The Shadow Biosphere Hypothesis: Non-knowledge in Emerging Disciplines

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 636-658
Author(s):  
Valentina Marcheselli

All life on Earth shares the same ancestor, the most primitive form of life that arose, in still unknown circumstances, more than 3.5 billion years ago. At least this is what is commonly assumed. Astrobiologists have revisited this assumption and advanced the hypothesis of the existence of a “shadow biosphere” on Earth: a parallel tree of life whose instances, being different at the molecular level to the kind of life we are used to, would remain hidden from view. In this paper, I take the emergence of the so-called shadow biosphere hypothesis and the controversial discovery of GFAJ-1, a microbe thriving in the arsenic-rich waters of Mono Lake, as an entry point to look into the strategic role of non-knowledge claims. I juxtapose the Latourian black-box, that is, those undiscussed technoscientific artifacts that are taken for granted in scientific practice, with the shadowy nature of non-knowledge claims in order to pay closer attention to the contingent, active, performative, and always social nature of the making of what is unknown. I conclude this paper by claiming that in the negotiation of what is unknown, emerging disciplines position themselves within the larger scientific community.

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-84
Author(s):  
Marcin Baran

Abstract:The main part of the philosophical activity of Charles Taylor may be characterized as philosophical anthropology. This philosophical anthropology is above all an attempt to overcome what he calls the epistemological construal i. e. a set of false anthropological beliefs spread in the modern western philosophy like: disengaged subject, the punctual self and social atomism. His critique of the anthropological beliefs draws, among other thinkers, heavily on Ludwig Wittgenstein's reflections on language and his social nature in Philosophical Investigations. To the disengaged subject and punctual self Taylor opposes the embodied subject, a human agent that is impossible to define without his language depending entirely on the “form of life”, an inescapable social context in which he is embedded. Thus Taylor emphasizes the basic connection between the self and the community, which is being falsely compromised by social atomism. This emphasis on the community, on the essential role of the link between individual and his social environment rank him among so called communitarians, the critics of the predominant individualistic liberal way of thinking. In his more recent works, especially A Secular Age Taylor reflects on the phenomenon of secularization of the modern West. Here the notion, inspired partially by Wittgenstein, of “background” – an implicit framework for the beliefs of an agent – plays an important role. The following text will show more in detail the most important Wittgensteinian inspirations in the philosophical reflection of Charles Taylor considering modern western culture.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosanna del Gaudio

<p>The aim of this work is to present and discuss the results of recent and ongoing wet and in silico laboratory experiments supporting Multiple Root Genesis (MuGeRo) hypothesis already proposed in search of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>approaches surrounding the mysterious primeval steps of life emergence on Earth and elsewhere in the Universe. There are and have been reported many theories on how the very first life began on Earth, and also on how life itself evolved, some even say that life might have arisen on Earth more than once, and since it is hard to prove or disprove them there is no fully accepted theory.</p> <p>Approaching the primordial step of life emerging and possibile evolutionary scenarios from nonliving-matter towards answering the fundamental question about when, where and how life was born on Earth I’ll discuss essential requirement for the first emergence of life on Earth and Earth-like planets.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p> <p>As examples of proto-metabolic reactions occurred in a pre-biotic hydrogel context and as a model for the emergence and early evolution of life on Earth, I'm proposing the self-organizing M4 materials, having a complex chemistry, that I’ve obtained from both some meteorites and terrestrial rocks and minerals. Moreover, they are certainly the result of several coordinated activities and only some of them can be attributed to the meteorite or terrestrial rock components.</p> <p>The results so far obtained could point a way towards understanding how Earth kick-started metabolism emerged on landmass that arose from Archean oceans rather than in the depths near a deep sea hydrothermal vent.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p> <p>This work puts forward also an evolutionary scenario that satisfies the known constraints by proposing that life on Earth emerged, powered by solar radiation because the M4 catalytic activities might be a primitive form of reaction network supporting abiogenic development of life on Earth or elsewhere in the Universe. This in addition the idea that microbial or virus or early forms of life were already present in our solar system at the time of Earth’s formation so that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>panspermia or abiogenesis results are not rival but two complementary theories.</p> <p>Concerning the role that minerals may have played in organizing organic matter rising towards life from supports to scaffolds or energy sources or molecular-level information. There are some hints concerning the role that some minerals may have played in organizing matter in its rise towards life, from simple supports to scaffolds, from energy sources to even maybe providers of molecular-level information.</p> <p>The work that remains to be done is huge is there an "interfacial" path from the disorganized complexity of prebiotic and "primitive-jam" to the functional systems that have been the precursors of life? To answer this question I hope soon to analyze with systems chemists the results already obtained and they will be obtained from new weighted experiments designed in scientific cooperation.</p>


