scholarly journals Sztuka nie-ludzkich aktorów

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
Diana Lelonek
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Plant Tissues ◽  
Living Matter ◽  
Digital Version ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Dumping Site ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Illegal Waste

The Center for the Living Things is a research institute founded in 2016 in order to examine, collect and popularise knowledge concerning new non-human forms: plants, lichen, fungi and insects. All exhibits gathered in the Institute’s collection are abandoned objects, used commodities and those no longer needed – the debris of human overproduction, which has become the natural environment for many living organisms. Specimens were found in an illegal waste dumping site, where man-derived objects and plant tissues mix. These hybrids of plants and artificial objects are difficult to classify, as they are simultaneously animate and inanimate. Exhibits collected in the Center for the Living Things cannot be classified conventionally. Recently, waste has taken over behaviours from living matter. In the process of overproduction, the incessant need to constantly update the goods we possess is the reason why most of these unnecessary products seem to be out of our control. The Center for the Living Things aims to describe mechanisms appearing in the sphere of rejection and uselessness. In this sphere, products are no longer tools used by people. Products participate in almost every process that occurs in the biosphere, hence we cannot definitively separate economic or social processes from so-called natural processes. The Center aims to draw attention to these processes, seek connections and possible alternatives. Specimens are stored and cultivated in an ever-expanding collection at Poznań’s Botanical Gardens. This institution also organises also houses temporary exhibitions, presentations and workshops. Work is underway on an edition of the ‚Atlas of Waste-plants’ to appear at the end of 2019. More information and a digital version of the Institute’s collection can be found at: www.centerforlivingthings.com.

scholarly journals Tissue culture and biological time: Alexis Carrel, Henri Bergson and the plasticity of living matter

BioSocieties ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosine Kelz
Keyword(s):  
Tissue Culture ◽  
Environmental Control ◽  
Culture Media ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Living Matter ◽  
Biological Time ◽  
Temporal Specificity ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractTaking the early tissue culture experiments of Alexis Carrel in the 1910s–1930s as its example, the article explores the relationship between advances in biotechnological control over living matter and a holistic ontology of life, which stresses the temporal specificity of living things. With reference to Henri Bergson, Carrel argued that physiological time depends on an organism’s relationship to its milieu. By developing a laboratory apparatus and culture media, new objects of investigation could be made to live outside the organism and be brought to behave in novel temporal ways. In difference to recent biotechnological advances, like for example genome editing, which seek to ‘engineer’ living organisms by rebuilding them from their DNA up, then, early twentieth century interventionist laboratory practices were often linked to an understanding that biological plasticity results from organismic complexity and interactions between organism and milieu. These notions contributed to shaping laboratory apparatuses and techniques; they also helped to establish an understanding of environmental control that would allow for the production of novel ‘living things’.

scholarly journals Traces “We” Leave Behind: Toward the Feminist Practice of Stig(e)merging

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-186
Author(s):  
Monika Rogowska-Stangret ◽  
Olga Cielemęcka
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Feminist Methodology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Companion Species ◽  
The Common ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Feminist Practice

      As Serpil Oppermann has stated “the Anthropocene has come to signify a discourse embedded in the global scale vision of the sedimentary traces of the anthropos” (“The Scale of the Anthropocene” 2). In the following article we wish to revisit the practice of leaving traces through thinking with wastes as traces human beings leave behind and lands of waste that co-compose today’s naturecultures (Haraway, Companion Species). Situating our research in the context of Polish ecocriticism, we would like to think-with an art project by Diana Lelonek entitled Center for the Living Things, in which the artist gathers and exhibits waste that “have become the natural environment for many living organisms” (Lelonek). Following the ambivalent and chaotic traces of wastes, we offer a concept of stig(e)merging to rethink the “unruly edges” (Tsing 141-54) of capitalist wastelands. We fathom stig(e)merging as a feminist methodology that relies on reacting to changes and alterations in the milieu, as well as the actions and needs of others, and on participating in the common work of reshaping the un/wasted world together with them.

