Schlagwort(e):
symbiosis
;
evolution
;
ecology
;
posthumanism
;
augmentation
Beschreibung / Inhaltsverzeichnis:
Different species, interacting in a symbiotic fashion, living together over a prolonged period of time, eventually co-evolving into new species: this vision of the biological phenomenon of symbiosis has created a strong impression—both of symbiosis as a metaphor and a material reality—of species in an intimate relationship together, cooperating in spite of differences, of becoming something else and transgressing boundaries. This idea has turned the concept of symbiosis, in its many guises and definitions,[1] into a breading ground for a posthuman, biologically and ecologically informed critique. Less focused on the biological process of symbiosis as such, our focus in Symbiosis: Ecologies, Assemblages and Evolution is more on how symbiosis can be used as a means to argue for an alternative worldview and even a better world. Interestingly, Angela Elizabeth Douglas notices a similar effect in her book The Symbiotic Habit (2010), where she talks about the growing importance of ‘applied symbiosis research’. Douglas refers above all to how research into symbiotic processes has the potential to help solve some of the practical problems mankind is facing through anthropogenically induced effects, such as climate change and environmental disasters; and in this way influence and improve (our) ecosystem(s) and make the world in which we live much healthier (Douglas, 2010: viii).
This living book consists of a number of examples of how symbiosis has been deployed. For instance, as a critique of the mainstream Darwinian idea of evolution as struggle; of the anthropocentric worldview that operates within the sciences and society at large; and of the idea of organisms or objects as static and isolated entities. Given the way in which symbiotic processes offer seeds for alternative worldviews, research on symbiosis has been taken-up as providing evidence for becoming as an infinite creative process, for the (animal, microbal, machinic, and/or virtual) other as an integral part of the multiple I, and for the integrated cooperation of living and non-living affects as one interconnected mesh.
URL:
http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Symbiosis
Sprache:
Englisch
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