The Epochs of Nature

The Epochs of Nature
Author: Georges-Louis Leclerc
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2018-04-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 022639557X

Georges-Louis Leclerc, le comte de Buffon's The Epochs of Nature, originally published as Les Époques de la Nature in 1778, is one of the first great popular science books, a work of style and insight that was devoured by Catherine the Great of Russia and influenced Humboldt, Darwin, Lyell, Vernadsky, and many other renowned scientists. It is the first geological history of the world, stretching from the Earth’s origins to its foreseen end, and though Buffon was limited by the scientific knowledge of his era—the substance of the Earth was not, as he asserts, dragged out of the sun by a giant comet, nor is the sun’s heat generated by tidal forces—many of his deductions appear today as startling insights. And yet, The Epochs of Nature has never before been available in its entirety in English—until now. In seven epochs, Buffon reveals the main features of an evolving Earth, from its hard rock substrate to the sedimentary layers on top, from the minerals and fossils found within these layers to volcanoes, earthquakes, and rises and falls in sea level—and he even touches on age-old mysteries like why the sun shines. In one of many moments of striking scientific prescience, Buffon details evidence for species extinction a generation before Cuvier’s more famous assertion of the phenomenon. His seventh and final epoch does nothing less than offer the first geological glimpse of the idea that humans are altering the very foundations of the Earth—an idea of remarkable resonance as we debate the designation of another epoch: the Anthropocene. Also featuring Buffon’s extensive “Notes Justificatives,” in which he offers further evidence to support his assertions (and discusses vanished monstrous North American beasts—what we know as mastodons—as well as the potential existence of human giants), plus an enlightening introduction by editor and translator Jan Zalasiewicz and historians of science Sverker Sörlin, Libby Robin, and Jacques Grinevald, this extraordinary new translation revives Buffon’s quite literally groundbreaking work for a new age.


Buffon

Buffon
Author: Jacques Roger
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780801429187

A biography of a premier French scientist of the Enlightenment and the director of France's Royal Botanical Garden, using Buffon's enormous literary production as the major source of insight into his and his age's beliefs about the natural world. Includes bandw illustrations from his Natural History. First published in 1989 as Buffon, un philosophe au Jardin du Roi, by Librarie Artheme Fayard. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


Against Nature

Against Nature
Author: Lorraine Daston
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2019-05-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262353814

A pithy work of philosophical anthropology that explores why humans find moral orders in natural orders. Why have human beings, in many different cultures and epochs, looked to nature as a source of norms for human behavior? From ancient India and ancient Greece, medieval France and Enlightenment America, up to the latest controversies over gay marriage and cloning, natural orders have been enlisted to illustrate and buttress moral orders. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike have appealed to nature to shore up their causes. No amount of philosophical argument or political critique deters the persistent and pervasive temptation to conflate the “is” of natural orders with the “ought” of moral orders. In this short, pithy work of philosophical anthropology, Lorraine Daston asks why we continually seek moral orders in natural orders, despite so much good counsel to the contrary. She outlines three specific forms of natural order in the Western philosophical tradition—specific natures, local natures, and universal natural laws—and describes how each of these three natural orders has been used to define and oppose a distinctive form of the unnatural. She argues that each of these forms of the unnatural triggers equally distinctive emotions: horror, terror, and wonder. Daston proposes that human reason practiced in human bodies should command the attention of philosophers, who have traditionally yearned for a transcendent reason, valid for all species, all epochs, even all planets.


After Nature

After Nature
Author: Jedediah Purdy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2015-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674368223

An Artforum Best Book of the Year A Legal Theory Bookworm Book of the Year Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. The geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. Climate change is planetary engineering without design. These facts of the Anthropocene are scientific, but its shape and meaning are questions for politics—a politics that does not yet exist. After Nature develops a politics for this post-natural world. “After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’s “Dazzling...Purdy hopes that climate change might spur yet another change in how we think about the natural world, but he insists that such a shift will be inescapably political... For a relatively slim volume, this book distills an incredible amount of scholarship—about Americans’ changing attitudes toward the natural world, and about how those attitudes might change in the future.” —Ross Andersen, The Atlantic


Views of Nature

Views of Nature
Author: Alexander von Humboldt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 484
Release: 1878
Genre: Physical geography
ISBN:


The Planet in a Pebble

The Planet in a Pebble
Author: Jan Zalasiewicz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2012-03-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0199645698

"Every pebble has many stories to tell. Its particular atoms, its crystals, its minerals, its grains, its textures, its strata, its tiny fossils bear evidence to a history that stretches back billions of years."--Book flap.


