Here is an overview of presentations and events incvolving scholars from The Greenhouse - Center for Environmental Humanities at the Fourth World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH4), held August 19-23rd at University of Oulu, Finland and online with the theme “Transitions, transformations and transdisciplinarity: Histories beyond history”.
Yesterday, on Wednesday December 13th, I moderated Lenart Skof´s The Greenhouse Research talk “From Forgetting of Air to (post-)Anthropocene: Sketches for Respiratory Paradigm Shift in Environmental Humanities» at the University of Stavanger. Around 10 people attended.
I am hosting an Erasmus exchange by Lenart Skof this week.
On Wednesday this week, I will offer the weekly Research talk at the The Greenhouse Research talk series, with the topic «Semiotic agency – science beyond mechanism». I will present the book by the same name authored by Alexei Sharov and me. The research talk will take place in HG N-105 at Ullandhaug campus at 14.15-15.30 Wednesday April 26th.
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Abstract:
In this presentation I will present aspects of the book Semiotic agency – science beyond mechanism, which I co-authored with Alexei Sharov (Springer 2021, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-89484-9).
Semiotic agency – science beyond mechanism invites readers to embark on a journey into the world of agency encompassing humans, other organisms, cells, intracellular molecular agents, colonies, populations, ecological systems, and artificial autonomous systems. We combine mechanistic and non-mechanistic approaches in the analysis of the function and evolution of organisms, their subagents, and multi-organism systems, and in this way offer a theoretical platform for integrating biosemiotics with both natural science and the humanities/social sciences. Agents are autonomous systems that incorporate knowledge on how to make sense of their environment and use it to achieve their goals. The functions of all agents are supported by mechanisms at the lowest level; however, the explanatory power of mechanistic analysis is not sufficient for complex agents. Non-mechanistic methods rely on the goal-directedness of agents whose dynamics follow self-stabilized dynamic attractors. The properties of attractors depend on stable or slowly changing factors, and such dependencies can be interpreted as sign relations if they are adaptive in nature. Agents can replace or redirect mechanisms on demand in order to preserve their functions; for performing higher-level semiotic functions, mechanisms are thus only means. We assume that mechanism and semiosis are not mutually exclusive, and that simple agents can interpret signs mechanistically. This assumption allows us to extend semiotic analysis to all agents, including ribosomes in cells, computers, and robots. This book challenges established traditions in natural science and the humanities/social sciences: semiotics no longer appears as restricted to humans and rational thinking, and biology is no longer limited to rely exclusively on mechanistic reasoning.
"The Greenhouse: An environmental humanities initiative at University of Stavanger", which has until now formally been a program area for research, has from September 1st onwards been granted the status as a research center, titled "The Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities". I have been one of the members of The Greenhouse from the start in 2017.
Today I have attended a meeting, and a Greenhouse book talk by Timo Maran on ecosemiotics.
I am involved as prospective co-supervisor in a ph.d. project at university of Stavanger´s Department of cultural studies and languages where applications are now called for. Main supervisor will be Tyson Retz. Deadline is November 17th. The call is here.
Excerpts:
The PhD fellow will explore the concept of progress in liberal democracy from the nineteenth century to the present day. The project will be a study that applies historical insight to the discussion of present-day political and environmental challenges. In particular, the project should aim to critically evaluate the conceptions of progress that have generated beliefs in continual growth. The concept of progress has evolved alongside ideas about human and community development, individual self-improvement, evolution, scientific and technological advancement, industrialisation and modernisation, as well as within political ideologies of social reform, piecemeal problem-solving, planning and anti-planning. Progress could be invoked morally in the name of a collective good, pursued through economic planning, or be aligned with freely acting individuals in the market place. In the second half of the twentieth century, largescale rises in material living standards saw progress become a byword for abundance and opportunity. The political rhetoric of progress has been ever-present.
The PhD fellow will propose a project examining the concept of progress in such or related themes. The project could explore, among numerous possibilities, how commitments to moral improvement underpinned political agendas of social reform. It could explore the concept of progress within discourses of human development, the conceptions of progress that tied together notions of community, welfare and state regulation, or the changing conceptions of moral, scientific and economic progress that had political consequences. Projects situated in the more recent past with a specifically environmental focus could explore the history of the concept of progress in environmental politics and ethics, or the rise of alternative green-growth and de-growth discourses. The intellectual histories of progress’s prophets and critics offer another rich source for generating new understandings of the concept’s role in modern society.
I have signalled interest in remaining a member of the program area for research The Greenhouse: An environmental history initiative at University of Stavanger for the next program period, 2021-2023.
