Agriculture & Philosophy: Agricultural Science in Philosophy

Agriculture & Philosophy: Agricultural Science in Philosophy PDF Author: Lindsay Falvey
Publisher: Thaksin University Press
ISBN: 0975100076
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Agriculture and philosophy have been parts of a whole across history and remain so. Philosophy informs wellbeing and contentment amidst the vagaries of existence, the primary concern of which has always been security of food. Science, once known as natural philosophy, is a major means of philosophical advance today. Agricultural science is presented as comprising all of these components. The philosophical quest to be at ease in nature extends from pre-historical times into our unknown future, and employs diverse vehicles to convey insights across generations via myths, legends religion, academic study and ritual practices. Expressing esoteric concepts has employed agricultural metaphor across the historical era as it has been our most common interaction with nature. Continuing as our most widespread human interaction within nature, agriculture’s role in creating civilization, and later its writing, eventually led to an urban separation from nature including food production. Unifying the philosophy, agriculture and agricultural science across cultures and traditions from pre-agricultural times through the European Enlightenment to today, this work builds on neglected ancient insights. Perhaps the most profound of these insights is that our thoughts and actions may be seen as an integral part of nature. Rather than being independent agents with free will, our fears and guilt may be seen as active forces in the dynamics of nature itself, which includes our procurement of food. This conception offers a wider interaction than can be comprehended from current popular approaches.

Agriculture & Philosophy: Agricultural Science in Philosophy

Agriculture & Philosophy: Agricultural Science in Philosophy PDF Author: Lindsay Falvey
Publisher: Thaksin University Press
ISBN: 0975100076
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
Agriculture and philosophy have been parts of a whole across history and remain so. Philosophy informs wellbeing and contentment amidst the vagaries of existence, the primary concern of which has always been security of food. Science, once known as natural philosophy, is a major means of philosophical advance today. Agricultural science is presented as comprising all of these components. The philosophical quest to be at ease in nature extends from pre-historical times into our unknown future, and employs diverse vehicles to convey insights across generations via myths, legends religion, academic study and ritual practices. Expressing esoteric concepts has employed agricultural metaphor across the historical era as it has been our most common interaction with nature. Continuing as our most widespread human interaction within nature, agriculture’s role in creating civilization, and later its writing, eventually led to an urban separation from nature including food production. Unifying the philosophy, agriculture and agricultural science across cultures and traditions from pre-agricultural times through the European Enlightenment to today, this work builds on neglected ancient insights. Perhaps the most profound of these insights is that our thoughts and actions may be seen as an integral part of nature. Rather than being independent agents with free will, our fears and guilt may be seen as active forces in the dynamics of nature itself, which includes our procurement of food. This conception offers a wider interaction than can be comprehended from current popular approaches.

Agriculture's Ethical Horizon

Agriculture's Ethical Horizon PDF Author: Robert L Zimdahl
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0123914787
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The second edition of Agriculture's Ethical Horizon is a carefully considered application of philosophical concepts, such as utilitarianism and positivism, to the practice of agricultural science. Author Robert Zimdahl argues for an approach to agriculture guided by foundational values, and addresses the questions: What are the goals of agricultural and weed science? What should their goals be? How do and how should the practitioners of agriculture address complex ethical questions? This book engages students, researchers, and professionals across disciplines including horticulture, soil and plant science, entomology, and more, all without requiring a background in philosophy. It examines topics such as scientific truth and myth, moral confidence in agriculture, the relevance of ethics to sustainability, and biotechnology. New to this edition is a chapter examining the raising, housing and slaughter of animals for human food, and a chapter on alternative and organic agricultural systems. - Easily understood by non-philosophers - Chapter sidebars highlight important concepts and can be used to engage students in further discussion - Companion website includes further teaching aids and a discussion board

