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Author: Bruce Clarke Publisher: U of Minnesota Press ISBN: 1452963304 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 397
Book Description
A groundbreaking look at Gaia theory’s intersections with neocybernetic systems theory Often seen as an outlier in science, Gaia has run a long and varied course since its formulation in the 1970s by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis. Gaian Systems is a pioneering exploration of the dynamic and complex evolution of Gaia’s many variants, with special attention to Margulis’s foundational role in these developments. Bruce Clarke assesses the different dialects of systems theory brought to bear on Gaia discourse. Focusing in particular on Margulis’s work—including multiple pieces of her unpublished Gaia correspondence—he shows how her research and that of Lovelock was concurrent and conceptually parallel with the new discourse of self-referential systems that emerged within neocybernetic systems theory. The recent Gaia writings of Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, and Bruno Latour contest its cybernetic status. Clarke engages Latour on the issue of Gaia’s systems description and extends his own systems-theoretical synthesis under what he terms “metabiotic Gaia.” This study illuminates current issues in neighboring theoretical conversations—from biopolitics and the immunitary paradigm to NASA astrobiology and the Anthropocene. Along the way, he points to science fiction as a vehicle of Gaian thought. Delving into many issues not previously treated in accounts of Gaia, Gaian Systems describes the history of a theory that has the potential to help us survive an environmental crisis of our own making.
Author: Bruce Clarke Publisher: U of Minnesota Press ISBN: 1452963304 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 397
Book Description
A groundbreaking look at Gaia theory’s intersections with neocybernetic systems theory Often seen as an outlier in science, Gaia has run a long and varied course since its formulation in the 1970s by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis. Gaian Systems is a pioneering exploration of the dynamic and complex evolution of Gaia’s many variants, with special attention to Margulis’s foundational role in these developments. Bruce Clarke assesses the different dialects of systems theory brought to bear on Gaia discourse. Focusing in particular on Margulis’s work—including multiple pieces of her unpublished Gaia correspondence—he shows how her research and that of Lovelock was concurrent and conceptually parallel with the new discourse of self-referential systems that emerged within neocybernetic systems theory. The recent Gaia writings of Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, and Bruno Latour contest its cybernetic status. Clarke engages Latour on the issue of Gaia’s systems description and extends his own systems-theoretical synthesis under what he terms “metabiotic Gaia.” This study illuminates current issues in neighboring theoretical conversations—from biopolitics and the immunitary paradigm to NASA astrobiology and the Anthropocene. Along the way, he points to science fiction as a vehicle of Gaian thought. Delving into many issues not previously treated in accounts of Gaia, Gaian Systems describes the history of a theory that has the potential to help us survive an environmental crisis of our own making.
Author: Roy Madron Publisher: ISBN: Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 164
Book Description
Gaian Democracies shows how to create a global network of just and sustainable societies that could co-exist symbiotically with Gaia. The authors stress the systems framework on which they have based their proposals and draw on real-world examples such as the Mondragon Cooperatives of Basque Spain, Visa International, the Semco Corporation, and the hundreds of participative budgets initiated by Brazilian Workers' Party.
Author: James Lovelock Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198784880 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 169
Book Description
Gaia, in which James Lovelock puts forward his inspirational and controversial idea that the Earth functions as a single organism, with life influencing planetary processes to form a self-regulating system aiding its own survival, is now a classic work that continues to provoke heated scientific debate.