1990 ◽  
Vol 35 (7) ◽  
pp. 729-730
Author(s):  
No authorship indicated
Keyword(s):  

2016 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Pier Giuseppe Rossi

The subject of alignment is not new to the world of education. Today however, it has come to mean different things and to have a heuristic value in education according to research in different areas, not least for neuroscience, and to attention to skills and to the alternation framework.This paper, after looking at the classic references that already attributed an important role to alignment in education processes, looks at the strategic role of alignment in the current context, outlining the shared construction processes and focusing on some of the ways in which this is put into effect.Alignment is part of a participatory, enactive approach that gives a central role to the interaction between teaching and learning, avoiding the limits of behaviourism, which has a greater bias towards teaching, and cognitivism/constructivism, which focus their attention on learning and in any case, on that which separates a teacher preparing the environment and a student working in it.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Dini Maulana Lestari ◽  
M Roif Muntaha ◽  
Immawan Azhar BA

Islamic banks are present in the community as financial institutions whose activities are based on the principles of Islamic law for the benefit of the people. This study aims to determine the strategic role of Islamic Banks as financial service institutions, the importance of the existence of Islamic Banks and Islamic-based markets and financial instruments in them. In its development, Islamic banks have a role as institutions that turn on public funds, channel funds to the public, transfer assets, liquidity, reallocation of income and transactions. In the Indonesian economic system, the existence of Islamic Banks is important as an alternative solution to the problem of conflict between bank interest and usury. Islamic financial markets and instruments provide a free society of interest and follow a different set of principles. Distribution of profit/ loss according to evidence of participation in the management fund. The division of rental income in the form of musharaka.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Fahrurrrazi Fahrurrrazi

Penelitian ini dilatarbelakangi oleh fenomena minat baca siswa dan pengaruh minat baca terhadap pertumbuhan kemampuan belajar siswa pada jenjang-jenjang pendidikan selanjutnya. Kepala sekolah sebagai lokomotif perkembangan mutu pendidikan memiliki peran strategi bagi pengumbuhan dan pengembangan minat baca peserta didik. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui peran kepala madrasah sebagai edukator, manajer, dan innovator dalam pengembangan minat baca peserta didik di MIT Nurul Islam Kota Semarang. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian kualitatif lapangan, data dikumpulkan melalui observasi, wawancara, dokumentasi dan triangulasi, serta dianalisis dengan teknik analisis deskriptif. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa: 1) Peran kepala madrasah sebagai edukator dalam pengembangan minat baca peserta didik meliputi meliputi tiga pembinaan, yakni pembinaan mental dan moral, serta pembinaan artistik. 2) Peran kepala madrasah sebagai manajer dalam pengembangan minat baca peserta didik di MIT Nurul Islam meliputi penerapan fungsi-fungsi manajemen dengan didasarkan pada pada kerjasama dengan USAID dan UIN Walisongo Semarang. 3) Peran kepala madrasah sebagai innovator dalam pengembangan minat baca peserta didik di MIT Nurul Islam Kota Semarang meliputi inovasi strategi, pola pikir (mindset) dan struktur. Abstract This research is motivated by the phenomenon of reading interest of students and the influence of reading interest on the growth of students' learning ability in the next level of education. The principal as a locomotive of the development of the quality of education has a strategic role for the growth and development of reading interest of learners. This study aims to determine the role of principal as an educator, manager, and innovator in the development of reading interest of learners in MIT Nurul Islam Semarang City. This research is a qualitative field research, data collected through observation, interview, documentation and triangulation, and analyzed by descriptive analysis technique. The results of this study indicate that: 1) The role of principal as an educator in the development of reading interest of learners includes three activities are coaching, namely mental and moral coaching, and artistic coaching. 2) The role of principal as manager in the development of reading interest of learners at MIT Nurul Islam covers the application of management functions based on cooperation with USAID and UIN Walisongo Semarang. 3) The role of principal as innovator in the development of reading interest of learners at MIT Nurul Islam Semarang City includes innovation strategy, mindset, and structure.


1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Shane Hershman ◽  
William A. Cunningham ◽  
Kevin R. Moore
Keyword(s):  

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 873-883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Manzoli ◽  
Sara Mongiorgi ◽  
Cristina Clissa ◽  
Carlo Finelli ◽  
Anna Billi ◽  
...  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document