Modern Concepts Of Nature Research Articles

The abandonment of the ideal of wilderness: Rewilding as the consequence of the Anthropocene metaphysics on restoration ecology

The idea of wilderness is being abandoned in restoration ecology due to metaphysical changes in the conception of nature. These changes are associated with the hybridization of nature and culture, an ontological distinction of modernity that touches its end in the Anthropocene. The notion of wilderness is falling because it was based on a static idea of nature, inherited from the modern conception of nature as passive, and this is affecting ecological restoration practices. The pursuit of wilderness has been abandoned in favor of wildness, vindicated by the so-called “rewilding philosophy.” Both restoration ecology and rewilding are based on the same corpus of ecology, but the first has historically operated in a period under the modern ontological distinction between nature and culture, while the second operates already in the hybridization of both categories. Rewilding does not pursue wilderness, no longer possible in the hybrid Anthropocene, but aims to restore the spontaneous order of the wildness.

The Roots of the Ecological Crisis in the Theological and Philosophical Landscape of Modern Civilization

According to contemporary Muslim philosopher and theologian Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the ecological crisis is a by-product of the modern Western worldview. The root cause of the crisis is the modern concept of nature, knowledge, and human, which has led to a spiritual crisis. For Nasr, the modern human has forgotten the vertical ascend and followed its echo and shadow in the earthly ambitions with the blind pursuit and application of modern science and technology (scientism). He desacralized knowledge and nature and sought infinite material progress in the finite world and thus brought about self-destruction in the form of ecological and environmental crises. For Nasr, the reign of quantity gave impetus to consumerism which resulted in the unprecedented destruction of nature. This paper analyzes Nasr’s views about the theological and philosophical causes of the ecological crisis and attempts to offer a realistic solution to it.

Judgment, normativity and the subject

One of the fundamental questions in post-Fregean philosophy is how to account for the normativity involved in assertoric claims once the traditional subject-object view of thinking is rejected. One of the more productive lines of inquiry in the contemporary literature attributes normativity to second nature, which is presented as a sui generis space of reason giving and receiving distinct from the space of nature studied by the natural sciences. In this paper I suggest an alternative account by drawing from Castoriadis’s philosophical interpretation of autopoiesis. For Castoriadis, the idea of second nature protects the modern conception of nature from undergoing the radical critique it requires, for it restricts normativity to the anthropic sphere. In contrast, he proposes an autopoietic account of the subject that grounds the capacity to know that one knows in the activity of the living being. Castoriadis demonstrates that the normativity of assertoric claims is not a vertical break from nature but rather a horizontal transformation of the biological capacity for self-referentiality.

The Role of Education in the Formation of Human Sociability

Aim: The paper aims at highlighting philosophical roots of the relation issue between nature and education in the process of socialization.
 Method: For the purpose of the research critical philosophical analysis and comparison of Thomas Hobbes’ and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s texts has been used.
 Concept: The first part of the paper clarifies the concept of nature and explains changes in understanding of this concept thorough the history of philosophy, with the special emphasis on transformation that happened in transition from medieval to modern period. Since both Hobbes and Rousseau are representatives of modern philosophy, the second section of the paper shows how modern concept of nature manifests in the works of the two philosophers and compares, in a more detailed way, their understanding of human nature or natural state of mankind, focusing on comparison of their concepts of human natural unsociability. The third part examines more closely the role of education in transformation of human individuals into social beings.
 Results: Research shows that, for the two philosophers, the role of education in the process of socialization consists in denaturalization of human beings.
 Conclusion: Hobbes’ and Rousseau’s idea of the relation of education and nature in the process of socialization constitutes a basis for justification of manipulations of education for political ends. To avoid such manipulations and find the adequate concept of education, paper suggests to search for the adequate concept of human nature first. 
 Key Words: education, human nature, sociability, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Modern concepts of nature and pathogenesis of depression (a psychological aspect)

This review addresses the impairment of cognitive processes in depression, interpersonal interactions and empathy in depressive patients. The authors consider cognitive models of depression showing distortions in domains of attention, memory and interpretation, that may lead to utilizing the rigid automatic approaches of situation evaluation, which impair emotional regulation. Interpersonal theories describe patterns of interpersonal interactions and dysfunctional personal characteristics (interpersonal inhibition, insecure attachment styles) also influencing onset and maintenance of depressive states.

