Thomas Nail's "Theory of the Earth"

Thomas Nail is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. He is the author of The Figure of the Migrant (2015) and Being and Motion (2018).

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Theory of the Earth, and reported the following:

From page 99:

Energy continually flows into a region from the periphery and then releases a portion of that energy outward. It then re-accumulates enough energy to repeat the process. This is what I am calling kinetic reproduction. In physics, it is called a “self-organized” or “dissipative” system.

Page 99 of Theory of the Earth is about how earth systems are “metastable” systems.

I think Page 99 is a better than average synthesis of the book compared to more than half the pages in the book.

Page 99 gives a general description of how metastable states emerge and reproduce. The focus of page 99 is on atmospheric systems, but its definition is also broad enough to describe how all Earth systems work. A metastable system absorbs energy and releases it at a relatively steady rate to maintain its existence. A whirlpool is a metastable state that persists as long as energy moves through it at a specific rate. The Earth is a metastable system composed of metastable systems. This is one of the critical interpretive ideas of Theory of the Earth. The book uses dynamic systems theory, new materialist philosophy, and thermodynamics to think about the origins of the cosmos, Earth’s history, the origin of life, evolution, and the ethics of climate change.

Visit Thomas Nail's blog.

--Marshal Zeringue