Forms Of Human Life Research Articles

Routes Beyond Roots: Alternative Ecological Histories in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies

This article will read Amitav Ghosh's novel Sea of Poppies as an account of “world histories from below” (Antoinette Burton, 2012) and position the writing of alternative histories of the colonial times within an ecocritical context. While such rewritings have always been a central preoccupation of postcolonial literature, the recent tendency has been to look at history from increasingly local, individualised perspectives. I will examine Ghosh's tracing of routes and connectivities across the Indian Ocean at the time immediately preceding the opium wars, focusing on his reconsideration of human relationships and hierarchies in an ecocritical perspective. This perspective cuts across boundaries established by caste, class, biology, geography and the colonial system, which Ghosh has long been interested in re-evaluating. While on board the Ibis identities become deterritorialised and fluid, they are disconnected from their roots and paths established by rigid culturally conditioned frameworks. Connections are established between the human and other forms of life, forming a continuum across the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, which becomes a fluid space of rebuilding identities. I will use a theoretical framework informed by Bruno Latour's concept of a politics of nature, Donna Haraway's nature-culture negotiations and Rosi Braidotti's eco-conscious ethics.

Foregrounding Sociomaterial Practice in Our Understanding of Affordances: The Skilled Intentionality Framework.

Social coordination and affordance perception always take part in concrete situations in real life. Nonetheless, the different fields of ecological psychology studying these phenomena do not seem to make this situated nature an object of study. To integrate both fields and extend the reach of the ecological approach, we introduce the Skilled Intentionality Framework that situates both social coordination and affordance perception within the human form of life and its rich landscape of affordances. We argue that in the human form of life the social and the material are intertwined and best understood as sociomateriality. Taking the form of life as our starting point foregrounds sociomateriality in each perspective we take on engaging with affordances. Using ethnographical examples we show how sociomateriality shows up from three different perspectives we take on affordances in a real-life situation. One perspective shows us a landscape of affordances that the sociomaterial environment offers. Zooming in on this landscape to the perspective of a local observer, we can focus on an individual coordinating with affordances offered by things and other people situated in this landscape. Finally, viewed from within this unfolding activity, we arrive at the person’s lived perspective: a field of relevant affordances solicits activity. The Skilled Intentionality Framework offers a way of integrating social coordination and affordance theory by drawing attention to these complementary perspectives. We end by showing a real-life example from the practice of architecture that suggests how this situated view that foregrounds sociomateriality can extend the scope of ecological psychology to forms of so-called “higher” cognition.

Liberalism, Disfigured

Liberalism, Disfigured

Brazilian Cerrado Qualea grandiflora Mart. Leaves Exhibit Antiplasmodial and Trypanocidal Activities In vitro.

Background:The rapid spread of drug-resistant strains of protozoan parasites required the urgent need for new effective drugs. Natural products offer a variety of chemical structures, which make them a valuable source of lead compounds for the development of such new drugs. Cerrado is the second largest biome in Brazil and has the richest flora of all the world savannahs. We selected Qualea grandiflora, a plant species known for its proprieties in folk medicine and its antibacterial activity.Objective:However, its antiprotozoal activity was not yet explored.Materials and Methods:We investigated the activities of fractions from the ethyl acetate extract of Q. grandiflora leaves against human life forms of Plasmodium falciparum, Trypanosoma cruzi, and Trypanosoma brucei gambiense, and for its cytotoxicity upon the rat L6-myoblast cell line. Ten fractions were produced by ethyl acetate:hexane chromatography.Results and Conclusion:The fractions showed no cytotoxicity against L-6 cells (IC50 > 100 μg/mL) and no hemolysis propriety. Three fractions had a moderate activity against P. falciparum, anyone was active against T. cruzi but four fractions demonstrated a high activity against bloodstream forms of T. brucei gambiense (8.0< IC50 <15 μg/mL). Identification and characterization of the active compounds are currently under investigation.SUMMARY Qualea grandiflora is an endemic tree of the Brazilian Cerrado, which presents medicinal propertiesTen fractions of the ethyl acetate extract of Q. grandiflora leaves were assessed against Plasmodium falciparum, Trypanosoma Cruzi, and Trypanosoma brucei gambienseNo fraction showed relevant cytotoxicity and hemolysis activityAll the fractions presented antiplasmodial and trypanocidal activitiesThree fractions with moderate antiplasmodial activity (49< IC50 <56 μg/mL)Four fractions with high activity against bloodstream forms of T. brucei gambiense (8.0< IC50 <15 μg/mL). Abbreviations used: CQ: Chloroquine, DMSO: Dimethyl sulfoxide, HEPES: 4-(2-hydroxyethyl)-1-piperazineethanesulfonic acid, HMI: Modified Iscove's medium, IC50: Concentration inhibiting 50% of parasite growth, IC90: Concentration inhibiting 90% of parasite growth, MTT: 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide, RPMI: Roswell Park Memorial Institute, SD: Standard deviation, SI: Ratio of cytotoxicity to biological activity − TC50/IC50, TC50: Concentration causing 50% of cell growth inhibition, TC90: Concentration causing 90% of cell growth inhibition, TLC: Thin-layer chromatography

