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This edited volume is the first specialized book in English about the Swiss zoologist and anthropologist Adolf Portmann (1897-1982). It provides a clarification and update of Portmann’s theoretical approach to the phenomenon of life, characterized by terms such as “inwardness” and “self-presentation.” Portmann’s concepts of secondary altriciality and the social uterus have become foundational in philosophical anthropology, providing a benchmark of the difference between humans and animals. In its content, this book brings together two approaches: historical and philosophical analysis of Portmann’s studies in the life sciences and application of Portmann’s thought in the fields of biology, anthropology, and biosemiotics. Significant attention is also paid to the methodological implications of his intended reform of biology. Besides contributions from contemporary biologists, philosophers, and historians of science, this volume also includes a translation of an original essay by Portmann and a previously unpublished manuscript from his most remarkable English-speaking interpreter, philosopher Marjorie Grene. Portmann’s conception of life is unique in its focus on the phenomenal appearance of organisms. Confronted with the enormous amount of scientific knowledge being produced today, it is even clearer than it was during Portmann’s lifetime that although biologists employ physical and chemical methods, biology itself is not (only) physics and chemistry. These exact methods must be applied according to what has meaning for living beings. If biology seeks to understand organisms as autonomous agents, it needs to take display and the interpretation of appearances as basic characteristics of life. The topic of this book is significantly relevant to the disciplines of theoretical biology, philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and biosemiotics. The recent epigenetic turn in biology, acknowledging the interconnections between organismal development, morphology and communication, presents an opportunity to revisit Portmann’s work and to reconsider and update his primary ideas in the contemporary context.
The author discusses the cell and cellular formation and development; stimulus and perception and how these relate to the particular biological entity and its environment; the problems of biological ranking; and the mechanistic theory of evolution, which he considers an oversimplification of the evolutionary process. He closes with a discussion of two tendencies in modern biology: the attempt to formulate universal laws at a time when there are too many unanswered questions within the field; and the attempt to relate biological discoveries to a framework of ethics and behavior problems.--
The Living Form and the Seeing Eye should be of interest not only to philosophers but also to marine biologists (Emperor Hirohito, a marine biologist, was a reader of Portmann), students of natural history, those involved in the life sciences, zoologists, zoo managers, wildlife preservationists, and ethicists. The essays are translated into English and the volume includes an interpretive essay.
Goethe's influential text, newly illustrated with stunning color photographs. The Metamorphosis of Plants, published in 1790, was Goethe's first major attempt to describe what he called in a letter to a friend “the truth about the how of the organism.” Inspired by the diversity of flora he found on a journey to Italy, Goethe sought a unity of form in diverse structures. He came to see in the leaf the germ of a plant's metamorphosis—“the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms”—from the root and stem leaves to the calyx and corolla, to pistil and stamens. With this short book—123 numbered paragraphs, in the manner of the great botanist Linnaeus—Goethe aimed to tell the story of botanical forms in process, to present, in effect, a motion picture of the metamorphosis of plants. This MIT Press edition of The Metamorphosis of Plants illustrates Goethe's text (in an English translation by Douglas Miller) with a series of stunning and starkly beautiful color photographs as well as numerous line drawings. It is the most completely and colorfully illustrated edition of Goethe's book ever published. It demonstrates vividly Goethe's ideas of transformation and interdependence, as well as the systematic use of imagination in scientific research—which influenced thinkers ranging from Darwin to Thoreau and has much to teach us today about our relationship with nature.
The 74th volume of the Eranos Yearbooks, The Age of Immediacy at the Test of Meaning, presents to the public the work of the last two years of activities at the Eranos Foundation (2017–2018). The book gathers the lectures presented at the occasion of the 2017 Eranos Conference, Where is the World Going? The Uncertain Future, between Traditional Knowledge and Scientific Thought, the 2018 Eranos Conference, Space for Thinking and Thinking about Space. Reflections on the Relations between the Soul and Places at the Time of the Anthropocene, the 2017 Eranos-Jung Lectures, Who is Afraid of Interiority? A Journey through Literature, Philosophy, and Psychology, the 2018 Eranos-Jung Lectures, Who is Stealing our Time? The Age of Immediacy at the Test of Meaning, and the 2018 Eranos School seminar, The Mechanisms of Heresy: Old and New Forms of Exclusion and Repression. The volume includes essays by Valery Afanassiev, Stephen Aizenstat, Arnaldo Benini, Paul Bishop, Roberto Casati, Adriano Fabris, Franco Ferrari, Giuseppe O. Longo, Jaap Mansfeld, Panos Mantziaras, Grazia Shōgen Marchianò, Massimo Mori, Guy Pelletier, Antonio Prete, Francesca Rigotti, René Roux, Silvano Tagliagambe, Yannis Tsiomis, Amelia Valtolina, Matteo Vegetti, Antonio Vitolo, Samaneh Yasaei, and Chiara Zamboni.
The 71st volume of the Eranos Yearbooks, Beyond Masters – Spaces Without Thresholds, presents the work of the activities at the Eranos Foundation in 2012. The book gathers the lectures organized on the theme of the 2012 Eranos Conference, “On the Threshold – Disorientation and New Forms of Space” together with the talks given on the occasion of the 2012 Eranos-Jung Lectures seminar cycle, on the topic, “The Eclipse of the Masters?” This volume includes essays by Valerio Adami, Stephen Aizenstat, Claudio Bonvecchio, Michael Engelhard, Adriano Fabris, Maurizio Ferraris, Mauro Guindani, Nikolaus Koliusis, Fabio Merlini, Bernardo Nante, Fausto Petrella, Gian Piero Quaglino, Shantena Augusto Sabbadini, Amelia Valtolina, and Marco Vozza. Each lecture is reproduced in the language in which it was presented: 12 essays in Italian, 3 in English, and 2 in German.
In Transformation: Emergence of the Self, noted analyst and author Murray Stein explains what this process is and what it means for an individual to experience it. Transformation usually occurs at midlife but is much more complicated than what we colloquially call a midlife crisis. Consciously working through this life stage can lead people to become who they have always potentially been. Indeed, Stein suggests, transformation is the essential human task.