Realm Of Nature Research Articles

“How Does Nature Deify Us”

“How Does Nature Deify Us”

En quel sens y a-t-il un parallélisme chez Leibniz?

The purpose of this article is to show that by “parallelism”, Leibniz meant something different from what is usually termed, since Fechner, “psychophysical parallelism”. Besides the fact that very few occurrences of the term “parallelism” are to be found in the Leibnizian corpus, the notion is only explicitly related to pre-established harmony between soul and body in the Leibniz-Stahl controversy. Rather than envisaging a “metaphysical” parallelism opposing soul to body as two heterogeneous entities, Leibniz conceived of a symbolic relation between the two and upheld a “methodological” parallelism that implied that, in explaining phenomena, one should not confuse efficient with final causes, nor the realm of Nature with that of Grace, while sustaining their exact concordance and convergence.

Water Conservation: Extension Agents’ Perceptions of Issue Importance, Professional Abilities, and Landowner Needs

The Extension Service is one of many agencies charged with increasing awareness and knowledge of research-based agricultural conservation practices. A regional survey of Extension agents with agriculture and natural resources responsibilities was conducted to assess the need for in-service training on 11 water resource conservation topics. The highest priority training needs were for topics related to complex interactions and drivers of agricultural water pollution. This article highlights the implications of these results and offers broader perspective on bringing the Borich model of needs assessment into the agricultural and natural resources realm of subject matter expertise.

From Mary’s Motherhood to the Immaculate Conception: An Iconographic Analysis of Marian Art in Spain during the Tenth to Nineteenth Centuries

This article analyzes Marian art in Spain from the tenth to nineteenth centuries in order to show how popular piety represented Mary’s motherhood. Through art, including architecture, painting, sculpture, and oral preaching, a popular image of Mary emerged and, in turn, became key for understanding the history of the family in western Catholic countries. Studying the evolution of Marian iconography during this thousand-year period reveals a kind of grandeur, and then a certain crisis, surrounding Mary’s motherhood. This crisis specifically involves the meaning of the body as an effective sign of the personal gift-of-self. We argue that this process ran parallel to growing problems in theological culture related to reconciling the natural and supernatural realms, and we further sustain that it contains a true cultural revolution, a shift that is at the origin of many later transformations. This interpretation helps better understand the dilemmas surrounding the history of the family in the West, and specifically of motherhood, from the point of view of the Christian tradition.

More-than-Human Witnessing? The Politics and Aesthetics of Madre Tierra (Mother Earth) in Transnational Agrarian Movements

Since the mid-1990s, appeals to “Madre Tierra” [Mother Earth] have united activists and campesino [peasant] networks globally as part of political claims of food sovereignty and agrarian rights. Positioning this paper as a contribution to feminist theory, here I explore what Madre Tierra does in political-aesthetic terms, specifically within situated struggles in Central America. Seen from (white) eco-feminist perspectives, the rise of Madre Tierra could be seen to perform new kinds of exclusions: in this resonant figure diverse indigenous cosmologies seem to collapse; agrarian struggles are rendered “feminine,” and both women and land-workers are placed in the realm of nature—which is to say, far from meaning-making. However, when the everyday practices of agrarian activism are thought through Latinx and Chicanx theories of queer kinship and black womanism, a more radical, and specifically decolonial, vision emerges. Through ethnographic vignettes I illustrate the ways that masculinity/femininity, nature/culture, and the relationships between them are being reworked.

XV—‘I Wish My Speech Were Like a Loadstone’: Cavendish on Love and Self-Love

Abstract This paper examines the surprisingly central role of sympathetic love within Margaret Cavendish’s philosophy. I show that such love fulfils a range of metaphysical functions, and highlight an important shift in Cavendish’s account vis-à-vis earlier conceptions: sympathetic love is no longer given an emanative or mechanistic explanation, but is naturalized as an active emotion. I further investigate to what extent Cavendish’s account reveals a rift between the realm of nature and the realm of human sociability, and whether this rift really prompts an inward turn as some interpreters have suggested.

