The great societal transformations: epigenetic explorations: a transdisciplinary perspective on the evolution of modern knowledge societies ; part I, The Epigenetic Research Program (EPR) - basic building blocks ; part II, 'Great transformations' within modern societies - epigenetic transfer modules (TM)

'Die zwei Artikel in diesem Heft geben eine konzise Übersicht zu einer neuen, transdisziplinären Perspektive für die Analyse 'wissensbasierter Prozesse' innerhalb der unterschiedlichsten Bereiche in den Natur- und Sozialwissenschaften. Dieser neue Approach, der unter dem Namen 'epigenetisches Forschungsprogramm' (ERP) läuft, ermöglicht es, so die zentrale Botschaft dieses Reihenheftes, evolutionäre Entwicklungsmuster der 'sozialen Welt' - in ihren sozio-ökonomischen oder sozio-kulturellen Seiten - einzufangen und zu identifizieren. Dieses neuartige Leistungspotential erschließt sich durch den Aufbau eines konzeptionellen, theoretischen wie modellmäßigen Apparats von transdisziplinärem Geltungsbereich und durch die Differenzierung in zwei Ebenen, nämlich in einen theoretischen, modellbezogenen wie einen generellen anwendungsorientierten transdisziplinären Bereich und in Transfermodule sowie Datenfelder, welche einzelnen Disziplinfeldern zugeordnet werden können. Und hinsichtlich der Aufteilung der zwei Artikel offeriert der erste Teil eine Übersicht zu den einzelnen ERP-Bausteinen und der zweite Teil ein Set an 'Transfermodulen' speziell für die Analyse der Entwicklung moderner Gesellschaften und ihrer so vielfältig gewordenen und weit verteilten Wissensbasen.' (Autorenreferat)'The subsequent two parts give a precise overview of a new and transdisciplinary perspective for the study of 'knowledge based processes' in a wide variety of domains, including natural science fields and social science areas. The new approach which runs under the label of an 'epigenetic research program' (ERP) is able, so the core message, to capture the evolutionary development patterns of the socio-economic and the socio-cultural world. This achievement is brought about through the construction of a conceptual, theoretical and modeling apparatus of sufficient transdisciplinary generality and through the separation of two different levels, namely of ERP-meta-levels on the one hand and ERP-levels of application on the other hand. Meta-level elements are characterized, above all, by their transdisciplinary status, being not linked to any particular type of application domain, whereas building Blocks at application levels are clearly connected with special features in natural science or social science domains. With respect to the set of two consecutive articles, part I presents a general summary of the ERP-perspective and part II is devoted to a set of ERP 'transfer modules' mainly for the evolution of modern societies and their knowledge bases.' (author's abstract)

The Baby and the Bath Water: Improving Metaphors and Analogies in High School Biology Texts

This dissertation is concerned with understanding how metaphors and analogies function in biology education and whether some of the philosophical critiques of the language used in the field of biology — and in particular its accompanying metaphors and analogies, have a basis in the educational materials used to teach the subject. This inquiry was carried out through examining the pedagogical features and content of metaphors and analogies from three high school biology textbooks. After identifying over two hundred and twenty-five verbal and pictorial metaphors and analogies, these figures of speech were coded based on prior research that establishes effective characteristics for their use. In tandem with this quantitative analysis, a philosophical analysis considers how well the content of these metaphors and analogies aligns with current scientific understanding and what misunderstandings may be engendered through the use of these metaphors and analogies. The major findings of the analysis include: 1) Textbook authors are much more likely to utilize metaphors and analogies as well as signal their presence to students compared with past analyses; 2) A number of metaphors and analogies either contain errors in analogical mapping or use source analogues that are too antiquated to support today’s students; 3) The content of many metaphors and analogies is frequently outdated in reference to current scientific understanding; and 4) Many metaphors and analogies tend to reinforce tacit elements of past scientific paradigms – these are termed ‘reinforcing metaphors’ in the dissertation and include nature as machine, nature as blueprint or information, nature as business and nature as war. The present work submits several implications for students learning biology as well as the manner in which students come to understand the natural world. The work suggests ways to reduce ineffective metaphors and analogies as well as reliance on reinforcing metaphors. It offers new approaches for the use of metaphors and analogies in biology education as well as specific directions that better reflect a more balanced and modern conception of important topics in biology including viruses, eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, genetics, natural selection and ecology

