An Ecocritical Perspective on the Vital Forces of Decay

Author(s):  
Dennis Denisoff

The modern decadent tradition began to form around the same time that ecology emerged as a recognized scientific field. The essentialist biologism at the historical root of decadence meshed with the interest that cultural theorists and artists of the nineteenth century had in models of society as an organically coherent, self-regulating system. Turning to conceptions of decay in Charles Baudelaire’s poetry and Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/1891), this article addresses the authors’ ecological understanding of themselves as humans and as artists, and of the place of decadent aesthetics within the biological world itself. This essay foregrounds not the scientific knowledge the authors had regarding decay, fungi, or rot, but the ontological perspective through which ecological models of engagement and influence permeate their decadent works.

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
HENRY P. HUNTINGTON ◽  
ROBERT S. SUYDAM ◽  
DANIEL H. ROSENBERG

The integration or co-application of traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge has been the subject of considerable research and discussion (see Johannes 1981; Johnson 1992; Stevenson 1996; McDonald et al. 1997; Huntington et al. 1999, 2002), with emphasis on various specific topics including environmental management and conservation (see Freeman & Carbyn 1988; Ferguson & Messier 1997; Ford & Martinez 2000; Usher 2000; Albert 2001). In most cases, examples of successful integration compare traditional and scientific observations at similar spatial scales to increase confidence in understanding or to fill gaps that appear from either perspective. We present a different approach to integration, emphasizing complementarity rather than concordance in spatial perspective, using two migratory species as examples.


Author(s):  
Consuelo Sendino

ABSTRACT Our attraction to fossils is almost as old as humans themselves, and the way fossils are represented has changed and evolved with technology and with our knowledge of these organisms. Invertebrates were the first fossils to be represented in books and illustrated according to their original form. The first worldwide illustrations of paleoinvertebrates by recognized authors, such as Christophorus Encelius and Conrad Gessner, considered only their general shape. Over time, paleoillustrations became more accurate and showed the position of organisms when they were alive and as they had appeared when found. Encyclopedic works such as those of the Sowerbys or Joachim Barrande have left an important legacy on fossil invertebrates, summarizing the knowledge of their time. Currently, new discoveries, techniques, and comparison with extant specimens are changing the way in which the same organisms are shown in life position, with previously overlooked taxonomically important elements being displayed using modern techniques. This chapter will cover the history of illustrations, unpublished nineteenth-century author illustrations, examples showing fossil reconstructions, new techniques and their influence on taxonomical work with regard to illustration, and the evolution of paleoinvertebrate illustration.


1991 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 2763-2763 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. M. Yamashiro ◽  
C. S. Poon ◽  
III. DiStefano JJ

In every scientific field, significant progress often comes about in two steps, coevolving in the building of scientific knowledge: the accumulation of critical data and their consolidation into working hypotheses or models.


2005 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARISOL DE LA CADENA

Through a genealogical analysis of the terms mestizo and mestizaje, this article reveals that these voices are doubly hybrid. On the one hand they house an empirical hybridity, built upon eighteenth and nineteenth century racial taxonomies and according to which ‘mestizos’ are non-indigenous individuals, the result of biological or cultural mixtures. Yet, mestizos’ genealogy starts earlier, when ‘mixture’ denoted transgression of the rule of faith, and its statutes of purity. Within this taxonomic regime mestizos could be, at the same time, indigenous. Apparently dominant, racial theories sustained by scientific knowledge mixed with, (rather than cancel) previous faith based racial taxonomies. ‘Mestizo’ thus houses a conceptual hybridity – the mixture of two classificatory regimes – which reveals subordinate alternatives for mestizo subject positions, including forms of indigeneity.


Author(s):  
Maria Antónia Pires de Almeida

This is a study of how scientific knowledge reached common citizens in nineteenth-century Portugal, using newspapers as the main source. Despite the population's limited access to written material, each leading newspaper might be read by 30 000 people a day in Lisbon. This made newspapers the most widely available vehicle for the diffusion of the latest scientific information to the general public. With a cholera morbus epidemic affecting the second largest Portuguese town and all the northern regions, as well as the Algarve, reports on the course of the epidemic were considered essential. The author bases her study on a database of news about the disease in 1855 and 1856, especially with regard to prevention and treatment.


2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Jackson

Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863–1947) wrote his most popular supernatural tales between 1890 and 1900, a period in which European culture felt itself to be on the decline and in which “decadent” art and literature rose up both as a reflection of and a contribution to this perceived cultural deterioration. While Machen's works have received little critical attention, a recent revival of interest in fin-de-siècle decadence has brought his supernatural tales into the literary limelight. Noteworthy examples of this interest include Julian North's treatment of The Great God Pan in Michael St. John's Romancing Decay: Ideas of Decadence in European Culture and Christine Ferguson's analysis of the same work in her PMLA article “Decadence as Scientific Fulfillment.” Indeed, Machen's supernatural tales could enhance and complicate any exposition of decadent literature and culture; they offer a unique vision of descent into the primordial that differs from the moral and psychological treatment of decadence in other popular works of the time, such as Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Like Stevenson and Wilde, Machen employs themes of transgression and metamorphosis to illustrate his characters’ deviations from human nature. However, the forces at work in Machen's tales do not arise from the recesses of the human mind in its modern conception, nor do his protagonists sin primarily against society and the arbitrary nature of its morals and values. Instead, Machen locates mythic forces at work within his contemporary society to highlight a much older form of transgression and to challenge notions of degeneration that held currency at the end of the nineteenth century.