Osun Osogbo grove: the divinisation of water and the contestation of its history

ABSTRACT Sacredness is one of the distinctive phenomena of religion. It is about the divine existence of a thing set apart due to its supernatural abilities that can bring humanity closer to divinity. It is the core of existence and has transformative effect on people’s lives and destinies. Osun Osogbo sacred grove houses over one hundred shrines and sculptures. The main objective of this study is to examine the divinisation of water, the contestation of its history, the religiousness behind the grove, and the interconnectivity between religion and water. The study reveals that the deification of Osun Osogbo water shows humans’ thirst to commune with the supernatural in seeking solutions to problems beyond the natural realm. This study concludes that what links religion and water is the supernatural and that adherents believe that the supernatural can inhabit nature with the desire to have a dialogue with the human in yearly rituality.

CULTIVATING SPIRITUALITY A NECESSITY FOR PRESENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS

We are going through a very challenging period in human history. Not only has the COVID-19 pandemic had a disastrous effect on people and countries in all parts of the world, but also many other dangerous and life threatening problems have to be addressed and overcome, especially the environmental crisis, huge disparities in income and wealth, systemic racism, and conflicts between different genders, groups, regions, countries, and cultures. In order to come to grips with these problems, and others, it is imperative to make transcendental and not just transformational changes in our lifestyles, values, worldviews, actions, behaviour, and ways of life. The key to this lies in creating an effective balance between materialism and spiritualism, as well as placing a much higher priority on the cultivation of spirituality in our lives in the traditional and contemporary sense. Not only will this make it possible to reduce the colossal demands we are making on the natural environment – largely because most spiritual activities are "human intensive" rather than "material intensive" and therefore don’t consume as many natural resources as most other activities – but also it will enable present and future generations to experience a great deal more exuberance, exhilaration, and ecstasy in life without having to resort to drugs and other substances and devices to create "highs" and "peak experiences" because spiritual activities achieve this naturally. Many of these activities involve participating in causes that are greater than ourselves, joining protest movements aimed at creating more equality and justice in the world, going within ourselves to discover who we really are and what we were intended to realize in life, broaden and deepen our experiences in the arts, cultures, and the cultural heritage of humankind, and engage in explorations in nature and the natural realm that are capable of bringing us into contact with the sublime and possibly even the divine.

The polyphony of nature

The polyphony of nature

Framing the Non-human: American Honey as Eco-Road Movie

This article approaches Andrea Arnold's American Honey (2016) as a contemporary manifestation of an eco-road movie. Although the film's expansive interest in the ‘natural’ environment and its non-human inhabitants aligns it with Arnold's earlier work, American Honey is unique for its complex engagement with the cinematic traditions of Hollywood genre films. I argue that Arnold's eco-aesthetics work to conflate the distinctions between human and non-human worlds, offering a de-romanticisation of the American picturesque vistas and exploring the intersections of human speciesism, masculinity and whiteness, as well as narratives of conquest and ownership. I focus on the ways in which the film both participates in and exceeds Arnold's previous ecocinematic approach in filming British landscape, while at the same time highlighting her distinctive contribution to the tradition of the road movie. If the conventional road movie tends to offer a sense of escape from the capitalist dystopia, American Honey displaces such a promise. In its complex treatment of the supposedly distinct realms of nature and culture, the film does not endorse a return to the mythical wild but, rather, draws attention to the messiness of ecological, social and economic entanglements, exposing both neoliberal and anthropocentric power structures. Ultimately, it is through the intertwining of the film's ecological orientation and its engagement with the conventions of the road movie and its antecedent, the Western, that such a critique is possible.

