September 9, 2025
Online at 5:30 - 7pm PDT
Join Dr. Chantal Noa Forbes from the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion (ESR) program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in thinking through arboreality with Dr. David Macauley and Dr. Laura Pustarfi.
The Wisdom of Trees is a unique edited volume that applies philosophical thinking to trees, edited by Dr. David Macauley and Dr. Laura Pustarfi, an ESR adjunct and alumna. This book examines the new and emerging understanding of trees in science and society through a series of sixteen diverse essays by leading scholars and writers, including CIIS alumni Dr. Kimberly Carfore and Dr. Sam Mickey, and CIIS faculty, Dr. Don Johnson and Dr. Matthew Segall.
Contributors demonstrate how these developments encourage a revisioning of philosophical thought and a more sustainable relationship with trees and forests—a reconceptualization with significant ecological and social implications for addressing deforestation, biodiversity loss, and the climate emergency. The interdisciplinary contributions in this collection explore the multifaceted dimensions of arboreality, examining subjects such as time, mind, truth, memory, being, beauty, goodness, silence, wisdom, personhood, and death. The volume engages in a conversation about why trees matter, how they can be best protected, our obligations to them, and even what they are. Most of the chapters are informed by natural history or ecological science, and many share a particular emphasis on continental philosophy and the environmental humanities.