/pdf/the-dance-language-and-orientation-of-bees-3jdlph0pp0.pdf

The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees

https://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/INFOECOL.pdf

Information theory in ecology.

Preface 1. Biology and its philosophy 2. Autonomy and provincialism 3. Teleology and the roots of autonomy 4. Reductionism and the temptation of provincialism 5. The structure of evolutionary theory 6. Fitness 7. Species 8. New problems of functionalism Bibliography Index.

The Structure of Biological Science.

Susan Goethel Campbell’s exhibition Field Guide explores the nature of art and the conceptual process through a multimedia installation that also reflects upon temporality, art history, ecology and science. Introduced with a time-lapse video of weather patterns captured by web cam over the course of an entire year, atmospheric effects assume the quality of translucent washes that blur distinctions between opacity and transparency, painting and technology. Aerial views of built environments set against expansive cityscapes present essential imagery for large-format digital woodblock prints realized in monochromatic tonals and saturated grids of yellow and blazing orange. Some combine undulating wood grain patterns with pinhole perforations to admit light; others consist of diaphanous walnut stains applied to hand-crafted paper, a self-referential allusion to art’s planarity and permeable membrane. The evanescence of these views is echoed in pristine impressions of filtered dust and shimmering milkweed assemblages contained in Plexiglas light boxes. Known as Asclepias, milkweed is an herbaceous flower named by Carl Linnaeus after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, due to its efficacious medicinal powers. Like the weather, the milkweed’s reflective silver filaments respond to shifting currents of air paired with gently wafted treetops projected in the viewing room. Here pearls of light corresponding to the spheres and pinpricks of the prints on the walls float randomly over the fictitious frame of a cubical vitrine. Orbs appear and disappear amid nocturnal shadows as figments of the imagination, their languid dispersion eliciting not-ofthis-world sensations of suspension, ascent and transcendence. This joined to the mesmerizing stillness of a gallery pierced occasionally by the sound of supersonic aircraft, a reminder of the machine in the garden. Beyond, the history of landscape photography and the Romantic sublime are encoded in works titled “Old Stand” that render minuscule figures of stationary box photographers against the grandeur of ice-capped Rockies. In some of the works the human figure is effaced as a historical memory through exquisitely modulated rubbings whose unbounded spatiality contrasts with the reflexive interiority of the viewing room. Campbell’s incandescent vision of nature asserts the phenomenal power of art to elevate the human spirit in the presence of heart-stirring beauty. It dares to reaffirm the timeless union between the material and immaterial substance of the universe, between human life and the ephemera of the natural world. f i l m

The Conscious Mind

We summarize the foundational elements of a new area of research we call soundscape ecology. The study of sound in landscapes is based on an understanding of how sound, from various sources—biological, geophysical and anthropogenic—can be used to understand coupled natural-human dynamics across different spatial and temporal scales. Useful terms, such as soundscapes, biophony, geophony and anthrophony, are introduced and defined. The intellectual foundations of soundscape ecology are described—those of spatial ecology, bioacoustics, urban environmental acoustics and acoustic ecology. We argue that soundscape ecology differs from the humanities driven focus of acoustic ecology although soundscape ecology will likely need its rich vocabulary and conservation ethic. An integrative framework is presented that describes how climate, land transformations, biodiversity patterns, timing of life history events and human activities create the dynamic soundscape. We also summarize what is currently known about factors that control temporal soundscape dynamics and variability across spatial gradients. Several different phonic interactions (e.g., how anthrophony affects biophony) are also described. Soundscape ecology tools that will be needed are also discussed along with the several ways in which soundscapes need to be managed. This summary article helps frame the other more application-oriented papers that appear in this special issue.

What is soundscape ecology? An introduction and overview of an emerging new science

Foreword 1. Signifying On lumps in nothingness, on "not" 2. Forgetting On history and codes: the dialectic of oblivion 3. Repeating On Nature's tendency to acquire habits 4. Inventing On life and self-reference, on subjectivity 5. Opening Up On the sensory universe of creatures: the liberation of the semiosphere 6. Defining The mobile brain: the language of cells 7. Connecting On the triadic ascendance of dualism 8. Sharing On language: existential bioanthropology 9. Uniting Consciousness: the bodily governor within the brain 10. Healing On ethics: reuniting two stories in one body-mind Notes Bibliography Index

Signs of meaning in the universe

Recent debates surrounding the teaching of biology divide participants into three camps based on how they explain the appearance of the human race: evolution, creationism, or intelligent design. "Biosemiotics" discovers an intriguing higher ground respecting those opposing theories by arguing that questions of meaning and experiential life can be integrated into the scientific study of nature. This innovative book shows how the linguistic powers of humans suggest that consciousness emerges in the evolutionary process and that life is based on sign action, not just molecular interaction. "Biosemiotics" will be essential reading for anyone interested in the nexus of linguistic possibility and biological reality.

Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs

Code-duality and the semiotics of nature

Theses on the semiotic study of life as presented here provide a collectively formulated set of statements on what biology needs to be focused on in order to describe life as a process based on semiosis, or signaction. An aim of the biosemiotic approach is to explain how life evolves through all varieties of forms of communication and signification (including cellular adaptive behavior, animal communication, and human intellect) and to provide tools for grounding sign theories. We introduce the concept of semiotic threshold zone and analyze the concepts of semiosis, function, umwelt, and the like as the basic concepts for theoretical biology.

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Theses on Biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a Theoretical Biology

The teleonomic character of living systems continues to challenge the conception of life prevailing among biologists. No matter how forcefully vitalistic or finalistic explanations have been defeated through developments in experimental biology, such attitudes apparently never totally disappear, even among professional biologists. Rather, they reappear in new guises for every new generation. In the history of science, controversies of this kind going on for centuries have rarely, if ever, been resolved through the unambiguous victory of one of the sides. In the first decades following the neo-Darwinistic synthesis of the 1940s, however, most biologists considered the matter settled once and for all. The purposeful character of living organisms was seen as an inevitable consequence of evolution to be causally explained by the mechanism of natural selection gradually favoring the spread of adaptive mutations within populations. This provisional cease-fire, however, did not survive the 1970s. Severe criticism from areas ranging from paleontology to embryology and molecular biology succeeded in provoking a renewed theoretical debate on the role of natural selection in evolution, and thus the gradual and adaptive character of this process (Gould 1982, 1985; Vrba and Eldredge 1984; Webster and Goodwin 1982; Goodwin 1984; L0vtrup 1987; Ho and Saunders 1979; Dover 1982). At the deepest level, this renewed criticism concerns the question of biological form. Is the development of form to be explained simply through the gradual improvement of function? Do organisms and parts of organisms develop their characteristic forms just because such forms were the most functional (the most successful)? This problem is an old one: what is the relation between substance and form? In reflecting on Korzybski's famous statement, Gregory Bateson traces the problem back to Pythagoras:

Jesper Hoffmeyer

Papers

Signs of meaning in the universe

Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs

Code-duality and the semiotics of nature

Theses on Biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a Theoretical Biology

From language to nature: The semiotic metaphor in biology