Critical Programming: Toward a Philosophy of Computing

Beliefs about the relationship between human beings and computing machines and their destinies have alternated from heroic counterparts to conspirators of automated genocide, from apocalyptic extinction events to evolutionary cyborg convergences. Many fear that people are losing key intellectual and social abilities as tasks are offloaded to the everywhere of the built environment, which is developing a mind of its own. If digital technologies have contributed to forming a dumbest generation and ushering in a robotic moment, we all have a stake in addressing this collective intelligence problem. While digital humanities continue to flourish and introduce new uses for computer technologies, the basic modes of philosophical inquiry remain in the grip of print media, and default philosophies of computing prevail, or experimental ones propagate false hopes. I cast this as-is situation as the post-postmodern network dividual cyborg, recognizing that the rational enlightenment of modernism and regressive subjectivity of postmodernism now operate in an empire of extended mind cybernetics combined with techno-capitalist networks forming societies of control. Recent critical theorists identify a justificatory scheme foregrounding participation in projects, valorizing social network linkages over heroic individualism, and commending flexibility and adaptability through life long learning over stable career paths. It seems to reify one possible, contingent configuration of global capitalism as if it was the reflection of a deterministic evolution of commingled technogenesis and synaptogenesis. To counter this trend I offer a theoretical framework to focus on the phenomenology of software and code, joining social critiques with textuality and media studies, the former proposing that theory be done through practice, and the latter seeking to understand their schematism of perceptibility by taking into account engineering techniques like time axis manipulation. The social construction of technology makes additional theoretical contributions dispelling closed world, deterministic historical narratives and requiring voices be given to the engineers and technologists that best know their subject area. This theoretical slate has been recently deployed to produce rich histories of computing, networking, and software, inform the nascent disciplines of software studies and code studies, as well as guide ethnographers of software development communities. I call my syncretism of these approaches the procedural rhetoric of diachrony in synchrony, recognizing that multiple explanatory layers operating in their individual temporal and physical orders of magnitude simultaneously undergird post-postmodern network phenomena. Its touchstone is that the human-machine situation is best contemplated by doing, which as a methodology for digital humanities research I call critical programming. Philosophers of computing explore working code places by designing, coding, and executing complex software projects as an integral part of their intellectual activity, reflecting on how developing theoretical understanding necessitates iterative development of code as it does other texts, and how resolving coding dilemmas may clarify or modify provisional theories as our minds struggle to intuit the alien temporalities of machine processes

The “Olympiad of Photography”: FIAP and the Global Photo-Club Culture, 1950–1965

This dissertation examines the global photo-club culture of the 1950s through the work of the International Federation of Photographic Art (Fédération internationale de l\u27art photographique, FIAP), founded in 1950. By 1965 FIAP united national associations of photo clubs in fifty-five countries across Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The regular exhibitions and publications of FIAP provided a unique platform where photographers living in the “second” and “third worlds” were welcome to present their work on equal grounds with their peers from the “first world.” FIAP, I posit, created a nonprofit, egalitarian, and open system of image production and circulation among photo clubs that aspired to align with the idealism of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Moreover, I contend that the photo-club culture of the 1950s overlapped remarkably with the field of professional magazine photography and photojournalism. Thus FIAP, I argue, succeeded in mobilizing a transnational and heterogeneous community of photographers by appealing to a shared idealism that transcended geopolitical and professional boundaries at a time of deep political and socioeconomic crisis. The work of these photographers, documented in seven FIAP yearbooks published between 1950 and 1965, offers a cross-section of postwar photography consisting of multiple regional perspectives and idiosyncratic visual styles that resist applying one unified periodization or single stylistic hierarchy. My analysis of this cross-section, with a focus on examples from Argentina, Brazil, East and West Germany, India, and Taiwan, aims to disrupt the established narrative of the Eurocentric art history of photography. Instead, I propose a global and decentralized history comprising several coexisting narratives, each of them relevant within their local and regional context independently of whether they fit into the storyline of Western art history or not. Relying on the sociology of art and postcolonial theories, I emphasize the cultural diversity and local specificity of the multiple photographic practices that coexisted in photo-club culture. The systemic power imbalance in the field of photography during the 1950s, I posit, was one of the reasons why the efforts of FIAP and most photo clubs had been forgotten as we look back on that decade from our vantage point. Among the dominant forces in the field were the influence of Life magazine, the monopolization of photojournalistic production by Magnum cooperative, and the worldwide circulation of the exhibition and photobook The Family of Man. Operating in this context, FIAP and photo clubs offered “second” and “third world” photographers an alternative and more accessible avenue toward advancing their social standing and elevating the cultural role of photography within their societies. The dissertation opens with a panoramic view on the profound influence the UN had on FIAP. It proceeds with a sequence of gradually closer middle shots, first focusing on magazine photographers as a professional group and then identifying humanist photography, which also had a notable presence in FIAP yearbooks, as the leading visual style of the time. The next close-up is the international photography trade fair in Cologne, Photokina 1956, which gave an unprecedented public platform for photo-club exhibition design, strategies, and politics. The narrative concludes with macro-level close-ups of two outstanding advocates of photo-club culture and FIAP: Lang Jingshan, a Chinese refugee photographer working in Taiwan, and the São Paulo-based photo club Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante

Specialised Languages and Multimedia. Linguistic and Cross-cultural Issues

none2noThis book collects academic works focusing on scientific and technical discourse and on the ways in which this type of discourse appears in or is shaped by multimedia products. The originality of this book is to be seen in the variety of approaches used and of the specialised languages investigated in relation to multimodal and multimedia genres. Contributions will particularly focus on new multimodal or multimedia forms of specialised discourse (in institutional, academic, technical, scientific, social or popular settings), linguistic features of specialised discourse in multimodal or multimedia genres, the popularisation of specialised knowledge in multimodal or multimedia genres, the impact of multimodality and multimediality on the construction of scientific and technical discourse, the impact of multimodality/multimediality in the practice and teaching of language, the impact of multimodality/multimediality in the practice and teaching of translation, new multimedia modes of knowledge dissemination, the translation/adaptation of scientific discourse in multimedia products. This volume contributes to the theory and practice of multimodal studies and translation, with a specific focus on specialized discourse.Rivista di Classe A - Volume specialeopenManca E., Bianchi F.Manca, E.; Bianchi, F

Chi-Thinking: Chiasmus and Cognition

The treatise proposes chiasmus is a dominant instrument that conducts processes and products of human thought. The proposition grows out of work in cognitive semantics and cognitive rhetoric. These disciplines establish that conceptualization traces to embodied image schematic knowledge. The Introduction sets out how this knowledge gathers from perceptions, experiences, and memories of the body's commonplace engagements in space. With these ideas as suppositional foundation, the treatise contends that chiastic instrumentation is a function of a corporeal mind steeped in elementary, nonverbal spatial forms or gestalts. It shows that chiasmus is a space shape that lends itself to cognition via its simple, but unique architecture and critically that architecture's particular meaning affordances. We profile some chiastic meanings over others based on local conditions. Chiastic iconicity ('lending') devolves from LINE CROSSING in 2-D and PATH CROSSING in 3-D space and from other image schemas (e.g., BALANCE, PART-TO-WHOLE) that naturally syndicate with CROSSING. Profiling and iconicity are cognitive activities. The spatio-physical and the visual aspects of cross diagonalization are discussed under the Chapter Two heading 'X-ness.' Prior to this technical discussion, Chapter One surveys the exceptional versatility and universality of chiasmus across verbal spectra, from radio and television advertisements to the literary arts. The purposes of this opening section are to establish that chiasticity merits more that its customary status as mere rhetorical figure or dispensable stylistic device and to give a foretaste of the complexity, yet automaticity of chi-thinking. The treatise's first half describes the complexity, diversity, and structural inheritance of chiasmus. The second half treats individual chiasma, everything from the most mundane instantiations to the sublime and virtuosic. Chapter Three details the cognitive dimensions of the macro chiasm, which are appreciable in the micro. It builds on the argument that chiasmus secures two cognitive essentials: association and dissociation. Chapter Four, advantaged by Kenneth Burke's "psychology of form," elects chiasmus an instrument of inordinate form and then explores the issue of Betweenity, i.e., how chiasma, like crisscrosses, direct notice to an intermediate region. The study ends on the premise that chiasmus executes form-meaning pairings with which humans are highly fluent

The Semiotic Nature of Power in Social-Ecological Systems

abstract: Anderies (2015); Anderies et al. (2016), informed by Ostrom (2005), aim to employ robust feedback control models of social-ecological systems (SESs), to inform policy and the design of institutions guiding resilient resource use. Cote and Nightingale (2012) note that the main assumptions of resilience research downplay culture and social power. Addressing the epistemic gap between positivism and interpretation (Rosenberg 2016), this dissertation argues that power and culture indeed are of primary interest in SES research. Human use of symbols is seen as an evolved semiotic capacity. First, representation is argued to arise as matter achieves semiotic closure (Pattee 1969; Rocha 2001) at the onset of natural selection. Guided by models by Kauffman (1993), the evolution of a symbolic code in genes is examined, and thereon the origin of representations other than genetic in evolutionary transitions (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995; Beach 2003). Human symbolic interaction is proposed as one that can support its own evolutionary dynamics. The model offered for wider dynamics in society are “flywheels,” mutually reinforcing networks of relations. They arise as interactions in a domain of social activity intensify, e.g. due to interplay of infrastructures, mediating built, social, and ecological affordances (An- deries et al. 2016). Flywheels manifest as entities facilitated by the simplified interactions (e.g. organizations) and as cycles maintaining the infrastructures (e.g. supply chains). They manifest internal specialization as well as distributed intention, and so can favor certain groups’ interests, and reinforce cultural blind spots to social exclusion (Mills 2007). The perspective is applied to research of resilience in SESs, considering flywheels a semiotic extension of feedback control. Closer attention to representations of potentially excluded groups is justified on epistemic in addition to ethical grounds, as patterns in cul- tural text and social relations reflect the functioning of wider social processes. Participatory methods are suggested to aid in building capacity for institutional learning.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Anthropology 201