Essays And Nature Studies

Organized around issues, debates and discussions concerning the various ways in which the concept of nature has been used, this book looks at how the term has been endlessly deconstructed and reclaimed, as reflected in anthropological, scientific, and similar writing over the last several decades. Made up of ten of Roy Ellen’s finest articles, this book looks back at his ideas about nature and includes a new introduction that contextualizes the arguments and takes them forward. Many of the chapters focus on research the author has conducted amongst the Nuaulu people of eastern Indonesia.

What is a videogame? What makes a videogame "good"? If a game is supposed to be fun, can it be fun without a good story? If another is supposed to be an accurate simulation, does it still need to be entertaining? With the ever-expanding explosion of new videogames and new developments in the gaming world, questions about videogame criticism are becoming more complex. The differing definitions that players and critics use to decide what a game is and what makes a game successful, often lead to different ideas of how games succeed or fail. This collection of new essays puts on display the variety and ambiguity of videogames. Each essay is a work of game criticism that takes a different approach to defining the game and analyzing it. Through analysis and critical methods, these essays discuss whether a game is defined by its rules, its narrative, its technology, or by the activity of playing it, and the tensions between these definitions. With essays on Overwatch, Dark Souls 3, Far Cry 4, Farmville and more, this collection attempts to show the complex changes, challenges and advances to game criticism in the era of videogames.

In The Nature Essay: Ecocritical Explorations Simone Schröder offers the first extended account of the nature essay. Her ecocritical readings of essays engage with the genre's central epistemological and poetic paradigms, revealing its unique capacity to serve as a platform for environmental discourse.

This collection of essays is a tribute to Stillman Drake by some of his friends and colleagues, and by others on whom his work has had a formative influence. It is difficult to know him without succumbing to his combination of discipline and enthusiasm, even in fields remote from Renaissance physics and natural philosophy; and so he should not be surprised in this volume to see emphases and methods congenial to him, even on topics as remote as Darwin or the chemical revolution. Therein lies whatever unity the discerning reader may find in this book, beyond the natural focus and coherence of the largest section, on Galileo, and the final section on Drake's collection of books, a major and now accessible resource for research in the field that he has made his own. We have chosen, as the occasion for presenting the volume to Stillman Drake, Galileo's birthday; Galileo has had more than one birthday party in Toronto since Drake came to the University of Toronto. As for the title, it reflects a shared conviction that experiment is the key to science; it is what scientists do. Drake has already asserted that emphasis in the title of his magisterial Galileo at Work, and we echo it here. Those who have had the privilege and pleasure of working and arguing with Stillman over the years know his tenacity, penetration, and vigour. They also know his generosity and humility. We owe him much.

Nature Matrix is a gathering of some of Robert Michael Pyle’s most significant, original, and timely expressions of a life immersed in the natural world, in all its splendor, power, and peril Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays contains sixteen pieces that encompass the philosophy, ethic, and aesthetic of Robert Michael Pyle. The essays range from Pyle’s experience as a young national park ranger in the Sierra Nevada to the streets of Manhattan; from the suburban jungle to the tangles of the written word; and from the phenomenon of Bigfoot to that of the Big Year—a personal exercise in extreme birding and butterflying. They include deep profiles of John Jacob Astor I and Vladimir Nabokov, as well as excursions into wild places with teachers, children, and writers. The nature of real wilderness in modern times comes under Pyle’s lens, as does reconsideration of his trademark concept, “the extinction of experience”—maybe the greatest threat of alienation from the living world that we face today. Nature Matrix shows a way back toward possible integration with the world, as it plumbs the range and depth of experience in one lucky life lived in close connection to the physical earth and its denizens. This collection brings together the thoughts and hopes of one of our most widely read and respected natural philosophers as he seeks to summarize a life devoted to conservation.

Annotation. Six essays by Finnish scholars (which accounts for some of the notes being in Finnish) discuss the "new" science of environmental history, issues and case studies of change over time in forested Northern Hemisphere zones due to natural and human forces, and Western conceptions of wilderness. The editors are with the U. of Helsinki, whose press first published the book in 1999. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.

Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894), though often overshadowed by her celebrity father, James Fenimore Cooper, has recently become recognized as both a pioneer of American nature writing and an early advocate for ecological sustainability. Editors Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson have assembled here a collection of ten pieces by Cooper that represent her most accomplished nature writing and the fullest articulation of her environmental principles. With one exception, these essays have not been available in print since their original appearance in Cooper's lifetime. A portrait of her thoughts on nature and how we should live and think in relation to it, this collection both contextualizes Cooper's magnum opus, Rural Hours (1850), and demonstrates how she perceived her work as a nature writer. Frequently her essays are models of how to catch and keep the interest of a reader when writing about plants, animals, and our relationship to the physical environment. By lamenting the decline of bird populations, original forests, and overall biodiversity, she champions preservation and invokes a collective environmental conscience that would not begin to awaken until the end of her life and century. The selections include independent essays, miscellaneous introductions and prefaces, and the first three installments from Cooper's work of literary ornithology, "Otsego Leaves," arguably her most mature and fully realized contribution to American environmental writing. In addition to a foreword by John Elder, one of the nation's leading environmental educators, an introduction analyzes each essay in various cultural contexts. Brief but handy textual notes supplement the essays. Perfect for nature-writing aficionados, environmental historians, and environmental activists, this collection will radically expand Cooper's importance to the history of American environmental thought.

Pannenberg poses theological questions to natural scientists that illuminate his personal position on issues dealing with theology and the natural sciences, especially physics, reviewing the relationship between natural law and contingency, the importance of the spirit in the phenomenon of life, field theory, language, and the theological account for the nature of God and God's creative activity.

This book offers new perspectives on the environmental history of lands that have come under Russian and Soviet rule by paying attention to 'place' and 'nature' in the intersection between humans and the environments that surround them. Through case studies of specific places in northwestern Russia, for example the Solovetskie Islands, the Urals, Siberia, in particular Lake Baikal, and the Russian Far East, the book highlights the importance of local environments and the specificities of individual places and spaces in understanding the human-nature nexus. This focus is accentuated by the fact that the authors have considerable, first-hand experience of the places they write about that complements and supplements their research in textual sources.