21st Century Science & Technology celebrates 150 years of Vernadsky with this two-volume anthology of original translations of Vernadsky's work, as well as articles both historical and scientific regarding this prolific thinker, the founder of biogeochemistry.

21st Century Science & Technology celebrates 150 years of Vernadsky with this two-volume anthology. This volume, The Noösphere, contains original translations of Vladimir Vernadsky's work, as well as historical and scientific articles regarding the work of this great scientist.

Pathways to the Origin and Evolition of Meanings in the Universe The book explains why meaning is a part of the universe populated by life, and how organisms generate meanings and then use them for creative transformation of the environment and themselves. This book focuses on interdisciplinary research at the intersection of biology, semiotics, philosophy, ethology, information theory, and the theory of evolution. Such a broad approach provides a rich context for the study of organisms and other semiotic agents in their environments. This methodology can be applied to robotics and artificial intelligence for developing robust, adaptable learning devices. In this book, leading interdisciplinary scholars reveal their vision on how to integrate natural sciences with semiotics, a theory of meaning-making and signification. Developments in biology indicate that the capacity to create and understand signs is not limited to humans or vertebrate animals, but exists in all living organisms - the fact that inspired the integration of biology and semiotics into biosemiotics. The authors discuss the nature of semiotic agents (organisms and other autonomous goal-directed units), meaning, signs, information, memory, evolution, and consciousness. Also discussed are issues including the origin of life, potential meaning and its actualization, top-down causality in physics and biology, capacity of organisms to encode their functions, the strategy of organisms to combine homeostasis with direct adaptation to new life-cycle phases or new environments, multi-level memory systems, increase of freedom via enabling constraints, creative modeling in evolution and learning, communication in animals and humans, the origin and function of language, and the distribution and transfer of life in space. This is the first book on biosemiotics in its global conceptual and spatial scope. Biosemiotics is presented using the language of natural sciences, which supports the scientific grounding of semiotic terms. Finally, the cosmic dimension of life and meaning-making leads to a reconsideration of ethical principles and ecological mentality here on earth and in space exploration. Audience Theoretical biologists, ethologists, astrobiologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, philosophers, phenomenologists, semioticians, biosemioticians, molecular biologists, linguists, system scientists and engineers.

Science tells us that a new and dangerous stage in planetary evolution has begun—the Anthropocene, a time of rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising oceans, and mass species extinctions. Humanity faces not just more pollution or warmer weather, but a crisis of the Earth System. If business as usual continues, this century will be marked by rapid deterioration of our physical, social, and economic environment. Large parts of Earth will become uninhabitable, and civilization itself will be threatened. Facing the Anthropocene shows what has caused this planetary emergency, and what we must do to meet the challenge. Bridging the gap between Earth System science and ecological Marxism, Ian Angus examines not only the latest scientific findings about the physical causes and consequences of the Anthropocene transition, but also the social and economic trends that underlie the crisis. Cogent and compellingly written, Facing the Anthropocene offers a unique synthesis of natural and social science that illustrates how capitalism's inexorable drive for growth, powered by the rapid burning of fossil fuels that took millions of years to form, has driven our world to the brink of disaster. Survival in the Anthropocene, Angus argues, requires radical social change, replacing fossil capitalism with a new, ecosocialist civilization.

“One of the finest, most gripping surveys of the history of Russian science in the twentieth century.” —Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the many gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the revolution through the death of the “Great Scientist” himself, Joseph Stalin. It weaves together the stories of scientists, politicians, and ideologues into an intimate and sometimes horrifying portrait of a state determined to remake the world. They often wreaked great harm. Stalin was himself an amateur botanist, and by falling under the sway of dangerous charlatans like Trofim Lysenko (who denied the existence of genes), and by relying on antiquated ideas of biology, he not only destroyed the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists, he caused the death of millions through famine. But from atomic physics to management theory, and from radiation biology to neuroscience and psychology, these Soviet experts also made breakthroughs that forever changed agriculture, education, and medicine. A masterful book that deepens our understanding of Russian history, Stalin and the Scientists is a great achievement of research and storytelling, and a gripping look at what happens when science falls prey to politics. Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2016 A New York Times Book Review “Paperback Row” selection “Ings’s research is impressive and his exposition of the science is lucid . . . Filled with priceless nuggets and a cast of frauds, crackpots and tyrants, this is a lively and interesting book, and utterly relevant today.” —The New York Times Book Review “A must read for understanding how the ideas of scientific knowledge and technology were distorted and subverted for decades across the Soviet Union.” —The Washington Post