Author(s):  
Gaetano Albergo ◽  

The work realized by Aristotle in his investigations on the natural world, in particular the biological world, has as backdrop two theoretical assumptions: the ability to organize phainomena in such a dialectically well structured, although at the same time open and flexible way, as the living reality that is studied, and the opportunity to offer to the theoretical knowledge, of axiomatic nature, not only information and tools for the understanding of individual species, but also methods, and its logic, which, if properly pursued, will lead to scientific knowledge. This, understood in the sense of causal knowledge, cannot be pursued in a purely formal way. Our aim is to demonstrate why Naturphilosophen did not get the Aristotelian lesson, up to refuse his teleologism because considered metaphysically regressive.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (02) ◽  
pp. 347-367
Author(s):  
Christian Yago Vieira de Souza ◽  
Fábio da Silva Gonçalves Pereira

Embora a sistematização da Geografia remonte apenas no século XIX, na Prússia, atual Alemanha, por Alexandre Von Humboldt e Karl Ritter, já se observava a existência do conhecimento geográfico desde os tempos primitivos. Ao longo da evolução dessa ciência diferentes abordagens a caracterizaram, como a Positivista, a Neopositivista, a Humanística e a Crítica. Atualmente a Geografia que se tem buscado (re)fazer é de cunho holístico, uma Geografia plural. Contudo, esta visão criou uma excessiva fragmentação do conhecimento geográfico, que promoveu um distanciamento da identidade do geógrafo. Diante disso, o objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar o panorama do pensamento geográfico e a relação com o conhecimento científico ao longo da evolução histórica do pensamento geográfico, bem como os principais métodos que a tangenciou nesse processo. O caminho metodológico está baseado em levantamento bibliográfico que permitirá analisar os métodos utilizados na trajetória da Geografia enquanto ciência. Palavras- chave: Geografia; Método; Epistemologia Geográfica.   GEOGRAPHY: scientific relations and analysis of methods Abstract Although the systematization of Geography dates back only to the nineteenth century, in Prussia, present Germany, by Alexandre Von Humboldt and Karl Ritter, the existence of geographic knowledge had been observed since the earliest times. Throughout the evolution of this science different approaches have characterized it, as Positivist, Neopositivist, Humanistic and Critical. Nowadays the Geography that has been tried to make and to remake is of holistic character, a plural Geography. However, this view created an excessive fragmentation of geographic knowledge, which promoted a distancing of the geographer's identity. Therefore, the objective of this article is to present the panorama of geographic thought and the relation with the scientific knowledge along the historical evolution of the geographic thought, as well as the main methods that concern it in this process. The methodological path is based on a bibliographical survey that will allow to analyze the methods used in the trajectory of Geography as science. Keywords: Geography; Method; Geographical Epistemology.   GEOGRAFÍA: asuntos científicos y métodos de análisis Resumen A pesar de que la sistematización de Geografía so lamente volver a montar em el siglo XIX, em Prusia, ahora Alemania, por Alexander von Humboldt y Karl Ritter, ya se ha observado la existencia de conocimiento geográfico desde los primeros tiempos. Longo da la evolución de esta ciencia diferentes enfoques caracterizados como un positivista, el neopositivista, la a geografía Humanístico y Crítica. Atualmente que ha intentado rehacer y la naturaleza holística, una geografía plural. Sin embargo, esta visión ha creado una excesiva fragmentación Del conocimiento geográfico, que promovió um distanciamiento de la identidaddel geógrafo. Por lo tanto, el objetivo de este trabajo es presentar el panorama del pensamiento geográfico y La relación com el conocimiento científico a lo largo de la evolución histórica del pensamiento geográfico y los principales métodos que tangenciou este proceso. El enfoque metodológico se basa em la literatura que examinará los métodos utilizados em la trayectoria de la geografía como una ciencia. Palabras clave: Geografía; Métodos; Epistemología Geográfica.


MANUSYA ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-88
Author(s):  
Somphong Amnuay-ngerntra

This research investigates King Mongkut’s vision of modernity as expressed through the medium of Phra Nakhon Kiri in Phetchaburi. King Mongkut used hierarchically traditional architecture as a means of bolstering national pride and legitimising claims to the right of kingship. Simultaneously, a political position of Siam as a modern state was manifested through European-Sino-Siamese hybrid architectural styles in the mid-nineteenth century. In addition, the bell-shaped pagoda style within the site complex reflected his religious reform directed at upgrading monastic practices and purifying the canon. His reformed Buddhist sect, Thammayut, is characterised as rational, intellectual, and humanistic. Such religious reform was integrated with scientific knowledge, which he had learned during his contact with Christian missionaries as a monk and later as king.


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