November 28th 2025, is the release date for my new book entitled ‘Life on Earth’ (Past, Present and Future)’ initially in ebook form, later in paperback form. It is currently available on Amazon and other book sale outlets. For those considering purchasing a copy, I last week published the back page blurb on this blog, to provide an overview of its contents.  This week I publish  the foreword which gives more detail on how I have approached the question of the increasingly contradictory relationship between the human species and all the other forms of life on earth, millions of which are both invisible to the naked eye, missing from mainstream anthropocentric climate discourses, yet are vital to the future of life on earth.

“FOREWORD

As far as we humans can ascertain, life as it appears on our planet, is an occurrence which is an exception within the entire universe. This is both with regard to the huge expanse of our solar system and within the even larger expanse of the Milky Way Galaxy of which the huge solar system is merely a small part. Moreover, the Galaxy in which our solar system resides appears to be just one of many millions if not billions of other Galaxies within the vast expanse of inter-stellar space. Clearly, there is as yet, no tangible evidence that life in any form, let alone the forms which exist on our planet, exists beyond the outer gaseous boundaries of the planet we call earth.

Yet life, as it exists in its many various forms and myriad of shapes on earth, is actually not exceptional. Life is everywhere. Life is under our nails, on our skin, in our mouths, within our stomachs, up our noses and even living in our butts. In the form of microscopic cells, organic life forms make up our skin, and are inside and outside of our bones, our body organs and tissues, blood, urine and faeces. Furthermore, life in the form of plants assisted by pollinating, wind, insects and animals, captures the suns energy and transforms this and other inorganic gasses and minerals into the air we breathe and the food we eat. We humans could quite literally not exist without the ceaseless activity of millions of life forms both symbiotic and non-symbiotic within us, upon us and all those billions of forms existing outside us.

Life in some form or other also exists in the coldest, the hottest, the driest, the wettest, the most acid, the most alkaline, the highest and deepest parts of the planet, whether on land or in the sea. Indeed, it is estimated that life on earth has existed in single celled bacterial forms for billions of years, and in multicellular forms for multiple millions of years. On planet earth, life is literally almost everywhere. Consequently, in contrast to what we know of the universe beyond the planet earth, ‘life on earth’ cannot be regarded as exceptional at all. Indeed ‘life on earth’ is normal, quite routine and ubiquitous.

Yet despite this fact and in spite of the fact that humanity is totally dependent upon the whole interdependent chain of life forms on earth, from the smallest cells and microorganisms, to the largest plants, insects and animals, a problematic trend was set in motion during the previous five or six thousand years of human existence. Sections of the human species during a particular historic part of its evolution came to see themselves as so exceptional that they needed only their own skills and intelligence to survive and prosper. This trend was a form of anthropocentric exceptional arrogance and conceit which was (and still is) totally at odds with the actual existential dependency of humanity upon every other aspect of organic and inorganic life on earth.

So human life on earth is in a very real sense, the opposite of the anthropocentric ideologies humanity has created concerning its own exclusive and ‘privileged’ place on earth. Although the rest of life on earth is not at all dependent upon humanity to survive, humanity is certainly totally dependent upon the rest of the interconnected and inter-dependent organic/inorganic support functions of life on earth as a whole. Despite the concept of Gaia, (life as a whole planetary system) being suggested in ancient Greece and re-stated in the 20th century, we humans are only just beginning to understand that we absolutely need the complex inter-connected web of life to exist. Minute life forms harness energy from chemicals or the sun and convert this energy into forms suitable for human and animal life to process internally in order to continue to exist and to reproduce.

Therefore, although humanity, as a life-form species, is far from exceptional in this bio-chemical dependency regard, this realisation has yet to thoroughly sink in and be sensibly acted upon. Moreover, the exceptional and narcissistic, short-sighted self-regard and ecological disregard of some human beings reached a tipping point in the 20th and 21st centuries. It was then that some people were encouraged to not only damage and destroy each other by the millions, in two world wars and do the same to most other forms of life on earth, but to do so in pursuit of personal or collective acquisition and satisfaction.

This damage and destruction was done at the most extreme levels to plant species (by forest and prairie clearances), to insect and animal species (by chemical dumping and spraying) and to the human species at the levels now known as crimes against humanity and genocide. In the course of examining the information and evidence presented in the following chapters of this study, the biological origins and organisational impetus for this myopic process of human, self-conceit, self-destruction and ecological devastation will also be explored.”

Roy Ratcliffe (November 28 2025)

ebook copies can be obtained from Amazon. Paper back copies from Amazon; Browns Books (www.browns bfs.co.uk); Bookshop.org and Ebay.