The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Conception of Mind, Matter, and Life

Over the last thirty years, a new systemic understanding of life has emerged at the forefront of science. It integrates four dimensions of life: the biological, the cognitive, the social, and the ecological dimension. At the core of this new understanding we find a fundamental change of metaphors: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. One of the most radical philosophical implications of the systems view of life is a new conception of mind and consciousness which, for the first time, overcomes the Cartesian division between mind and matter

Laudato si’ - A ética ecológica e o pensamento sistêmico do Papa Francisco

O objetivo deste artigo é comentar algumas passagens da encíclica Lautato sì, do Papa Francisco. Ela trata não só questões relativas à ética para com a vida de todos os seres e a terra, mas revela também que o papa tem familiaridade com muitos conceitos e ideias da ciência contemporânea. Uma concepção unificadora, que integra as dimensões biológica, cognitiva, social e ecológica da vida. Uma visão sistêmica, que passa da visão do mundo como uma máquina para a de uma imensa rede. Segunda essa visão, a religiosidade não pode ser vista como desligada da vida terrena

A conceptual framework for ecological economics based on systemic principles of life

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Ecoliteracy through imagery: a close reading of two wordless picture books

The purpose of this paper is to propose some ways of reading two wordless picture storybooks which have recently been published, by Suzy Lee and Bernardo Carvalho respectively. The objective is to analyse the ways in which the visual discourse can create an effective narrative using a variety of pictorial strategies. These works were not idly chosen, however. Both are concerned with ecoliteracy, having narratives that tell a story about a specific relationship between humans and the sea. Depicting maritime scenarios, the two picture books promote a special and symbolic approach to the natural environment. The narratives help to configure the environment as more than merely an undifferentiated space inhabited by living beings, this being the most elementary concept of ‘‘environment’’; rather, it is seen as an ecological arena involving the interaction between the landscape and the living beings it harbours. As such, the books assume the role of promoting not only habits of proto-literacy, but of ecoliteracy too.CIEC – FCT research unit 31

Transformative sensemaking: Development in Whose Image? Keyan Tomaselli and the semiotics of visual representation

The defining and distinguishing feature of homo sapiens is its ability to make sense of the world, i.e. to use its intellect to understand and change both itself and the world of which it is an integral part. It is against this backdrop that this essay reviews Tomaselli's 1996 text, Appropriating Images: The Semiotics of Visual Representation/ by summarizing his key perspectives, clarifying his major operational concepts and citing particular portions from his work in support of specific perspectives on sense-making. Subsequently, this essay employs his techniques of sense-making to interrogate the notion of "development". This exercise examines and confirms two interrelated hypotheses: first, a semiotic analysis of the privileged notion of "development" demonstrates its metaphysical/ ideological, and thus limiting, nature especially vis-a-vis the marginalized, excluded, and the collective other, the so-called Developing Countries. Second, the interrogative nature of semiotics allows for an alternative reading and application of human potential or skills in the quest of a more humane social and global order, highlighting thereby the transformative implications of a reflexive epistemology.Web of Scienc