Download or read book City As Superorganism written by Bernard Barnes and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-05-27 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is written by an artist about science. It describes the ideas of the City as Superorganisms as a lifelong obsession that has led the author to develop a series of paintings and drawings related to the subject that are used as illustrations throughout the work. He text of the work explores the way in which a city may be described as an organism; it looks at the systems of the city, the digestives system, the form and skeleton of the city, the membranes, specialist tissue, vascules and valves of the city. It examines the way language, signs, cultural structures, traditions etc. constitute the nervous system of the city. It suggests that a parallel to the endocrine system in complex multicellular animals can be seen in the financial and banking system of the city. It examines the way cities reproduce by forming colonies, how cities can develop sickness and die. There is a section in the book that looks as some aspects of the history of city development and the part played by religion and politics in this story. The author is especially interested in the part played by the individual human beings in this organic development. He takes into account the recent work of the neurobiologists and the discovery of the limits of free will. This book has its origins in a catalogue to accompany an exhibition of paintings held in Plas Glyn Y Weddwl in North Wales in 1985 entitled 'City as Parasite'.
Download or read book The City and the Super Organism written by Marco Amati and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces how naturalism—the idea of a common theory uniting natural social systems—has contributed to major shifts in urban planning. Beginning in the 17th century, when the human body began to emerge as an inspiration for urban planning, the book examines the work of medical analyses of city life. Responding to the 19th century industrial revolution and 20th century modernism, the Second World War and mass motorisation, Dr Marco Amati shows how vitalism, eugenics, evolutionary theories and medical treatments were applied to understand cities and propose new urban forms. While critically evaluating the uses of naturalism, Amati also observes a renewed interest in the application of sciences to analyse city life, arguing that this is essential to help resolve challenges of human-induced climate change.
Download or read book Designing Sustainable Cities written by Rob Roggema and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-19 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book emphasizes new ways of designing for a sustainable city and urban environment. From several angles the future of our urbanism is illuminated. From a philosophical point of view, the city is seen as an organism, following complex ecosystemic principles, shining light on indigenous perspectives to become beneficial for sustainable design and core questions are asked whether current architectural practice is really sustainable. Simultaneously concrete practices are presented for cities in transformation, focusing on green infrastructure, smart city principles and health.
Download or read book Unified Fields written by Janine Rogers and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2014-12-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary form presents an important opportunity for understanding the relationship between literature and science. Through a series of close readings of poetry and prose, Unified Fields demonstrates that formal structures in literature can relate to scientific concepts through their essential interpretive functions. Janine Rogers engages with a wide range of writing from Canadian, British, and American authors, including the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and Robyn Sarah as well as prose by Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, and Stephen Hawking. She employs an interdisciplinary approach combining formalist, historical, and theoretical literary practice, informed by interpretive frameworks developed in the philosophy of science. Although dedicated to contemporary texts, Rogers's analysis is frequently rooted in historical contexts of form, including Euclidean geometry and medieval romance, developed when the distinction between literature and science was not so drastic. These historical connections demonstrate that continuities of form resonate in both contemporary literature and science. Through critical analysis and engaging prose, Unified Fields bridges an important disciplinary gap by revealing how literary practice informs scientific understanding.
