Download or read book Consilience written by E. O. Wilson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-11-26 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." —The Wall Street Journal One of our greatest scientists—and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants—gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities. Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principles underlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.

Download or read book Encountering Nature written by Thomas Heyd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that an attentive encounter with nature is of key importance for the development of an environmentally appropriate culture. The fundamental idea is that the environmental degradation that we are increasingly experiencing is best conceived as the consequence of a cultural mismatch: our cultures seem not to be appropriate to the natural environment in which we move and on which we depend in thoroughgoing ways. In addressing this problem, Thomas Heyd weaves together a rich tapestry of perspectives on human interactions with the natural world, ranging from traditional modes of managing human communities that include the natural environment, to the consideration of poetic travelogues, ecological restoration and botanic gardens. The volume is divided into three parts, which respectively consider the relation of human beings to nature in terms of ethics, aesthetics and culture. It engages the current literature in each of these areas with the help of inter-disciplinary approaches, as well as on the basis of personal encounters with natural spaces and processes. The ultimate aim of this book is to make a contribution to the development of a cultural fabric that is suitable to the natural spaces and processes in which we may thrive, and on which we all depend as individuals and as a species.

Download or read book The Ecology of Law written by Fritjof Capra and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award in Politics/Current Events: A systems theorist and a legal scholar present a new paradigm for protecting our planet. This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other—until recently. In the past few decades, science has shifted from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine best understood by analyzing each cog and sprocket to a systems perspective that views the world as a vast network of fluid communities and studies their dynamic interactions. The concept of ecology exemplifies this approach. But law is stuck in the old mechanistic paradigm: The world is simply a collection of discrete parts, and ownership of these parts is an individual right, protected by the state. Fritjof Capra, physicist, systems theorist, and bestselling author of The Tao of Physics, and distinguished legal scholar Ugo Mattei show that this obsolete worldview has led to overconsumption, pollution, and a general disregard on the part of the powerful for the common good. Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on Earth that better addresses many of the economic and social crises we face today. This is a visionary reconceptualization of the very foundations of the Western legal system, a kind of Copernican revolution in the law, with profound implications for the future of our planet. “Thoughtful . . . The authors propose a philosophy and jurisprudence that is deeply radical—upending centuries of Western tradition and culture—but possibly crucial to solving looming environmental problems.” —Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Toward a Culture of Nature written by Pamela Stricker and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toward a Culture of Nature is a comprehensive study of Cuba's environmental policy, specifically the response of the Cuban government to the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent shortage of petroleum products. Pamela Stricker analyzes Cuba's transition to sustainable models of agriculture, efforts toward energy independence using renewable resources, the adoption of "green" medicine, a framework law on environmental protection, the impact of tourism and foreign investment on the island, incorporation of environmental education, and the crafting of a culture of nature, that is, a Cuban environmental ethics of sustainable development. Going beyond the standard accounts of formal legislation and executive institutions, Professor Stricker pays special attention to the scientists and activists who worked in all capacities (governmental and non-governmental) to bring about change to the environmental policies. Spanning the second half of the twentieth-century, Toward a "Culture of Nature" is an important case study of environmental policy, ethics, and sustainable development.

Download or read book Colors of Nature written by Alison H. Deming and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An anthology of nature writing by people of color, providing deeply personal connections to—or disconnects from—nature.” —NPR From African American to Asian American, indigenous to immigrant, “multiracial” to “mixed-blood,” the diversity of cultures in this world is matched only by the diversity of stories explaining our cultural origins: stories of creation and destruction, displacement and heartbreak, hope and mystery. With writing from Jamaica Kincaid on the fallacies of national myths, Yusef Komunyakaa connecting the toxic legacy of his hometown, Bogalusa, LA, to a blind faith in capitalism, and bell hooks relating the quashing of multiculturalism to the destruction of nature that is considered “unpredictable”—among more than thirty-five other examinations of the relationship between culture and nature—this collection points toward the trouble of ignoring our cultural heritage, but also reveals how opening our eyes and our minds might provide a more livable future. Contributors: Elmaz Abinader, Faith Adiele, Francisco X. Alarcón, Fred Arroyo, Kimberly Blaeser, Joseph Bruchac, Robert D. Bullard, Debra Kang Dean, Camille Dungy, Nikky Finney, Ray Gonzalez, Kimiko Hahn, bell hooks, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Pualani Kanaka’ole Kanahele, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Jamaica Kincaid, Yusef Komunyakaa, J. Drew Lanham, David Mas Masumoto, Maria Melendez, Thyllias Moss, Gary Paul Nabhan, Nalini Nadkarni, Melissa Nelson, Jennifer Oladipo, Louis Owens, Enrique Salmon, Aileen Suzara, A. J. Verdelle, Gerald Vizenor, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Al Young, Ofelia Zepeda “This notable anthology assembles thinkers and writers with firsthand experience or insight on how economic and racial inequalities affect a person’s understanding of nature . . . an illuminating read.” —Bloomsbury Review “[An] unprecedented and invaluable collection.” —Booklist

