which for
each dawning soul suddenly is, derives meaning from Becoming.
Kant the systematic, however, with his conception of the form a
priori, would approach the interpretation of this very riddle from a
dead result instead of along a living way.
From now on, we shall consider the kind of extension as the prime
symbol of a Culture. From it we are to deduce the entire form-
language of its actuality, its physiognomy as contrasted with the
physiognomy of every other Culture and still more with the almost
entire lack of physiognomy in primitive man’s world-around. For now
the interpretation of depth rises to acts, to formative expression in
works, to the trans-forming of actuality, not now merely in order to
subserve necessities of life (as in the case of the animals) but above
all to create a picture out of extensional elements of all sorts
(material, line, colour, tone, motion)—a picture, often, that re-
emerges with power to charm after lost centuries in the world-picture
of another Culture and tells new men of the way in which its authors
understood the world.
 But the prime symbol does not actualize itself; it is operative
through the form-sense of every man, every community, age and
epoch and dictates the style of every life-expression. It is inherent in
the form of the state, the religious myths and cults, the ethical ideals,
the forms of painting and music and poetry, the fundamental notions
of each science—but it is not presented by these. Consequently, it is
not presentable by words, for language and words are themselves
derived symbols. Every individual symbol tells of it, but only to the
inner feelings, not to the understanding. And when we say, as
henceforth we shall say, that the prime-symbol of the Classical soul
is the material and individual body, that of the Western pure infinite
space, it must always be with the reservation that concepts cannot
represent the inconceivable, and thus at the most a significative
feeling may be evoked by the sound of words.
Infinite space is the ideal that the Western soul has always striven
to find, and to see immediately actualized, in its world-around; and
hence it is that the countless space-theories of the last centuries
possess—over and above all ostensible “results”—a deep import as
symptoms of a world-feeling. In how far does unlimited extension
underlie all objective things? There is hardly a single problem that
has been more earnestly pondered than this; it would almost seem
as if every other world-question was dependent upon the one
problem of the nature of space. And is it not in fact so—for us? And
how, then, has it escaped notice that the whole Classical world never
expended one word on it, and indeed did not even possess a
word[187] by which the problem could be exactly outlined? Why had
the great pre-Socratics nothing to say on it? Did they overlook in
their world just that which appears to us the problem of all problems?
Ought we not, in fact, to have seen long ago that the answer is in the
very fact of their silence? How is it that according to our deepest
feeling the “world” is nothing but that world-of-space which is the true
offspring of our depth-experience, and whose grand emptiness is
corroborated by the star-systems lost in it? Could a “world” of this
sense have been made even comprehensible to a Classical thinker?
In short, we suddenly discover that the “eternal problem” that Kant,
in the name of humanity, tackled with a passion that itself is
symbolic, is a purely Western problem that simply does not arise in
the intellects of other Cultures.
What then was it that Classical man, whose insight into his own
world-around was certainly not less piercing than ours, regarded as
the prime problem of all being? It was the problem of ἀρχή, the
material origin and foundation of all sensuously-perceptible things. If
we grasp this we shall get close to the significance of the fact—not
the fact of space, but the fact that made it a necessity of destiny for
the space-problem to become the problem of the Western, and only
the Western, soul.[188] This very spatiality (Räumlichkeit) that is the
truest and sublimest element in the aspect of our universe, that
absorbs into itself and begets out of itself the substantiality of all
things, Classical humanity (which knows no word for, and therefore
has no idea of, space) with one accord cuts out as the nonent, τὸ μὴ
ὄν, that which is not. The pathos of this denial can scarcely be
exaggerated. The whole passion of the Classical soul is in this act of
excluding by symbolic negation that which it would not feel as actual,
that in which its own existence could not be expressed. A world of
other colour suddenly confronts us here. The Classical statue in its
splendid bodiliness—all structure and expressive surfaces and no
incorporeal arrière-pensée whatsoever—contains without remainder
all that Actuality is for the Classical eye. The material, the optically
definite, the comprehensible, the immediately present—this list
exhausts the characteristics of this kind of extension. The Classical
universe, the Cosmos or well-ordered aggregate of all near and
completely viewable things, is concluded by the corporeal vault of
heaven. More there is not. The need that is in us to think of “space”
as being behind as well as before this shell was wholly absent from
the Classical world-feeling. The Stoics went so far as to treat even
properties and relations of things as “bodies.” For Chrysippus, the
Divine Pneuma is a “body,” for Democritus seeing consists in our
being penetrated by material particles of the things seen. The State
is a body which is made up of all the bodies of its citizens, the law
knows only corporeal persons and material things. And the feeling
finds its last and noblest expression in the stone body of the
Classical temple. The windowless interior is carefully concealed by
the array of columns; but outside there is not one truly straight line to
be found. Every flight of steps has a slight sweep outward, every
step relatively to the next. The pediment, the roof-ridge, the sides are
all curved. Every column has a slight swell and none stand truly
vertical or truly equidistant from one another. But swell and
inclination and distance vary from the corners to the centres of the
sides in a carefully toned-off ratio, and so the whole corpus is given
a something that swings mysterious about a centre. The curvatures
are so fine that to a certain extent they are invisible to the eye and
only to be “sensed.” But it is just by these means that direction in
depth is eliminated. While the Gothic style soars, the Ionic swings.
The interior of the cathedral pulls up with primeval force, but the
temple is laid down in majestic rest. All this is equally true as relating
to the Faustian and Apollinian Deity, and likewise of the fundamental
ideas of the respective physics. To the principles of position, material
and form we have opposed those of straining movement, force and
mass, and we have defined the last-named as a constant ratio
between force and acceleration, nay, finally volatilized both in the
purely spatial elements of capacity and intensity. It was an obligatory
consequence also of this way of conceiving actuality that the
instrumental music of the great 18th-Century masters should emerge
as a master-art—for it is the only one of the arts whose form-world is
inwardly related to the contemplative vision of pure space. In it, as
opposed to the statues of Classical temple and forum, we have
bodiless realms of tone, tone-intervals, tone-seas. The orchestra
swells, breaks, and ebbs, it depicts distances, lights, shadows,
storms, driving clouds, lightning flashes, colours etherealized and
transcendent—think of the instrumentation of Gluck and Beethoven.
“Contemporary,” in our sense, with the Canon of Polycletus, the
treatise in which the great sculptor laid down the strict rules of
human body-build which remained authoritative till beyond Lysippus,
we find the strict canon (completed by Stamitz about 1740) of the
sonata-movement of four elements which begins to relax in late-
