scholarly journals Martin Versfeld

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst Wolff

Martin Versfeld (1909–1995) is one of South Africa’s greatest philosophers, appreciated by academics and activists, poets and the broader public. His masterful prose spans the tension between disquiet and joy. Detractor of the violent trends of modernity, a critic of apartheid from the first hour, he was among the first philosophers of ecology. At the same time he celebrated the generosity of the world and advocated an ethics of simplicity, drawing on mediaeval theology and Eastern wisdom. His philosophy offered food for thought in dark times of the 20th century, as it still does for us in the 21st century. This first book-length study on Versfeld is an invitation to think with him on justice and exploitation, cultural difference and human nature, religion and the environment, time and connectedness.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst Wolff

Martin Versfeld (1909–1995) is one of South Africa’s greatest philosophers, appreciated by academics and activists, poets and the broader public. His masterful prose spans the tension between disquiet and joy. Detractor of the violent trends of modernity, a critic of apartheid from the first hour, he was among the first philosophers of ecology. At the same time he celebrated the generosity of the world and advocated an ethics of simplicity, drawing on mediaeval theology and Eastern wisdom. His philosophy offered food for thought in dark times of the 20th century, as it still does for us in the 21st century. This first book-length study on Versfeld is an invitation to think with him on justice and exploitation, cultural difference and human nature, religion and the environment, time and connectedness.


Author(s):  
Ruyu Hung

The neologism ecopedagogy was coined in the late 20th century to represent the joining of ecology and pedagogy. However, ecopedagogy is not an education about ecology but an education through ecology, meaning that it is an education based on an ecological worldview. A worldview is the fundamental understanding of life and the world. Ecological worldview means the ecological approach to the understanding of life and the world. The basic ideas of the ecological worldview come from the science of ecology, of which there are two interpretations: ecology of stability and ecology of instability. Both provide a general, shared outline of the world and how it works but each offers distinctive values of philosophy, ethics, culture, and society with regard to the ecosystem. Ecopedagogy, which encompasses both ecological worldview and education, develops into two broad movements: philosophical ecopedagogy and critical ecopedagogy. For the former, referred to as ecosophy, focuses on the metaphysical investigation of the human-nature relationship and related issues in education. For the latter, ecojustice, the mission is to critique the injustice and oppression involved in environmental issues and to construct a utopian society of planetary civilization.


Author(s):  
Ray Kurzweil

I have been involved in inventing since I was five, and I quickly realized that for an invention to succeed, you have to target the world of the future. But what would the future be like? To find out, I became a student of technology trends and began to develop mathematical models of different technologies: computation, miniaturization, evolution over time. I have been doing that for 25 years, and it has been remarkable to me how powerful and predictive these models are. Now, before I show you some of these models and then try to build with you some of the scenarios for the future—and, in particular, focus on how these will benefit technology for the disabled—I would like to share one trend that I think is particularly profound and that many people fail to take into consideration. It is this: the rate of progress—what I call the “paradigmshift rate”—is itself accelerating. We are doubling this paradigm-shift rate every decade. The whole 20th century was not 100 years of progress as we know it today, because it has taken us a while to speed up to the current level of progress. The 20t h century represented about 20 years of progress in terms of today’s rate. And at today’s rate of change, we will achieve an amount of progress equivalent to that of the whole 20th century in 14 years, then as the acceleration continues, in 7 years. The progress in the 21st century will be about 1,000 times greater than that in the 20th century, which was no slouch in terms of change.


This chapter will delve on modern approaches to city making (eco-cities, sustainable cities, resilient cities, etc.) explaining their basics and complexity. Additionally, the demands that changing solutions place on the architects, urban planners, and other city designers will be explained. The scope should be treated as the introduction to the circular economy approach; it will also cover other development attitudes where a city was not the initial prime element even if urban planning became one of the main issues during later phases of development. Such attitudes can be traced in the mid-20th century policy making with the car transport being the leading development attitude but having a wide impact on the solutions used in most cities. It will also explain when the urbanization process became part of this economic approach. The chapter will include principles of the modern initiatives in various parts of the world and consider existing movements allowing for a more sweeping coverage.