Download or read book ScienceBites written by Gerard Jagers op Akkerhuis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-09-14 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In science, concepts such as organism, evolution and life, are used almost every day. Every scientist knows the general meaning of such concepts. At the same time, nature is complex, and for this reason, it is difficult to draw stringent lines around classes of things. Scientists therefore accept the use of so called 'working definitions' for many concepts. It is frequently advocated that working on definitions has little use for practical research. This book explores a different viewpoint, in which definitions are compared with tools. If your toolbox contains too few tools, tools that are worn down, or tools that don't fit, it becomes difficult to carry out even the most easy maintenance or repair job. Experts know: suitable tools make the work easier. The aim of this book is to examine much-used concepts in science as if these are tools in a scientific toolbox. Do the current definitions represent quality tools? To explore this question, this book uses a recently developed hierarchy theory, the operator theory, as a reference. This theory is explained in the first chapter. Whenever the analyses suggest to do so, the ScienceBites offer directions for improvement of current definitions. 'These delicious bites of science will inspire readers to devour much more scientific knowledge, and to reflect on the importance for humanity of progress in the sciences.' Prof. Dr Herman Philipse Utrecht University 'In this "golden age of biology" SCIENCEBITES provides a much needed critical reflection on its core terms' Prof. Dr Bart Gremmen Wageningen University & Research 'This is one of the most fascinating books I have read recently. Do not be deceived by the brevity of the chapters. Each gave me food for thought during many days.' Dr Peter Roessingh University of Amsterdam
Download or read book Stories Dice and Rocks That Think written by Byron Reese and published by BenBella Books. This book was released on 2022-08-23 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Byron Reese gets to the heart of what makes humans different from all others." —Midwest Book Review What makes the human mind so unique? And how did we get this way? This fascinating tale explores the three leaps in our history that made us what we are—and will change how you think about our future. Look around. Clearly, we humans are radically different from the other creatures on this planet. But why? Where are the Bronze Age beavers? The Iron Age iguanas? In Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think, Byron Reese argues that we owe our special status to our ability to imagine the future and recall the past, escaping the perpetual present that all other living creatures are trapped in. Envisioning human history as the development of a societal superorganism he names Agora, Reese shows us how this escape enabled us to share knowledge on an unprecedented scale, and predict—and eventually master—the future. Thoughtful, witty, and compulsively readable, Reese unravels our history as an intelligent species in three acts: Act I: Ancient humans undergo “the awakening,” developing the cognitive ability to mentally time-travel using language Act II: In 17th century France, the mathematical framework known as 'probability theory' is born—a science for seeing into the future that we used to build the modern world Act III: Beginning with the invention of the computer chip, humanity creates machines to gaze into the future with even more precision, overcoming the limits of our brains A fresh new look at the history and destiny of humanity, readers will come away from Stories, Dice, and Rocks that Think with a new understanding of what they are—not just another animal, but a creature with a mastery of time itself.
Download or read book Urban Ecosystems written by Frederick R. Adler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As humans have come to dominate the earth, the ideal of studying and teaching ecology in pristine ecosystems has become impossible to achieve. Our planet is now a mosaic of ecosystems ranging from the relatively undisturbed to the completely built, with the majority of people living in urban environments. This accessible introduction to the principles of urban ecology provides students with the tools they need to understand these increasingly important urban ecosystems. It builds upon the themes of habitat modification and resource use to demonstrate how multiple ecological processes interact in cities and how human activity initiates chains of unpredictable unintended ecological consequences. Broad principles are supported throughout by detailed examples from around the world and a comprehensive list of readings from the primary literature. Questions, exercises and laboratories at the end of each chapter encourage discussion, hands-on study, active learning, and engagement with the world outside the classroom window.
Download or read book Software Services and Systems written by Rocco De Nicola and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is dedicated to Professor Martin Wirsing on the occasion of his emeritation from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany. The volume is a reflection, with gratitude and admiration, on Professor Wirsing’s life highly creative, remarkably fruitful and intellectually generous life. It also gives a snapshot of the research ideas that in many cases have been deeply influenced by Professor Wirsing’s work. The book consists of six sections. The first section contains personal remembrances and expressions of gratitude from friends of Professor Wirsing. The remaining five sections consist of groups of scientific papers written by colleagues and collaborators of Professor Wirsing, which have been grouped and ordered according to his scientific evolution. More specifically, the papers are concerned with logical and algebraic foundations; algebraic specifications, institutions and rewriting; foundations of software engineering; service oriented systems; and adaptive and autonomic systems.
