Form and perception of nature in Elizabeth bishop’s “questions of travel”.

Human Beings ◽

Human Presence ◽

The Relationship ◽

Formal Features

Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry is acutely form-conscious and human perception informs its descriptions of nature; critics who study Bishop’s poetry refer to her use of poetic artifice and note in passing the ethics of restraint and impersonality in her poetry. However, Bishop’s poetry is rarely discussed in the sphere of ecocriticism; and the formal significance of human perception infused with the descriptions of nature in her poetry is conveniently overlooked. Likewise, anthropogenic climate change is underrepresented in traditional ecocriticism which insists on removing form—and with it, any trace of the human—from the text. This article proposes that a study of Bishop’s travel writing and exploring the significance of concern for nature in conjunction with form-consciousness can contribute to a more profound understanding of both human-nature relationship and Bishop’s ecopoetic sensitivities. “Questions of Travel” is one of Bishop’s poems that directly grapples with the ethics of human presence in nature. The article explicates the textual and formal features of this poem to elucidate the function of form in its ecopoetic descriptions. The article shows how Bishop accepts the inevitability of human perception of nature and its literary corollary in ecopoetry as form-consciousness, and, thus, by implication, points to the importance of such poetry for a deeper understanding of the relationship between human beings and nature in the context of climate change.

Kant, Chakrabarty, and the Crises of the Anthropocene

Environmental Ethics ◽

10.5840/enviroethics20194115 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 53-67

Author(s):

David Baumeister ◽

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Human Nature ◽

Environmental Philosophy ◽

Human Beings ◽

Environmental Humanities ◽

The Core ◽

Critical Insight ◽

Insight Into

Dipesh Chakrabarty has identified Immanuel Kant’s distinction between the human’s moral and animal dimensions as an underlying source of the failure of the humanities to respond to the ecological crises of the Anthropocene. Although relevant for the environmental humanities generally, Chakrabarty’s critique is especially germane to contemporary environmental philosophy. It shows how the reality of anthropogenic climate change renders central aspects of Kant’s influential conception of human nature untenable. While closer examination of Kant’s writings corroborates the core of Chakrabarty’s reading, there nonetheless remain positive resources in Kant’s philosophy for contemporary environmental thinking, for, although Kant does regard the human’s moral and animal dimensions as conceptually separable, he also understands them to be inextricably bound within the nature of human beings. Attending to the interplay between these Kantian commitments, a new critical insight into one of the basic tensions of the Anthropocene era can be attained.

On the relationship between low cloud variability and lower tropospheric stability in the Southeast Pacific

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ◽

10.5194/acpd-11-3777-2011 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 3777-3811

Author(s):

F. Sun ◽

A. Hall ◽

X. Qu

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Seasonal Cycle ◽

Austral Summer ◽

Cloud Amount ◽

Cloud Feedbacks ◽

Southeast Pacific ◽

Low Cloud ◽

Lower Tropospheric Stability ◽

Abstract. In this study, we examine observed marine low cloud variability in the southeast Pacific and its association with lower-tropospheric stability (LTS) across a spectrum of timescales. On both daily and interannual timescales, LTS and low cloud amount are very well correlated in austral summer (DJF). Meanwhile in winter (JJA), when ambient LTS increases, the LTS-low cloud relationship disintegrates. The DJF LTS-low cloud relationship also weakens in years with unusually large ambient LTS values. These are generally strong El Niño years, in which DJF LTS values are comparable to those typically found in JJA. Thus the LTS-low cloud relationship is strongly modulated by the seasonal cycle and the ENSO phenomenon. We also investigate the origin of LTS anomalies closely associated with low cloud variability during austral summer. We find that the ocean and atmosphere are independently involved in generating anomalies in LTS and hence variability in the southeast Pacific low cloud deck. This highlights the coupled nature of the climate system in this region, and raises the possibility of cloud feedbacks related to LTS. We conclude by addressing the implications of the observed LTS-low cloud relationship in the southeast Pacific for low cloud feedbacks in anthropogenic climate change.

The Question of Disclosure in Photography

Glimpse ◽

10.5840/glimpse20212217 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 33-38

Author(s):

Junichiro Inutsuka ◽

Keyword(s):

Human Nature ◽

Social Environment ◽

Living Environment ◽

Epistemic Value ◽

Human Consciousness ◽

Human Beings ◽

Technological Environment ◽

Cognitive Transformation ◽

The World ◽

Keeping aside discussions about theories of depiction of photography and the epistemic value of photography from the viewer’s perspective, I reconsider this techne from the photographers’ entire act of photographing. It presents the quest of the possibility to regain the world by the art of photography, especially in a situation where human consciousness of the living environment is overwhelmed by the photographic effects. The nature of the current technological environment—while disguising the manifestation of pure humanity, in the sense that it is the externalization of technology due to human nature—is completely destructive. Today, trying to save or regenerate philosophy should be nothing more than seeking a way for human beings to refuse being incorporated as an automaton in an endless track of automated reproduction processes. As one of those who wish to find a way to reconstruct the relationship between humans and nature or to reveal that human existence can only be established in such correlation, I seek a way of breathing human freedom, momentarily disputing this automated living and social environment. In other words, to regain or to play the art of photography, to unsettle what usually works as concrete support for the cognitive transformation making us unconsciously think of the technological environment as something inevitable and natural. It would be presenting a temporary retreat and a more positive way forward.

