Cultural Botany: Toward a Model of Transdisciplinary, Embodied, and Poetic Research into Plants

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic Botany ◽  
Environmental Studies ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Cultural Ecology ◽  
Transdisciplinary Research ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Since the eighteenth century, the study of plants has reflected an increasingly mechanized and technological view of the natural world that divides the humanities and the natual sciences. In broad terms, this article proposes a context for research into flora through an interrogation of existing literature addressing a rapprochement between ways to knowledge. The natureculture dichotomy, and more specifically the plant-to-human sensory disjunction, follows a parallel course of resolution to the schism between objective (technical, scientific, reductionistic, visual) and subjective (emotive, artistic, relational, multi-sensory) forms of knowledge. The foundations of taxonomic botany, as well as the allied fields of environmental studies, ethnobotany and economic botany, are undergirded by universalizing, sensorylimited visual structuring of the natural world. As the study of everyday embodied interactions of humans with flora, expanding upon the lens of cultural ecology, "cultural botany" provides a transdisciplinary research approach. Alternate embodied cultural engagements with flora emerge through a syncretic fusion of diverse methodologies.

Schools of Empiricism

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-289
Author(s):  
Andreas Friedolin Lingg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Mining District ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Scientific Observation ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Mining Town ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Abstract Recent research emphasizes that empiricist approaches already emerged long before the seventeenth and eighteenth century. While many of these contributions focus on specific professions, it is the aim of this article to supplement this discourse by describing certain social spaces that fostered empiricist attitudes. A particularly interesting example in this respect is the mining region of the Erzgebirge (Saxony) in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The following article will use this mining district as a kind of historical laboratory, as a space not only for scientific observation but also as a structure within which specific forms of knowledge were socially tested, to show how the economic transformation of this region supported the rise of characteristic elements of empiricist thinking. It is common practice to link the appraisal of useful knowledge, (personal) experience and the distrust towards (scholastic) authorities in those days with only small minorities. By addressing not only the struggles of the commercial elites but also the challenges faced by the average resident of a mining town, this paper tries to add to this view by demonstrating how entire masses of people inhabiting the late medieval Erzgebirge were affected by and schooled to think in empiricist ways.

scholarly journals Designing biomimetic robots: iterative development of an integrated technology design curriculum

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Bernstein ◽  
Gillian Puttick ◽  
Kristen Wendell ◽  
Fayette Shaw ◽  
Ethan Danahy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Integrated Learning ◽  
Technology Design ◽  
Design Task ◽  
Biomimetic Robots ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approaches ◽  
K 12

AbstractIn most middle schools, learning is segregated by discipline. Yet interdisciplinary approaches have been shown to cultivate creative thinking, support problem solving, and develop interest while supporting knowledge gains (NAE & NRC in STEM Integration in K-12 Education: Status, Prospects, and an Agenda for Research. National Academies Press, Washington, 2014). The Designing Biomimetic Robots project emphasizes problem-based learning to integrate engineering, science, and computational thinking (CT). During a 3 to 4-week unit, students study the natural world to learn how animals accomplish different tasks, then design a robot inspired by what they learned. The project engages students in science, engineering, and CT practices. Over the course of a 3-year project, we used a design-based research approach to: (1) identify and describe strategies and challenges that emerge from integrated curriculum design, (2) explicate how a balance of integrated disciplines can provide opportunities for student participation in science, engineering, and CT practices, and (3) explore how a technology design task can support students’ participation in integrated learning. Data from three focal groups (one from each year of the project) suggest that a focused design task, supported by explicit and targeted supports for science, CT, and engineering practices, led to a student technology design process that was driven by disciplinary understanding. This work highlights the importance of drawing out and prioritizing alignments between disciplines (Barber in Educ Des, 2(8), 2015), to enable integrated learning. Additionally, this work demonstrates how a technology design task can support student learning across disciplines, and how engaging in CT practices can further help students draw these connections.

Is Nature Priceless?

