Author: Diederik Aerts Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9400708564 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 379
Book Description
A World in Transition, Humankind and Nature is appropriately entitled after its aim for an intrinsic property of reality: change. Of major concern, in this era of transformation, is the extensive and profound interaction of humankind with nature. The global-scale social and technological project of humankind definitely involves a myriad of changes of the ecosphere. This book develops, from the call for an interdisciplinary synthesis and respect of plurality, acknowledging the evolving scientific truth, to the need for an integrated but inevitably provisional worldview. Contributors from different parts of the world focus on four modes of change: (i) Social change and the individual condition, (ii) Complex evolution and fundamental emergent transformations, (iii) Ecological transformation and responsibility inquiries, (iv) The economic-ecological and socio-technical equilibria. Primarily concerned with the deep transformations of humankind and of the relationship between humans and nature, it is addressed to a broad and thinking public that wants to be kept informed.
Author: Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen (Germany) Publisher: Earthscan ISBN: 9781853838026 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 482
Book Description
* Comprehensive assessment from the leading German environmental scientists of the state of the world's living resources or biosphere * Covers all aspects of the subject: biodiversity and genetic diversity, landscape and ecosystems, its role in the Earth's system and human impacts on it * Reviews global policies and research strategies on the biosphere and advocates urgent policy actions * A major, authoritative contribution to environmental science and policy Biodiversity- the planet's natural capital- is undergoing a dramatic collapse: its " Sixth Extinction". The losses, which are do to human activities and overexploitation of the biosphere, are irreversible. They are undermining the basis of future well-being and prosperity, including genetic resources and food production, climate stability, and coastal and soil protection. The scientists of the German Advisory Council on Global Change have produced an authoritative and alarming analysis of the state of the biosphere. They show that the time remaining for remedial action is fast disappearing and they set out a range of initiatives to be undertaken at different levels. Among their main urgent recommendations are: * protecting 10-20% of the global land area * an Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity to provide scientific advice * conservation of the diversity of cultivated as well as wild plant species * greater multilateral cooperation and implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity The volume makes a highly significant contribution to the scientific and policy debates on these critical issues. It will be essential reading for those engaged with them.
Author: Clive Hamilton Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1509519785 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 200
Book Description
Humans have become so powerful that we have disrupted the functioning of the Earth System as a whole, bringing on a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – one in which the serene and clement conditions that allowed civilisation to flourish are disappearing and we quail before 'the wakened giant'. The emergence of a conscious creature capable of using technology to bring about a rupture in the Earth's geochronology is an event of monumental significance, on a par with the arrival of civilisation itself. What does it mean to have arrived at this point, where human history and Earth history collide? Some interpret the Anthropocene as no more than a development of what they already know, obscuring and deflating its profound significance. But the Anthropocene demands that we rethink everything. The modern belief in the free, reflexive being making its own future by taking control of its environment – even to the point of geoengineering – is now impossible because we have rendered the Earth more unpredictable and less controllable, a disobedient planet. At the same time, all attempts by progressives to cut humans down to size by attacking anthropocentrism come up against the insurmountable fact that human beings now possess enough power to change the Earth's course. It's too late to turn back the geological clock, and there is no going back to premodern ways of thinking. We must face the fact that humans are at the centre of the world, even if we must give the idea that we can control the planet. These truths call for a new kind of anthropocentrism, a philosophy by which we might use our power responsibly and find a way to live on a defiant Earth.
Author: Gustaaf C. Cornelis Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9401722455 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 323
Book Description
How do scientists approach science? Scientists, sociologists and philosophers were asked to write on this intriguing problem and to display their results at the International Congress `Einstein Meets Magritte'. The outcome of their effort can be found in this rather unique book, presenting all kinds of different views on science. Quantum mechanics is a discipline which deserves and receives special attention in this book, mainly because it is fascinating and, hence, appeals to the general public. This book not only contains articles on the introductory level, it also provides new insights and bold, even provocative proposals. That way, the reader gets acquainted with `science in the making', sitting in the front row. The contributions have been written for a broad interdisciplinary audience of scholars and students.