Beethoven quartets and symphonies and, finally, in the lonely, utterly
infinitesimal tone-world of the “Tristan” music, frees itself from all
earthly comprehensibleness. This prime feeling of a loosing,
Erlösung, solution, of the Soul in the Infinite, of a liberation from all
material heaviness which the highest moments of our music always
awaken, sets free also the energy of depth that is in the Faustian
soul: whereas the effect of the Classical art-work is to bind and to
bound, and the body-feeling secures, brings back the eye from
distance to a Near and Still that is saturated with beauty.
 V
Each of the great Cultures, then, has arrived at a secret language
of world-feeling that is only fully comprehensible by him whose soul
belongs to that Culture. We must not deceive ourselves. Perhaps we
can read a little way into the Classical soul, because its form-
language is almost the exact inversion of the Western; how far we
have succeeded or can ever succeed is a question which
necessarily forms the starting-point of all criticism of the
Renaissance, and it is a very difficult one. But when we are told that
probably (it is at best a doubtful venture to meditate upon so alien an
expression of Being) the Indians conceived numbers which
according to our ideas possessed neither value nor magnitude nor
relativity, and which only became positive and negative, great or
small units in virtue of position, we have to admit that it is impossible
for us exactly to re-experience what spiritually underlies this kind of
number. For us, 3 is always something, be it positive or negative; for
the Greeks it was unconditionally a positive magnitude, +3; but for
the Indian it indicates a possibility without existence, to which the
word “something” is not yet applicable, outside both existence and
non-existence which are properties to be introduced into it. +3, -3, ⅓,
are thus emanating actualities of subordinate rank which reside in
the mysterious substance (3) in some way that is entirely hidden
from us. It takes a Brahmanic soul to perceive these numbers as
self-evident, as ideal emblems of a self-complete world-form; to us
they are as unintelligible as is the Brahman Nirvana, for which, as
lying beyond life and death, sleep and waking, passion, compassion
and dispassion and yet somehow actual, words entirely fail us. Only
this spirituality could originate the grand conception of nothingness
as a true number, zero, and even then this zero is the Indian zero for
which existent and non-existent are equally external designations.[189]
Arabian thinkers of the ripest period—and they included minds of
the very first order like Alfarabi and Alkabi—in controverting the
ontology of Aristotle, proved that the body as such did not
necessarily assume space for existence, and deduced the essence
of this space—the Arabian kind of extension, that is—from the
characteristic of “one’s being in a position.”
But this does not prove that as against Aristotle and Kant they
were in error or that their thinking was muddled (as we so readily say
of what our own brains cannot take in). It shows that the Arabian
spirit possessed other world-categories than our own. They could
have rebutted Kant, or Kant them, with the same subtlety of proof—
and both disputants would have remained convinced of the
correctness of their respective standpoints.
When we talk of space to-day, we are all thinking more or less in
the same style, just as we are all using the same languages and
word-signs, whether we are considering mathematical space or
physical space or the space of painting or that of actuality, although
all philosophizing that insists (as it must) upon putting an identity of
understanding in the place of such kinship of significance-feeling
must remain somewhat questionable. But no Hellene or Egyptian or
Chinaman could re-experience any part of those feelings of ours,
and no artwork or thought-system could possibly convey to him
unequivocally what “space” means for us. Again, the prime
conceptions originated in the quite differently constituted soul of the
Greek, like ἀρχή, ὕλη, μορφἠ, comprise the whole content of his
world. But this world is differently constituted from ours. It is, for us,
alien and remote. We may take these words of Greek and translate
them by words of our own like “origin,” “matter” and “form,” but it is
mere imitation, a feeble effort to penetrate into a world of feeling in
which the finest and deepest elements, in spite of all we can do,
remain dumb; it is as though one tried to set the Parthenon
sculptures for a string quartet, or cast Voltaire’s God in bronze. The
master-traits of thought, life and world-consciousness are as
manifold and different as the features of individual men; in those
respects as in others there are distinctions of “races” and “peoples,”
and men are as unconscious of these distinctions as they are
ignorant of whether “red” and “yellow” do or do not mean the same
for others as for themselves. It is particularly the common symbolic
of language that nourishes the illusion of a homogeneous
constitution of human inner-life and an identical world-form; in this
respect the great thinkers of one and another Culture resemble the
colour-blind in that each is unaware of his own condition and smiles
at the errors of the rest.
And now I draw the conclusions. There is a plurality of prime
symbols. It is the depth-experience through which the world
becomes, through which perception extends itself to world. Its
signification is for the soul to which it belongs and only for that soul,
and it is different in waking and dreaming, acceptance and scrutiny,
as between young and old, townsmen and peasant, man and
woman. It actualizes for every high Culture the possibility of form
upon which that Culture’s existence rests and it does so of deep
necessity. All fundamentals words like our mass, substance,
material, thing, body, extension (and multitudes of words of the like
order in other culture-tongues) are emblems, obligatory and
determined by destiny, that out of the infinite abundance of world-
possibilities evoke in the name of the individual Culture those
possibilities that alone are significant and therefore necessary for it.
None of them is exactly transferable just as it is into the experiential
living and knowing of another Culture. And none of these prime
words ever recurs. The choice of prime symbol in the moment of the
Culture-soul’s awakening into self-consciousness on its own soil—a
moment that for one who can read world-history thus contains
something catastrophic—decides all.
Culture, as the soul’s total expression “become” and perceptible in
gestures and works, as its mortal transient body, obnoxious
to law, number and causality:
As the historical drama, a picture in the whole picture of world-
history:
As the sum of grand emblems of life, feeling and
understanding:
—this is the language through which alone a soul can tell of what it
undergoes.
The macrocosm, too, is a property of the individual soul; we can
never know how it stands with the soul of another. That which is
implied by “infinite space,” the space that “passeth all
understanding,” which is the creative interpretation of depth-
experience proper and peculiar to us men of the West—the kind of
extension that is nothingness to the Greeks, the Universe to us—
dyes our world in a colour that the Classical, the Indian and the
Egyptian souls had not on their palettes. One soul listens to the
world-experience in A flat major, another in F minor; one apprehends
it in the Euclidean spirit, another in the contrapuntal, a third in the
Magian spirit. From the purest analytical Space and from Nirvana to
the most somatic reality of Athens, there is a series of prime symbols
each of which is capable of forming a complete world out of itself.
And, as the idea of the Babylonian or that of the Indian world was
remote, strange and elusive for the men of the five or six Cultures
that followed, so also the Western world will be incomprehensible to
the men of Cultures yet unborn.
 CHAPTER VI

