A sensitive and resonant view of the rural environment in three books by Julià Guillamon

Journal articles constitute the core documents for the diffusion of knowledge in the natural sciences. It has been argued that the same is not true for the social sciences and humanities where knowledge is more often disseminated in monographs that are not indexed in the journal‐based databases used for bibliometric analysis. Previous studies have made only partial assessments of the role played by both serials and other types of literature. The importance of journal literature in the various scientific fields has therefore not been systematically characterized. The authors address this issue by providing a systematic measurement of the role played by journal literature in the building of knowledge in both the natural sciences and engineering and the social sciences and humanities. Using citation data from the CD‐ROM versions of the Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) databases from 1981 to 2000 (Thomson ISI, Philadelphia, PA), the authors quantify the share of citations to both serials and other types of literature. Variations in time and between fields are also analyzed. The results show that journal literature is increasingly important in the natural and social sciences, but that its role in the humanities is stagnant and has even tended to diminish slightly in the 1990s. Journal literature accounts for less than 50% of the citations in several disciplines of the social sciences and humanities; hence, special care should be used when using bibliometric indicators that rely only on journal literature.

Nietzsche, Trump, and the Social Practices of Valuing Truth

People and nature: The emerging signature of a relational journal

We assessed the influence of some environmental conditions (temperature and rainfall) on the litterfall and BAI (basal area increment), in three close forests in the Montseny massif (NE part of the Iberian peninsula, Spain). Two of them are composed of deciduous species Fagus sylvatica and Quercus petraea, and the other one is a Mediterranean evergreen species, Quercus ilex. We have collected monthly data about litterfall and radial growth since 2007. For each forest there are tree plots, with litterfall traps and band dendrometers. This data has been related with the meteorological parameters of meteorological station closed to the study area. Our results show that F. sylvatica recorded the biggest drop in annual litterfall (6 Mg·ha−1·year−1), followed by Q. ilex (4.34 Mg·ha−1·year−1) and Quercus petraea (4.4 Mg·ha−1·year−1) and that all the values were similar to those observed in other forests and mountains with the same state of maturity. Regarding the litterfall, the investigation found a decline in the leaves fall in deciduous trees in years with hot summers. In addition, these warm summers produce a decline in the F. sylvatica BAI, but not in Q. petraea. Concerning growth, we found that Q. petraea increases the BAI on the study period while F. sylvatica does not. In conclusion, we believe that in the future Q. petraea will be more tolerant to the warm conditions than F. sylvatica, making the former a possible replacement of the second species.

Economics and other social sciences stem from the same methodological scientific revolution that gave birth to the natural sciences. The natural and social sciences share a commitment to the dialectical process of theory formation on the basis of empirical findings and theory revision to incorporate empirical anomalies. Claims that the subject matter of social and natural sciences differ qualitatively in terms of mathematical formalism, statistical modeling, or reductionism are unconvincing. The notion of a “value-free” character to natural sciences fails historical and critical tests. Natural and social sciences share an ideological component in their representation of the relation between the subject and the external natural and social world. Natural sciences arise from the struggles of human beings with nature in the process of social reproduction, while social sciences arise from the struggles of human beings with each other and with the class divisions social reproduction imposes.

<p>In the fourth and fifth century of AH (tenth and eleventh. m) all science, especially natural science and cosmology were interest to people particular to scientists. These centuries was in a row of the best periods of prosperity, science and culture and became famous in the history and civilization of "the golden age of Islamic Iran". As a result, new scientific findings add to the scientific achievements of the past and also influenced the minds of scientists in the later centuries. Razi had a big contribution in the development of philosophy and natural sciences at the beginning of the fourth century AH equal to the tenth century AD and achieve the highest degrees in their time in various fields. Razi raised the opinion of the ancient alchemy of Khamse, and also transformed elixir to chemistry. And was founded the core of chemistry and give chemistry to the medicine. among what was written in the third to seventh century of AD about race (the ninth to the thirteenth century), we find many cases that all of them express his accurate method in the clinical experimental method. Razi not only experiences in medicine but also knew tests as essential topics in the natural sciences. Human scientific past was known by thoughts of scientists such as Razi and their theories are the cornerstone of philosophers thinking of recent history. Therefore, this article seeks to examine the scientific thinking of Razi about the world of nature and cosmology. For this purpose, the method of library and tools of notes taking was used.</p>

