Dr. Frank Ryan

פורסם: 9.04.12, 2:51 am

Field of reference: Biology

Description: symbiosis is key to evolution

“Symbiosis, the "living together of differently named organisms" is far more important in the evolution of life and the functioning of organisms and ecologies than the competition-centric views of Darwin's early defenders asserted, and may be the key driving force in the evolution of life on earth.”

Link to the book review

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שייך לנושאים: 1-13 - חינוך אינטגרלי, -מקורות מדעיים, הטבע, 1. רמת קשר
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Dr. Andrew McVicar, John Clancy

פורסם: 22.03.12, 8:26 am

Field of reference: Health

Description: Homeostasis: a framework for integrating the life sciences..

“Nurse education curricula continue to emphasize the holistic nature of health and ill-health. As a concept, holism recognizes that the interactions between a person and his/her environment are significant factors in shaping the individual, and important determinants of wellbeing. Psychosocial interactions as a basis for health now figure prominently in nursing curricula. In contrast, the applied biological sciences have increasingly become marginalized, yet knowledge of the biological construct of the individual, and an understanding of how it is influenced by psychosocial interactions, are also necessary if holistic care is the aim. Nursing models attempt to reinforce holistic principles, but the integrative nature of health and illness needs to be established before their application. This article proposes that the concept of homeostasis, and its relationship to systems theory, provides a workable framework for teaching the basis of health, and so forms a foundation for the application of nursing theory and nursing models.”

Link to the article

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שייך לנושאים: 1-13 - חינוך אינטגרלי, -מקורות מדעיים, הטבע, 2. הטבע כמערכת
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Bruce K. Ferguson

פורסם: 22.03.12, 8:25 am

Field of reference: Ecology

Description: Explains how landscape design and management, while accommodating human use, should aim not to tip a healthy landscape out of its homeostatic equilibrium, not to restrict the operation of natural homeostatic adjustment mechanisms, and, when necessary, actively to support the landscape in its effort to seek equilibrium in response to stress.

“The behaviours of two aspects of landscapes, biotic communities and watershed morphology, show that landscapes are homeostatic systems exhibiting conditions of health and disease. In a biotic community, a state of homeostatic balance is represented by the climax community, maintaining itself in a condition of dynamic equilibrium. In a stream system, a condition of dynamic equilibrium is represented by discharges of water and sediment equal to inflows to the system. Each aspect of a landscape, when disturbed, undergoes succession, morphologic adjustments and other processes to re-establish equilibrium.”

Link to the article

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שייך לנושאים: 1-13 - חינוך אינטגרלי, -מקורות מדעיים, הטבע, 2. הטבע כמערכת
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Dr.Ted Mosquin

פורסם: 22.03.12, 8:23 am

Field of reference: Ecology/Biology

Description: Harmony reigns through all levels of the Ecosphere-Harmony is the sum of the laws of nature.

“Harmony - Function 18 Harmony is the ultimate function of biodiversity: the consequence of the 17 functions already described. Harmony in nature is diverse, pervasive and persistent, existing at all levels necessary to the maintenance of the whole. Harmony emerged slowly in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. We can observe harmony in many aspects of the Ecosphere: animal and plant form (trees, flowers, birds, fish, insects), the obvious grace of animal movement (swimming, flight, running); colours of birds, fish, insects, trees, leaves, flowers; radial or bilateral symmetries of individual animals and flowers. Even the world of microorganisms is full of harmonies of many types. Another aspect of harmony is the innate capacity for hundreds and indeed thousands of life forms to live together "in relative harmony" within a community or larger ecosystem, and to form linkages, co-adaptations, and symbioses. The developmental and physiological harmonies that have evolved within individual organisms is another level of harmony. Wholeness, completeness, health, and integrity are the broader aspects of the innate harmony function in the Ecosphere.Harmony cannot be separated from the abiotic part of biodiversity: the matrix of rivers, lakes, waterfalls, wind, pounding of oceanic surf, landforms, clouds, and all other "abiotic" conditions (within which organisms and ecosystems evolved and apart from which they cannot survive). Indeed, since the beginning of life, organisms have dramatically changed and shaped the characteristics of the Ecosphere. Harmonies appear to be the ultimate consequence of the workings of the laws of nature. The deeper origins of the pervasive persistence of harmonies in nature may be due to an innate drive of organisms to achieve maximum "self-realization" during the course of their lifetime, a concept described by a number of authors, including Arne Naess, Stuart Kaufmann, Edward Goldsmith and Holmes Rolston,III.”

Link to the article

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שייך לנושאים: 1-13 - חינוך אינטגרלי, -מקורות מדעיים, הטבע, 2. הטבע כמערכת
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Max Borders

פורסם: 22.03.12, 5:47 am

Field of reference: Sociology, Ecology, Politics

Description: Building society as a balanced ecosystem.

“What rises up above the ecosystem metaphor to glow distinctly about human society is human subjectivity itself, with all its unmet desires and Sisyphean searches for happiness. It is in the teaming associations among millions of subjectivities in search of an ever-changing pluralism of human values that we find something unique to human society, something not fully captured in any of our metaphors. As we attempt to limn something like the laws and limits of human organization, we must be struck by the understanding that something so lifeless as a rule can animate a holistic system of seekers, strivers and their subjectivities. As Hobbes teaches and Mises channels, inter-subjective agreement on these lifeless rules makes for the bases of society, and such agreement, too, is contingent: Not every interhuman relation is a social relation. When groups of men rush upon one another in a war of outright extermination, when men fight against men as mercilessly as they crush pernicious animals and plants, there is, between the fighting parties, reciprocal effect and mutual relation, but no society. Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner’s success as a means for the attainment of his own.  Internal to our species, we must seek peace through free association, or more specifically, the rules of free association.  In the human ecosystem, however, one finds all the mystery, beauty, prosperity and happiness that institutions make possible. Whereas natural institutions rely as much on predation and parasitism as mutualism, human ecosystems flourish where predation and parasitism are in decline. When informal  norms of mutual respect and trust are built atop those formal rules, an invisible scaffolding of toleration gets built into our culture, too. In other words, we don’t simply obey the rules, we internalize them. And the more we internalize them, the less we have need for those enforcement apparatuses that can so quickly be captured by those for whom power is an end.”

Link to the article

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שייך לנושאים: 1-13 - חינוך אינטגרלי, -מקורות מדעיים, הטבע, 1. רמת קשר
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