Banking Seed: Use and Value in the Conservation of Agricultural Diversity

Since the 1930s it has been widely acknowledged that agricultural crop diversity is being lost at an alarming rate. The international response to this genetic erosion has principally taken the form of ex situ genebanks. In these facilities and in the international regulatory frameworks that now surround them, it is genetic diversity that is the focus of conservation efforts. This focus, however, passes over the many other important diversities—both biological and social (or ‘biosocial’)—that exist in, and depend on, agricultural environments. These diversities cannot be conserved in genebanks. In addition to failing to actually conserve agricultural diversity (in any full sense of the term), ex situ banking projects also produce important potential inequalities—in terms of which material is banked and who has access to it. If, however, we refuse to accept an exclusive focus on the genetic components of plants, and instead insist on a brand of conservation that includes whole biosocial, more-than-human communities, then the role of banked resources must be radically rethought. Genebanks might instead take the place of central nodes in networks of diversity sharing, helping to keep plant varieties growing and circulating. This focus, in turn, requires that we also pay more critical attention to the various economic, legal and other mechanisms that prevent or stifle the flow and development of plant genetic resources in/to agricultural communities—especially those of peasant and indigenous farmers that play such a crucial role in conserving the world's (agro)biodiversity.     

孔子与泰德·本顿的生态观之比较

20世纪后半期,人类面临的最突出的问题就是全球性的生态危机和环境问题。摆脱人类生存的困境,走向具有生态持续性的文明社会是中国现代化实践面临的严峻挑战。本文试将孔子和泰德·本顿的生态观加以比较,求同存异,发掘其中蕴含的积极因素。两者在对自然的解读上,强调自然的客观实在性,重视自然的内在价值和对自然规律的遵循;在人与自然的关系上,阐发人与自然的息息相关性和密不可分性,强调二者相互作用。相互影响;在对自然资源的利用上,强调合理地支配和有限地利用自然,承认自然的极限。这些思想为我国生态文明建设提供了有益的借鉴。     

Attributing and denying humanness to others

We review a programme of research on the attribution of humanness to people, and the ways in which lesser humanness is attributed to some compared to others. We first present evidence that humanness has two distinct senses, one representing properties that are unique to our species, and the other—human nature—those properties that are essential or fundamental to the human category. An integrative model of dehumanisation is then laid out, in which distinct forms of dehumanisation correspond to the denial of the two senses of humanness, and the likening of people to particular kinds of nonhuman entities (animals and machines). Studies demonstrating that human nature attributes are ascribed more to the self than to others are reviewed, along with evidence of the phenomenon's cognitive and motivational basis. Research also indicates that both kinds of humanness are commonly denied to social groups, both explicitly and implicitly, and that they may cast a new light on the study of stereotype content. Our approach to the study of dehumanisation complements the tradition of research on infrahumanisation, and indicates new directions for exploring the importance of humanness as a dimension of social perception.     

Our Cosmos,from Substance to Process

Philosophies of nature over the past three centuries have gone through three distinct phases, beginning with classical views and now evolving into a process view at the dawn of the 21st century. These phases derive from a complex weaving of two frameworks of physics since Newton's time [classical, modern] with two principal metaphysical frameworks[substance, event]. Problematic fin de siècle claims at the end of both the 19th and 20th centuries appear to have a common root in substance metaphysics and part/whole reductionism. Going beyond such simplistic forms of modernism requires a more integrated, ecological worldview, or process view of nature.     

BIOLOGY AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE HUMAN

We will consider two Christian responses to the enormous advances in recent years in the connected sciences of genetics, evolutionary biology, and biochemistry, a dualist one by Pope John Paul II and an “emergentist” one by Arthur Peacocke. These two could hardly be more different. It would be impossible within the scope of a brief comment to do justice to these differences. What I hope to do instead is more modest: to draw attention to troublesome ambiguities in some of the key concepts on which discussions of human uniqueness depend, to recall very briefly some of the difficulties philosophers have encountered in their attempts to define the relation of the human powers of mind to the material capacities of body, and finally to ask what the theological significance of all this is.     