Introduction

Nature and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century Ireland ◽

10.3828/liverpool/9781789620320.003.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 1-15

Author(s):

Matthew Kelly

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Nineteenth Century ◽

Human Nature ◽

Future Study ◽

Historical Study ◽

The World ◽

Individual Contributions ◽

The Individual ◽

Narrative Thread ◽

This introduction considers the ‘environmental turn’ taken in the humanities, and particularly in historical study, suggesting ways in which these developments might animate the future study of nineteenth-century Ireland. Question of agency and the relationship between human and non-human nature are addressed. Also considered is how current environmental concerns, and climate change in particular, should lead us to think anew about the past, rendering familiar subjects unfamiliar. Particular attention is paid to how Ireland’s past might be located within larger global processes, attracting the interest of scholars from throughout the world. It then introduces the individual contributions in the volume, tracing a narrative thread through them in order to demonstrate how a change in optic can significantly change how we think about Ireland’s recent past.

“Everywhere you go always take the weather with you”: Phenomenology and the pedagogy of climate change education

Phenomenology & Practice ◽

10.29173/pandpr21165 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 3-18 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Patrick Howard

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Human Beings ◽

Human History ◽

Climate Change Education ◽

Living World ◽

To Come ◽

Imminent Threat ◽

The Relationship ◽

Regional Programs

In no other time in human history has the relationship between human beings, and the biosphere on which we depend, been fraught with such a sense of urgency. Responding to the imminent threat of climate change has focussed our attention on education. There has been a proliferation of international, national and regional programs designed to change attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs associated with the causes of climate change. This paper will look to phenomenology and pedagogy to attempt describe the experience of climate and to help us consider how we may allow the young to live in a time of inevitable climate disruption while nurturing what seems to come to them naturally, an embodied integration into the wonder and awe of the places they live. Also, this paper explores two dominant approaches to climate change education and asks how these approaches articulate an understanding of the essential relationship between humans and the larger living world as reflected through changing climatic conditions.

‘If You Want to Be Green Hold Your Breath’: Climate Change in British Theatre

New Theatre Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0266464x12000449 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 28 (3) ◽

pp. 260-271 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Julie Hudson

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Collaborative Work ◽

Public Domain ◽

Human Beings ◽

The Public ◽

Oxford University ◽

An Inconvenient Truth ◽

Dramatic Form ◽

Crown Prince ◽

With a rich mix of theatrical material to bring to the table, the climate-change debate playing out in the public domain would seem well adapted to the stage, and has often been presented in docu-dramatic form, as in Al Gore's well-known film An Inconvenient Truth. But until relatively recently climate change and the science relating to it have been conspicuous by their absence from the stage. Early movers on the climate-change theatre scene included Caryl Churchill's 2006 climate-change libretto for the London Proms, We Turned on the Light, and John Godber's 2007 play Crown Prince. Since then, interest has steadily increased. In 2009 came Steve Waters's double bill The Contingency Plan (On the Beach and Resilience). This was quickly followed by Earthquakes in London by Mike Bartlett in 2010, and by three further plays in the spring of 2011: Greenland, the collaborative work of Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner, and Jack Thorne; The Heretic by Richard Bean; and Wastwater by Simon Stephens. In this article Julie Hudson focuses on three of these works to explore how the plays engage with the debate through the medium of climate-change science. As her article suggests, these British climate-change plays make an important and occasionally subversive contribution to the long-running discourse on the relationship between science, the ecosystem, and human beings. In performance, they succeed in turning a subject that has been overplayed for effect in the public domain into compelling theatre. Julie Hudson is currently a visiting fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University.

The Omniscient Spring – the Whispering Water: Man and potajnica

Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology ◽

10.21301/eap.v16i2.11 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

pp. 575-591

Author(s):

Bojan Novaković ◽

Keyword(s):

