The biologist, Edward O. Wilson, coined the term “biophelia” to describe the love he has, and that all curious naturalists have, (indeed, that all people have), for exploring the human bond with other species. He writes that “humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.”
Wilson grasps wonderfully the interplay of niches and beings, of shared landmarks and pathways, and the gifts which death and decay promise to life and beauty. In short, he understands ecosystems. But, like all scientists he concentrates on the matter of landscapes, rather than the qualia of ecosystems. Matter, after all, can be measured, while qualia can’t. More than most, however, Wilson is poet enough to capture the qualiadelic essence of ecosystems, which can only be understood as something un-nameable and indescribable, somehow invisibly holding all those biotic landscapes together.
Wilson, though immersed in the smallest details (he was an ant man, a myrmecologist), is really a big-picture visionary. Good theories, like Wilson’s Island Biogeographies, or ecosystems, gather together the sum of its details and makes them into a greater whole, much as the hexagon gathers together frozen water molecules and turns them into a snowflake. That is what qualia does — it gathers matter together into a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts.
Although Wilson, in his days in the field, focused on the material relationships of ants, it is clear that he also had a keen eye for the qualia they shared with others in their landscape. Ants, plants, insects and microorganisms, all have qualiadelic relationships, and they evolve, not so much by competing together for matter, but by cooperating together through shared qualia.
Animals and plants consciously ritual with shared qualia (think of how the color red creates a relationship between hummingbirds and the flowering plants that attract them), thus evolving together into their specialized and enduring niches. These are qualiadelic relationships, and scientists have them too. Scientists share qualia (hypotheses), and consciously ritual with them (experiment), and scientists and science evolve and specialize.
Thus, if the wise, old biophiliac would point some of his students in the direction of qualiaphila, I think it would prove fruitful and elevate our concept of life.