Individu, famille, communauté. Niveaux d’organisation et émergence de la vie chez les Mixe de Oaxaca (Mexique)

Unlike the concept of origin, which treats the moment of appearance as a unique event, the notion of emergence – even more so when it is plural – suggests the idea of a multiplicity of moments during which appear new configurations, according to a logic combining ‘chance and necessity.’ This is why the natural sciences, which study life as an emergent process, develop explanatory models that go beyond the strictly causal approaches to address the dynamic dimension of the phenomenon. For the social sciences, especially the anthropology of life, this problem becomes even more difficult because the analysis should, in addition, take into account the variations, through space and time, in the conceptions of life and vital processes that humans elaborate. Drawing from an ethnographic investigation conducted among the Mixe of Oaxaca, Mexico, this article explores how these Amerindians think the emergence of new individuals in their community. The joint study of life cycle rituals – such as birth and wedding – and political rituals, involving poultry sacrifices made to an entity called ‘He, Who Makes Being Alive’, attests the constant aim to articulate the emergence of a new human life form with the development of competences in conformity with the form of life in which he/she will be inserted as a new center of activity. One of the challenges for the anthropology of life is to understand how the emergence of life – regarding both its physiological/physical dimension and its relational/behavioral dimension – involves several levels of organization (individual, family, community) that connect the biological existence of a human being with his process of becoming member of his community, especially when he fulfills political functions.

DIGITISED HUMAN LIFE FORM ISOMORPHIC ALGORITHM

ISOs are "isomorphic algorithms", which are life forms that emerged-- unplanned--from the artificial environment of the grid.Isomorphic Algorithms (better known as ISOs) are a race of programs that spontaneously evolved on the Grid, as opposed to being created by users. ISOs differ from standard programs with distinctions in their appearance and capabilities, but where they are truly unique is in their code base. While regular programs conform to the rigid structure defined by their users, ISOs have evolved, complete with a genetic code of sorts.. This inner structure of their code has allowed ISOs to develop beyond the capabilities of regular programs.. These miraculous algorithms had the capacity to evolve and change and grow at tremendous rates utilizing genetic algorithms, whereas normal programs that were intentionally written by users could only change slowly in anticipated fashions. What's REALLY important about the isomorphic algorithms id, it is revealed that indeed programs can escape the grid into the real world, essentially raising questions of what is life, sentience, the soul, etc. that humanity is no longer confined to humans, but has essentially arisen out of our digital dust and the real and digital world can become interchangeable This kind of human life form is made possible for ISOs because of digital DNA and object recognition which is made possible in isomorphic algorithms.. In this paper we aregoing to describe how an algorithm can be emergedinto human life form.

Lively Ethography

AbstractThis article is an effort to dwell with the kinds of writing and thinking practices that we have been developing in our research, especially over the past seven years. This is an approach grounded in an attentiveness to the evolving ways of life (or ēthea; singular: ethos) of diverse forms of human and nonhuman life and in an effort to explore and perhaps restory the relationships that constitute and nourish them. Our aim is to develop “lively ethographies”: a mode of knowing, engaging, and storytelling that recognizes the meaningful lives of others and that, in so doing, enlivens our capacity to respond to them by singing up their character or ethos. Most of our work in this area has focused on extinction, but this approach might readily be taken up in a range of other contexts. This article alternates between two types of writing. One is expository and lays out an analysis of ethos, liveliness, storytelling, “response-ability,” and becoming witness. The second is performative, offering short ethographic vignettes that enact some of the qualities and approaches we have discussed. Here each of these vignettes is taken from our recent work in Hawai‘i, a deeply generative and often fraught field site that has inspired much of our thinking.

