Philosophy of Nature

Intersections of Nature, Science, and Religion: An Introduction

by Adrian Ivakhiv

Co-authored with Catherine Tucker

Misyurov D.A. Dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas // Credo New. 2012. №2

by Dmitry Misyurov

The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with... more The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with dominant and the non-dominant elements; universal formula; formula with symbolic weight of elements; tautological formula. For example, it suggests an opportunity to use the dialectical formulas for modeling and artificial intelligence creation, etc.

Engineering love

by Brian Earp

Savulescu, J. and Sandberg, A. (2012). Love machine: Engineering lifelong romance. New Scientist, 2864, 28-29.

Essay partially adapted from Earp, B. D., Sandberg, A., and Savulescu, J. (2012). Natural selection, childrearing, and the ethics of marriage (and divorce): Building a case for the neuroenhancement of human relationships. Philosophy & Technology, forthcoming [see "profile" box in article].

Available at the New Scientist website: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428646.200-love-machine-engineering-lifelong-romance.html

New Scientist BIG IDEA section, May 2012.

With break-up and divorce a major part of modern life, it looks... more New Scientist BIG IDEA section, May 2012.

With break-up and divorce a major part of modern life, it looks like we may be outliving our inborn capacity to love. But there could be a way to outwit evolution and make love last.

Also available at New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428646.200-love-machine-engineering-lifelong-romance.html.

Water Magic

by Richard Wilk

Published as
2012 “Water Magic.” in People at the Well: Kinds, Usages and Meanings of Water in a Global Perspective, edited by Hans Peter Hahn, Karlheinz Cless and Jens Soentgen, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt.

Human beings always seem to be looking for new ways to contain, channel and domesticate water; science and technology... more Human beings always seem to be looking for new ways to contain, channel and domesticate water; science and technology define it, manipulate it, and keep it in place. But there is something in water that seems to defy our every effort to pin it into a specific place, to keep it within boundaries and make it predictable. Sooner or later channels and containers always overflow or dry up, and no matter how tame it appears at a given moment, the flow of water always carries a potential for chaos.

Aristotele, De caelo - Giordano Bruno, De l'Infinito: confronto e commento.

by Stefano Ulliana

The Trembling of the Concept: The Material Genesis of Living Being in Hegel's Realphilosophie

by Joseph Carew

Forthcoming in Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy. Vol 23: Life, 2012

Although Hegel's absolute idealism is often presented as solipsistically self-grounding, the Realphilosophie offers us... more Although Hegel's absolute idealism is often presented as solipsistically self-grounding, the Realphilosophie offers us an another image of Hegel that not only challenges standard interpretations but, more importantly, gives us valuable resources to rethink living being. The zero-level determinacy (Bestimmtheit) of nature as “the idea in its otherness” has two important consequences. First, the starting point of any philosophy of nature must be a realism insofar as nature's material constitution shows itself as non-thought-like. Second, if idealism is to be viable, it must be able to show how nature becomes idea through her own immanent auto-movement. Taking as my guide the category of “trembling” (Erzittern) and exploring its intimate connection with the emergent ideality of bodies producing sound, the chemical process, and the voice of animals, I aim to show how the Realphilosophie is a reconstruction of the painful odyssey of the material genesis of the autopoietic self-referentiality of the concept as it is paradoxically begotten by a self-caused immaculate conception in the pure extimacy of nature. Rather than being a naturephilosophical theory of material being as an implicit, self-unfolding productivity that leads to life via an intrinsic teleology, the dialectics of nature is an account of the contingent emergence of unpredictable kinds of ontological determinacies from within the immanent field of mechanical nature. Only a naturalised idealism/idealised naturalism is capable of arguing for the ontological irreducibility of living being while simultaneously articulating the latter's dependence upon different empirical-material domains which form its ontogenetic ground, thereby avoiding both eliminative materialism and naïve vitalism.

Responding with dao: Early Daoist Ethics and the Environment

by Eric S. Nelson

“Responding with dao: Early Daoist Ethics and the Environment.” Philosophy East West, 59:3 (July 2009): 294-316.

Early Daoism, as articulated in the 'Daodejing' and the 'Zhuangzi', indirectly addresses environmental issues by... more Early Daoism, as articulated in the 'Daodejing' and the 'Zhuangzi', indirectly addresses environmental issues by intimating a nonreductive naturalistic ethics calling on humans to be open and responsive to the specificities and interconnections of the world and environment to which they belong. "'Dao'" is not a substantial immanent or transcendent entity but the lived enactment of the intrinsic worth of the "myriad things" and the natural world occurring through 'how' humans address and are addressed by them. Early Daoism potentially corrects both anthropocentrism and biocentrism in environmental ethics by disclosing the things themselves in the context of the self-cultivation of life. Given increasing environmental devastation and the dominance of views, practices, and institutions reducing nature to a background and/or raw material for human activity, this "ethics of encounter" discloses the life of things as inexhaustibly more than human projects and constructs, extending ethical recognition and responsibility beyond social relations and the social self.

Hegel on Nature and Spirit

by Cinzia Ferrini

“Die Faktizitat der Natur. Der philosophische Sinn der Natur als Antwort auf den Nihilismus”

by Vincent Blok

published in: Jünger-Studien, No. 5 (2011), pp. 40-54.

Le critiche di Fichte alla Naturphilosophie negli anni dell’insegnamento all’Università di Berlino, in “Filosofia”, anno LV, Fasc.I, Gennaio – Aprile 2004, pp.1-32.

by Alessandro Bertinetto

Review of Deborah Cook, Adorno on Nature

by Eric S. Nelson

Review of: Deborah Cook, Adorno on Nature, Acumen, 2011, 198pp., $29.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781844652624. NDPR 2012.02.23.

Note: text is available at: Note: text is available at: http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/28839-adorno-on-nature/

Teleology and the life sciences: between limit concept and ontological necessity.

by Barbara Muraca

paper should appear 2011
in: Koutroufinis, S. (ed.). Process and Life – Towards a Whiteheadian View of Living Beings, Frankfurt: Lancaster, Ontos

Ecology between natural science and environmental ethics. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism and its contribution to an ecological worldview

by Barbara Muraca

in: Weber, M. (ed.): Handbook of Whiteheadien Process Thought. 2008 Frankfurt, Lancaster: Ontos.

Pietro Pomponazzi and the Rôle of Nature In Oracular Divination

by Anthony Ossa-Richardson

Ragioni causali e ordine della natura in Agostino. A proposito di una tesi di Robert Markus

by Giovanni Catapano

«Studia Patavina», XLVIII (2001), ISSN 0039-3304, pp. 133-141

After having briefly introduced the Augustinian doctrine of "causal reasons", the author discusses the... more After having briefly introduced the Augustinian doctrine of "causal reasons", the author discusses the opinion of R. Markus, according to whom the attribution of the miracles to the action of the 'rationes' would imply the dissolution of the concept of nature.

Spatio-Temporal Facticity and the Dissymmetry of Nature: A Peircean-Based Defense of Some Essential Distinctions of Nature

by Philip Rose

Environmental Philosophy, Vol. VIII, Issue II, Fall, 2011(pp. 115-140)

This is an attempt to work the ground in the philosophy of nature by trying to articulate in a clear and rigorous... more This is an attempt to work the ground in the philosophy of nature by trying to articulate in a clear and rigorous philosophical sense what Nature is. This will involve pressing the question of nature to the point of essential distinctions in the hope of disclosing conditions that mark Nature as a distinct conception and general mode of being. Drawing and building upon Peirce’s account of “facts,” time and space,  and the “dissymmetry” of nature, I will suggest some ways in which the essential distinctness of Nature can be framed. I will end by offering a parting glance at some of the implications that might follow from the distinctions constructed.

Spatio-Temporal Facticity and the Dissymmetry of Nature: A Peircean-Based Defense of Some Essential Distinctions of Nature

by Philip Rose

Environmental Philosophy, Vol. VIII, Issue II, Fall, 2011(pp. 115-140)

This is an attempt to work the ground in the philosophy of nature by trying to articulate in a clear and rigorous... more This is an attempt to work the ground in the philosophy of nature by trying to articulate in a clear and rigorous philosophical sense what Nature is. This will involve pressing the question of nature to the point of essential distinctions in the hope of disclosing conditions that mark Nature as a distinct conception and general mode of being. Drawing and building upon Peirce’s account of “facts,” time and space,  and the “dissymmetry” of nature, I will suggest some ways in which the essential distinctness of Nature can be framed. I will end by offering a parting glance at some of the implications that might follow from the distinctions constructed.

Traumatic natures in the swamp. Concepts of nature and participatory governance in the Danube delta

by Kristof Van Assche

Published in Environmental Values

This paper focuses on local constructions of ‘nature’ in governance processes, and the importance of historical and... more This paper focuses on local constructions of ‘nature’ in governance processes, and the importance of historical and institutional contexts for their genesis and functioning. Through extensive field study in the Romanian Danube delta, it is demonstrated that the origin and distribution of certain concepts can be credited to a history of conflicts over land and resource use. Considering the implications for participatory natural resource governance, we argue that this capacity of the governance context to produce and transform concepts of nature, poses real challenges. To these challenges can be added legacies of disempowerment and marginalization, evident in local inhabitants’ images and concepts of nature, which we seek to understand by developing a theory of traumatic nature.

Nature et environnement. Considérations épistémologiques

by Bertrand Levy

In : A. Bailly (ed.), Géographie et nature, Actes du Festival International de Géographie (FIG), de Saint-Dié-les-Vosges, Géographie et nature, 1999

Nature, environment, definition, use, philosophical and political implications Nature, environment, definition, use, philosophical and political implications

Technology and the Fleshly Interface in Forster’s “The Machine Stops”: An Ecocritical Appraisal of a One-Hundred Year Old Future

by Alf Seegert

Published in 'Journal of Ecocriticism,' 2 (1), January 2010.

As a prescient critique of telepresence technologies like the Internet, “The Machine Stops” satirizes hypermediated... more As a prescient critique of telepresence technologies like the Internet, “The Machine Stops” satirizes hypermediated contact and in its place valorizes contact made with the fleshly body-—so much so, that it fantasizes the removal of all technological mediations between that body and the “real.” This move carries strong ecocritical implications in its suggestion that all authentic connection—whether between people themselves or between people and the earth—must be corporeal. The narrator’s apology on behalf of “beautiful naked man” (122) and his nostalgia for the robust, technology-­free body are, however, both problematic. Forster appears to conflate nakedness and fleshly connection with unmediated contact or “full presence,” a view that raises many potential criticisms and questions. If the body proves to be but one kind of mediating interface itself, then on what grounds should the mode of fleshly connection be privileged over interactions mediated by motors, buttons, and video screens? If all contact must be mediated somehow, does it even make sense to consider one type of interface as “more authentic” than another? Is it right to equate nakedness with freedom from technology? In this paper I use an ecocritical perspective to explore such questions in the text, focusing in particular on Forster’s depiction of technology as devastating to both the human body and to the experience of space and place. The timeliness of such concerns suggests that “The Machine Stops” might prove even more significant in the hypermediated world of today than it was a hundred years ago for questioning the relationship between corporeality, representation, and nature.