Catastrophism

Catastrophism PDF Author: Sasha Lilley
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 160486804X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
We live in catastrophic times. The world is reeling from the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, with the threat of further meltdowns ever-looming. Global warming and myriad dire ecological disasters worsen—with little if any action to halt them—their effects rippling across the planet in the shape of almost biblical floods, fires, droughts, and hurricanes. Governments warn that there is no alternative to the bitter medicine they prescribe—or risk devastating financial or social collapse. The right, whether religious or secular, views the present as catastrophic and wants to turn the clock back. The left fears for the worst, but hopes some good will emerge from the rubble. Visions of the apocalypse and predictions of impending doom abound. Across the political spectrum, a culture of fear reigns.? Catastrophism explores the politics of apocalypse—on the left and right, in the environmental movement—and examines why the lens of catastrophe can distort our understanding of the dynamics at the heart of these numerous disasters—and fatally impede our ability to transform the world. Lilley, McNally, Yuen, and Davis probe the reasons why catastrophic thinking is so prevalent, and challenge the belief that it is only out of the ashes that a better society may be born. The authors argue that those who care about social justice and the environment should jettison doomsaying—even as it relates to indisputably apocalyptic climate change. Far from calling people to arms, they suggest, catastrophic fear often results in passivity and paralysis—and, at worst, reactionary politics.?

Catastrophism

Catastrophism PDF Author: Sasha Lilley
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 160486804X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book

Book Description
We live in catastrophic times. The world is reeling from the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, with the threat of further meltdowns ever-looming. Global warming and myriad dire ecological disasters worsen—with little if any action to halt them—their effects rippling across the planet in the shape of almost biblical floods, fires, droughts, and hurricanes. Governments warn that there is no alternative to the bitter medicine they prescribe—or risk devastating financial or social collapse. The right, whether religious or secular, views the present as catastrophic and wants to turn the clock back. The left fears for the worst, but hopes some good will emerge from the rubble. Visions of the apocalypse and predictions of impending doom abound. Across the political spectrum, a culture of fear reigns.? Catastrophism explores the politics of apocalypse—on the left and right, in the environmental movement—and examines why the lens of catastrophe can distort our understanding of the dynamics at the heart of these numerous disasters—and fatally impede our ability to transform the world. Lilley, McNally, Yuen, and Davis probe the reasons why catastrophic thinking is so prevalent, and challenge the belief that it is only out of the ashes that a better society may be born. The authors argue that those who care about social justice and the environment should jettison doomsaying—even as it relates to indisputably apocalyptic climate change. Far from calling people to arms, they suggest, catastrophic fear often results in passivity and paralysis—and, at worst, reactionary politics.?

Spinal Catastrophism

Spinal Catastrophism PDF Author: Thomas Moynihan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1913029638
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The historical continuity of spinal catastrophism, traced across multiform encounters between philosophy, psychology, biology, and geology. Drawing on cryptic intimations in the work of J. G. Ballard, Georges Bataille, William Burroughs, André Leroi-Gourhan, Elaine Morgan, and Friedrich Nietzsche, in the late twentieth century Daniel Barker formulated the axioms of spinal catastrophism: If human morphology, upright posture, and the possibility of language are the ramified accidents of natural history, then psychic ailments are ultimately afflictions of the spine, which itself is a scale model of biogenetic trauma, a portable map of the catastrophic events that shaped that atrocity exhibition of evolutionary traumata, the sick orthograde talking mammal. Tracing its provenance through the biological notions of phylogeny and “organic memory” that fueled early psychoanalysis, back into idealism, nature philosophy, and romanticism, and across multiform encounters between philosophy, psychology, biology, and geology, Thomas Moynihan reveals the historical continuity of spinal catastrophism. From psychoanalysis and myth to geology and neuroanatomy, from bioanalysis to chronopathy, from spinal colonies of proto-minds to the retroparasitism of the CNS, from “railway spine” to Elizabeth Taylor's lost gill-slits, this extravagantly comprehensive philosophical adventure uses the spinal cord as a guiding thread to rediscover forgotten pathways in modern thought. Moynihan demonstrates that, far from being an fanciful notion rendered obsolete by advances in biology, spinal catastrophism dramatizes fundamental philosophical problematics of time, identity, continuity, and the transcendental that remain central to any attempt to reconcile human experience with natural history.

El Niño, Catastrophism, and Culture Change in Ancient America

El Niño, Catastrophism, and Culture Change in Ancient America PDF Author: Daniel H. Sandweiss
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection
ISBN:
Category : Climate and civilization
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This book summarizes research on the nature of El Niño events in the Americas and details specific historic and prehistoric patterns in Peru and elsewhere.