Personale Lebensform

Philosophical anthropology offers two ways of structuring the concept of person, either by locating the essence of man in his being a person or by providing a bio- philosophy of personhood. Building on the work of Helmuth Plessner, this essay aims at conciliating both structurings. It argues for the thesis that personhood is the life-form of man and discusses the main structural features of human life-form.

Animality, Sociality, and Historicity in Helmuth Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology

Axel Honneth and Hans Joas claim that Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology is problematically ‘solipsistic’ insofar as it fails to appreciate the ways in which human persons or selves are brought into being and given their characteristic powers of reflection and action by social processes. Here I review the main argument of Plessner’s Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch: Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie (1928) with this criticism in mind, giving special attention to Plessner’s accounts of organic being, personhood, language, sociality, and historicity in that text. I argue that Honneth and Joas’s criticisms understate the extent to which Plessner takes sociality to be a constitutive condition of human forms of life within the structure he calls ‘ex-centric positionality’. This reading of Plessner also provides resources for answering a more common criticism of his philosophical anthropology – namely, that it is problematically ‘essentialist’, paying insufficient heed to the historical variability and contingency of human forms of life.

Tractarian Form as the Precursor to Forms of Life

Interpreters are divided on the question of whether the phrase ‘form of life’ is used univocally in Wittgenstein’s later writings. Some univocal interpreters suggest that, for Wittgenstein, ‘form of life’ captures a uniquely biological notion: the biologically human form of life. Others suggest that it captures a cultural notion: the notion of differently enculturated forms of human life. Non-univocal interpreters, in contrast, argue that Wittgenstein does not use ‘form of life’ univocally, but that he uses it sometimes to highlight a cluster of biological notions and sometimes a cluster of cultural ones. The debate between univocal and non-univocal readers has generated a raft of intricate, illuminating literature on both sides. If it remains to an extent open, it is partly as a result of the fact that the textual evidence available on this matter, in Wittgenstein’s later published and unpublished writings, is so limited. In this paper, I argue that considering Wittgenstein’s earlier treatment of ‘form’ can help to shed light on his later treatment of ‘form of life’. More specifically I argue that revisiting the Tractatus’ treatment of ‘form’ gives us – perhaps surprisingly – reasons to support a non-univocal later reading of ‘forms of life’.

Wittgenstein on Forms of Life, Patterns of Life, and Ways of Living

This paper aims to distinguish Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘form of life’ from other concepts or expressions that have been confused or conflated with it, such as ‘language-game’, ‘certainty’, ‘patterns of life’, ‘ways of living’ and ‘facts of living’. Competing interpretations of Wittgenstein’s ‘form(s) of life’ are reviewed (Baker &amp; Hacker, Cavell, Conway, Garver), and it is concluded that Wittgenstein intended both a singular and a plural use of the concept; with, where the human is concerned, a single human form of life characterized by innumerable forms of human life.

Macroscopic Quantum Superposition in a Human Life-Form: The Discovery of the Open Gate into the Quantum World

This paper presents one of the most remarkable discoveries to have occurred in science with the finding of the open gate into the quantum world which occurs simultaneously with the macroscopic quantum superposition of a human life-form. The reason these two events occur together is that Newton’s domain has a rule which does not allow multiple states of reality in it. Newton’s domain therefore automatically expels any such multiple reality states into a second parallel universe called the quantum domain. Thus, many of the rules in the quantum world are different from those in Newton’s domain. For example, it allows multiple states of reality. What I do know for certain is that I would have never made it back to Newton’s domain after I went into a state of macroscopic quantum superposition without the help of the sentient beings who monitor our domain and who taught me how to reverse my multiple superposition state. Further, this leads us directly to the solution of the measurement problem showing us for the first time how we get to the classical domain from the quantum domain. This, by revealing how such multiple states of reality can be turned into complex single classical states or composites by the merging of all of their electrons together. So, this obviously is a turning point for mankind as the sentient beings now want us to know just what kind of science this is, that we are not alone, and that a whole new world has just opened up for us to be in.