In paradigm exercises of agency, individuals guide their activities toward some goal. A central challenge for action theory is to explain how individuals guide. This challenge is an instance of the more general problem of how to accommodate individuals and their actions in the natural world, as explained by natural science. Two dominant traditions–primitivism and the causal theory–fail to address the challenge in a satisfying way. Causal theorists appeal to causation by an intention, through a feedback mechanism, in explaining guidance. Primitivists postulate primitive agential capacities in their explanations. The latter neglect to explain how primitive capacities integrate with findings from natural science. The former do not explain why some feedback mechanism’s activity amounts to the agent’s guidance. In this paper I argue that both traditions should acknowledge a capacity to guide, as actually constituted by the executive system. I argue that appeals to this empirically discovered psychological system explain how individuals guide in a way that integrates with explanations from cognitive science. Individuals’ capacity to guide is embedded in the natural world through the activity of its constituent (mechanistic) components.

Introduction

As is well known, natural science and religion were not considered natural enemies in the later Middle Ages, but no conflict between the two seems even conceivable unless they have some common ground in their subject-matters. Drawing on the work of Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, amongst others, this paper considers how natural science and religion were related in the scholastic thought of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and asks whether science can ever make contributions to religious knowledge. I consider whether natural science and theology can ever meet over their subject-matter, and whether science can encroach on religious matters. I argue that science cannot make contributions to knowledge concerning infinite beings or their effects, for finite effects do not require infinite causes. I discuss the philosophical dispute over the eternity of the world and whether it can be demonstrated that the world had a temporal beginning. I argue that only insofar as religions make empirical claims about the natural world do science and religion share a subject-matter. I look at arguments for the necessity of supernatural revelation from the insufficiency of Aristotelian science, and for the central importance of metaphysics to theology in scholastic thought.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the impact of Kant’s ideas on the development of the current problem of the scientific foundations of humanities knowledge. Of particular importance in this regard was the ideal of scientism formulated by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. On the one hand, he defined mathematics and natural science as a general form of scientific knowledge, setting a general model of scientism. But, on the other hand, he laid down a tradition within which many humanities disciplines and their special methodology could not acquire scientific status. The importance of the unity of scientific methodology was not so obvious to other German philosophers. Here, the influence of Kant’s idea of two spheres of existence, two worlds in which man exists: the natural world and the human world, was evident. This led to the idea of a fundamental difference between nature and culture, nature and society. From here, it is not far from the idea of the difference and opposition between the humanities and the natural sciences and the methods they use. In the works of W. Dilthey, I. Droysen, G. Simmel, F. Schleiermacher, and others, there is a rather developed concept of the specificity of the humanities as sciences of the spirit, that is, of spiritual life, the world of experience, and the corresponding cultural and historical formations. In this sense, the revival of the Kantian idea of the constructive role of reason, in particular by neo-Kantians, was of great importance, and the slogan “back to Kant” rather meant a move forward on the path of expanding the scope of the rational. The possibility of joining humanities knowledge to the scientific sphere is a research topic in contemporary world philosophy, but it is Kant who is largely the milestone from which this topic was able to unfold. The history of philosophical understanding of humanities knowledge in post-Kantian philosophy reveals two trends. The first tendency emphasized that the humanities knowledge, at least in some aspects, is very similar to the natural sciences and uses the same methods and means of cognition and presentation of knowledge, representing general scientific ideals. The second tendency emphasized another feature: humanities knowledge is significantly different from natural science knowledge and uses specific conceptual guidelines and means of cognition and presentation of knowledge. We can distinguish between two types of humanities knowledges, which correspond to strict or weakened ideals of science, and humanities, a vast field of non-scientific humanities knowledge with varying degrees of remoteness from science in its individual components. Kant’s ideal of science and the idea of two worlds of human existence potentially laid down two trends in the development of humanities knowledge: the first oriented humanities knowledge toward scientific norms, while the second sought unique specificity. Eventually, this led to the division of humanities knowledge into humanities and humanities studies, which are in a state of mutual exclusion and complementarity.

This article discusses important issues for a Christian doctrine of creation that is concerned with its relationship to natural science. The issues deal with the core presuppositions that are required for theological use of concepts derived from the natural sciences – just as the biblical account of the creative act of God in Genesis made comparable use of the knowledge about the world of nature that was available at that time. One can consider the production of such creatures to be the intrinsic aim that was implicit in the act of creation. The Christian doctrine of creation strongly affirms the relative independence of creatures – not only with regard to one another, but also with regard to God himself – as essential in the act of creation itself. The personal difference and self-distinction of the Son in relation to the Father is the model for such independent existence of creatures.

