Bio-Tile: An Intelligent Hybrid-Infrastructure

Bio-tile is a multipurpose artifact designed for protecting the coastline from erosion while creating a landscape element and an architectural experience for visitors. Bio-tile performs as a mitigation strategy to slow down erosion while promoting biodiversity. This paper describes the methodology used to develop the bio-tile as the nexus between digital and environmental for resolving coastline challenges through material tectonics. A non-linear algorithm and nature’s inherent code are used to develop the Bio-tile, a nature-based hybrid infrastructure. This approach aims to generate a performance-oriented design by using emergence theory to construct shoreline elements adaptive to climatic conditions.

Approaching Nonhuman Ontologies: Trees, Communication, and Qualitative Inquiry

Consideration of trees has historically been confined to disciplinary, quantitative perspectives embedded in botany, earth sciences, resource management, environmental sustainability, and sustainable development wherein trees are largely viewed as senseless, bio-mechanical matter to be controlled and used for human consumption and economic gain. In this article, I reflect selectively on methodologies and methods I used in a broader, interdisciplinary project to study the sentient, intelligent relationality of trees as agentic, conscious, innovative entities embedded in unique, community-based lifeways. My research framework integrated Indigenous research methodologies, public ethnography, ontological emergence theory, plant science, philosophies of plant and nonhuman knowing, interspecies communication, and filmmaking. Herein, I focus on how perspectives and approaches based on qualitative, ethnographic inquiry and Indigenous epistemologies support and broaden research, (re)presentation, and engagement with trees and other nonhumans. Methods I discuss include the practices of cultivating tree/human communication and fostering human sensitivity and embodied knowing.

Why a Panpsychist Should Adopt Theism: God, Galileo, and Goff

This paper argues that there is a deep level of agreement between panpsychism and theism. Goff's Galileo's Error would have been even more compelling than it already is if Goff had portrayed a panpsychist cosmos as the world created by God, not as a spiritual alternative to theism. First, I critique Goff's assumption of incompatibilism, with regards the relationship between science and religion, and argue that panpsychism provides unique resources for articulating divine action. Second, I argue that most panpsychists endorse either the 'principle of sufficient reason' or a 'causal principle' in their rejection of emergence theory, and that if either of these principles are applied to the universe as a whole this would imply a further endorsement of the cosmological argument for the existence of God.

Recent advances in research on the association between consciousness and unconsciousness in China

In recent decades, Chinese scholars have introduced and modified several experimental paradigms for studying consciousness. With the advent of new fields, the paradigms used by Chinese scholars are essentially at the level of those used abroad. More importantly, they have proposed theories of consciousness including the concrete-and-steel model; the model of the interrelationship between consciousness, attention, and stimulus quality; the station monitoring room model; and the emergence theory. These theories have similarities as well as differences with classical theories of consciousness and unconsciousness, and have enriched the theoretical thinking in this field. However, there is still room for considerable theoretical and experimental development of the novel consciousness and unconsciousness research emerging from China; theories must be further developed and additional experimental research conducted in China.

Emergence Through Playwriting

Jungian artistic criticism is a thriving field of scholarship, with strong representation in the literature across numerous disciplines. However, there is relatively little Jungian representation in critical studies of dramatic writing. This essay adopts the dual perspectives of playwright and dramatic critic to argue for the utility of a Jungian theoretical framework for the creation and analysis of play texts. Such utility is demonstrated through analysis of a case study genre, termed the “contemporary family homecoming drama.” C. G. Jung’s theories of individuation and the psychological complex provide the theoretical framework for this discussion, along with a post-Jungian understanding of emergence theory. The central argument is substantiated via critical case studies of Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County and Eventide, an original play. This essay proposes a model for a Jungian playwriting methodology, transferable to other playwrights wishing to create drama within a Jungian framework.

Ethical Mimesis and Emergence Aesthetics

In nature the transformation of dead matter (objects) into living matter endowed with green energy or subjectivity is called emergence. Art itself, I argue, is an emergence phenomenon, enacting and replicating in theme and form emergence in nature. Literature thus conceived is about the emergence of spirit. It depicts forces that suppress spirit and enables the spiritual in nature to find expression. It gives voice to spirit rising. Mimesis is thus reconceived as a replication of the natural phenomenon of emergence, which brings to life what has hitherto been seen as object, dead matter. This article outlines the concept of emergence in current philosophical and scientific theories; examines the aesthetic precursors of emergence theory in certain Frankfurt School theorists, notably Theodor Adorno; and applies emergence aesthetic theory to a contemporary novel, Richard Powers’ The Overstory (2018).

Definitely dust, but also more

What does the Lutheran systematic theologian from South Africa, Klaus Nürnberger, find ‘ourselves to be’, that is, what is his viewpoint on anthropology? Nürnberger has recently taken on the task of formulating anew his anthropological viewpoint in his two-volume Faith in Christ today(2016). I will focus on this publication as well as an earlier publication on anthropology, namely ‘Dust of the ground and breath of life (Gn 2:7): The notion of “life” in ancient Israel and emergence theory’ (2012). Having discussed his rich and broadly science-theology–defined anthropological viewpoint on ‘what we find ourselves to be’, only one dimension of ‘more than dust’ is critically engaged with, namely his understanding of the ‘emotive’ or ‘affective’ dimension of being human. From contemporary neuroscientific viewpoints on emotions as well as philosophical viewpoints on the layeredness of affectivity, I critically engage with Nürnberger’s viewpoint.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The question of being human (philosophical anthropology) is addressed within the context of the contemporary science–theology dialogues on anthropology. The critical question on the undervalued role of affectivity within Klaus Nürnberger’s perspective is asked from insights from neuroscientific and philosophical viewpoints on emotions and affectivity.