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Collier
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Rain Forest ◽  
Organic Food ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Good Sense ◽  
Left Flank ◽  
Modern Industrial Society ◽  
Recent Variation

The indignant tears of a child command attention. Daniel, aged eight, has just learned about the Brazilian rain forest and it has moved him to his first expression of political outrage. It is directed at me, not as his father, but as representative of the generation of adults who are destroying something precious before he reaches the age at which he can stop us. Through sobs and rage he shouts, “Tell the president!” Having seen me on television, Daniel has a somewhat inflated impression of my influence. Eight-year-olds are not, on the whole, always repositories of good sense, and Daniel is no exception. But by chance his anger is right on target: son and father are ethically aligned in the battleground of natural assets. First, the left flank. I agree with environmentalists that nature is special: at some level most of us recognize that. But why is it special? Mainstream environmentalists, such as Stewart Brand, offer one answer. Nature is especially vulnerable and that matters because, being dependent upon it, mankind is thereby vulnerable. But as Brand argues, many environmentalists are carrying ideological baggage that needs to be discarded. For romantic environmentalists nature is incommensurate with the mundane business of the economy: it is in some way ethically prior. Echoing Baron d’Holbach’s diagnosis of modern angst, they see industrial capitalism as having divorced us from the natural world which it is rapidly destroying. You can sense their discomfort with modern industrial society in the language that they use, replete with words such as “organic” and “holistic.” For a recent variation on the theme of Holbach, watch Prince Charles delivering the BBC’s 2009 distinguished Dimbleby Lecture. Perhaps man needs to return to a simpler, nonindustrial lifestyle. Prince Charles produces organic food, and he has created a village, Poundsbury, in the style of the eighteenth century—the last age prior to industrialization. At the extreme end of romantic environmentalism the diagnosis is more radical: mankind itself has become the enemy of what is truly good. Reflecting these sentiments, there is now a considerable cult that relishes the prospect of the extinction of mankind.

scholarly journals “None of Them Could Say They Ever Had Seen Them, but Only Had It from Others”: Encounters with Animals in Eighteenth-Century Natural Histories of Greenland

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 2024
Author(s):  
Helen Parish
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Natural Histories

The pages of early modern natural histories expose the plasticity of the natural world, and the variegated nature of the encounter between human and animal in this period. Descriptions of the flora and fauna reflect this kind of negotiated encounter between the world that is seen, that which is heard about, and that which is constructed from the language of the sacred text of scripture. The natural histories of Greenland that form the basis of this analysis exemplify the complexity of human–animal encounters in this period, and the intersections that existed between natural and unnatural, written authority and personal testimony, and culture, belief, and ethnography in natural histories. They invite a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which animals and people interact in the making of culture, and demonstrate the contribution made by such texts to the study of animal encounters, cultures, and concepts. This article explores the intersection between natural history and the work of Christian mission in the eighteenth century, and the connections between personal encounter, ethnography, history, and oral and written tradition. The analysis demonstrates that European natural histories continued to be anthropocentric in content and tone, the product of what was believed, as much as what was seen.

scholarly journals Integrating sciences to sustain urban ecosystem services

2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 653-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Lundy ◽  
R. Wade
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Pollutant Removal ◽  
Water Bodies ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Transdisciplinary Research ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Urban Water