Two Sorts of Dualism. McDowell's Oscillation Between a Transcendental and a Metaphysical Conception of Reason and Nature

In Mind and World, John McDowell tries to achieve a reconciliation between reason and nature. In his view, this pursuit derives its motivation from the modern conception of nature as the space of law, which seems to relegate human rationality to a state of utter isolation from man's nature as an animal. Accordingly, we need to rethink the modern understanding of nature in such a way as to make room for a notion of “second nature”, in which human reason may properly be situated. In this article I argue, from a phenomenological point of view, that McDowell's proposed solution to the problem of dualism is unsatisfactory, basically because it seeks to combine two radically different perspectives on experience: as a vehicle of reasons and meaning and as a transaction in nature respectively. But, it is suggested, that kind of reconciliation is neither possible, nor even desirable. At bottom, it rests on a confusion of transcendental with metaphysical issues.

Human nature: an oxymoron?

The concept of human nature played an important role in the Aristotelian attempt to characterize the specific difference of humans from other animals and serves as a normative guide. But with the positivistic turn in the modern conception of nature and the denaturalization of reason (typically since Kant), the essential characteristic of human beings can no more be thought of as "natural". The idea of human nature is more commonly conceived as open-ended, and is associated, since Pico della Mirandola, with the human power of self-shaping or transcendence of one's nature. This rift between the human and the natural undermines the coherence of the traditional concept of human nature. Since the concept of human nature is often used in the debates about the moral legitimacy of contemporary genetic technologies, the critical analysis suggested in the first part of the article is used in the second part to assess the force of the argument from human nature in the context of germ line genetic manipulation, genetic engineering, eugenics, and cloning.

Caught in the Crossfire: Depression, Self-Consistency, Self-Enhancement, and the Response of Others

We proposed and tested an integration of Coyne's (1976b) interpersonal theory of depression with work on the interplay between self-enhancement and self-consistency theory (e.g., Swann, Griffin, Predmore, & Gaines, 1987). Students' levels of depressive symptoms, reassurance-seeking, and negative feedback-seeking were assessed at Time 1 and their same-gender roommates' appraisals of them were assessed five weeks later. In line with our conceptualization, we found that depressed students reported engaging in more self-enhancing reassurance-seeking and more self-consistent negative feedback-seeking than nondepressed students at Time 1

The Modern Concept of Nature. Essays on Theoretical Biology and Evolution. H. J. Muller, Elof Axel Carlson

<i>The Modern Concept of Nature. Essays on Theoretical Biology and Evolution</i>. H. J. Muller, Elof Axel Carlson

The Modern Concept of Nature: Essays on Theoretical Biology and Evolution

This volume reprints ten of H. J. Muller's articles dealing with mutation and evolutionary change. The title,<i>The Modern Concept of Nature</i>, and subtitle,<i>Essays on Theoretical Biology</i>, seem to promise an interpretive synthesis of science in the tradition of T. H. Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and P. W. Bridgman, but the book is not of this nature. Muller was a brilliant geneticist and an indefatigable worker. He made the discovery that ionizing radiation is mutagenic and he created many of the fundamental techniques of genetic research. He was not, however, a graceful synthesizer. His style was pedantic and often awkward; his rhetorical conceits are labored and tend to distract rather than elucidate. The articles are reviews and essays published originally between 1922 and 1958. They do not constitute an integrated whole; there is considerable repetition. Repeatedly, they cite other work in the field without explaining it, and some of these