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"This book takes a humanistic and theological approach to the religious culture of the West by emphasizing the importance of thinking about nature. It argues that in the current environmental crisis, our thinking about nature is under siege, for nature is too quickly seen as victimized and humanity too often considered the culprit. Turning to theology as a way out of this bind, the author examines an old tradition of Western religious thought about nature in which God, the self, and nature are placed on a continuum. Engaging various thinkers who have previously (and unduly, to her way of thinking) been left out of religious discussions, the author privileges an unusual pair of protagonists, John the Scot Eriugena, the early medieval theologian and author of the Periphyseon, or The Division of Nature (considered a final word in the tradition of ancient philosophy but also condemned at the Council of Sens in 1225), and modern American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Arguing that these two thinkers shed light on each other while offering a third way between the objectified, instrumentalized nature of contemporary science and environmentalism and the mystical nature that is the exclusive alternative we find in most eco-religious and eco-philosophical thinking, the book rehabilitates the importance of reflecting on nature in terms of nature's own relevance and agency. As she puts her protagonists in conversation with both each other and with a range of further interlocutors, the author casts a wide net, bringing in figures both secular and confessional, remote in time and in space. This coming together of congenial minds makes for a Platonic Symposium of sorts, as she puts it. Eriugena is illuminated via Augustine and Maximus the Confessor, representing the Western and Eastern Christian traditions, respectively; Emerson is at the center of a wider circle, in dialogue with both the continental founder of modern theology, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and the American thinker of religious experience, William James. The result is not a new natural theology, the tradition of which this book to some extent deconstructs, but rather a religious reconceptualization of the meaning and development of nature in the West"--
A groundbreaking examination of the implications of synthetic biology for biodiversity conservation Nature almost everywhere survives on human terms. The distinction between what is natural and what is human-made, which has informed conservation for centuries, has become blurred. When scientists can reshape genes more or less at will, what does it mean to conserve nature? The tools of synthetic biology are changing the way we answer that question. Gene editing technology is already transforming the agriculture and biotechnology industries. What happens if synthetic biology is also used in conservation to control invasive species, fight wildlife disease, or even bring extinct species back from the dead? Conservation scientist Kent Redford and geographer Bill Adams turn to synthetic biology, ecological restoration, political ecology, and de-extinction studies and propose a thoroughly innovative vision for protecting nature.
A provocative argument that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the built environment. Environmentalism, in theory and practice, is concerned with protecting nature. But if we have now reached “the end of nature,” as Bill McKibben and other environmental thinkers have declared, what is there left to protect? In Thinking like a Mall, Steven Vogel argues that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the “environment”—that is, the world that actually surrounds us, which is always a built world, the only one that we inhabit. We need to think not so much like a mountain (as Aldo Leopold urged) as like a mall. Shopping malls, too, are part of the environment and deserve as much serious consideration from environmental thinkers as do mountains. Vogel argues provocatively that environmental philosophy, in its ethics, should no longer draw a distinction between the natural and the artificial and, in its politics, should abandon the idea that something beyond human practices (such as “nature”) can serve as a standard determining what those practices ought to be. The appeal to nature distinct from the built environment, he contends, may be not merely unhelpful to environmental thinking but in itself harmful to that thinking. The question for environmental philosophy is not “how can we save nature?” but rather “what environment should we inhabit, and what practices should we engage in to help build it?”
Moving between ancient and modern sources, philosophy and theology, and science and popular culture, Sean McGrath offers a genuinely new reflection on what it means to be human in an era of climate change, mass extinction and geoengineering. Engaging with contemporary thinkers in eco-criticism, including Timothy Morton, Bruno Latour and Slavoj Zizek, McGrath argues for a distinctive role for the human being in the universe: the human being is nature come to full consciousness. McGrath's compelling case for a new Anthropocenic humanism is founded on a reverence for nature, a humanism that is not at the expense of nature, and a naturalism that is not at the expense of the human.
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
"Wild Ideas" looks deep into the forests, skies and oceans to explore how animals solve problems. Whether it's weaving a safe place to rest and reflect, blowing a fine net of bubbles to trap fish, or leaping boldly into a new situation, the animals featured (including the orangutan, humpback whale and gibbon) can teach us a lot about creative problem solving tools and strategies. This book uses lyrical text grounded in current science alongside wonderfully detailed art to present problems as doorways to creative thinking. "Wild Ideas" encourages an inquiry-based approach to learning, inviting readers to indulge their sense of wonder and curiosity by observing the natural world, engaging with big ideas and asking questions
Scientific thinking must be understood as an activity. The acts of interpretation, representation, and explanation are the cognitive processes by which scientific thinking leads to understanding. The book explores the nature of these processes and describes how scientific thinking can only be grasped from a pragmatic perspective.
In Ecology without Nature, Timothy Morton argues that the chief stumbling block to environmental thinking is the image of nature itself. Ecological writers propose a new worldview, but their very zeal to preserve the natural world leads them away from the "nature" they revere. The problem is a symptom of the ecological catastrophe in which we are living. Morton sets out a seeming paradox: to have a properly ecological view, we must relinquish the idea of nature once and for all. Ecology without Nature investigates our ecological assumptions in a way that is provocative and deeply engaging. Ranging widely in eighteenth-century through contemporary philosophy, culture, and history, he explores the value of art in imagining environmental projects for the future. Morton develops a fresh vocabulary for reading "environmentality" in artistic form as well as content, and traces the contexts of ecological constructs through the history of capitalism. From John Clare to John Cage, from Kierkegaard to Kristeva, from The Lord of the Rings to electronic life forms, Ecology without Nature widens our view of ecological criticism, and deepens our understanding of ecology itself. Instead of trying to use an idea of nature to heal what society has damaged, Morton sets out a radical new form of ecological criticism: "dark ecology."