Valedictory

Contingentism, generally contrasted with law necessitarianism, is the view that the laws of nature are contingent. It is often coupled with the claim that their contingency is knowable a priori. This paper considers Bird's [2001 Bird, Alexander 2001. Necessarily, Salt Dissolves In Water, Analysis 61/4: 267–74.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2002 Bird, Alexander 2002. On Whether Some Laws Are Necessary, Analysis 62/3: 257–70.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2005 Bird, Alexander 2005. Unexpected A Posteriori Necessary Laws of Nature, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83/4: 533–48.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2007 Bird, Alexander 2007. Nature's Metaphysics: Laws and Properties, Oxford: Clarendon Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]] arguments for the thesis that, necessarily, salt dissolves in water; and it defends his view against Beebee's [2001] and Psillos's [2002 Psillos, Stathis 2002. Salt Does Dissolve In Water, But Not Necessarily, Analysis 62/3: 255–7.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]] contingentist objections. A new contingentist objection is offered and several reasons for scepticism about its success are raised. It is concluded that certain higher-level laws describing the behaviours of molecular compounds may be necessary due to their dependence on underlying physical laws, and that the modal status of laws of nature cannot be determined a priori, as the structural features of the substances and properties they govern must first be investigated.     

Whiteheadian Societies and Peirce's Law of Mind: Actuality and Potentiality in the Cosmic Process

Abstract

A more suitable philosophical position to counter the claims of scientific materialism re the nature of physical reality can possibly be found in combining the metaphysics of A.N. Whitehead and C.S. Peirce. Peirce postulated a habit-forming tendency or inbuilt potentiality of the cosmic process as a whole to move over time toward ever greater organization and more complex structure. But he is vague on how “the law of the mind” applies to nature below the level of human self-awareness. Whitehead's notion of actual entities (momentary self-constituting subjects of experience) as the “final real things of which the world is made up” logically allows for some primitive form of subjectivity with the requisite potentiality for habit-formation at all levels of existence and activity within nature. In addition, Whitehead's notion of structured societies made up of subsocieties with a “regnant” subsociety seems philosophically to justify the new emphasis on bottom-up rather than top-down causation in the emergence of more complex levels of existence and activity within the life-sciences.     

The Role of Experience in the Assessment of Human Nature

Abstract

We need to distinguish between different types of experience and different experiential realms when we address the topic of human nature. Special emphasis is put on the hermeneutical dimension of human knowledge. The different experiential realms, which may give rise to natural, cultural and social, psychological and spiritual experiences, are then in turn assessed with regard to in what respect, for what purpose, and to what extent they can be used in order to establish a comprehensive and interdisciplinary justified view of human nature that takes all dimensions of human experience sufficiently into account.     

Some reflections on the links between psychoanalysis and literature

Abstract

I taught literature to students from overseas for a number of years before entering the world of student counselling. Both experiences helped to develop and clarify thoughts that I had long held, albeit in a rather vague fashion, about the ways that literature and psychoanalytic thought can reflect our inner worlds. In the first part of this article I look at certain ideas that I think they have in common, what they both can illuminate and how they can contribute to opening up a therapeutic relationship. Then I give an example, from my work experience, of how I was able to draw on some of these ideas in such a relationship with a student. The psychoanalytic process and the reading of a literary text touch at frequent points: both are ways of finding out about oneself, about one's inner and outer worlds, and how they interact. They enable us to ‘read’ our experiences. They have, therefore, a certain congruence of direction towards self-knowledge. They search for a particular kind of understanding. In exploring the literary text one is discovering oneself, gaining insight into the complexities of the multifarious self. Katherine Mansfield, commenting on the creative act of writing, said that a writer tries to go deep, to speak to the secret self we all have (Lee 1985: xv). Symington (1986: 15) speaks in terms of psychoanalysis occurring ‘at the centre of the individual’, but occurring only ‘through a personal act of understanding’.     

Dante’s Divine Comedy and modern depth therapy

The author discusses a connection between the modern analysand’s experience of depth therapy and the Christian pilgrim’s experience of confession, penitence and transformation as described by Dante in his Divine Comedy. She looks at structure and order in the context of psychotherapy. Taking Adriana Mazzarella’s ‘In Search of Beatrice’ as a guide, she examines a Jungian interpretation of the poem as an analogy of therapeutic initiation. She explores the idea of cultural complexes via the study of the medieval world view as one distinct from our own. She demonstrates the way in which study of the Comedy unexpectedly helped her survive an experience of long-term psychotherapeutic work.