Download or read book Swarming Landscapes written by Rob Roggema and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-02 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book advocates a fresh approach to planning that anticipates, rather than reacts to, the changes in climate currently in process. Today’s spatial planning procedures rely on historical evidence instead of preparing for factors that by definition lie in the future, yet which are relatively uncontroversial: shortages of water, sea level rise and rises in average temperatures being but three examples. Arguing for more flexibility, the contributors view ‘complexity’ as the key to transforming the way we plan in order to better equip us to face uncertainties about our future environment.
Download or read book We Are Agora written by Byron Reese and published by BenBella Books. This book was released on 2023-12-12 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover a groundbreaking new way of thinking about life, society, and the future of our species that bridges science and human history. Could humans unknowingly be a part of a larger superorganism—one with its own motivations and goals, one that is alive, and conscious, and has the power to shape the future of our species? This is the fascinating theory from author and futurist Byron Reese, who calls this human superorganism “Agora.” In We Are Agora, Reese starts by asking the question, “What is life and how did it form?” From there, he looks at how multicellular life came about, how consciousness emerged, and how other superorganisms in nature have formed. Then, he poses eight big questions based on the Agora theory, including: If ants have colonies, bees have hives, and we have our bodies, how does Agora manifest itself? Does it have a body? Can Agora explain things that happen that are both under our control and near universally undesirable, such as war? How can Agora theory explain long-term progress we’ve made in the world? In this unique and ambitious work that spans all of human history and looks boldly into its future, Reese melds science and history to look at the human species from a fresh new perspective. Told with his characteristic wit and compulsive readability, We Are Agora will give readers a better understanding of where we’ve been, where we’re going, and how our fates are intertwined.
Download or read book Social Collective Intelligence written by Daniele Miorandi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book focuses on Social Collective Intelligence, a term used to denote a class of socio-technical systems that combine, in a coordinated way, the strengths of humans, machines and collectives in terms of competences, knowledge and problem solving capabilities with the communication, computing and storage capabilities of advanced ICT. Social Collective Intelligence opens a number of challenges for researchers in both computer science and social sciences; at the same time it provides an innovative approach to solve challenges in diverse application domains, ranging from health to education and organization of work. The book will provide a cohesive and holistic treatment of Social Collective Intelligence, including challenges emerging in various disciplines (computer science, sociology, ethics) and opportunities for innovating in various application areas. By going through the book the reader will gauge insight and knowledge into the challenges and opportunities provided by this new, exciting, field of investigation. Benefits for scientists will be in terms of accessing a comprehensive treatment of the open research challenges in a multidisciplinary perspective. Benefits for practitioners and applied researchers will be in terms of access to novel approaches to tackle relevant problems in their field. Benefits for policy-makers and public bodies representatives will be in terms of understanding how technological advances can support them in supporting the progress of society and economy.
Download or read book Urban Evolutionary Morphology The Vestige City written by Des Fagan and published by Infra Press . This book was released on 2012 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city is changing: no longer is it an aesthetic creation, nor purely an industrial powerhouse. It is becoming a living, breathing super-organism, with a myriad of multiple, competing functions enabling the city to dwell within its particular ecology. As a super-organism, the future city will be defined more by its metabolism, than purely its primary function or spatial form. These biospheric flows of energy and materials will drive the new city and create new synergies for living. This book develops the composition of the evolutionary and the city through architectural and landscape insertions in the Greengate area of Salford, Manchester UK. These designs will engage with the idea of the city as biotic and as a host for biota as well as humans. These new ‘natural’ landscapes will be resilient, through new biodiversity that not only provides a productive landscape, but also links and extends the city’s function and liveability. We have been wrong to force designs on the city: as a superorganism, the new city will be born, not made.