Living Matter as a Self-Organizing System

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vyacheslav Korzh
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Elements ◽  
External Environment ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Universal Constant ◽  
Living Matter ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Stability

<p>Biological evolution proceeded under the sign of the liberation of developing organisms from the power of random phenomena in the external environment. At a certain stage in the evolution of living matter - the totality of all living organisms, it became possible to basically implement liberation from the instability of the external environment. Back in the eighteenth century J.-B. Lamarck argued and tried to prove that all substances located on the surface of the globe and forming its crust were formed due to the activity of living organisms. V.I. Vernadsky wrote: “On the earth's surface there is no chemical force that is more permanently acting, and therefore more powerful in its ultimate consequences than organisms taken as a whole” [1]. We find convincing proofs of the formation of a biogeochemical environment by living matter in accordance with their needs in the work of V.V. Kovalsky's [2].</p><p>We have studied the dynamics of the global process of transfer of chemical elements in the ocean-atmosphere-continent-ocean system. Living matter is an active participant in this process. As a result of metabolic processes, living matter constantly creates and constantly maintains an increased concentration of trace elements in its environment. The biocenosis of the hydrosphere initiates  increasing of the soluble forms of microelements in its habitat. The terrestrial biocenosis acts in the opposite direction [3]. The nonlinear laws of the processes of redistribution of average elemental compositions in the biosphere between liquid and solid phases (hydrosphere-lithosphere system) have been established. We have established a universal constant of nonlinearity of these processes in the biosphere (equal to 0.7) [3].</p><p>Human activity makes irreversible changes in the dynamics of the biosphere, and at the present stage of development of a technogenic civilization, the scale of human expansion into natural processes is such that they begin to destroy the biosphere as an integral ecosystem. The impending global ecological catastrophe requires development of fundamentally new strategies in scientific  activities that ensure harmonious coexistence of man and nature. We are developing the concept of the harmonious integrity of the biosphere (the concept of biosphere homeostasis). The stability of biogeochemical and other processes on the Earth's surface is completely determined by the coordinated, purposeful activity of living matter as an integral system [3]. The universal constant of nonlinearity of the processes of formation of the elemental composition of the biosphere (equal to 0.7) established by us should be accepted as an ecological standard, violation of which is unacceptable.</p><p><strong>References</strong><strong>.</strong></p>

The Death of the Ethic of Life

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Basl
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Philosophy Of Biology ◽  
Biomedical Ethics ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Ethics Of Technology ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Moral Importance ◽  
Practical Concern ◽  
Living Organisms

According to the ethic of life, all living organisms are of special moral importance. Living things, unlike simple artifacts or biological collectives, are not mere things whose value is entirely instrumental. This book articulates why the ethic is immune to most of the standard criticisms raised against it, but also why such an ethic is untenable, why the domain of moral concern does not extend to all living things; it argues for an old conclusion in an entirely new way. To see why the ethic must be abandoned requires that we look carefully at the foundations of the ethic—the ways in which it is tightly connected to issues in the philosophy of biology and the sorts of assumptions it must draw on to distinguish the living from the nonliving. This book draws on resources from a variety of branches of philosophy and the sciences to show that the ethic cannot survive this scrutiny, and it articulates what the death of the ethic of life means in a variety of areas of practical concern, including environmental ethics, biomedical ethics, ethics of technology, and in philosophy more generally.

Social ecology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktor Strel'nikov ◽  
Tat'yana Franceva
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
Social Ecology ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Nature Management ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Higher Educational Institutions ◽  
Master's Students ◽  
Broad View

Important processes and phenomena occurring in human society in the era of the modern ecological crisis are considered. The evolution of humanity and its relationship with the natural environment, the transformation of its habitat, namely the development of a multi — faceted system "man — society-nature", are also considered. The problems of the emergence of socio-ecological tension between society and its environment, as well as the factors of its regulation, are presented. The material presented in the textbook contributes to the development of bachelor's and master's students ' broad view of various social processes and phenomena. It is intended for students of higher educational institutions studying in the field of "Ecology and nature management".

Semiotic Content of Visuals and Communication

2014 ◽  
pp. 174-192
Keyword(s):  
Data Visualization ◽  
Verbal Communication ◽  
Biological Data ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Visual Design ◽  
Basic Information ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
Visualization Tools ◽  
Living Organisms

The semiotic content of visual design makes a foundation for non-verbal communication applied to practice, especially for visualizing knowledge. The ways signs convey meaning define the notion of semiotics. After inspection of the notions of sign systems, codes, icons, and symbols further text examines how to tie a sign or symbol to that for which it stands, combine images, and think figuratively or metaphorically. Further text introduces basic information about communication through metaphors, analogies, and about the scientific study of biosemiotics, which examines communication in living organisms aimed at conveying meaning, communicating knowledge about natural processes, and designing the biological data visualization tools.

