human experience – a veneration of nature as foundational to our lives, from early pantheistic theories which imagine that spirits inhabit trees, woodland brooks, stones, and the like, through religions that worship the Earth Mother or deities (like the Inca goddess Pachamama), to the present-day idea of ‘Gaia’ – scientist James Lovelock’s contention that we should regard the planet and all life on earth as a single, self-regulating ecosystem.
