scholarly journals The Way Soil Organisms Look Can Help Us Understand Their Importance

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Ganault ◽  
Léa Beaumelle ◽  
Apolline Auclerc
Keyword(s):  
Life Forms ◽  
Soil Organisms ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
The Way

There is a multitude of life forms on our planet. This is especially true under our feet, in the soil. Earthworms, spiders, and millipedes are only a few examples of the vast number of soil organisms. Once you look what lives in soils, you realize the tremendous diversity of shapes and colors. But what if we take the time to describe all their characteristics: color, size, shape, number of legs, type of wings, lifespan, and climate preferences? All these characteristics, called traits, help us to understand what types of organisms can be found in a particular ecosystem, what they feed on, and how far they can travel. Scientists use this information to understand the different roles of organisms in soils, and to restore degraded soils. Analyzing traits can reveal the importance of soil organisms and the fundamental roles they play for human societies.

On Clean, Soiled, and Spattered Hands

Equity ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 152-188
Author(s):  
Irit Samet
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Dirty Hands ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
Ad Hominem ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Judicial Reasoning ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the clean hands doctrine, according to which a claimant who knocks on the court’s door with a hand tainted by illegality or immorality will not be given her day in court. Instead of listening to her potentially successful claim, Equity resorts to its characteristic ad hominem, flexible, morally sensitive, and ex post approach to drive him/her away. The doctrine, despite its effect on a vast number of disputes, is under-theorised and fraught with lack of clarity. The chapter first considers the sources of the considerable legal anxiety caused by the way this powerful gatekeeper operates, before discussing the underpinnings of the three traditional justifications for keeping the clean hands gatekeeper in place: coherence, deterrence, and integrity. I then make the argument that by interpreting the integrity justification as a concept rooted in moral psychology, we can understand how the incommensurable justifications relate to each other and operate in judicial reasoning. I conclude by showing how the clean hands gatekeeper creates a ‘dirty hands’ type dilemma for judges and what they can do about it.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 146-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Kohn
Keyword(s):  
Research Group ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Group Project ◽  
The Way

This afterword reflects on how the Matsutake Worlds Research Group project can be considered as ontological. The multispecies ethnographic engagements presented in this special issue manifest not only the concepts inherent in the worlds of others that defy the categories of Western metaphysical thought (e.g., life forms seen as ‘events’ rather than mere things), but also the way in which non-human life forms themselves can demand that we practice another kind of thought and embrace another vision of our own selves. By succumbing to the allure of the matsutake fungus, the Matsutake Worlds Research Group has begun one of the most suggestive and original conceptual enterprises today, a practice that perhaps could be named ‘heeding headless thoughts’.

The Biopolitical Logics of Settler Colonialism and Disruptive Relationality

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Dietrich
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Way

This essay argues that the biopolitical logics of settler colonialism function according to a naturalization in Western thought of politics as a project of hierarchically ordering life in relation to the sphere of politics. Significantly, such a mode of thinking discredits socio-political orders that operate on the basis of a non-hierarchical place-based relationality of all life forms including the land. Through a reading of Foucault and Agamben in their use of Aristotle, I want to show how hierarchy as a principle of the political is already implemented in the premise they draw upon for analyzing the biopolitical. In the same way it remains unrecognized in their analysis of biopolitics, this principle also becomes operative within settler colonial logics of life and land. Recently, however, Indigenous scholars and writers have mobilized relationality in its formative characteristic for Indigenous polities and politics as strategy to disrupt biopolitical logics and denaturalize settler colonial rule, which I want to show through engaging Daniel Heath Justice’s Indigenous fantasy trilogy The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles as a site of disruptive relationality and political knowledge production.

Soil organisms and sustainable productivity

Soil Research ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 855 ◽  
Author(s):  
KE Lee ◽  
CE Pankhurst
Keyword(s):  
Nutrient Cycling ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Soil Microflora ◽  
Soil Biota ◽  
Soil Organisms ◽  
Soil Organism ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Sustainable Productivity

The soil is a habitat for a vast, complex and interactive community of soil organisms whose activities largely determine the chemical and physical properties of the soil. In a fertile soil the soil biota may have a biomass exceeding 20 t ha-1, with life forms ranging from microscopic bacteria to the largest of earthworms which may be 1 m in length. Only a small fraction, probably <20%, of the soil microflora and microfauna (including bacteria, fungi, algae, protozoa, nematodes, collembola, acari) have been described. The role of soil organisms in the development and maintenance of soil structure, in nutrient cycling and in their various interactions (including associative, harmful and beneficial) with plant roots is described. Trophic interactions between soil organism groups in developed agroecosystems are considered in relation to nutrient cycling and the impact such interactions have on populations of saprophytic, parasitic and symbiotic microorganisms. Prospects for the management of the soil biota to promote sustainable productivity are illustrated by describing the effects of tillage on the composition of soil organism communities. Management technologies that conserve the biodiversity of communities may provide the greatest benefits for the long term sustainability of the soil resource.

