Stephan Harding

“We must really feel that Gaia is alive – a great mysterious, animate being. We must understand that Gaia has purpose and that all the evolution that has happened up to this point is about something. That it is not just chance or blind natural selection, but that there is something deeply teleological, meaningful and purposeful about what is happening on the Earth […] you could say that the whole Earth is a great consciousness. It’s not outside us; we’re inside it.”

- Stephan in an interview with The Gaia Foundation, December 2018.

Dr Stephan Harding (08/07/53 - 03/09/24) was a scientist, ecologist, author and teacher who specialised in Gaia theory, Deep Ecology and a holistic approach to science. One of the founding members of the pioneering Schumacher College, where he led the MSc Holistic Science for over two decades, Stephan advocated for relating to life through engaging with feeling, intuition, embodied sense-making and systems thinking. Through this way of seeing, we are able to recognise the sentience and consciousness of Gaia (Mother Earth) and the Cosmos, and take action in the knowledge that we are part of - rather than separate from - the wellbeing of our beautiful planet.