Author: Steven Pinker Publisher: Penguin Books ISBN: 0143122010 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 834
Book Description
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think this is the most violent age ever seen. Yet as bestselling author Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true.
Author: Diederik Aerts Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9401147043 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 346
Book Description
Einstein Meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection presents insights of the renowned key speakers of the interdisciplinary Einstein meets Magritte conference (1995, Brussels Free University). The contributions elaborate on fundamental questions of science, with regard to the contemporary world, and push beyond the borders of traditional approaches. All of the articles in this volume address this fundamental theme, but somewhere along the road the volume expanded to become much more than a mere expression of the conference's dynamics. The articles not only deal with several scientific disciplines, they also confront these fields with the full spectrum of contemporary life, and become new science. As such, this volume presents a state-of-the-art reflection of science in the world today, in all its diversity. The contributions are accessible to a large audience of scientists, students, educators, and everyone who wants to keep up with science today.
Author: Diederik Aerts Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9401147086 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 487
Book Description
This book considers philosophy to be more than mere reflection. Through philosophy, humankind can give meaning to the world. In part, this book re-evaluates the philosophy of Leo Apostel, who dedicated his life to the investigation of the use of philosophy in everyday life. But it is also a presentation of international research carried out along the lines of the worldviews project. The contributions address not only professional philosophers, but also students, teachers, academics and everyone interested in the relationship between philosophy and the world.
Author: Jedediah Purdy Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674368223 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
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
Author: Gertrude Hirsch Hardon Publisher: EOLSS Publications ISBN: 1905839839 Category : Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
Unity of Knowledge in Transdisciplinary Research for Sustainable Development theme is a component of Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and Humanities in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty Encyclopedias. Today, there is a social need for a comprehensive unity of knowledge that would provide orientation and ensure action in the context of the complex problems of modern civilization. Based on an intellectual need for unity of knowledge, different concepts of unity of knowledge have emerged in the course of the history of ideas. The intellectual need for unity can be directed at the world, science, action or the individual. It can involve the quest for the unity of the world based on a principle that is immanent in it, the unity of science as a theoretical, methodical or epistemological unity, the unity of action as a correlation of scientific, pragmatic and moral knowledge or, finally, unity as the educational task of the individual. The concepts associated with unity of knowledge can go in two directions. The first assumes that there is a unity existing in the world that can be perceived by man. It is thought of as an order of being, i.e. an ontological unity of the plurality of phenomena, that consist in their common nature. The other direction is based on the assumption that unity is a construction of a subject, based on its cognitive principles and structures. Thus it is not something that can be discovered as an existing objective order, and is instead subjective. These two volumes present some aspects of Unity of Knowledge in Transdisciplinary Research for Sustainable Development in three parts. The purpose of the first part is to trace back the core ideas in transdisciplinary thinking in the history of western philosophy and science, to locate socially the concerns of transdisciplinary research and to give an account of the development of transdisciplinary research. The second group of chapters deals with methodological and management problems related to transdisciplinary research with regard to problem identification and structuring of research questions, with knowledge integration in problem investigation as well as with evaluation. An outline of the institutional measures and transformations to enable and support transdisciplinary research is given in the third part. Institutional strategies build on organizational arrangements and links across academic institutions in education and research, on networks between science and society for joint knowledge production in temporally limited settings of research programs or projects, but they also set up new institutions, such as centers for advanced studies, national offices, agencies and networks. These two volumes are aimed at a wide spectrum of audiences: University and College Students, Educators, Research Personnel and all those concerned with sustainable development.
Author: Diederik Aerts
Author: Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen (Germany)
Author: Diederik Aerts
Author: Clive Hamilton
Author: Gustaaf C. Cornelis
Author: Steven Pinker
Author: Diederik Aerts
Author: Diederik Aerts
Author: Jedediah Purdy
Author: Gertrude Hirsch Hardon