Animating virtual worlds: Emergence and ecological animation of Ryzom’s living world of Atys

First Monday ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Manning
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Living World ◽  
Organic World ◽  
Game World ◽  
Mutual Care ◽  
Media Form ◽  
Science Fantasy ◽  
The Way

Ryzom is a long-running (from 2004–present) science fantasy MMORPG (henceforth MMO) set in the science fantasy game world of the planet Atys, an entirely organic “rootball” teeming with alien life forms. The most oft-cited distinctive properties of Ryzom in the MMO world is the way creates not only an immersive sense of “worldness”, but a living, breathing, organic world. The game world is not only a richly animated “world” like all MMOs, but the aggregate of these animations also produce a sense of life, a “living world”. Following Silvio (2010) in particular, I ask how and when the properties of animation — understood in the narrow sense as a medium or media form — can produce a broader sense of “animacy” (Chen, 2012), a lively affect of “animatedness”: how and when animation (movement) is read as life; how an animated world becomes a living world. Specifically, why is it that in the animated world of Ryzom, as in animated cartoons, the animation of animality is central to this transition from animation to life: why the reading of animated “movement-as-life tends to settle on cartoon animals”. The “immersive” feeling of Atys as a ‘living world’ is displayed in the “emergent” animation of animals, particularly the ways that animals interact via “ecological” algorithms of predation and mutual care. animations which players explore as part of the emergent living worldness of Atys.

Zum Verständnis der politischen Aktion Lassalles

1938 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 89-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustav Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
The Real ◽  
Object A ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Social ◽  
Napoleon Iii ◽  
The Way

The present study is based on the vast number of letters written by and addressed to Lassalle, which have only been discovered during the last twenty years, and which have hitherto hardly been regarded seriously by historians. This study does not deal with the theories of the famous propagandist, but only with his political activity. It investigates his real motives for drafting the programme of the Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein; for what he was agitating; and why he failed to attain his object. A short analysis of the internal situation of Prussia adds to a better understanding of the real possibilities, of Lassalle's schemes.Special attention has been paid to the arguments which Lassalle used to convince Bismarck of the necessity of granting a general suffrage—the principal item of his programme—, and the analysis of his attitude towards the monarchial system of Poland and the caesarism of Napoleon III. His friend Rodbertus wanted to persuade him that caesarism was the "signatura temporis" for future Europe, and that consequently the dictatorial system had far better chances to succeed in solving the problem of the proletariat than democracy. But Lassalle was too much of a politician to let himself be persuaded that in the long run it would be possible to divorce the social elements from politics.Finally the author compares the way in which Lassalle tried to influence the political outlook of his age with that of his rivals Marx and Engels.

Skills and Concepts for Ethics beyond the Lifespan

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Larry R. Churchill
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Mechanistic View ◽  
The Way

The skills and concepts presented in previous chapters are here illustrated for their relevance for the problem of global warming, a calamity whose full effects will occur beyond the lifespan of many readers. This is arguably the most urgent ethical problem we now face. Five debilitating features of our current thinking are described: our focus on the present; political ineptness; the idea that humans are the crown of the creation; consumerism; and our mechanistic view of nature, including our own physical bodies. It is argued that the way forward is not through correcting our concepts but recognizing our grounding in Earth and embracing it. This kind of love of Earth and other life forms is related to but distinguished from that of scientists such as E. O. Wilson and Stephen J. Gould.

Nicolas of Clairvaux and the Twelfth-Century Sequence with Special Reference to Adam of St. Victor

Traditio ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 149-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Benton
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

The vast number and variety of sequences, those liturgical interpolations which in the middle ages commonly followed the repetition of the Alleluia in the Mass, and the freedom of their development, show that they were an outlet for the creative talents of musicians and poets. A sample of sequences from successive periods allows the literary historian to trace the development of rhyme and accentual meter, and a musicologist has described the sequence ‘as the parent of oratorio and the grandparent of modern drama.’ But while a view which encompasses centuries reveals to us variety and change, the compositions of any given time were largely shaped by inherited traditions. Not the least value of studies on the early history of the sequence is their demonstration of the close connection between various Alleluia melodies and their sequences and the way in which appropriate texts were fitted to melodies for specific feasts.

scholarly journals The fine-tuning argument: the Bayesian version

2002 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. C. BRADLEY
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
Traditional Theism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Objectivist Theory ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
The Way

This paper considers the Bayesian form of the fine-tuning argument as advanced by Richard Swinburne. An expository section aims to identify the precise character of the argument, and three lines of objection are then advanced. The first of these holds that there is an inconsistency in Swinburne's procedure, the second that his argument has an unacceptable dependence on an objectivist theory of value, the third that his method is powerless to single out traditional theism from a vast number of competitors. In the final section of the paper the fine-tuning argument is considered, not now as self-standing, but as one of a number of theistic arguments taken together and applied in the manner of the final chapter of Swinburne's The Existence of God. It is argued that points already made also block the way for this line of thought.

Applications: Animal Form Or Keeping Your Cool

1982 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 395-397
Author(s):  
George Knill ◽  
George Knill
Keyword(s):  
Life Forms ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Infinite Variety ◽  
The Way

We have on this planet an almost infinite variety of life forms. Darwin lit the way toward understanding these forms with his theory of evolution, and today we can safely state that whatever exists in the natural world does so for a reason.

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