Download or read book The Culture of Nature written by Ken Corcoran and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Toward a Metaphysics of Culture written by Joseph Margolis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-02 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toward a Metaphysics of Culture provides an initial, minimal, and original analysis of the concept of uniquely enlanguaged cultures of the human world and of the distinctive metaphysical features of whatever belongs to the things of that world: preeminently, persons, language, actions, artworks, products, history, practices, institutions, and norms. Emphasis is placed on the artifactual and hybrid nature of persons, naturalistic and post-Darwinian evolutionary considerations, and the bearing of the account on a range of disputed inquiries largely centered on the relationship between physical nature and human culture and between the natural and human sciences. The schema offered lays a foundation for a closer analysis of the human mind, cognition, interpretation, nomologicality, normativity, intentionality, realism, and related matters. The central thesis advances the heterodox notion, congruent with post-Darwinian studies in paleoanthropology, that the human person is a natural artifact, a functional transform of the primate members of Homo sapiens, by way of a complexly intertwined biological and encultured evolution, primarily dependent on the invention, transmission, and mastery of true language and the novel hybrid abilities that that makes possible. The emergence of persons is taken to be the obverse side of the mastery of language itself.

Download or read book Reinhabiting Reality written by Freya Mathews and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sequel to For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism, also published by SUNY Press, Freya Mathews argues that replacing the materialist premise of modern civilization with a panpsychist one transforms the entire fabric of culture in profound ways. She claims that the environmental crisis is a symptom of deeper issues facing modern civilization arising from the loss of the very meaning of culture. To come to grips with this crisis requires a change in the metaphysical premise of modernity deeper than any as yet envisaged even by the radical ecology movement. This is a change with profound implications for the full range of existential questions and not merely for questions regarding our relationship with "nature."

Download or read book Genetic Nature Culture written by Prof. Alan H. Goodman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-11-06 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The so-called science wars pit science against culture, and nowhere is the struggle more contentious—or more fraught with paradox—than in the burgeoning realm of genetics. A constructive response, and a welcome intervention, this volume brings together biological and cultural anthropologists to conduct an interdisciplinary dialogue that provokes and instructs even as it bridges the science/culture divide. Individual essays address issues raised by the science, politics, and history of race, evolution, and identity; genetically modified organisms and genetic diseases; gene work and ethics; and the boundary between humans and animals. The result is an entree to the complicated nexus of questions prompted by the power and importance of genetics and genetic thinking, and the dynamic connections linking culture, biology, nature, and technoscience. The volume offers critical perspectives on science and culture, with contributions that span disciplinary divisions and arguments grounded in both biological perspectives and cultural analysis. An invaluable resource and a provocative introduction to new research and thinking on the uses and study of genetics, Genetic Nature/Culture is a model of fruitful dialogue, presenting the quandaries faced by scholars on both sides of the two-cultures debate.

Download or read book Living in the Landscape written by Arnold Berleant and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Many more of our decisions to conserve nature have been motivated by environmental aesthetics than by environmental ethics, more by beauty than by duty. This book by Arnold Berleant is therefore especially welcome and important. It will help to advance an inquiry that has been badly neglected but is sorely needed". -- J. Baird Callicott, author of Earth's Insights. "In the past thirty years, Arnold Berleant has been calling attention to the ethics and aesthetics of the environment. He is indeed America's latter-day Henry David Thoreau". -- E. F. Kaelin, author of An Aesthetics for Art Educators.