Marginal Lives and the Microsociology of Overhearing in the Jamuna Chars

ABSTRACT In the past decade, Bangladesh has made a shift to becoming an authoritarian state. What happens to everyday speech within the context of state repression and censorship? I take up this question by exploring the nature and fate of ‘overhearing’ as a mode of speaking, most often prefaced by, ‘I heard that,’ or ‘this is heard speech,’ among the underprivileged denizens of the chars in the Jamuna River during the 2014 National Elections. The interest in drawing attention to overhearing, as opposed to eavesdropping or rumouring to which overhearing bears a resemblance, is to highlight a mode of speaking that stands to fall victim to the disciplining of speech currently underway in Bangladesh. In disciplining overhearing we stand to loose a practice, which, despite being intermittent and ephemeral, espouses an aesthetic sensibility and extends socio-religious judgments into the realm of nature, increasing the scope for political critique.

Sobre o Caráter Absoluto ou Relativo da Noção de Bem em sua Conexão com as Noções de Forma e Matéria

In ethics, the good is the final cause of every action. All other causes are what they are relatively to the final cause, but the final cause is not relative to something else, except as means and efficient cause of an ulterior motive, whereby the supreme end, whose possession brings happiness, is the absolute in ethics. In physics, the same thing: the living being tends to the fullness of its eidos (form) and all matter is moved towards that end. But the notion of happiness is a kind of empty truism (everyone wants to be happy) and the correspondent good will also remain empty until determined by relation to some substantive content, and in that determination we will fatally see the polyphony and the antilogy break out. In the realm of nature, as long as the good is thought from a philosophy of form and as what is useful and advantageous, that strengthens, brings health and preserves life, we will then have a total relativization of its absolute sense, because one form needs to snatch the matter from the other to survive, and the good of one, therefore, will be the evil of another. How to determine the good from the point of view of a philosophy of matter?

Rhetorical Analysis of Abu Al-Taib Al-Mutanabbi Selected Poems: The Case of Metaphor

In order to understand the concept of poetry, a good perception of its metaphor, the structure as well as the affiliation, would be a significant contribution for a better perception of this form of literature. This study aims to acquire an understanding of how Mutannabi describes the way of humanism in his poetry by portraying the concept of metaphors. The analogies from the representation of metaphors in his poetry are entangled with his view in encompassing regular wonders. In other words, the metaphors that he utilises in his poetry are based on the indirect interaction between human and the natural surroundings. The significance of this study is to analyse the deeply the actual meaning in the context of poetry, especially the inability of many students to fail to understand the meaning of metaphors, specifically in Arabic poetry. This study is conducted in hope for a better sensitivity of the reader in exploring and seeing the interconnection between the harmony of life and the art of poetry through its verses. This study utilised a qualitative content analysis framework with literary ecology and literary semiotics strategy. Mutannabi is known for his poetry pieces that are strongly correlated with natural elements, meaning that the verses can be depicted through the form of literary ecology. Hence, this study will present an explanation of how people understand the essence of life through the natural realms that are naturally created by God.

Transcending natural philosophy or disregarding metaphysics?

AbstractAlbert’s anthropology places the human being at the top of a hierarchy of living things in virtue of a unique feature – namely the intellect – that offers the possibility of transcending the changing realm of nature and of assimilating its possessor to their divine creator. Even though Albert, throughout his works, often defends the independence of the human intellect from matter and consequently from the body and senses, his works on natural philosophy seem to offer a different perspective. InDe animalibus, Albert considers the brain to be the divine member of the body responsible for the operations of sensation and, to a certain degree, of intellection. Thus, the entire humoral activity of the human body has a direct influence on the activity of the intellect, his divine nature notwithstanding. Accordingly, the main purpose of the present study is to point out how the classical humoral theory is integrated by Albert the Great in his physiological consideration for an explanation of the intellect placed between the murky boundaries of natural philosophy and metaphysics.