Philosophy of Agricultural Science

Philosophy of Agricultural Science PDF Author: Osamu Soda
Publisher: ISBS
ISBN: 9781876843267
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
This book, written by one of the leading Japanese scholars in the philosophy of agricultural science, examines the relationship between human life, the natural environment, and agriculture. The author argues that satisfying diverse human values requires a harmonious realization of three sometimes conflicting sets of values, and situates a reconceived agricultural science as the best means to realizing these ends. This means rethinking the entrenched divisions between the natural, human, and practical sciences to create an agricultural science that draws on the reductive empiricism of the natural sciences as well as the interpretative methodologies of the human sciences in its efforts to find applied solutions to real problems. This also entails rethinking the place of agriculture in the world, recognizing that its non-economic contributions to the community and environment are every bit as important as, if not more than, its economic values. Only through balancing diverse value objectives and synthesizing diverse research methodologies will modern societies avert further environmental damage and begin to rectify existing problems.

Rethinking Food and Agriculture

Rethinking Food and Agriculture PDF Author: Amir Kassam
Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
ISBN: 0128164115
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
Given the central role of the food and agriculture system in driving so many of the connected ecological, social and economic threats and challenges we currently face, Rethinking Food and Agriculture reviews, reassesses and reimagines the current food and agriculture system and the narrow paradigm in which it operates. Rethinking Food and Agriculture explores and uncovers some of the key historical, ethical, economic, social, cultural, political, and structural drivers and root causes of unsustainability, degradation of the agricultural environment, destruction of nature, short-comings in science and knowledge systems, inequality, hunger and food insecurity, and disharmony. It reviews efforts towards 'sustainable development', and reassesses whether these efforts have been implemented with adequate responsibility, acceptable societal and environmental costs and optimal engagement to secure sustainability, equity and justice. The book highlights the many ways that farmers and their communities, civil society groups, social movements, development experts, scientists and others have been raising awareness of these issues, implementing solutions and forging 'new ways forward', for example towards paradigms of agriculture, natural resource management and human nutrition which are more sustainable and just. Rethinking Food and Agriculture proposes ways to move beyond the current limited view of agro-ecological sustainability towards overall sustainability of the food and agriculture system based on the principle of 'inclusive responsibility'. Inclusive responsibility encourages ecosystem sustainability based on agro-ecological and planetary limits to sustainable resource use for production and livelihoods. Inclusive responsibility also places importance on quality of life, pluralism, equity and justice for all and emphasises the health, well-being, sovereignty, dignity and rights of producers, consumers and other stakeholders, as well as of nonhuman animals and the natural world. - Explores some of the key drivers and root causes of unsustainability , degradation of the agricultural environment and destruction of nature - Highlights the many ways that different stakeholders have been forging 'new ways forward' towards alternative paradigms of agriculture, human nutrition and political economy, which are more sustainable and just - Proposes ways to move beyong the current unsustainable exploitation of natural resources towards agroecological sustainability and overall sustainability of the food and agriculture system based on 'inclusive responsibility'

Before Dinner

Before Dinner PDF Author: M. Korthals
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402029934
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
This book is an extensive, original and systematic treatment of many important philosophical and ethical aspects of food (consumption and production). May we eat just anything? Can we do everything with animals, even genetic modification? If not, how can we regulate those processes so that they lead to optimum animal welfare while at the same time producing optimum taste? The production of food also causes environmental pollution – does the fight against hunger have priority over the care of the environment? The care of the environment, animal welfare, and the quality of food should be in a certain harmony, but that is far from granted and hardly easy to achieve. These factors are often in conflict with each other, and a balance will thus need to be searched for. Other factors to take into consideration are the issue of global famine, the care for a farming class that is able to keep its head above water in a decent way, and a fair trade system that does not throw up unnecessary barriers for newcomers or small market participants and that promotes good nutrition. Famine continues to be a widespread phenomenon that violates human rights, causing nearly a billion people to suffer from hunger or malnutrition. At the same time, deliberate hunger, abundance, and obesity are prevalent in the Western world. Both issues refer to the social and cultural aspects of food. Scientific and technological developments like genetic modification and functional food also play an increasingly important role; almost every bite that we take is determined by scientific developments. An extra difficulty is that scientific information is often contradictory, or that it relies on statistical probabilities that are difficult to translate into everyday certitudes. All of these factors deserve attention, but it is the mix that is most important. In the land of food, ‘either or’ does not exist, only ‘both and’. The adequate measure of ‘both and’ serves as the starting point for this philosophical reflection. Before Dinner is a must-read for all people interested in contemporary ethical issues of food, such as university students and researchers of food, agricultural and life sciences, as well as policymakers in these fields, such as members of professional organisations focusing on food and agriculture (f.e., EURSAFE (European Society for Agriculture and Food Ethics), the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (USA), and European Federation of Biotechnology).