Times of History, Times of Nature

Times of History, Times of Nature
Author: Anders Ekström
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2022-02-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1800733232

As climate change becomes an increasingly important part of public discourse, the relationship between time in nature and history is changing. Nature can no longer be considered a slow and immobile background to human history, and the future can no longer be viewed as open and detached from the past. Times of History, Times of Nature engages with this historical shift in temporal sensibilities through a combination of detailed case studies and synthesizing efforts. Focusing on the history of knowledge, media theory, and environmental humanities, this volume explores the rich and nuanced notions of time and temporality that have emerged in response to climate change.


Socio-humanitarian development of Ukrainian society in the epoch of modernity and current postmodern transformations

Socio-humanitarian development of Ukrainian society in the epoch of modernity and current postmodern transformations
Author: Bielkin I., Bogatchuk S., Levchuk K., Makarov Z., Shvets L., Mangora V., Mazylo I.
Publisher: International Science Group
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2022-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN:

The collective monograph is devoted to the study of current problems of socioeconomic development of modern Ukrainian society. The study uses an interdisciplinary approach that allows you to analyze different aspects of society, which increases its importance. Historical research begins with the study of socio-economic transformations in the second half of the nineteenth century. In particular, an analysis of the socioeconomic development of Ukrainian lands after the agrarian reform of 1861, considered the social situation of the peasantry after the abolition of serfdom, analyzed the development of the railway industry and its impact on economic reforms. Resistance to Russian aggression and the issue of post-war reconstruction are relevant for Ukraine today. The study of the historical experience of Ukraine's participation in World War II requires further work of researchers. It is with Ukraine, and even more broadly, that the decisive events on the entire Soviet-German front are connected with the entire southern direction as its geographical extension. The fate of the whole war was decided on the Ukrainian and in general the southern part of the Soviet-German front. The phenomenon of the volunteer movement, which today allows us to solve a number of pressing problems of Ukrainian society, originated in Soviet times under the influence of Gorbachev's policy of "perestroika". The monograph pays considerable attention to such a large-scale social phenomenon as the emergence and development of amateur informal organizations outside the state influence in 1987-1989. Researchers conclude that the democratization of Ukrainian society marked the beginning of the struggle for Ukraine's independence. Studies of socio-humanitarian problems remain relevant for the modern socioeconomic development of Ukraine. Today, in conditions of fierce competition, which requires constant updating of technologies, accelerated development of innovations, rapid adaptation to the demands and requirements of consumers of socio-cultural services, the question of increasing the competitiveness of managers is acute. Training of future managers of marketing communications consists in development of effective models of management, approbation of new projects of activity of the organization. Therefore, the most effective method of learning is a business game. In almost any business game, a real professional situation is simulated, which requires a managerial decision. In addition, business games have such components that fundamentally distinguish them from all other technologies, primarily in that they have an operational scenario or block structure, which is embedded algorithm "correct" and "incorrect" decision, ie the participant in the game sees the result of his decisions on future events. The text of the collective monograph focuses on such a topical phenomenon as the philosophical view of nature in retrospect of the current environmental crisis. The current international level of measures to harmonize economic expansion into nature and the principles of ecological balance reveals the need for an appropriate worldview scale of rethinking the relationship between man and nature, beginning with the recognition of their mutual influence and ending with reformulation of fundamental definitions. From this point of view, they appear to be relatively long-lasting and reproducible connections over a certain historical period, in which objective reality is a prerequisite for the existence and spiritual development of mankind not only as an external environment but also as a potential for internal possibilities. Today in most countries of the world the issue of observance and protection of human and civil rights is very acute. The institute of human rights protection began to develop especially actively at the beginning of the XXI century, when most countries set a course for democratization and development of civil society. In this regard, there are many regulations at the international level that enshrine human rights and the protection of human rights. Of particular importance in the context of the protection of human rights is the constitutional right to protection. The realization of a person's right to protection can be carried out through various political and legal mechanisms. The content of the monograph corresponds to the direction of research work of the Department of History of Ukraine and Philosophy of Vinnytsia National Agrarian University "Study of trends in socio-economic development and consolidation of Ukrainian society in modern history of Ukraine." The methods of historical research, statistical analysis, sociological and pedagogical approaches were used in the work.