In the Realm of Nature There Is Nothing Purposeless, Trivial, or Unnecessary

In the Realm of Nature There Is Nothing Purposeless, Trivial, or Unnecessary

Pandemics, Power, and Conspiracy Theories

Pandemics, Power, and Conspiracy Theories

Dasein and World: Heidegger’s Reconceiving of the Transcendental After Husserl

Abstract The following examines Heidegger’s analysis of world and Dasein from a transcendental perspective. It is argued that Heidegger’s reflections on the interconnected themes of world and Dasein reveal the tensions that exist between the transcendental claims before and after Being and Time and the analysis of worldliness. It begins by looking at Heidegger’s early analysis of Husserl’s critique of psychologism and naturalism, assessing what this tells us about Heidegger’s analysis of world and nature. It subsequently addresses Heidegger’s transformation of Husserlian phenomenology, and intentionality in particular, arguing against interpreters who claim Heidegger’s interconnected concepts of Dasein and world are reducible to one another and hence phenomenologically problematic. In order to respond to this reading, the article examines the twin themes of, on the one hand, transcendental constitutive analysis in Heidegger’s work, Dasein as disclosive and ‘world entering’, and, on the other hand, the centrality of the world and the realm of nature as always more than Dasein’s constitutive relationship to it. In order to understand what Heidegger means by worldliness, the article will look at Heidegger’s reflections on nature as the world’s other, which nonetheless needs to be understood on the basis of worldliness.

Voices from the Roof of the World

Glacier-based mountain water systems are the water towers of the world, and billions are dependent on the vital services they provide. In an effort to better understand the effects of climate change on the glaciers of the Hindu Kush-Himalaya, National Geographic and Tribhuvan University conducted a multidisciplinary expedition to Mount Everest. These are the voices from that journey.

BERLIN NEUE NATIONALGALERIE. A CONTEMPORARY VIEW OF THE MODERN TEMPLE

Mies van der Rohe´s approach to architecture through a poetic structural skeleton, abstractly refined to become a universal prototype of the essence of form and spiritualization of space, can be best seen at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. This unique modern temple recently under refurbishment by the subtle pencil of David Chipperfield [1] will soon have to be prepared to receive the extra additional space designed by the winner competition office leaded by Herzog & De Meuron [2].
 Despite the rebirth of the building´s prestige there is still a gap of knowledge on the construction philosophy pursued by Mies van der Rohe, who conceived the Galeria Project as a phenomenological duality of lightness and heaviness in within a constant game of oppositions, exquisitely intended to intensify human emotions. Far beyond a mere construction, the magnificent museum became a place where the Silesia stone terrace seemed to detain the historical time meanwhile the biotite grey steel structure was encapsulating a flexible space embracing the dynamic elapse of life.
 The investigation undertaken by this author on the building´s original working drawings at the MvdR Archive in New York revealed unknown details which are helping nowadays to achieve a deeper understanding on the design and construction process of the iconic miesian museum. The underground ventilation channels running beneath the monolithic concrete plinth refreshing the interior volume with perfumed air from the garden´s lindens, altogether with the heroic columns and the freestanding glass membranes of the façades, resume today´s dilemma of the global high-tech city within the natural realm.

Schwinger’s picture of quantum mechanics IV: Composition and independence

The groupoid description of Schwinger’s picture of quantum mechanics is continued by discussing the closely related notions of composition of systems, subsystems, and their independence. Physical subsystems have a neat algebraic description as subgroupoids of the Schwinger’s groupoid of the system. The groupoid picture offers two natural notions of composition of systems: Direct and free products of groupoids, that will be analyzed in depth as well as their universal character. Finally, the notion of independence of subsystems will be reviewed, finding that the usual notion of independence, as well as the notion of free independence, find a natural realm in the groupoid formalism. The ideas described in this paper will be illustrated by using the EPRB experiment. It will be observed that, in addition to the notion of the non-separability provided by the entangled state of the system, there is an intrinsic “non-separability” associated to the impossibility of identifying the entangled particles as subsystems of the total system.