Water Flow ◽

Social Power ◽

Human Perception ◽

Balkan Peninsula ◽

Human Beings ◽

Entire Area ◽

Higher Power ◽

Human Tendency ◽

Karst Reservoir ◽

Potajnice (intermittent/rhythmic springs) are a rare hydrographic phenomenon exclusively present in karst areas. They appear as a result of the rising and emptying of the siphon in the underground karst reservoir, while the phases when the water flows over and drains down most frequently last for several minutes or several hours. They are often accompanied by a distinct noise (rumbling, sizzling, bursting) which adds to the mysteriousness of this phenomenon. Up to this point in time, around one hundred of these flows have been detected worldwide and, when it comes to Europe, they are most frequent in the Balkan Peninsula, primarily in the range of the Dinarides. The subject of this paper is the human perception of this unusual hydrological phenomenon and reaction to it, which has brought about the birth of many interesting ceremonies and beliefs. In areas with predominantly Orthodox and Islamic traditions, the water from these springs is often regarded as healing and miraculous, which is not the case in the northwestern areas closer to Central Europe. Nevertheless, the entire area is eager to provide a logical explanation for this phenomenon. In the more distant past, some of these places had been subject to Christianisation through construction of churches in their vicinity and provision of a Christian interpretation of local beliefs and tales. Man interpreted the functioning of these flows in two ways – either as the existence of a supernatural being in the underground canal, which occasionally presents a barrier to the water flow, or as activities of a higher power which infallibly judges the moral righteousness of human beings and thereupon decides to either let the water flow or stops its flow. The ancient human tendency to tame the supernatural has enticed man to look for a way to predict the flow intervals which, under certain circumstances, could ensure or confirm social power for an individual or group. At some point, the monks took over the perennial monitoring of the flow rhythm of one such source in order to harmonise their prayers for the appearance of the “healingˮ water. The relation between man and the potajnica has always been ambivalent; therefore, one river, which for centuries was called Sveto vrelo (the Holy Spring), also has an alternative name – Đavolje vrelo (the Devil's Spring). Also, men tend to cross significant distances to reach water from one spring, but avoid drinking water from others precisely due to the identical disappearance of the flow. Nevertheless, these springs represent unrivalled points where the richness of the spirit and tradition of the population visiting them is embedded, and, more generally, the relationship between man, as the human being, and this enigmatic force of nature.

MANUSIA DAN AGAMA

Ri'ayah: Jurnal Sosial dan Keagamaan ◽

10.32332/riayah.v5i02.2810 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (02) ◽

pp. 183

Author(s):

Achmad Asrori

Keyword(s):

Human Nature ◽

Human Beings ◽

Absolute Necessity ◽

Interesting Study ◽

Scientific Disciplines ◽

The World ◽

Long Time ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Universe

The study of humans is a very interesting study, because besides being approachable from various aspects, it also concerns us as human beings. This study of humans has been done for a long time since the time of the ancient philosophers in Greece. They have started talking about humans, besides talking about God and the universe. This study of humans also eventually gave birth to various scientific disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, biology, psychology, and other sciences.Religion is a part that cannot be separated from humans, considering that since humans were born into the world, God has actually been equipped with religion. For this reason, the relationship between humans and religion will be explained in this section so that it becomes clear that religion is an absolute necessity for humans and humans cannot live in order and prosperity in this world without religion. In other words, human nature is religious, so when a human claims to be non-religious means he has lied to himself and at the same time has done wrong against him.

Do No Harm: A Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Cultural Climate Ethics

De Ethica A Journal of Philosophical Theological and Applied Ethics ◽

10.3384/de-ethica.2001-8819.14125 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 5-21 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Casey Rentmeester

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Ethical Issue ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

The Political ◽

Human Beings ◽

Climate Ethics ◽

Do No Harm ◽

Cultural Climate

Anthropogenic climate change has become a hot button issue in the scientific, economic, political, and ethical sectors. While the science behind climate change is clear, responses in the economic and political realms have been unfulfilling. On the economic front, companies have marketed themselves as pioneers in the quest to go green while simultaneously engaging in environmentally destructive practices and on the political front, politicians have failed to make any significant global progress. I argue that climate change needs to be framed as an ethical issue to make serious progress towards the path to a sustainable human civilization. In an effort to motivate the urgency needed to confront climate change, I argue that climate change seriously affects human beings living here and now, and if one cares about unnecessarily harming fellow innocent living human beings, then one should care about one’s own environmental impact related to climate change. Since this argument does not depend upon any specific philosophical, religious, or ethical tradition but applies regardless of one’s particular background, I hope to induce genuine concern among all human beings regarding this issue.

Scientific truth or debate: On the link between perceived scientific consensus and belief in anthropogenic climate change

Public Understanding of Science ◽

10.1177/0963662519865448 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 28 (7) ◽

pp. 778-796 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Raquel Bertoldo ◽

Claire Mays ◽

Gisela Böhm ◽

Wouter Poortinga ◽

Marc Poumadère ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

United Kingdom ◽

Human Activity ◽

Public Understanding ◽

The Public ◽

Scientific Consensus ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Scientific Truth ◽

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change exists and is caused by human activity. It has been argued that communicating the consensus can counter climate scepticism, given that perceived scientific consensus is a major factor predicting public belief that climate change is anthropogenic. However, individuals may hold different models of science, potentially affecting their interpretation of scientific consensus. Using representative surveys in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Norway, we assessed whether the relationship between perceived scientific consensus and belief in anthropogenic climate change is conditioned by a person’s viewing science as ‘the search for truth’ or as ‘debate’. Results show that perceived scientific consensus is higher among climate change believers and moreover, significantly predicts belief in anthropogenic climate change. This relationship is stronger among people holding a model of science as the ‘search for truth’. These results help to disentangle the effect of implicit epistemological assumptions underlying the public understanding of the climate change debate.