MAKROKOSMOS
II

APOLLINIAN, FAUSTIAN AND MAGIAN SOUL

 CHAPTER VI

MAKROKOSMOS
 II
APOLLINIAN, FAUSTIAN AND MAGIAN SOUL

Henceforth we shall designate the soul of the Classical Culture,

which chose the sensuously-present individual body as the ideal
type of the extended, by the name (familiarized by Nietzsche) of the
Apollinian. In opposition to it we have the Faustian soul, whose
prime-symbol is pure and limitless space, and whose “body” is the
Western Culture that blossomed forth with the birth of the
Romanesque style in the 10th century in the Northern plain between
the Elbe and the Tagus. The nude statue is Apollinian, the art of the
fugue Faustian. Apollinian are: mechanical statics, the sensuous cult
of the Olympian gods, the politically individual city-states of Greece,
the doom of Œdipus and the phallus-symbol. Faustian are: Galileian
dynamics, Catholic and Protestant dogmatics, the great dynasties of
the Baroque with their cabinet diplomacy, the destiny of Lear and the
Madonna-ideal from Dante’s Beatrice to the last line of Faust II. The
painting that defines the individual body by contours is Apollinian,
that which forms space by means of light and shade is Faustian—
this is the difference between the fresco of Polygnotus and the oil
painting of Rembrandt. The Apollinian existence is that of the Greek
who describes his ego as soma and who lacks all idea of an inner
development and therefore all real history, inward and outward; the
Faustian is an existence which is led with a deep consciousness and
introspection of the ego, and a resolutely personal culture evidenced
in memoirs, reflections, retrospects and prospects and conscience.
And in the time of Augustus, in the countries between Nile and Tigris,
Black Sea and South Arabia, there appears—aloof but able to speak
to us through forms borrowed, adopted and inherited—the Magian
soul of the Arabian Culture with its algebra, astrology and alchemy,
its mosaics and arabesques, its caliphates and mosques, and the