"Vladimir Vernadsky was a brilliant and prescient scholar-a true scientific visionary who saw the deep connections between life on Earth and the rest of the planet and understood the profound implications for life as a cosmic phenomenon." -DAVID H. GRINSPOON, AUTHOR OF VENUS REVEALED "The Biosphere should be required reading for all entry level students in earth and planetary sciences." -ERIC D. SCHNEIDER, AUTHOR OF INTO THE COOL: THE NEW THERMODYNAMICS OF CREATIVE DESTRUCTION

This volume, which is rooted in biogeophysical studies, addresses conceptions of political action in the Anthropocene and the tension between a desire to accomplish the Promethean project of modernity and a post-Promethean approach. This work explores the idea of ​​an anthropological mutation of political consolidation from a “post-Promethean togetherness”, to creating the capacity to act together. The political thinking of the human condition developed by Hannah Arendt is important here as a resource for thinking about humanity in terms of human adventure. This has three dimensions: hubris, the world and coexistence referring respectively to the logic of profit of the homo oeconomicus, the logic of responsibility of the homo collectivus and the logic of the hospitality of the homo religatus. The intellectual and political attitude outlined in this book is an extension of critical theory: the work also puts forward a critique of what poses a problem in our relationship to the world and suggests how to overcome it, the ultimate goal being social transformation. The author propose an uprising and an anthropological consolidation of politics based on the revitalization that is brought about by the sharing of a conviviality both between humans and with what is non-human. The identification of conviviality as an educational paradigm to survive the Anthropocene gives us the much needed reason for hope despite this heritage of the Anthropocene. In addition to Arendtian thinking, this critical theory for the Anthropocene draws on the political thinking of several contemporary authors including Maurice Bellet, Hartmut Rosa, Andreas Weber, Dominique Bourg, and Christian Arnsperger. This volume is of interest to researchers in the Anthropocene.

"Today the fate of the earth as a home for humanity is in question-and yet, contends John Bellamy Foster, the reunification of humanity and the earth remains possible if we are prepared to make revolutionary changes. As with his prior books, The Dialectics of Ecology is grounded in the contention that we are now faced with a concrete choice between ecological socialism and capitalist exterminism, and rooted in insights drawn from the classical historical materialist tradition. In this latest work, Foster explores the complex theoretical debates that have arisen historically with respect to the dialectics of nature and society. He then goes on to examine the current contradictions associated with the confrontation between capitalist extractivism and the financialization of nature, on the one hand, and the radical challenges to these represented by emergent visions of ecological civilization and planned degrowth, on the other"--

The concept of world and the practice of world creation have been with us since antiquity, but they are now achieving unequalled prominence. In this timely anthology of subcreation studies, an international roster of contributors come together to examine the rise and structure of worlds, the practice of world-building, and the audience's reception of imaginary worlds. Including essays written by world-builders A.K. Dewdney and Alex McDowell and offering critical analyses of popular worlds such as those of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Minecraft, Revisiting Imaginary Worlds provides readers with a broad and interdisciplinary overview of the issues and concepts involved in imaginary worlds across media platforms.

Over the last 11,700 years, during which human civilization developed, the earth has existed within what geologists refer to as the Holocene Epoch. Now science is telling us that the Holocene Epoch in the geological time scale ended, replaced by the onset of a new, more dangerous Anthropocene Epoch, which began around 1950. The Anthropocene Epoch is characterized by an “anthropogenic rift” in the biological cycles of the Earth System, marking a changed reality in which human activities are now the main geological force impacting the earth as a whole, generating at the same time an existential crisis for the world’s population. What caused this massive shift in the history of the earth? In this comprehensive study, John Bellamy Foster tells us that a globalized system of capital accumulation has induced humanity to foul its own nest. The result is a planetary emergency that threatens all present and future generations, throwing into question the continuation of civilization and ultimately the very survival of humanity itself. Only by addressing the social aspects of the current planetary emergency, exploring the theoretical, historical, and practical dimensions of the capitalism’s alteration of the planetary environment, is it possible to develop the ecological and social resources for a new journey of hope.