Conservation is a relational practice. Thus, it is commonly supposed that nature conservation is primarily concerned with nature, particularly nature in the sense of that which is external to human society. Following this model, which is somewhat redolent of the ‘Platonic cave’ (i.e. the conceptualisation of society as existing in the political world of ‘the cave’ away from the external world of nature, which can only come to be known via the specialist techniques of science or philosophy; see Latour, 2004), conservation has been dominated by the natural sciences, particularly ecology, in assessing the work that needs doing and how best it might be achieved. The potential contribution of the social sciences has arguably been perceived as limited to providing insights into the ‘human dimensions’ for example, by helping to incorporate the interests of ‘local people’ and other ‘stakeholders’ into the management plans that have already been developed by conservationists. They have dealt with the politics of ‘the cave’ and the natural scientists have ventured into the world of nature to find out what is going on there before returning to society to explain what needs to be done. While this is an illustrative simplification, social science has largely been subservient to natural science in the development of conservation. The reasons for this, I argue, arise from conservation being conceptualised as the management of a detached nature that is understood by means of natural science. When one analyses the practice of conservation, it soon becomes clear that it is an activity that is less about people mastering a detached nature than about assessing how best to regulate human activities in relation to their environment. This shift in emphasis, from conservation as an understanding of nature and its management to conservation as primarily about human activity in relation to the environment, still demands the skills of natural scientists, but places the social sciences much more at the heart of conservationist endeavours.

Prelims

This paper examines one of the historical antecedents of Big Data, the social physics movement. Its origins are in the scientific revolution of the 17th century in Western Europe. But it is not named as such until the middle of the 19th century, and not formally institutionalized until another hundred years later when it is associated with work by George Zipf and John Stewart. Social physics is marked by the belief that large-scale statistical measurement of social variables reveals underlying relational patterns that can be explained by theories and laws found in natural science, and physics in particular. This larger epistemological position is known as monism, the idea that there is only one set of principles that applies to the explanation of both natural and social worlds. Social physics entered geography through the work of the mid-20th-century geographer William Warntz, who developed his own spatial version called “macrogeography.” It involved the computation of large data sets, made ever easier with the contemporaneous development of the computer, joined with the gravitational potential model. Our argument is that Warntz's concerns with numeracy, large data sets, machine-based computing power, relatively simple mathematical formulas drawn from natural science, and an isomorphism between natural and social worlds became grounds on which Big Data later staked its claim to knowledge; it is a past that has not yet passed.

In the 1990s, the educational system in Sweden began to a trend toward liberalization and decentralization. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the concepts of geographical education in the new Swedish curriculum.Social studies and science began to appear in non-compulsory schools in Sweden in the late 1960s. Physical geography and regional geography were driven out of the social studies. Human geography incorporated some important developments of the new geography into the social studies, but it was gradually buried in the social studies. The technical aspects of physical geography were enchanted in science.Until that time, geographical education in the compulsory schools was conducted within a general subject called “orientation”. The orientation subject was divided into a social block consisting of geography, history, religion, and civics, and a natural block consisting of biology, physics, chemistry, and technology. Geography was composed of physical, human, and regional geography, and functioned as one of the core of the orientation subject, which had as its goals the broadening of students' knowledge of humanity, society and the natural world, and the creation of a better society by nurturing independence and sociality. As students progressed from one grade to the next, their studies evolved from general courses into block courses, then finally into courses for individual subjects. Within this framework, the study of geography was a kind of bridge or unifier between natural block on the one hand and the social block on the other.With the revision of the non-compulsory school curriculum in 1992, geography revived into a subject in its own right. With the compulsory school revision in 1994, the orientation subject was dismantled and geography was made an independent subject. As a result, at all levels of school education, geography has now been restored to its original system as a bridge between natural block on the one hand and the social block on the other.Today we are witnessing the globalization of society at a rapid pace, and serious environmental problems are occurring on a worldwide scale. Therefore, educational systems should adopt to the resulting changes in understanding of this diversifying society and promote the well-rounded development of a sense of regional identity and international solidarity. Special emphasis has been placed on geography's role in environmental education. To understand global environmental problems, it is important to take a holistic view of humanity and the natural world. In this sense, geography is gaining attention for its aforementioned roles as a bridge between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.The new geographical education has the added role in environmental education of looking holistically at the relationship between humanity and nature to instill in the students a comprehensive environmental image. One of the most important roles of geograhy is to nurture the important attitudes and capacity to understand, from an ecologial perspective, the various local, regional, and global issues and problems that exist between humanity and nature, and to foster a citizenry which can participate in the decisions whitch have an affect on the use and protection of the environment.