Farming as if we belong

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. C. Lefroy

Two fundamental changes in attitude are required before efforts to develop sustainable agricultural systems will be successful. Firstly, the deeply held and often unexamined views we have of our relationship with the natural world, particularly the view of nature as a commodity, must be challenged. Secondly, we must question our continuing faith in a knowledge-based world view as the best way to solve problems that are a consequence of that view. The history of agricultural settlement in Western Australia is an example of the view of nature as a commodity that led to failed agricultural schemes at great social and environmental costs.

ISRN Agronomy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zareen Khan ◽  
Grant Guelich ◽  
Ha Phan ◽  
Regina Redman ◽  
Sharon Doty

Endophytic associations with plants have a beneficial effect for many different plant species with some of them being host specific. Several endophytes isolated from poplar and willow were screened for their effects on commercially important crops including corn, tomato, pepper, squash, sunflower, and grasses. Most of these endophytes produce growth hormones such as indoleacetic acid (IAA) and have the nitrogenase gene required for nitrogen fixation. The effects of these isolates on plant growth and yield were evaluated under greenhouse conditions. We found that inoculated plants not only had better viability and earlier flowering and fruiting, they also had increased plant growth and fruit yields when grown in nitrogen-limited soil. In a particular variety of perennial rye grass, the endophytes increased the total nitrogen content of the plants, indicative of nitrogen fixation, in addition to promoting plant growth. The use of specific endophytes may be preferable to the use of chemical fertilizers because of the monetary and environmental costs, contributing to more sustainable agricultural systems.


1984 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. H. Nasr

Whenever the discussion of the relation between religion and science or science and faith arises in circles imbued with various trends of modern thought, immediately the history of the confrontation of the Church with Galileo or of Protestant theology with Darwinianism comes to mind and the problem is viewed from the particular vantage point of the West. Those who have kept pace with the most current speculations of certain scientists in quest of a new world view may point to the fact that there are more recent works which compare the movement of electrons with the Dance of Shiva or speak of the search for the Tao of modern science. But even in such works which are becoming popular, although reference is made to Oriental doctrines, these teachings are usually viewed in separation from the traditional universe to which they belong and the philosophical and scientific framework remain Western. In the modern world the usual background for the understanding of the relation between religion and science continues to be the Western experience from the revolt of modern science against its scholastic theological background during the Renaissance and the seventeenth century to the final abdication by religion from the domain of nature and its surrender to the scientific enterprise and the latter's particular methodology and philosophy for the study of the natural world. Even when certain works step outside the Western world view in search of a rapprochement with certain Oriental doctrines, science remains Western science and the suppositions made upon the nature of Reality do not change in an ultimate way.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 103-124
Author(s):  
Gemma Tulud Cruz

Christian missionaries played an important role in the Australian nation building that started in the nineteenth century. This essay explores the multifaceted and complex cultural encounters in the context of two aboriginal missions in Australia in the nineteenth century. More specifically, the essay explores the New Norcia mission in Western Australia in 1846-1900 and the Lutheran mission in South Australia in 1838-1853. The essay begins with an overview of the history of the two missions followed by a discussion of the key faces of the cultural encounters that occurred in the course of the missions. This is followed by theological reflections on the encounters in dialogue with contemporary theology, particularly the works of Robert Schreiter.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-20
Author(s):  
Ms. Cheryl Antonette Dumenil ◽  
Dr. Cheryl Davis

North- East India is an under veiled region with an awe-inspiring landscape, different groups of ethnic people, their culture and heritage. Contemporary writers from this region aspire towards a vision outside the tapered ethnic channel, and they represent a shared history. In their writings, the cultural memory is showcased, and the intensity of feeling overflows the labour of technique and craft. Mamang Dai presents a rare glimpse into the ecology, culture, life of the tribal people and history of the land of the dawn-lit mountains, Arunachal Pradesh, through her novel The Legends of Pensam. The word ‘Pensam’ in the title means ‘in-between’,  but it may also be interpreted as ‘the hidden spaces of the heart’. This is a small world where anything can happen. Being adherents of the animistic faith, the tribes here believe in co-existence with the natural world along with the presence of spirits in their forests and rivers. This paper attempts to draw an insight into the culture and gender of the Arunachalis with special reference to The Legends of Pensam by Mamang Dai.


