Preface 008

| Part 1 |
Kapok Tree 013
Balsam fir 049
Sabal Palm Tree 084
Red maple 114
Intermission: Samjidak Tree 132

| Part 2 |
Hazelnut 141
Redwood and Ponderosa Pine 162
Interlude: Maple 201

| Part 3 |
Poplar tree 211
Soybean tree 244
Olive Tree 278
Island Pine 312

Acknowledgements 327
Reference 332
Search 363

“It is difficult to find a recent book that describes nature from a scientific perspective as eloquent, persuasive, and rich as this one.”

Science Friday, Brain Pickings: The Best Science Books of 2017

The return of our time's greatest natural literature writer!
This is the second book by David George Haskell, whose "Seeing the Universe Through the Forest" was selected as a National Academy of Sciences Best Book and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
The author, who is considered one of the "best nature literature writers of our time," observed and recorded twelve species of trees from around the world, including the Amazon rainforest, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone, Scotland, and East Asian Japan.
It transcends time and space, describing humanity, nature, society, history, and philosophical insights in beautiful sentences.
The author's insight that humans and nature form a vast interconnected network throughout the origins and history of life leads to the search for a new ethics that transcends the individualism, ethical nihilism, and dichotomy of human versus nature in our time.
It offers poetic and elegant prose, as well as calm and meticulous scientific inquiry, and dazzling insights into humanity and nature.

Beyond the ecological record of trees, this book contains insights into humans and nature, history and culture, society and art.

This book, which was written over several years of observations and records of twelve species of trees from around the world, including the kapok trees of the Yasuni Ecological Reserve in Ecuador, the sabal palms growing on the sandy beaches of the sea, the hazel trees of Scotland, the poplars of the Denver River, the bean pear trees of downtown Manhattan, the olive trees of Israel, and the Japanese pine, is filled with the calm and keen eye of a biologist and a poetic sensibility.
The author, who “looks at nature with an open mind like a Zen monk rather than a scientist testing hypotheses” (The New York Times), climbed a ladder into the canopy of kapok trees to examine them, held a magnifying glass to a dead tree, and attached electronic equipment to a Manhattan street tree to listen to its sounds. What he discovered was a vast web of life.
Trees do not exist in isolation, but form a network of life where bacteria, fungi, plants, animals, microorganisms, and humans communicate with each other.
This web of life has continued from the birth of life hundreds of thousands of years ago to the present, forming a global community that crosses tropical rainforests, boreal forests, deserts, and temperate forests.
Naturally, humans also occupy a place in this web of life.
The charcoal from the prehistoric ovens of the Japanese cedar trees bears traces of the intimate intertwining of trees with human survival; the olive trees of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone have a history of coexistence with humans through numerous political conflicts and disputes since the Roman era; and the Japanese pine bonsai trees embody the artistic desire and culture of coexisting with nature.
The author goes beyond simply talking about the ecology of trees to discover a philosophy about history, culture, and humanity and nature.

Are humans the destroyers of nature, and is nature a natural space outside the human community?
Deep insights into the relationship between humans and nature

The Great Web of Life makes us reconsider the many problems left behind by the dichotomy between humans and nature.
Indeed, what are humans and what is nature in the web of life? Are human activities like destroying the Amazon rainforest for genetic development (see the chapter "Kapok Tree") and polluting the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, carbon crystals formed over billions of years (see the chapter "Hazel Tree"), completely unrelated to nature, which we must "protect" and preserve as a "wild area"? Is nature a place polluted by unnatural human activities, a realm that exists "outside" the human community? Are the cities built by human civilization destroying biodiversity and disrupting the web of life?
What the author observed in the bean trees of Manhattan and the poplar trees of Denver was far from this.
As humans are natural, cities are also natural.
Rather, “if we think of cities as unnatural, then rivers in the city center move away from their natural state.
It's like it's okay to pour out the wastewater since it's already been 'disturbed'.
“The end result of ‘natural’ sanctuaries from which humans are excluded is an industrial dump.” (pp. 230-231) The concrete sidewalks of cities and the pollutants spewing out of factories are “as natural as the rustling of maple leaves, the calls of baby woodchucks, or the nests of tri-colored swallows, in that they all stem from the evolved mental capacities of primates.” (p. 232) Furthermore, “the high biodiversity of rural areas is due to the presence of cities, and if the world’s urban population moves into rural areas, native birds and plants will be devastated.”
Forests will be cut down, streams will turn muddy, and carbon dioxide levels will soar.' (pp. 254-255) At first glance, the author's argument about nature's great web of life seems contradictory.
However, this is a realistic perspective necessary to find solutions to contemporary environmental problems, as evidenced by the trees living in urban human communities, and also the paradoxical consequences of the dichotomous view of nature versus humans.
Nature exists for us humans as well, and human communities do not exist outside of nature.

An Ethics of Belonging Beyond Biological Atomism, Individualistic Solitude, and Ethical Nihilism
The 'human versus nature dichotomy' lies at the core of many philosophies of our time.
Biological atomism, individualism, and ethical nihilism are based on this very dichotomy.
But from a biological perspective, this dichotomy is nothing more than an 'illusion'.
This illusion is shattered by calm and meticulous biological observation, leading to an exploration of what humans can do to creatively restore the biological web.
“If we are made of the same stuff as all other living things, if our bodies arose from the same natural laws, then human actions are also natural processes.” (p. 190) Therefore, ‘the destruction and extinction of nature caused by volcanic eruptions during the Eocene is no different from climate change caused by human activities.’ Environmentalists who are worried and concerned about climate change will be puzzled.
Of course, this argument does not justify human-caused climate change or the destruction of nature caused by human activities.
Nor does it lead to ethical nihilism, where ethics and morality are merely 'illusions' created by the human nervous system.
Rather, the author argues that the idea that humans form a vast network with other living beings can serve as a starting point for discovering a "new ethics of belonging" that transcends ethical nihilism or individualistic loneliness (pp. 190-198). Because humans exist within the network of life and are members of nature, they must move beyond all actions that break and destroy the network of life and instead create a creative network of life.