Download or read book Culture and Cultural Entities Toward a New Unity of Science written by Joseph Margolis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-13 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Culture and Cultural Entities provides an original philosophical analysis of the nature and explanation of cultural phenomena, with special attention to ontology and methodology. It addresses in depth such topics as: the relation between physical and biological nature and cultural phenomena; the analysis of intentionality; the nature and explanation of action; causality; causal explanation and the unity of science; theories of language; historicity; animal and human intelligence; psychological and social phenomena; technology and evolution. Its approach features a form of non-reductive materialism, examines a wide range of views, and is highly readable, making it suitable for professionals, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and an informed general audience. A new chapter was added to give a sense of pertinent trends since the appearance of the first edition, particularly with respect to the history of philosophy, pragmatism, the unity of science, and evolution. The unity, scope, and simplicity of the theory are well-regarded.

Download or read book Risk Environment and Modernity written by Scott Lash and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1996-01-31 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging and accessible contribution to the study of risk, ecology and environment helps us to understand the politics of ecology and the place of social theory in making sense of environmental issues. The book provides insights into the complex dynamics of change in `risk societies′.

Download or read book Nature Technology and Society written by Victor Ferkiss and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1994-11 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ferkiss (emeritus, government, Georgetown U.) delves thoughtfully into how various civilizations and cultures, including Western civilization, have historically looked at humanity, nature, and technology. He then looks at the conflicting attitudes of contemporary thinkers, seeking a balance, but maintaining a bias toward reverence for nature and an unwillingness to allow technology and its owners to set all the terms. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book After Nature written by Jedediah Purdy and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-09 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Artforum Best Book of the Year A Legal Theory Bookworm Book of the Year Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. The geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. Climate change is planetary engineering without design. These facts of the Anthropocene are scientific, but its shape and meaning are questions for politics—a politics that does not yet exist. After Nature develops a politics for this post-natural world. “After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’s “Dazzling...Purdy hopes that climate change might spur yet another change in how we think about the natural world, but he insists that such a shift will be inescapably political... For a relatively slim volume, this book distills an incredible amount of scholarship—about Americans’ changing attitudes toward the natural world, and about how those attitudes might change in the future.” —Ross Andersen, The Atlantic

Download or read book Mother nature written by Catherine M. Roach and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brief but ambitious book explores our relationship with nature through the imagery we use when we talk about Mother Nature. Employing the critical tools of religious studies, psychology, and gender studies, Catherine M. Roach examines the various manifestations of nature as "mother" and what that idea implies for the way we approach the natural world. Part One, "Nature as Good Mother," discusses the notion that nature is, or is like, a beneficent and nurturing mother who provides and maintains life. In studying the "green" slogan "Love Your Mother," Roach questions the effects-for women and for the environment-of imputing female gender to nature. She asks us to look at the associations "motherhood" and "mothering" carry within a culture still shaped by patriarchy. She notes the danger of such an apparently pro-environmental slogan if "mother" evokes the bountiful, self-sacrificing provider who herself requires no care.Part Two, "Nature as Bad Mother," looks at the contrary notion of nature as a violent, threatening, and wrathful mother. This image arises most often when humans and technology are depicted as masters of unruly nature. Here Roach draws on theological reflection to analyze this ambivalence toward nature manifested in a fantasy that casts humans as gods. She explores the contributions of eco-theology and eco-psychology to a "heart of darkness" perspective. Finally, Part Three, "Nature as Hurt Mother," looks at possibilities and pitfalls of environmental healing inherent in the image of nature as a mother we have wounded and now seek to heal.ALSO OF INTEREST ECOFEMINISMWomen, Culture, NatureEdited by Karen J. Warren0-253-33031-9 HB £37.950-253-21057-7 PB £18.95

Download or read book Wired for Culture Origins of the Human Social Mind written by Mark Pagel and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history. A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why? Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.

Download or read book Reverence Toward written by Ned Smyth and published by . This book was released on 2022* with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: