Search results for ""Author Bruce Clarke""
University of Minnesota Press Gaian Systems: Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene
A groundbreaking look at Gaia theory’s intersections with neocybernetic systems theory Often seen as an outlier in science, Gaia has run a long and varied course since its formulation in the 1970s by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis. Gaian Systems is a pioneering exploration of the dynamic and complex evolution of Gaia’s many variants, with special attention to Margulis’s foundational role in these developments.Bruce Clarke assesses the different dialects of systems theory brought to bear on Gaia discourse. Focusing in particular on Margulis’s work—including multiple pieces of her unpublished Gaia correspondence—he shows how her research and that of Lovelock was concurrent and conceptually parallel with the new discourse of self-referential systems that emerged within neocybernetic systems theory. The recent Gaia writings of Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, and Bruno Latour contest its cybernetic status. Clarke engages Latour on the issue of Gaia’s systems description and extends his own systems-theoretical synthesis under what he terms “metabiotic Gaia.” This study illuminates current issues in neighboring theoretical conversations—from biopolitics and the immunitary paradigm to NASA astrobiology and the Anthropocene. Along the way, he points to science fiction as a vehicle of Gaian thought. Delving into many issues not previously treated in accounts of Gaia, Gaian Systems describes the history of a theory that has the potential to help us survive an environmental crisis of our own making.
£87.30
Fordham University Press Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems
From Dr. Moreau’s Beast People to David Cronenberg’s Brundlefly, Stanislaw Lem’s robot constructors in the Cyberiad to Octavia Butler’s human/alien constructs in the Xenogenesis trilogy, Posthuman Metamorphosis examines modern and postmodern stories of corporeal transformation through interlocking frames of posthumanism, narratology, and second-order systems theory. New media generate new metamorphs. New stories have emerged from cybernetic displacements of life, sensation, or intelligence from human beings to machines. But beyond the vogue for the cyborg and the cybernetic mash-up of the organic and the mechanical, Posthuman Metamorphosis develops neocybernetic systems theories illuminating alternative narratives that elicit autopoietic and symbiotic visions of the posthuman. Systems theory also transforms our modes of narrative cognition. Regarding narrative in the light of the autopoietic systems it brings into play, neocybernetics brings narrative theory into constructive relation with the systemic operations of observation, communication, and paradox. Posthuman Metamorphosis draws on Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Niklas Luhmann, Cary Wolfe, Mieke Bal, Katherine Hayles, Friedrich Kittler, and Lynn Margulis to read narratives of bodily metamorphosis as allegories of the contingencies of systems. Tracing the posthuman intuitions of both pre- and post-cybernetic metamorphs, it demonstrates the viability of second-order systems theories for narrative theory, media theory, cultural science studies, and literary criticism.
£31.50
Fordham University Press Earth, Life, and System: Evolution and Ecology on a Gaian Planet
Exploring the broad implications of evolutionary theorist Lynn Margulis’s work, this collection brings together specialists across a range of disciplines, from paleontology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory, and geobiology to developmental systems theory, archaeology, history of science, cultural science studies, and literature and science. Addressing the multiple themes that animated Margulis’s science, the essays within take up, variously, astrobiology and the origin of life, ecology and symbiosis from the microbial to the planetary scale, the coupled interactions of earthly environments and evolving life in Gaia theory and earth system science, and the connections of these newer scientific ideas to cultural and creative productions. Dorion Sagan acquaints the reader with salient issues in Lynn Margulis’s scientific work, the controversies they raised, and the vocabulary necessary to follow the arguments. Sankar Chatterjee synthesizes several strands of current theory for the origin of life on earth. James Strick tells the intertwined origin stories of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and Margulis’s serial endosymbiosis theory. Jan Sapp explores the distinct phylogenetic visions of Margulis and Carl Woese. Susan Squier examines the epigenetics of embryologist and developmental biologist C. H. Waddington. Bruce Clarke studies the convergence of ecosystem ecology, systems theory, and science fiction between the 1960s and the 1980s. James Shapiro discusses the genome evolution that results not from random changes but rather from active cell processes. Susan Oyama shows how the concept of development balances an over-emphasis on genetic coding and other deterministic schemas. Christopher Witmore studies the ways in which a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, mixes up natural resources, animal lives, and human appetites. And Peter Westbroek brings the insights of earth system science toward a new worldview essential for a proper response to global change.
£84.60
Fordham University Press Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems
From Dr. Moreau’s Beast People to David Cronenberg’s Brundlefly, Stanislaw Lem’s robot constructors in the Cyberiad to Octavia Butler’s human/alien constructs in the Xenogenesis trilogy, Posthuman Metamorphosis examines modern and postmodern stories of corporeal transformation through interlocking frames of posthumanism, narratology, and second-order systems theory. New media generate new metamorphs. New stories have emerged from cybernetic displacements of life, sensation, or intelligence from human beings to machines. But beyond the vogue for the cyborg and the cybernetic mash-up of the organic and the mechanical, Posthuman Metamorphosis develops neocybernetic systems theories illuminating alternative narratives that elicit autopoietic and symbiotic visions of the posthuman. Systems theory also transforms our modes of narrative cognition. Regarding narrative in the light of the autopoietic systems it brings into play, neocybernetics brings narrative theory into constructive relation with the systemic operations of observation, communication, and paradox. Posthuman Metamorphosis draws on Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Niklas Luhmann, Cary Wolfe, Mieke Bal, Katherine Hayles, Friedrich Kittler, and Lynn Margulis to read narratives of bodily metamorphosis as allegories of the contingencies of systems. Tracing the posthuman intuitions of both pre- and post-cybernetic metamorphs, it demonstrates the viability of second-order systems theories for narrative theory, media theory, cultural science studies, and literary criticism.
£76.50
University of Minnesota Press Gaian Systems: Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene
A groundbreaking look at Gaia theory’s intersections with neocybernetic systems theory Often seen as an outlier in science, Gaia has run a long and varied course since its formulation in the 1970s by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis. Gaian Systems is a pioneering exploration of the dynamic and complex evolution of Gaia’s many variants, with special attention to Margulis’s foundational role in these developments.Bruce Clarke assesses the different dialects of systems theory brought to bear on Gaia discourse. Focusing in particular on Margulis’s work—including multiple pieces of her unpublished Gaia correspondence—he shows how her research and that of Lovelock was concurrent and conceptually parallel with the new discourse of self-referential systems that emerged within neocybernetic systems theory. The recent Gaia writings of Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, and Bruno Latour contest its cybernetic status. Clarke engages Latour on the issue of Gaia’s systems description and extends his own systems-theoretical synthesis under what he terms “metabiotic Gaia.” This study illuminates current issues in neighboring theoretical conversations—from biopolitics and the immunitary paradigm to NASA astrobiology and the Anthropocene. Along the way, he points to science fiction as a vehicle of Gaian thought. Delving into many issues not previously treated in accounts of Gaia, Gaian Systems describes the history of a theory that has the potential to help us survive an environmental crisis of our own making.
£22.99
Fordham University Press Earth, Life, and System: Evolution and Ecology on a Gaian Planet
Exploring the broad implications of evolutionary theorist Lynn Margulis’s work, this collection brings together specialists across a range of disciplines, from paleontology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory, and geobiology to developmental systems theory, archaeology, history of science, cultural science studies, and literature and science. Addressing the multiple themes that animated Margulis’s science, the essays within take up, variously, astrobiology and the origin of life, ecology and symbiosis from the microbial to the planetary scale, the coupled interactions of earthly environments and evolving life in Gaia theory and earth system science, and the connections of these newer scientific ideas to cultural and creative productions. Dorion Sagan acquaints the reader with salient issues in Lynn Margulis’s scientific work, the controversies they raised, and the vocabulary necessary to follow the arguments. Sankar Chatterjee synthesizes several strands of current theory for the origin of life on earth. James Strick tells the intertwined origin stories of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and Margulis’s serial endosymbiosis theory. Jan Sapp explores the distinct phylogenetic visions of Margulis and Carl Woese. Susan Squier examines the epigenetics of embryologist and developmental biologist C. H. Waddington. Bruce Clarke studies the convergence of ecosystem ecology, systems theory, and science fiction between the 1960s and the 1980s. James Shapiro discusses the genome evolution that results not from random changes but rather from active cell processes. Susan Oyama shows how the concept of development balances an over-emphasis on genetic coding and other deterministic schemas. Christopher Witmore studies the ways in which a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, mixes up natural resources, animal lives, and human appetites. And Peter Westbroek brings the insights of earth system science toward a new worldview essential for a proper response to global change.
£31.50
Cambridge University Press Writing Gaia: The Scientific Correspondence of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis
In 1972, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis began collaborating on the Gaia hypothesis. They suggested that over geological time, life on Earth has had a major role in both producing and regulating its own environment. Gaia is now an ecological and environmental worldview underpinning vital scientific and cultural debates over environmental issues. Their ideas have transformed the Earth and life sciences, as well as contemporary conceptions of nature. Their correspondence describes these crucial developments from the inside, showing how their partnership proved decisive for the development of the Gaia hypothesis. Clarke and Dutreuil provide historical background and explain the concepts and references introduced throughout the Lovelock-Margulis correspondence, while highlighting the major landmarks of their collaboration within the sequence of almost 300 letters written between 1970 and 2007. This book will be of interest to researchers in ecology, history of science, environmental history and climate change, and cultural science studies.
£39.99
Stanford University Press From Energy to Information: Representation in Science and Technology, Art, and Literature
This book offers an innovative examination of the interactions of science and technology, art, and literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Scholars in the history of art, literature, architecture, computer science, and media studies focus on five historical themes in the transition from energy to information: thermodynamics, electromagnetism, inscription, information theory, and virtuality. Different disciplines are grouped around specific moments in the history of science and technology in order to sample the modes of representation invented or adapted by each field in response to newly developed scientific concepts and models. By placing literary fictions and the plastic arts in relation to the transition from the era of energy to the information age, this collection of essays discovers unexpected resonances among concepts and materials not previously brought into juxtaposition. In particular, it demonstrates the crucial centrality of the theme of energy in modernist discourse. Overall, the volume develops the scientific and technological side of the shift from modernism to postmodernism in terms of the conceptual crossover from energy to information. The contributors are Christoph Asendorf, Ian F. A. Bell, Robert Brain, Bruce Clarke, Charlotte Douglas, N. Katherine Hayes, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Bruce J. Hunt, Douglas Kahn, Timothy Lenoir, W. J. T. Mitchell, Marcos Novak, Edward Shanken, Richard Shiff, David Tomas, Sha Xin Wei, and Norton Wise.
£36.00
