Biophilia
Rethinking the human relationship with information
February 10, 2024 - Volume 2, Issue 6
Cite as: Coleman, Anita S. (2024, Feb. 10). Biophilia: Rethinking the human relationship with information. Infophilia, a positive psychology of information, 2 (6).
Welcome to Infophilia, a weekly newsletter about the human love of information and connections. This is one of the places where I'm pioneering the foundations of a positive and evolutionary psychology of information. If you’re a new subscriber, I’m glad to have you here, welcome back everyone else! As always, hope you are all doing well and thanks for reading!
The early computer,
Was a humongous creature
It took a pretty big room, to make it zoom
But now a computer can rocket,
Nestled in my hip pocket.
- Madhav Gadgil [i]
The competition for human attention can be reduced, albeit simplistically, to one between biology and technology.
Biophilia, a human personality trait, was first described by Erich Fromm in 1973 and developed by Edmund Wilson in 1984. [ii, iii] Biophilia literally translates to a love of life, and includes a love for living creatures, Nature, and the environment. [iv]
Modern life has removed most of us from the natural environment in which our ancestors evolved but the biophilic tendency remains (example, love of pets).
Scientific evidence for biophilia is said to have been found when it was confirmed that biophobia – fear of some living things such as snakes - was inherited. [v]
Modern biophobia appears as alienation, a lack of connection with the natural world. People are disconnected and don’t much care about living things: nature, animals or plants. Biophobia makes people indifferent to the loss of species and the health of ecosystems.
Biophilia is not only an innately human attraction to life but also to complexity as evidenced by the phenomenal growth of information technologies and the knowledge industry or knowledge economy (aka Information Age, Information Society).