This book concerns figurines from cultures that have no direct links with each other. It explores the category of the figurine as a key material concept in the art history of antiquity through comparative juxtaposition of papers drawn from Chinese, pre-Columbian, and Greco-Roman culture. It extends the study of figurines beyond prehistory into ancient art-historical contexts. At stake are issues of figuration and anthropomorphism, miniaturization and portability, one-off production and replication, substitution and scale. Crucially, figurines are objects of handling by their users as well as their makers—so that, as touchable objects, they engage the viewer in different ways from flat art. Unlike the voyeuristic relationship of viewing a neatly framed pictorial narrative, as if from the outside, the viewer as handler is always potentially and without protection within the narrative of figurines. This is why they have had potential for a potent, even animated, agency in relation to those who use them.


Traditio ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 87-125
Author(s):  
JOEL L. GAMBLE

The “Defense of Medicine” prefaces the Codex Bambergensis Medicinalis 1, a Carolingian collection of medical texts. Some scholars have dismissed the Defense as an incoherent patchwork of quotations. Yet, missing from the literature is an adequate assessment of the Defense's arguments. This present study includes the first English translation accompanied by a complete source commentary, a prerequisite for valid content analysis. When read systematically and with attention to the author's use of sources, the Defense is limpid and cogent. Its first purpose is to defend the compatibility of Christian faith and secular medicine. Key propositions include the following: God made nature good, so the natural sciences are reconcilable with divine learning; scripture respects medicine; God expects the sick to avail of physicians and deserves honor for healings done through physicians. Counter-arguments used by the Defense's opponents, who rejected medicine on principle, can also be reconstructed from the text. Two further purposes of the Defense have hitherto been explored insufficiently. After justifying medicine, the Defense addresses sick patients. It encourages them that illness can be spiritually healthful, an instrument for curing their souls. The Defense then addresses caregivers. It tells them why they should succor the sick, even the poor: not for gain or fame, but in imitation of Christ and as if treating Christ himself, whose image the sick bear. The Defense thus contributes to the history of ideas on medicine, health, sickness, and the ethics of altruistic care.


Apeiron ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Proios

Abstract Plato’s invention of the metaphor of carving the world by the joints (Phaedrus 265d–66c) gives him a privileged place in the history of natural kind theory in philosophy and science; he is often understood to present a paradigmatic but antiquated view of natural kinds as possessing eternal, immutable, necessary essences. Yet, I highlight that, as a point of distinction from contemporary views about natural kinds, Plato subscribes to an intelligent-design, teleological framework, in which the natural world is the product of craft and, as a result, is structured such that it is good for it to be that way. In Plato’s Philebus, the character Socrates introduces a method of inquiry whose articulation of natural kinds enables it to confer expert knowledge, such as literacy. My paper contributes to an understanding of Plato’s view of natural kinds by interpreting this method in light of Plato’s teleological conception of nature. I argue that a human inquirer who uses the method identifies kinds with relational essences within a system causally related to the production of some unique craft-object, such as writing. As a result, I recast Plato’s place in the history of philosophy, including Plato’s view of the relation between the kinds according to the natural and social sciences. Whereas some are inclined to separate natural from social kinds, Plato holds the unique view that all naturalness is a social feature of kinds reflecting the role of intelligent agency.


1997 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 177-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Wilks

During the 1370s Wyclif wrote to defend a monarchy which made extensive use of bishops and other clergy in the royal administration and yet was faced with aristocratic factions encouraged by bishops like Wykeham and Courtenay who espoused papal supremacy, if not out of conviction, at least as a very convenient weapon to support their independence against royal absolutism. At first sight Wyclifs attempts to define the right relationship between royal and episcopal, temporal and spiritual, power seem as confused as the contemporary political situation. His works contain such a wide range of theories from orthodox two swords dualism to a radical rejection of ecclesiastical authority well beyond that of Marsilius and Ockham that it seems as if his only interest was in collecting every anti-hierocratic idea available for use against the papacy. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that a much more coherent view of episcopal power can be detected beneath his tirades if it is appreciated that his continual demand for a great reform, a reformatio regni et ecclesiae, is inseparably linked to his understanding of the history of the Christian Church, and that in this way Wyclif anticipates Montesquieu in requiring a time factor as a necessary ingredient in constitutional arrangements.


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