Fritjof Capra is a scientist and science writer, as well as an environmental educator and activist. He co-founded the Center for Ecoliteracy in 1994 and often teaches at Schumacher College, an international center for ecological studies in the UK. He was trained as a physicist and from 1965-85 did research in theoretical high energy physics. In his first book, The Tao of Physics (1975), he discussed the change in our worldview that was brought about by the conceptual revolution in physics — a change from the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton to a holistic and ecological view. Subsequently, his research interests shifted from physics to the life sciences, and over the past 30 years he has developed a conceptual framework that integrates four dimensions of life: the biological, the cognitive, the social, and the ecological. He summarizes these ideas in The Web of Life (1996), The Hidden Connections (2002), and The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision (2014, co-authored with Pier Luigi Luisi). photo credit: Karl Grossman.