Download or read book The Internet of Things for Smart Urban Ecosystems written by Franco Cicirelli and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-08-10 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main objective of this book is to provide a multidisciplinary overview of methodological approaches, architectures, platforms, and algorithms for the realization of an Internet of Things (IoT)-based Smart Urban Ecosystem (SUE). Moreover, the book details a set of real-world applications and case studies related to specific smart infrastructures and smart cities, including structural health monitoring, smart urban drainage networks, smart grids, power efficiency, healthcare, city security, and emergency management. A Smart Urban Ecosystem (SUE) is a people-centric system of systems that involves smart city environments, applications, and infrastructures. SUEs require the close integration of cyber and physical components for monitoring, understanding and controlling the urban environment. In this context, the Internet of Things (IoT) offers a valuable enabling technology, as it bridges the gap between physical things and software components, and empowers cooperation between distributed, pervasive, and heterogeneous entities.
Download or read book Insurgencies and Revolutions written by Haripriya Rangan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-26 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past six or more decades, John Friedmann has been an insurgent force in the field of urban and regional planning, transforming it from its traditional state-centered concern for establishing social and spatial order into a radical domain of collaborative action between state and civil society for creating ‘the good society’ in the present and future. By opening it up to theoretical engagement with a wide range of disciplines, Friedmann’s contributions have revolutionised planning as a transdisciplinary space of critical thinking, social learning, and reflective practice. Insurgencies and Revolutions brings together former students, close research associates, and colleagues of John Friedmann to reflect on his contributions to planning theory and practice. The volume is organized around five broad themes where Friedmann’s contributions have risen to challenge established paradigms and generated the space for revolutionary thinking and action in urban and regional planning – Theorising hope; Economic development and regionalism; World cities and the Good city; Social learning, empowered communities, and citizenship; and Chinese cities. The essays by the authors reflect their engagement with his ideas and the new directions in which they have taken these in their work in planning theory and practice.
Download or read book Emergence written by Steven Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Being Digital and The Tipping Point, Steven Johnson, acclaimed as a "cultural critic with a poet's heart" (The Village Voice), takes readers on an eye-opening journey through emergence theory and its applications. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A VOICE LITERARY SUPPLEMENT TOP 25 FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR AN ESQUIRE MAGAZINE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Explaining why the whole is sometimes smarter than the sum of its parts, Johnson presents surprising examples of feedback, self-organization, and adaptive learning. How does a lively neighborhood evolve out of a disconnected group of shopkeepers, bartenders, and real estate developers? How does a media event take on a life of its own? How will new software programs create an intelligent World Wide Web? In the coming years, the power of self-organization -- coupled with the connective technology of the Internet -- will usher in a revolution every bit as significant as the introduction of electricity. Provocative and engaging, Emergence puts you on the front lines of this exciting upheaval in science and thought.
Download or read book Joyful Darkness written by Doug Clelland and published by Arena books. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the Invisible apparent: its narratives investigating what it is to be alive with the concealed, i.e., its anchors, caresses, respect, stains, tests, threats and zaps entangling us in myriad ways.
Download or read book Design for Tomorrow Volume 1 written by Amaresh Chakrabarti and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-26 with total page 983 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book showcases cutting-edge research papers from the 8th International Conference on Research into Design (ICoRD 2021) written by eminent researchers from across the world on design processes, technologies, methods and tools, and their impact on innovation, for supporting design for a connected world. The theme of ICoRD‘21 has been “Design for Tomorrow”. The world as we know it in our times is increasingly becoming connected. In this interconnected world, design has to address new challenges of merging the cyber and the physical, the smart and the mundane, the technology and the human. As a result, there is an increasing need for strategizing and thinking about design for a better tomorrow. The theme for ICoRD’21 serves as a provocation for the design community to think about rapid changes in the near future to usher in a better tomorrow. The papers in this book explore these themes, and their key focus is design for tomorrow: how are products and their development be addressed for the immediate pressing needs within a connected world? The book will be of interest to researchers, professionals and entrepreneurs working in the areas on industrial design, manufacturing, consumer goods, and industrial management who are interested in the new and emerging methods and tools for design of new products, systems and services.