Effective water management within urban settings requires robust multidisciplinary understanding and an appreciation of the value added to urban spaces by providing multifunctional green-blue spaces. Multifunctional landscapes where ecosystem service provisions are ‘designed-in’ can help ‘transition’ cities to more sustainable environments which are more resilient to changing future conditions. With benefits ranging from the supply of water, habitat and energy to pollutant removal, amenity and opportunities for recreation, urban water bodies can provide a focal point for reconnecting humans and nature in otherwise densely built-up areas. Managing water within urban spaces is an essential infrastructure requirement but has historically been undertaken in isolation from other urban functions and spatial requirements. Increasingly, because of the limits of space and need to respond to new drivers (e.g. mitigation of diffuse pollution), more sustainable approaches to urban water management are being applied which can have multiple functions and benefits. This paper presents a review of ecosystem services associated with water, particularly those in urban environments, and uses the emerging language of ecosystem services to provide a framework for discussion. The range of supporting, provisioning, regulating and cultural ecosystem services associated with differing types of urban water bodies are identified. A matrix is then used to evaluate the results of a series of social, ecological and physical science studies co-located on a single stretch of a restored urban river. Findings identify the benefits of, but also barriers to, the implementation of a transdisciplinary research approach. For many, transdisciplinary research still appears to be on the edge of scientific respectability. In order to approach this challenge, it is imperative that we bring together discipline specific expertise to address fundamental and applied problems in a holistic way. The ecosystem services approach offers an exciting mechanism to support researchers in tackling research questions that require thinking beyond traditional scientific boundaries. The opportunity to fully exploit this approach to collaborative working should not be lost.

scholarly journals The Sin of Laura: The Meaning of Culture in the Education of Nineteenth-Century Women

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 257-271
Author(s):  
Marjorie R. Theobald
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Female Education ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Feminist Historiography ◽  
English Speaking World

Abstract In the iconography of nineteenth-century female education, the centralfigure is a woman at the piano. This figure embodies a form ofeducation, the female "accomplishments" — music, art, modern languages, literature, and the natural sciences — which was widespread in Britain by the end of the eighteenth century and which spread rapidly throughout the English-speaking world. Yet this form of education has been overlooked or dismissed by both mainstream and feminist historiography. This paper considers the rise of the accomplishments curriculum as a precursor to the emergence, late in the nineteenth century, of the “worthwhile education” of women. This earlier development, in the author's view, requires a reconsideration of that sacred cow of feminist theory, the man/culture, women/nature dichotomy. A study of the female accomplishments also illustrates the earlier rise of the enduring and oppressive myth that there is a natural affinity between the humanities and the female mind — with its equally enduring implication that there is a natural affinity between science and the male mind. Historians of the Edwardian period have noted that the rational, scientific frame of mind, which underpinned the capitalist exploitation of the natural world, was considered to be a "natural" male predilection. Feminist historians have rightly exposed the use of this pseudo-science as a justification of the contemporary intellectual subjugation of women. They have, however, failed to note that intellectual attitudes which were evident more than a century earlier, and which underpinned the emergence of the female accomplishments, ensured that women would be excluded from the great intellectual adventure of the twentieth century.

Taste-Based Medicine

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
India Mandelkern
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
New Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medical Marketplace ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Based Medicine

This essay examines the significance of gustation in the history of therapeutics as a shared anthropological inheritance that mediates human relationships with the natural world. Bringing together ancient Indian, Chinese, and Western medical cosmologies, I argue that our faith in the curative properties of certain tastes—or “taste-based medicine”—has been remarkably enduring. Focusing on elite English medical practitioners over the long eighteenth century, I demonstrate that “taste-based medicine” not only survived transformations within the English medical marketplace and the rise of the “new science,” but actively mobilized debates about the constitution of expertise and who should have access to it.

scholarly journals From Transfer to Knowledge Co-Production: A Transdisciplinary Research Approach to Reduce Black Carbon Emissions in Metro Manila, Philippines

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 10043
Author(s):  
Liina Tõnisson ◽  
Yvonne Kunz ◽  
Simonas Kecorius ◽  
Leizel Madueño ◽  
Everlyn Gayle Tamayo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Black Carbon ◽  
Stakeholder Involvement ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Transdisciplinary Research ◽  
Transport Sector ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Emission Mitigation ◽  
Transdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Metro Manila