Author: Stephan Harding Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 190744825X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 405
Book Description
An exciting exploration into how Gaian science can help us to develop a sense of connectedness with the 'more-than-human' world. Written by ecologist Stephan Harding, Animate Earth argues that we need to establish the right relationship with the planet as a living entity in which we are indissolubly embedded - and to which we are all accountable. Now in its second edition, this fascinating book includes a new chapter on fungi, contemplative exercises and an update on the global climate situation. Stephan's work is based on careful integration of rational scientific analysis with our intuition, sensing and feeling - a vitally important task at this time of severe ecological and climate crisis. He replaces the cold, objectifying language of science with a way of speaking of our planet as a sentient, living being rather than as a dead, inert mechanism. Chemical reactions, for instance, are described using human metaphors, such as marriage, to bring personality back into the world of rocks, atmosphere, water and living things. In this sense, the book is a contemporary attempt to rediscover anima mundi (the soul of the world) through Gaian science, whilst assuming no prior knowledge of science. Discover what it means to live as harmoniously as possible within a sentient creature of planetary proportions with this inspiring read.
Author: Eileen Crist Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262033755 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 782
Book Description
Essays link Gaian science to such global environmental quandaries as climate change and biodiversity destruction, providing perspectives from science, philosophy, politics, and technology.
Author: Bruce Clarke Publisher: U of Minnesota Press ISBN: 1452942161 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 263
Book Description
Neocybernetics and Narrative opens a new chapter in Bruce Clarke’s project of rethinking narrative and media through systems theory. Reconceiving interrelations among subjects, media, significations, and the social, this study demonstrates second-order systems theory’s potential to provide fresh insights into the familiar topics of media studies and narrative theory. A pioneer of systems narratology, Clarke offers readers a synthesis of the neocybernetic theories of cognition formulated by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, incubated by cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster, and cultivated in Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. From this foundation, he interrogates media theory and narrative theory through a critique of information theory in favor of autopoietic conceptions of cognition. Clarke’s purview includes examinations of novels (Mrs. Dalloway and Mind of My Mind), movies (Avatar, Memento, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and even Aramis, Bruno Latour’s idiosyncratic meditation on a failed plan for an automated subway. Clarke declares the era of the cyborg to have ended, laid to rest as the ontology of technical objects is brought into differential coordination with operations of living, psychic, and social systems. The second-order discourse of cognition destabilizes the usual sense of cognition as conscious awareness, revealing the possibility of nonconscious and nonhuman forms of sentience.
Author: Jeffrey R. Di Leo Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1501361961 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 529
Book Description
Disciplines from literary studies to environmentalism have recently undergone a spectacular reorientation that has refocused entire fields, methodologies, and vocabularies on the world and its sister terms such as globe, planet, and earth. The Bloomsbury Handbook of World Theory examines what “world” means and what it accomplishes in different zones of academic study. The contributors raise questions such as: What happens when “world” is appended to a particular form of humanistic or scientific inquiry? How exactly does “worlding” bear on the theoretical operating system and the history of that field? What is the theory or theoretical model that allows “world” to function in a meaningful way in coordination with that knowledge domain? With contributions from 38 leading theorists from a vast range of fields, including queer studies, religion, and pop culture, this is the first large reference work to consider the profound effect, both within and outside the academy, of the worlding of discourse in the 21st century.
Author: J. A. Bryant Publisher: WIT Press ISBN: 1853128538 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 513
Book Description
Highlighted with individual contributions from eminent specialists, these multiauthored volumes combine authority, inspiration and state-of-the-art knowledge. Both informative and inspiring they are designed to appeal to scientists and interested laypeople alike. Volume 2 complements and extends the scope of the first, with the biological viewpoint being stressed. Following an introductory chapter on design as understood in biology, the various aspects of the biological information revolution are addressed. Areas discussed include molecular structure, the genome, development, and neural networks. A section on information theory provides a link with engineering, and the scope is also broadened to include the implications of motion in nature and engineering.
Author: Bruno Latour Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0745684351 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 300
Book Description
The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of nature have been continually developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name 'Gaia' for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on 'natural religion,' Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime.
Author: Bruce Clarke
Author: Bruce Clarke
Author: Roy Madron
Author: James Lovelock
Author: Stephen Henry Schneider
Author: Stephan Harding
Author: Eileen Crist
Author: Bruce Clarke
Author: Jeffrey R. Di Leo
Author: J. A. Bryant
Author: Bruno Latour