The New Catastrophism

The New Catastrophism PDF Author: Derek Ager
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521483582
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A re-examination of earth history in terms of rare and violent events through geological time.

Catastrophic Thinking

Catastrophic Thinking PDF Author: David Sepkoski
Publisher: Science.Culture
ISBN: 022634861X
Category : Biodiversity
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Introduction: Why Extinction Matters -- The Meaning of Extinction: Catastrophe, Equilibrium, and Diversity -- Extinction in a Victorian Key -- Catastrophe and Modernity -- Extinction in the Shadow of the Bomb -- The Asteroid and the Dinosaur -- A Sixth Extinction? The Making of a Biodiversity Crisis -- Epilogue: Extinction in the Anthropocene.

Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism

Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism PDF Author: George McCready Price
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Catastrophes (Geology)
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description


The Book of Potentially Catastrophic Science

The Book of Potentially Catastrophic Science PDF Author: Sean Connolly
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
ISBN: 0761189866
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
It’s never been more important to engage a child's scientific curiosity, and Sean Connolly knows just how to do it—with lively, hands-on, seemingly "dangerous" experiments that pop, ooze, crash, and teach! Now, the author of The Book of Totally Irresponsible Science, takes it one step further: He leads kids through the history of science, and then creates amazing yet simple experiments that demonstrate key scientific principles. Tame fire just like a Neanderthal with the Fahrenheit 451 experiment. Round up all your friends and track the spread of "disease" using body glitter with an experiment inspired by Edward Jenner, the vaccination pioneer who's credited with saving more lives than any other person in history. Rediscover the wheel and axle with the ancient Sumerians, and perform an astounding experiment demonstrating the theory of angular momentum. Build a simple telescope—just like Galileo's—and find the four moons he discovered orbiting Jupiter (an act that helped land him in prison). Take a less potentially catastrophic approach to electricity than Ben Franklin did with the Lightning Mouth experiment. Re-create the Hadron Collider in a microwave with marshmallows, calculator, and a ruler—it won't jeopardize Earth with a simulated Big Bang, but will demonstrate the speed of light. And it's tasty! By letting kids stand on the shoulders of Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, the Wright brothers, Marie Curie, Darwin, Watson and Crick, and more, The Book of Potentially Catastrophic Science is an uncommonly engaging guide to science, and the great stories of the men and women behind the science.

The Catastrophist

The Catastrophist PDF Author: Ronan Bennett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596913053
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Living in Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo only to be near his lover, an idealistic journalist, novelist James Gillespie becomes caught up in the terror, violence, and corruption that marks that country's slide into civil war in the early 1960s. Reprint.

Catastrophic Success

Catastrophic Success PDF Author: Alexander B. Downes
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501761161
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
In Catastrophic Success, Alexander B. Downes compiles all instances of regime change around the world over the past two centuries. Drawing on this impressive data set, Downes shows that regime change increases the likelihood of civil war and violent leader removal in target states and fails to reduce the probability of conflict between intervening states and their targets. As Downes demonstrates, when a state confronts an obstinate or dangerous adversary, the lure of toppling its government and establishing a friendly administration is strong. The historical record, however, shows that foreign-imposed regime change is, in the long term, neither cheap, easy, nor consistently successful. The strategic impulse to forcibly oust antagonistic or non-compliant regimes overlooks two key facts. First, the act of overthrowing a foreign government sometimes causes its military to disintegrate, sending thousands of armed men into the countryside where they often wage an insurgency against the intervener. Second, externally-imposed leaders face a domestic audience in addition to an external one, and the two typically want different things. These divergent preferences place imposed leaders in a quandary: taking actions that please one invariably alienates the other. Regime change thus drives a wedge between external patrons and their domestic protégés or between protégés and their people. Catastrophic Success provides sober counsel for leaders and diplomats. Regime change may appear an expeditious solution, but states are usually better off relying on other tools of influence, such as diplomacy. Regime change, Downes urges, should be reserved for exceptional cases. Interveners must recognize that, absent a rare set of promising preconditions, regime change often instigates a new period of uncertainty and conflict that impedes their interests from being realized.

Global Catastrophic Risks

Global Catastrophic Risks PDF Author: Nick Bostrom
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199606501
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
A Global Catastrophic Risk is one that has the potential to inflict serious damage to human well-being on a global scale. This book focuses on such risks arising from natural catastrophes (Earth-based or beyond), nuclear war, terrorism, biological weapons, totalitarianism, advanced nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and social collapse.