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Welcome to our website! We hope
you will be led by this website to fresh and radical
perspectives on nature, science, and technology.
Winter Intensive for Farmers and Gardeners. Join us for a weeklong course "Plant, Earth and Cosmos: Cultivating Perception and Flexible Thinking." February 14 to 19, 2010. For more information click here.
Transformation in Nature and in Human Knowing. 2010 Summer Course from June 20 to June 26. Click here.
Bringing Science to Life: Experiential Learning in Science. A professional development program for science teachers from July 4 to July 10. Click here.
Unlearn everything you once knew about genes!
It hasn't hit the public consciousness yet, but the "epigenetic revolution"
is radically transforming scientists' thinking about genes and their
relation to the organism as a whole. It makes much more sense, researchers
have been discovering, to say that the whole organism is in charge of its
genes, than to put it the other way around. For an in-depth survey of the
stunningly rapid developments in our understanding of molecular biology,
see the continuing series of articles by Steve Talbott entitled,
On Making the Genome Whole.
In Context #22: on the problem of holism in
biology.
Can living creatures be understood using no more than the principles
with which we understand the inanimate world? This question brings to
mind the long-running and often subterranean struggle between mechanism
and vitalism in biology. Today the issues tend to be framed in terms
of mechanism and holism. However you view them, these issues are far
from resolved by today's biological research - and, in fact, are being
raised to a position of urgent and decisive importance for the further
progress of biology.
In Context #22,
now online, features articles revisiting the question of holism from
various angles.
| What Does it Mean to be a Sloth? This article by Craig Holdrege paints a vivid picture of the sloth — a remarkable animal that expresses slowness in so many of its characteristics and even slows down processes in the rain forest in which it lives. Originally published in 1998, this article, can now be read in revised form on our website. Enjoy getting to know this remarkable creature. And maybe it will even help you slow down in our hectic times! Click here. |
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 Nontarget Effects of Genetic
Manipulation: A Growing Database
The Nature Institute is now steadily expanding a
project designed to set the public debate about genetic engineering
upon a more accessible scientific foundation. Distilling a voluminous
technical literature, we are summarizing on our website both the intended
and unintended consequences of transgenic experiments. The emerging
picture tells a dramatic story - one that, to date, has scarcely begun
to inform the public conversation about genetic engineering.
Nontarget effects have proven both extensive and wildly
unpredictable. The evidence for their occurrence, while mostly buried
in the technical literature, is not disputable or even particularly
controversial. It's simply not widely known. Once it is known, the
frequently heard claim that genetic manipulation of organisms is
a "precise science" without dramatic risks will either be
voiced no more or will be recognized as dishonest. To view this web
resource, click here - or click on "Nontarget Effects of
Genetic Manipulation" in the menu at left. |
 A New Book from Nature Institute Staff
"Craig Holdrege and Steve Talbott's analysis of genetic engineering is the smartest, most original, and most compelling I have seen anywhere, in journalism or academia." (Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma)
The University Press of Kentucky has just released our new book, Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering. The book is in the Press' "Culture of the Land" series, whose editorial advisors include Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben, Wes Jackson, Vandana Shiva, and others. As Sheldon Krimsky (Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University) describes the book, "The authors offer a refreshing style of scientific interpretation and have brought the discussion of the issues to a new level by making excellent use of current scientific findings that disclose how genes operate in vivo and by drawing on bioethical discussions."
To find out more about this book or to order it, click here. |
The Work of Martin Wagenschein: The Nature Institute is translating some of the writings of the German science educator and physicist Martin Wagenschein. To read about Wagenschein and to access the translations we have done so far, click here.
How Shall We Live? The way we experience ourselves in the world - our habits of perception and the relation between our sense of Self and sense of the Other - are decisively important for everything from the achievement of a truly adequate science to the restoration of social health to the establishment of an environmentally responsible ethics. Human progress in all fields depends upon how we engage the phenomena around us. This is why the book Being on Earth: Practice In Tending the Appearances, a full-text, online document, is so important. Written by physicist Georg Maier, the late philosopher Ronald Brady, and the late physicist Stephen Edelglass, it explores what it means for us to be on earth as knowers, as participants in earth's various ecological settings, and in company with one another. The book breaks down the barriers between fact and value, between science and aesthetics.
Being on Earth is now available as a 196-page softcover paperback from Logos Verlag in Berlin. The price is 40.5 euros (approximately 63 US dollars). You can order the book over the internet by clicking here.
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A thought-provoking publication
The
Giraffe's Long Neck: From Evolutionary Fable
to Whole Organism
by Craig Holdrege
A fresh look at the giraffe and evolution.
To find out more about this book, click
here. |
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