The Natural Way of Farming

The Natural Way of Farming PDF Author: Masanobu Fukuoka
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788185987002
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
...A natural way of farming that renounces all human knowledge and intervention. - preface.

The Philosophy of Food

The Philosophy of Food PDF Author: David M. Kaplan
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520269330
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This book explores food from a philosophical perspective, bringing together leading philosophers to consider the most basic questions about food. Each essay analyses many contemporary debates in food studies. Slow Food, sustainability, food safety, and politics, and addresses such issues as happy meat, aquaculture, veganism, and table manners.

Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics

Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics PDF Author: David M. Kaplan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789400718531
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1939

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Book Description
This Encyclopedia offers a definitive source on issues pertaining to the full range of topics in the important new area of food and agricultural ethics. It includes summaries of historical approaches, current scholarship, social movements, and new trends from the standpoint of the ethical notions that have shaped them. It combines detailed analyses of specific topics such as the role of antibiotics in animal production, the Green Revolution, and alternative methods of organic farming, with longer entries that summarize general areas of scholarship and explore ways that they are related. Renewed debate, discussion and inquiry into food and agricultural topics have become a hallmark of the turn toward more sustainable policies and lifestyles in the 21st century. Attention has turned to the goals and ethical rationale behind production, distribution and consumption of food, as well as to non-food uses of cultivated biomass and the products of animal husbandry. These wide-ranging debates encompass questions in human nutrition, animal rights and the environmental impacts of aquaculture and agricultural production. Each of these and related topics is both technically complex and involves an – often implicit – ethical dimension. Other topics include methods for integrating ethics into scientific and technical research programs or development projects, the role of intensive agriculture and biotechnology in addressing persistent world hunger and the role of crops, forests and engineered organisms in making a transition to renewable, carbon-neutral sources of energy. The Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics proves an indispensible reference point for future research and writing on topics in agriculture and food ethics for decades to come.

General Philosophy of Science

General Philosophy of Science PDF Author: Theo A. F. Kuipers
Publisher: North-Holland
ISBN: 9780444515483
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 683

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Book Description
Laws, theories, and research programs as units of empirical knowledge (Theo Kuipers), various past and contemporary perspectives on explanation (Stathis Psillos), the evaluation of theories in terms of their virtues (Ilkka Niiniluto), and the role of experiments in the natural sciences, notably physics and biology (Allan Franklin), and their role in the social sciences, notably economics (Wenceslao Gonzalez). In the subsequent three chapters there is even more attention to various positions and methods that philosophers of science and scientists may favor: ontological, epistemological, and methodological positions (James Ladyman), reduction, integration, and the unity of science as aims in the sciences and the humanities (William Bechtel and Andrew Hamilton), and logical, historical and computational approaches to the philosophy of science (Atocha Aliseda and Donald Gillies).-

Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences

Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences PDF Author:
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080930743
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 1473

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Book Description
The Handbook Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences addresses numerous issues in the emerging field of the philosophy of those sciences that are involved in the technological process of designing, developing and making of new technical artifacts and systems. These issues include the nature of design, of technological knowledge, and of technical artifacts, as well as the toolbox of engineers. Most of these have thus far not been analyzed in general philosophy of science, which has traditionally but inadequately regarded technology as mere applied science and focused on physics, biology, mathematics and the social sciences. - First comprehensive philosophical handbook on technology and the engineering sciences - Unparalleled in scope including explorative articles - In depth discussion of technical artifacts and their ontology - Provides extensive analysis of the nature of engineering design - Focuses in detail on the role of models in technology