Homo religiosus: does spirituality have a place in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics?

AbstractIn this article I seek to show the importance of spirituality for a neo-Aristotelian account of ‘the good life’. First, I lay out my account of spirituality. Second, I discuss why the issue of the place of spirituality in the good life has often either been ignored or explicitly excluded from consideration by neo-Aristotelians. I suggest that a lot turns on how one understands the ‘ethical naturalism’ to which neo-Aristotelians are committed. Finally, I argue that through a deeper exploration of the evaluative standpoint from within our human form of life as ‘meaning-seeking animals’ we can come to better appreciate the importance of spirituality for human beings throughout recorded history up to the present and why we can be described ashomo religiosus.

Wittgenstein’s Augustinian Cosmogony in Zettel 608

Most commentators see Wittgenstein’s Zettel 608 as suggesting that language and thought might arise out of chaos at the neural center—but this contradicts Wittgenstein’s signature view that philosophers must not advance theories. Following Wittgenstein’s remark to Drury that he cannot help looking at problems from a religious point of view, the paper argues that Zettel 608 employs religious creation language of the sort found in Augustine to suggest a new paradigm in the philosophies of language and mind—that language and thought arise, not out of neural processes, but out of the “chaos” of actions at the center of human forms of life.

Natural goodness and the political form of human life

Ethical Naturalism attempts to explain the objective normativity effective in human practices by reference to the relation between a living individual and the life-form it exhibits. This explanation falls short in the case of human beings (1) - not merely because of their essential rationality, but because the idea of normativity implicit in practice is dependent on the form of normativity?s being made explicit (2). I argue that this explicit form of normativity?s force and claim - the law in general - implies a tension between an explicit norm?s claim to absoluteness and the particularity of the situational case it is applied to. This tension may seem to produce an inherent violence corrupting the very idea of objective normativity inherent in the human form of life (3); in fact, it shows that the human form of life is essentially political. That the human form of life is essentially political does not contradict the idea of objective normativity - provided that this objectivity is not derived from a conception of ?natural goodness?, but rather from the actuality of human practice and its principle, justice (4).

Evolutionary Social Theory: The Current State of Knowledge

BOOKS UNDER REVIEW Boehm, Christopher. Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame. New York: Basic Books, 2012. Print. Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. A Cooperative Species: Reciprocity and Its Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP; 2011. Print. Fukuyama, Francis. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Print. --. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Print. Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012. Print. Nowak, Martin A., and Roger Highfield. Supercooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. New York: Free P, 2011. Print. Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking, 2011. Print. Wilson, Edward O. The Social Conquest of Earth. New York: Liveright, 2012. Print. A USABLE MODEL OF EVOLVED HUMAN SOCIALITY Biocultural is an integrative research program designed to investigate the causal interactions between biological adaptations and cultural constructions. The central premise of biocultural theory is that human behavior is produced by interactions between human and culture. Human nature this usage designates a species-typical array of evolved, genetically transmitted features of anatomy, physiology, and neurology. Culture designates a collective, transmissible body of shared skills, practices, beliefs, values, and imaginative experiences (Baumeister; Carroll, Truth; Hill; Richerson and Boyd; Sterelny; Tomasello et al.). From the biocultural perspective, cultural processes are rooted the biological necessities of the human life cycle: specifically human forms of birth, growth, survival, mating, parenting, and life a social (Muehlenbein and Flinn). Conversely, from the biocultural perspective, human biological processes are constrained, organized, and developed by culture, which includes technology, culturally specific socioeconomic and political structures, religious and ideological beliefs, and artistic practices such as music, dance, painting, and storytelling. Because culture is social, biocultural theory must include a good basic model of evolved human sociality. The elements of such a model have become available only within the past few years. Those elements are scattered throughout the books here under review and a small set of recent articles. None of the books or articles fully exemplifies the whole model. After laying out the model, I shall use it to evaluate the books, describing how each contributes to it, and measuring each against it. Until very recently, most discussions of evolved human sociality turned endlessly on an inconclusive debate between proponents of inclusive fitness theory and proponents of group selection' (Alexander; Boehm, Moral Origins; Hamilton, Rule, Aptitudes; Nesse; Pinker, Allure; Sober and Wilson; Trivers; D. S. Wilson, Critique; Wilson and Wilson; E. O. Wilson, Social Conquest). Advocates of inclusive fitness reduced social motives to nepotism, direct reciprocation (mutual back-scratching), and indirect reciprocation (giving credit to people with a reputation for reciprocating) (Boehm, Bullies, Moral Origins; Nowak). Proponents of selection felt rightly that these three sources could not adequately account for human prosociality, but they usually acceded to a misleading formula: selection favors selfishness within groups and favors altruism only conflict between groups. As David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson put it, in virtually all cases, traits labeled cooperative and altruistic are selectively disadvantageous within the groups and require between-group selection to evolve (335). …