Air pollution, which kills an estimated 7 million people every year, is one of the greatest environmental health risks of our times. Finding solutions to this threat poses challenges to practitioners and policymakers alike. Increasing awareness on the benefits of transdisciplinary research in solution-oriented sustainable development projects has led to the establishment of the research project “A Transdisciplinary Approach to Mitigate Emissions of Black Carbon” (TAME-BC). This paper introduces the TAME-BC research setup that took place with Metro Manila, Philippines, case study. The approach integrates BC measurements with technological, socio-political, and health aspects to improve the scientific state of the art, policymaking, transport sector planning, and clinical studies related to air pollution health effects. The first pillar in the setup presents an (1) air quality assessment through aerosol measurements and instrumentation, complemented by a (2) description and assessment of the current policies, technologies, and practices of the transport sector that is responsible for pollution levels in the Philippines, as well as a (3) BC exposure and associated health impacts assessment. The fourth pillar is intercrossing, fostering (4) knowledge co-creation through stakeholder involvement across scales. We argue that this transdisciplinary approach is useful for research endeavors aiming for emission mitigation in rapidly urbanizing regions beyond Metro Manila.

Peculiar Attunements

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Mathew Grant
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Entire Structure ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Parallel Movement ◽  
Affective Attunement ◽  
Vital Component ◽  
Way Of Thinking

Peculiar Attunements places the recent turn to affect into conversation with a parallel movement that took place in European music theory of the eighteenth century. During that time the affects—or the passions, as they were also called—formed a vital component of a mimetic model of the arts. Eighteenth-century critics held that artworks imitated or copied the natural world in order to produce copies of the affects in their beholders. But music caused a problem for these thinkers, since it wasn’t apparent that musical tones could imitate anything with any dependability (except, perhaps, for the rare thunderclap or birdcall). Struggling to articulate how it was that music managed to move its auditors without imitation, certain theorists developed a new affect theory crafted especially for music. These theorists postulated that it was music’s physical materiality as sound that vibrated the nerves of listeners and attuned them to the affects through sympathetic resonance. This was a theory of affective attunement that bypassed the entire structure of representation, offering a non-discursive, corporeal alternative. Inflecting our current intellectual moment through eighteenth-century music theory and aesthetics, this book offers a reassessment of affect theory’s common systems and processes. It offers a new way of thinking through affect dialectically, drawing attention to patterns and problems in affect theory that we have been given to repeating. Finally, taking a cue from eighteenth-century theory, it argues for renewed attention to the objects that generate affects in subjects.

Elie Bertrand (1713-1797) Sees God's Order in Nature's Record: The 1766 Recueil De Divers Traites Sur L'Historie Naturelle

1991 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kennard Bork
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Earth ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Design In Nature ◽  
Theoretical Analyses ◽  
Insight Into

Elie Bertrand (1713-1797) was a Swiss pastor/naturalist whose geological writings are illustrative of the growth of eighteenth-century natural history. Describing, cataloguing, and classifying formed the core of his work, but he also proposed theoretical analyses based on observations in the field. Bertrand's intellectual roots included Cartesian rationalism, British natural theology, and the Linnacan system of classification. Trained as a theologian. Bertrand viewed the physical world as a proving ground for showing God's Wise Design in nature. He was also committed to empiricism, and repeatedly called for expanding the base of geological knowledge.Several of the published products of Bertrand's attempts to understand the natural world were brought together in the 1766 Recueil de divers traités sur l'histoire naturelle. By briefly considering each of the incorporated papers, it is possible to recognize the topics which interested eighteenth-century naturalists and to develop insight into the methodologies they used. In the Recueil we see Bertrand's eclectic epistemology attempt to deal with such topics as the interior of the earth, earthquakes, fossils, and the origin and Providential use of mountains.Celebrated in his day, Bertrand was a correspondent of Voltaire, a counselor to the Polish court, and a member of numerous learned societies. He published articles in the French Encyclopédic, and his 1763 Dictionnaire universal des fossiles was among the most-read scientific books of the century. The obscurity which enveloped Elie Bertrand seems related in large part to the fact that he was an accumulator of data and a commentator about past theories, rather than an innovator of new concepts. As the natural theology that undergirded his writing became obsolete, the cogency of his arguments diminished. In the context of his time, however, Bertrand is an instructive example of how geoscience matured during what has been termed a sterile period in the development of natural history.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document