Tyler Volk

Tyler Volk is a Professor in the departments of Environmental Studies and Biology at New York University.

His areas of interest include principles of form and function in systems (described as metapatterns), environmental challenges to global prosperity, CO2 and global change, biosphere theory and the role of life in earth dynamics.

Tyler Volk has authored seven books, most recently, Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be

"Quarks to Culture explores the rhythm within what Tyler Volk calls the "grand sequence," a series of levels of sizes and innovations building from elementary quanta to globalized human civilization. The key is "combogenesis," the building-up from combination and integration to produce new things with innovative relations. Themes unfold in how physics and chemistry led to biological evolution, and biological evolution to cultural evolution. Volk develops an inclusive natural philosophy that brings clarity to our place in the world, a roadmap for our minds."

His previous books include: CO2 Rising: The World’s Greatest Environmental Challenge,What is Death?: A Scientist Looks at the Cycle of Life,Gaia's Body: Toward a Physiology of Earth, and Metapatterns: Across Space, Time, and Mind

Volk was formerly an active proponent of the Gaia hypothesis. A 1989 study, co-authored by Volk, published in the journal Nature asserts that without the cooling effects of living things, Earth would be 80 degrees Fahrenheit warmer.

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