Spenser and “the Human” An Introduction

Next article No AccessSpenser and “the Human” An IntroductionAyesha Ramachandran and Melissa E. SanchezAyesha Ramachandran Search for more articles by this author and Melissa E. Sanchez Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Spenser Studies Volume 302015 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7756/spst.030.001.vii-xv Views: 219Total views on this site Copyright © 2015 AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

FORECASTING OF COLOURS IN CREATIVE COMPOSITION OF TEXTILE FABRIC AND FASHION

Colour is the most enriched and endless form of human life. It reflects our mood and more importantly, it has more influence and effect on our lives than we realize. How can we define colour, a reality, a feeling that creates energy, enthusiasm, potential, anger, affection, passion andmany other feelings in us. If we are in pleasant feeling, colour fills us with the feel of joy and happiness and in contrary to this if we are unhappy and sad the colours are there, who fill with the feel of unhealthy, unhappiness and sadness. Now it is a matter to think upon that why we correlate our feelings with colour or how colour reflects our mood or our internal expressions in a physical manner. It is not only because of colour but of course because of its composition too. We always look for a new colour palette range or a new invention but have we ever thought that from where did colours come and why they show their impact on us and our lives. Craving for colour, forces human to create invent and generate inventions, of course a human with artistic or creative brain and heart, who not only evolve in engraving of colours but also put efforts in to it to foster.

Wittgenstein’s Philosophy and Austrian Economics

The paper, following a suggestion by Kripke, argues that there is an illuminating analogy between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and Austrian economics (particularly that of Mises and Hayek). Most scholars interpret paragraph 608 of Wittgenstein’s Zettel (hereafter Z608) to suggest that language might arise out of physical chaos at the neural centre. Since, however, Wittgenstein holds that the philosopher must not advance theories, he cannot consistently be advancing such theories in Z608. Rather, all the key concepts in Z608 must be cashed in terms of Wittgenstein’s “forms of life”. Thus, Z608, read carefully, suggests that language “arises”, not out of chaos in the brain, but out of the chaotic activities in human forms of life. The paper shows that an analogous picture occurs in the early Austrian economists (such as Hayek, who is Wittgenstein’s cousin, and Mises). Z608 is part of a still unappreciated Austrian movement that emphasizes the creative chaos in human life. In this connection the paper explains how Z608 is an application of Wittgenstein’s “private language argument” against a neural theory of a private language. Finally, the paper shows that the real argument in Z608 traces to early Austrian phenomenology—shedding light both on Wittgenstein’s philosophy and on Austrian economics.

Waste Water Recycling in the Hospitality Industry

Water is an indispensable but scarce natural resource, used in the hotel intensively for sanitary and food processing purposes, producing and letting out vast amount of wastewater in the process. Untreated waste water has detrimental effects on the environment and subsequently impacts negatively on human and other forms of life. This is aside from the fact that hotels constantly have to commit a lot of finances into obtaining fresh water from the mains to meet with huge water demands. Fortunately, water is a renewable resource which may be reclaimed for both economic and environmental benefits. Recycling wastewater therefore, makes it a resource rather than a waste. This study looked at how wastewater generated from hotels may be collected, treated and reused for other non portable purposes. A three star hotel situated within the Bauchi metropolis was used as case study with the objective of determining the volume of water used in the hotel on daily basis, find out how waste water from all the use-sources may be collected and treated using biological process and to explore how treated wastewater may be put to profitable use in the hotel. The study found out that the hotel uses an average of 72,142.7 litres daily. The system found suitable to be adopted by the hotel is the three chamber treatment system. It is recommended that hotels use treated wastewater to green the environment, nurture a mini vegetable garden, for car wash, laundry and for flushing toilets. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n7p87