The phrase "the more-than-human world" entered the ecological lexicon in 1996 through the writings of David Abram, a philosopher and anthropologist who seeks to bridge phenomenology with environmental concerns. Born in 1957, Abram has spent decades exploring the connection between human cognition, linguistic structures, and the sentient landscapes that surround and sustain contemporary communities.
Early Influences and Magic
Raised in the suburbs of New York City, Abram developed an interest in perception through sleight-of-hand magic, which he began practicing in Baldwin, Long Island. By 1976, he worked as a house magician at Alice's Restaurant in the Berkshires while attending Wesleyan University. His travels as an itinerant street magician throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia included studying with indigenous medicine persons in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Nepal. He graduated summa cum laude from Wesleyan in 1980.
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Abram pursued studies in natural history and ethnoecology while engaging with Native communities in the Southwest Desert and the Pacific Northwest. In 1984, while at the Yale School of the Environment, he authored "The Perceptual Implications of Gaia," which connected him to Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock. He later earned a doctorate from Stony Brook University in 1993, focusing on how language shapes human sensory experience of the environment.
Philosophical Contributions
Abram is known for advocating a modern reappraisal of animism, rooting cognition in the human body and affirming an entanglement with the sentience of other animals and bioregions. His work draws upon the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and is influenced by figures such as James Hillman, Ivan Illich, and Gary Snyder. As the founder of the Alliance for Wild Ethics, he examines the cultural roots of ecological disarray. He is currently a senior visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School.
The Spell of the Sensuous
His 1996 book, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, received the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction and influenced the development of ecopsychology, ecophenomenology, and ecolinguistics. By using the term "more-than-human world," Abram aimed to shift the conceptual divide between humanity and nature, positioning human culture as a subset of a broader, encompassing earthly reality. His later work, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, was published in 2010.
Fast facts
- Born: 1957
- Nationality: United States
- Education: Wesleyan University, Yale School of the Environment, Stony Brook University
- Founder: Alliance for Wild Ethics
- Notable work: The Spell of the Sensuous (1996)
- Notable work: Becoming Animal (2010)
- Current position: Senior visiting scholar, Harvard Divinity School
Questions readers ask
What is the more-than-human world?
Coined by Abram in 1996, the term refers to the entirety of earthly nature, signifying that human culture is a subset sustained and surrounded by the wider living world.
How did magic influence his philosophy?
Abram's background as an itinerant magician sparked his initial fascination with perception, leading him to explore how sensory experience and cognitive habits shape our relationship with the environment.
Achievements
- Fields: bioethics
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