2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk G. Van der Merwe

Throughout its history, Christianity has stood in a dichotomous relation to the various philosophical movements or eras (pre-modernism, modernism, postmodernism and post-postmodernism) that took on different faces throughout history. In each period, it was the sciences that influenced, to a great extent, the interpretation and understanding of the Bible. Christianity, however, was not immune to influences, specifically those of the Western world. This essay reflects briefly on this dichotomy and the influence of Bultmann’s demythologising of the kerygma during the 20th century. Also, the remythologising (Vanhoozer) of the church’s message as proposed for the 21st century no more satisfies the critical Christian thinkers. The relationship between science and religion is revisited, albeit from a different perspective as established over the past two decades as to how the sciences have been pointed out more and more to complement theology. This article endeavours to evoke the church to consider the fundamental contributions of the sciences and how it is going to incorporate the sciences into its theological training and message to the world.


Author(s):  
Herbert S. Klein ◽  
Francisco Vidal Luna

The 20th century represents a crucial period in Brazil’s economic history, when an agrarian, rural-dominated society became an urban, industrialized country with a complex financial sector and a large service sector. This economic transformation fueled by coffee exports led to profound demographic and social changes as millions of European and Asian immigrants were integrated into Brazilian society, followed by a massive shift of native-born migrants from the northeast to the dynamic southeast of Brazil, particularly for the state of São Paulo, which became the richest, most industrialized, and most populous state of the nation. The second half of the 20th century saw the creation of a modern industrial sector and the modernization of national agriculture, which in the 21st century made Brazil one of the most important producers of grain and animal protein in the world.


Author(s):  
Carl Becker

The 20th century may be considered the ultimate expression of Western ideals and philosophy: "civilized" humanity's attempt to dominate "uncivilized" peoples and nature. The 21st century soberingly proclaims the shortsightedness and ultimate unsustainability of this philosophy. This paper shows the limitations of a modern Western world-view, and the practical applicability of ideas to be found in Asian philosophies. In outline, the contrast may be portrayed by the following overgeneralizations: (1) From a linear to a cyclical world view; (2) from divine salvation to karmic necessity; (3) from human dominion over nature to human place within nature; (4) from the perfectibility of humanity and the world through science; (5) from atomistic mechanistic individualism to organic interdependence; (6) from competition to cooperation; (7) from glorification of wealth to respect for humanhood; (8) from absolute cultural values to necessary common values. Each of these attitudes is examined in light of what we now know about the world in the 21st century, as Asian philosophy is found applicable to address future problems.


2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip C. Stenning ◽  
Clifford D. Shearing

A few years ago, David Bayley and Clifford Shearing (1996) argued that at the end of the 20th century we were witnessing a ‘watershed’ in policing, when transformations were occurring in the practices and sponsorship of policing on a scale unprecedented since the developments that heralded the creation of the ‘New Police’ in the 19th century. In this special issue of the journal, we and our fellow contributors turn our attention to a somewhat neglected aspect of this ‘quiet revolution’ in policing (Stenning & Shearing, 1980), namely the nature of the opportunities for, and challenges posed by, the reform of policing in different parts of the world at the beginning of the 21st century. Our attention in this issue is particularly focused on the opportunities, drivers and challenges in reforming public (state-sponsored) police institutions.


Author(s):  
Koichi Tonuma

The author, Emeritus Professor at Waseda University, Tokyo, is currently Chairman of the Board of the Research Institute for Urban and Environmental Development, Japan (UED). Dr Tonuma is the author of a book entitled Japan in the 21st Century with emphasis on planning for residential surroundings, and of numerous articles, some of which have also been published in Ekistics. He is a former Vice-President of the World Society for Ekistics. The text that follows is a revised and edited version of a paper presented by the author at the WSE Symposion"Globalization and Local Identity, " Hikone, Japan, 19-24 September,2005. He has pursued the theme of this paper in research published in Japanese in the UED Report, January 2007, and is currently researching habitability zones and Ecumenopolis. 


Author(s):  
Syihabul Furqon ◽  
Busro Busro ◽  
Abdul Syukur

The development of the world of tourism so rapidly from year to year. This implies an inevitable new tourist attraction. This development has its traces from the 20th century as a result of the decline of human existence, the objectification of nature and the breaking of the chain of sacredness with God through tradition. The second decade of the 21st century shows that this disconnection and decadence can be re-woven through tourism. This research will explore the statement: what kind of tourism model can then intertwine humans' disconnection from themselves, nature and God? The result is that in the ecotourism and religious tourism models there is a possibility of a harmonious mutualism symbiosis. Specifically in this study, the authors found that ecotourism (Trigonasantri Garden) and religious tourism objects (Petilasan Linggabuana) have a fundamental component—traditionally—relationship between humans, nature and God.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document