Ants as an Experiential Learning Strategy in Preschool Teacher Training

2021 ◽  
pp. 134-154
Author(s):  
Rosa María Gálvez Esteban ◽  
Beatriz Bravo Torija ◽  
Jose Manuel Pérez Martín
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Preschool Teachers ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Preschool Teacher ◽  
Education Project ◽  
Teaching Resource ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Living Organisms

In this chapter, the authors present the results of a project designed for 41 preservice preschool teachers to introduce the concept of living things as an experiential learning strategy in the classroom. The need to approach this concept from a different perspective prompted the design of an education project involving the introduction of insects into classroom as a teaching resource. An informative storyline was used for project launch presentation. The questions they strive to answer in this chapter are related with what concepts of living organisms and what inquiry stages will preservice teachers consider their pupils will carry out during the project. Relevant concepts that are usually not much covered in the preschool curriculum such as the life cycles of animals were considered by 23 participants. Twenty-five of the future teachers claimed that they would be able to work on every inquiry step if they implemented this project in the classroom.

Seeds of Light, Flowers of Power, Fruits of Change

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Layli Maparyan
Keyword(s):  
Sweet Potato ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Green Belt ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Peace Activism ◽  
Green Belt Movement ◽  
Potato Farm ◽  
Wangari Maathai

Ecowomanism focuses on the relationships between humans and nature through a spiritualized lens. Three core principles of ecowomanism are Livingkind (all living things are of a type), Aliveness (life pervades all creation, visible and invisible), and Luminosity (all living things are filled with light and spirit). Ecowomanism makes a unique, spiritually infused, ecological activist praxis possible. Three notable exemplars of this praxis are Sister Chan Khong (who established Sweet Potato Farm in France as part of her mindfulness-based peace activism), Kiran Bedi (who elevated the dignity of prisoners through her beautification of Tihar Jail/Ashram in India), and Wangari Maathai (who conscientized members of the Kenyan military by helping them to see the value of protecting the natural environment and planting trees as part of the Green Belt Movement).

Genes and the structure of organisms

1977 ◽  
Vol 199 (1136) ◽  
pp. 399-406 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Action ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Developmental Origin ◽  
Zoological Society ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Direct Gene ◽  
Living Organisms

In 1826, when the Zoological Society was founded, genes had not been recognized, and the structure of living organisms was thought of mainly in philosophical or evolutionary terms. Since then the developmental origin of complex structures has attracted much interest, and this now seems likely to be largely explicable in molecular terms by the controlled activity of genes. Certain structures whose formation seems unlikely to be explained by direct gene action will be discussed. Examples will be given of the opportunities which now exist in laboratories to create novel genetic constitutions (and hence structures) which are unlikely to arise by natural processes.

New horizons in organic chemistry

1961 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-80
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Living Matter ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Tartaric Acids ◽  
Inorganic Substances ◽  
Original Definition ◽  
Dynamic Stereochemistry ◽  
Carbon Compounds ◽  
Living Organisms

Tercentenary Lecture delivered by Sir Alexander Todd, F.R.S., at 2.30 p.m.on Wednesday 20 July at the Royal There have been two definitions of organic chemistry. The original definition, due to Berzelius ( ca . 1800), was ‘the chemistry of substances found in living matter.’ The second, commonly ascribed to Gmelin, appeared first about fifty years later, when more was known about the peculiarities of the substances found in living matter—the ‘organic’ substances as distinct from the ‘inorganic’ substances—and was simply ‘the chemistry of the carbon compounds. ’ Each of these definitions is defensible, but neither is wholly satisfactory, since the first is too restricted and the second is, in certain respects, too general. A very large number of known carbon compounds are of purely synthetic origin and do not, as far as we are aware, occur in living matter, but it is undoubtedly true that the study of substances which are found in living organisms has provided most of the major stimuli to the advance of organic chemistry for almost a hundred years, and there is little reason to believe that this will not continue to be the case in the future. After all, it was Pasteur’s work on the tartaric acids from wine that led to the van’t Hoff-Le Bel theory of the tetrahedral carbon atom, the anthraquinone dyestuffs stem from Graebe and Liebermann’s work on alizarin from madder root, and work on polymerization and plastics goes back to the studies of Harries on natural rubber. Many other examples could be quoted, but I shall mention only one more because it is less well known than it should be. It was the work of Windaus on the natural sterols which caused Hiickel to develop his theoretical studies on stereoisomerism in fused ring systems; through these studies, important enough in themselves, developed in due course the modern concept of dynamic stereochemistry of cyclic structures which has had such a profound influence over a very large area of organic chemistry.

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