SBS Informal Seminar: 'Thinking with Soils': Organicist Philosophy and Ecological Science

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SBS Informal Seminar: 'Thinking with Soils': Organicist Philosophy and Ecological Science
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This is a past event

'Thinking with Soils': Organicist Philosophy and Ecological Science

For our next informal seminar, Dr Jim Scown from the Cardiff Science Humanities Initiative, Cardiff University (https://ffcc.co.uk/our-people/staff/jim-scown), will be giving an informal seminar on ‘Thinking with Soils’: Organicist Philosophy and Ecological Science next Monday 17th April at 1pm in Cruickshank G27. Dr Ashish Malik will be hosting this talk.

There is a rich and long history of thinking about nature through soils. I look at the work of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), Charles Darwin (1809-1882), and Sergei Winogradsky (1856-1953), three scientists whose ground-breaking insights drew on the variability and ‘otherness’ of soils, and whose ideas about the natural world are foundational for the ecological sciences today. Their science was based on the philosophy of organicism – the idea that everything in nature has an organic basis or is part of an organic whole – and this presented opportunities for, and challenges to, their thinking. Reading their ideas back through recent work in the emerging field of Soil Humanities, I also think with the alterity of soils to draw out the complicated heritage their work presents for our understanding of the living world today.

Speaker
Dr Jim Scown
Hosted by
Dr Ashish Malik
Venue
G27 Cruickshank
Contact

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