scholarly journals Nature does not Create Unnecessary Things

No Limits ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Sikora ◽  
Piotr Skubała

Zero waste is an idea demanding a change in the way we think about and function in the environment. It points out that human activity should be connected with the responsibility for how we live and what consequences our actions have on the planet. The idea behind zero waste is to minimize the amount of waste and reuse it, as well as not to waste purchased products. Due to the fact that we use environmental resources, it is worth remembering that everything we buy and then use becomes waste. Therefore, the emphasis on changing our habits and lifestyles is so important, but what matters the most is to reduce excessive consumerism.

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania Sourdin

As technology continues to change the way in which we work and function, there are predictions that many aspects of human activity will be replaced or supported by newer technologies. Whilst many human activities have changed over time as a result of human advances, more recent shifts in the context of technological change are likely to have a broader impact on some human functions that have previously been largely undisturbed. In this regard, technology is already changing the practice of law and may for example, reshape the process of judging by either replacing, supporting or supplementing the judicial role. Such changes may limit the extent to which humans are engaged in judging with an increasing emphasis on artificial intelligence to deal with smaller civil disputes and the more routine use of related technologies in more complex disputes.


Author(s):  
Derek Parfit

This third volume of this series develops further previous treatment of reasons, normativity, the meaning of moral discourse, and the status of morality. It engages with critics, and shows the way to resolution of their differences. This volume is partly about what it is for things to matter, in the sense that we all have reasons to care about these things. Much of the book discusses three of the main kinds of meta-ethical theory: normative naturalism, quasi-realist expressivism, and non-metaphysical non-naturalism, which this book refers to as non-realist cognitivism. This third theory claims that, if we use the word ‘reality’ in an ontologically weighty sense, irreducibly normative truths have no mysterious or incredible ontological implications. If instead we use ‘reality’ in a wide sense, according to which all truths are truths about reality, this theory claims that some non-empirically discoverable truths — such as logical, mathematical, modal, and some normative truths — raise no difficult ontological questions. This book discusses these theories partly by commenting on the views of some of the contributors to Peter Singer's collection Does Anything Really Matter? Parfit on Objectivity.


RSC Advances ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 6958-6971
Author(s):  
Yaxian Tian ◽  
Zhaoju Tian ◽  
Yanrong Dong ◽  
Xiaohui Wang ◽  
Linsheng Zhan

This review focuses on the way how nanoparticles affect the structure and function of erythrocyte membranes, and is expected to pave the way for development of new nanodrugs.


Author(s):  
Kaitlyn Barton

Rapid advancements in radical life extension technologies contribute to humanity’s ever-changing world. The normalization of radical life extension technologies would signify that the present era in which biology and evolution act as dictators of human life and health would come to an end, thereby ushering in the age of the post-human. The purpose of this paper is to engage in a theological analysis of how and to what degree the ways in which humanity speaks about God could be changed or influenced if radical life extension becomes normative within society. . It is likely that this powerful technology would have a significant impact on many facets of culture, including the way in which humanity engages with religion, in particular Christianity. To accomplish this, the technology that could potentially support radical life extension, namely nanotechnology and cybernetic immortality, will be explained in terms of their relevance and function. Subsequently, the affects of radical life extension for human life will be addressed. Specifically, the implications of the partial or full eradication of human biological and psychological suffering and death through the use of cybernetic immortality and nanotechnology and will be considered. From there, the core theological concepts and narratives will be analyzed in the context of the potential actualization of radical life extension technology. A focus will be placed on the ethic of loving thy neighbour, Christ’s suffering on the cross, the hope of salvation and the Christian hope of entrance into heaven after death. 


2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (104) ◽  
pp. 148-165
Author(s):  
Frederik Tygstrup ◽  
Isak Winkel Holm

Literature and PoliticsLiterature is political by representing the world. The production of literature is a contribution to a general cultural poetics where images of reality are constructed and circulated. At the same time, the practice of literature is institutionalized in such a way that the form and function of the images of reality it produces are conceived and used in a distinctive way. In this article, we suggest distinguishing between a general cultural poetics and a specific literary poetics by using Ernst Cassirer’s neo-Kantian concept of »symbolic forms«. We argue that according to this view, the political significance of literary representational practices resides in the way they activate a common cultural repertoire of historical symbolic forms while at the same time deviating from the common ways of treating these forms.


2018 ◽  
Vol 186 ◽  
pp. 81-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juris Burlakovs ◽  
Yahya Jani ◽  
Mait Kriipsalu ◽  
Zane Vincevica-Gaile ◽  
Fabio Kaczala ◽  
...  

Antichthon ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 156-172
Author(s):  
James S. McLaren

AbstractDuring the late republic and early principate the Jews who called Rome their home occasionally found themselves in the public gaze. Some of their customs and aspects of their ways of life also attracted occasional comment, often for their apparently strange and foreign manner. At no stage, however, during this period did they feature prominently in the public sphere of life in Rome. The aftermath of the war of 66-70 CE brought about an abrupt change in circumstances for the Jews living in Rome. Apart from the immediate visual celebration of the triumph, there followed a number of substantial monumental and numismatic commemorations of the Roman victory. In this article the purpose and function of those commemorations and the possible consequences for the Jews who lived in Rome are examined. In particular, the impact of the public profiling of the war on Jewish identity and of how the writings of Josephus are to be read in this setting is explored. Rather than regard Josephus as a supporter of the Flavian rulers, writing an account of the war that encouraged fellow Jews to collaborate with Rome, it is argued that he was offering Jews in Rome a counter-narrative to the way the war was being publicly commemorated.


Author(s):  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
J. M. Bernstein

“Centric positionality” is a form of organism-environment relation exhibited by animal forms of life. Human life is characterized not only by centric but also by excentric positionality—that is, the ability to take a position beyond the boundary of one’s own body. Excentric positionality is manifest in: the inner, psychological experience of human beings; the outer, physical being of their bodies and behavior; and the shared, intersubjective world that includes other human beings and is the basis of culture. In each of these three worlds, there is a duality symptomatic of excentric positionality. Three laws characterize excentric positionality: natural artificiality, or the natural need of humans for artificial supplements; mediated immediacy, or the way that contact with the world in human activity, experience, and expression is both transcendent and immanent, both putting humans directly in touch with things and keeping them at a distance; and the utopian standpoint, according to which humans can always take a critical or “negative” position regarding the contents of their experience or their life.


1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry A. Fields

In this paper the nature and function of teacher rules in Year I and 2 primary classrooms is discussed. It is argued that the classroom is a complex mini-society which children must come to understand if they are to adjust to and succeed in school. Rules, it is believed, help children make sense of the world of the classroom. Rules are viewed as serving both a managerial function (helping to establish order) and as a mechanism for defining and understanding the ‘way of life’ in the classroom. Against this backdrop of perspectives on school and teacher rules, the rules of 60 Year 1 and 2 teachers were examined. The findings are discussed with reference to the above two perspectives and to the importance of rules in reinforcing the authority of the teacher in the classroom.


2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Denney

This essay examines the way in which the British landscape tradition influenced perceptions of sound, noise and silence in colonial Australia, focusing on representations of rural soundscape in art and literature. It argues that poets and artists attempted to recreate an image of Australia as a new ‘Happy Britannia’, a noisy society engaged in virtuous agricultural labour. But this image was opposed to the prevailing taste for picturesque landscape, which accorded little value to human activity and placed great emphasis on silent, rural scenery. Accordingly, colonial perceptions of soundscape were ambivalent, as human-produced noise was heard as both a sign of the progress of civilisation and an obstacle to the spread of cultural refinement.


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