“Biophilia Hypothesis”
The concept that humans have a biological need to connect with nature has been called biophilia, from the Greek, meaning love of life and the living world. The concept was made popular by the American biologist E. O. Wilson in 1984. He believed that, because we evolved in nature, we have a biological need to connect with it. We love nature because we learned to love the things that helped us to survive. We feel comfortable in nature because that is where we have lived for most of our life on earth. We are genetically determined to love the natural world. It is in our DNA.
And this affinity for the natural world is fundamental to our health. Contact with nature is as vital to our well-being as regular exercise and a healthy diet.
‘Our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents, wrote Wilson. We are ‘hard-wired’ to affiliate with the natural world – and just as our health improves when we are in it, so our health suffers when we are divorced from it. (page 14)

~Step into Stillness~