Dreaming The Biosphere

"Biosphere 2" rises from southern Arizonas high desert like a bizarre hybrid spaceship and greenhouse. Packed with more than 3,800 carefully selected plant, animal, and insect species, this mega-terrarium is one of the world's most biodiverse, lush, and artificial wildernesses. Only recently transformed from an abandoned ghost dome to a University of Arizona research center, the site was the setting of a grand drama about humans and ecology at the end of the twentieth century. The seeds of Biosphere 2 sprouted in the 1970s at Synergia, a desert ranch in New Mexico where John Allen and a handful of dreamers united to create a self-reliant utopia centered on ecological work, study, and their traveling experimental theater troupe, "The Theater of All Possibilities." At a time of growing tensions in the American environmental consciousness, the Synergians took on varied projects around the world that sought to mend the rift between humans and nature. In 1984, they bought a piece of desert to build Biosphere 2. Eco-enthusiasts competed to become the eight "biospherians" who would lock themselves inside the giant greenhouse world for two years to live in harmony with their wilderness, grow their own food, and recycle all their air, water, and wastes. Thin and short on oxygen, the biospherians stoically completed their survival mission, but the communal spirit surrounding Biosphere 2 eventually dissolved into conflict--ultimately the facility would be seized by armed U.S. Marshals. Yet for all the story's strangeness, perhaps strangest of all was how normal Biosphere 2 actually was. The story of this grand eco-utopian adventure (and misadventure) becomes a parable about the relationship between humans and nature in postmodern America. Visit the authors' website at www.dreamingthebiosphere.com

Reider tells the tangled tale of the creation, and eventual disintegration, of the experimental eco-utopia known as Biosphere 2.

From the beginning of the space age, scientists and engineers have worked on systems to help humans survive for the astounding 28,500 days (78 years) needed to reach another planet. They’ve imagined and tried to create a little piece of Earth in a bubble travelling through space, inside of which people could live for decades, centuries, or even millennia. Far Beyond the Moon tells the dramatic story of engineering efforts by astronauts and scientists to create artificial habitats for humans in orbiting space stations, as well as on journeys to Mars and beyond. Along the way, David P. D. Munns and Kärin Nickelsen explore the often unglamorous but very real problem posed by long-term life support: How can we recycle biological wastes to create air, water, and even food in meticulously controlled artificial environments? Together, they draw attention to the unsung participants of the space program—the sanitary engineers, nutritionists, plant physiologists, bacteriologists, and algologists who created and tested artificial environments for space based on chemical technologies of life support—as well as the bioregenerative algae systems developed to reuse waste, water, and nutrients, so that we might cope with a space journey of not just a few days, but months, or more likely, years.

A generously illustrated examination of the boom in luxurious, resort-style scientific laboratories and how this affects scientists' work. The past decade has seen an extraordinary laboratory-building boom. This new crop of laboratories features spectacular architecture and resort-like amenities. The buildings sprawl luxuriously on verdant campuses or sit sleekly in expensive urban neighborhoods. Designed to attract venture capital, generous philanthropy, and star scientists, these laboratories are meant to create the ideal conditions for scientific discovery. Yet there is little empirical evidence that shows if they do. Laboratory Lifestyles examines this new species of scientific laboratory from architectural, economic, social, and scientific perspectives. Generously illustrated with photographs of laboratories and scientists at work in them, the book investigates how “lifestyle science” affects actual science. Are scientists working when they stretch in a yoga class, play volleyball in the company tournament, chat in an on-site café, or show off their facilities to visiting pharmaceutical executives? The book describes, among other things, the role of beanbag chairs in the construction of science at Xerox PARC; the Southern California vibe of the RAND Corporation (Malibu), General Atomic (La Jolla), and Hughes Research Laboratories (Malibu); and Biosphere 2's “bionauts” as both scientists and scientific subjects; and interstellar laboratories. Laboratory Lifestyles (the title is an allusion to Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's influential Laboratory Life) documents a shift in what constitutes scientific practice; these laboratories and their lifestyles are as experimental as the science they cultivate. Contributors Kathleen Brandt, Russell Hughes, Tim Ivison, Sandra Kaji-O'Grady, Stuart W. Leslie, Brian Lonsway, Sean O'Halloran, Simon Sadler, Chris L. Smith, Nicole Sully, Ksenia Tatarchenko, William Taylor, Julia Tcharfas, Albena Yaneva, Stelios Zavos

The idea of the earth as a vessel in space came of age in an era shaped by space travel and the Cold War. Höhler’s study brings together technology, science and ecology to explore the way this latter-day ark was invoked by politicians, environmentalists, cultural historians, writers of science fiction and many others across three decades.

This handbook surveys the many relationships between scientific studies of the world around us and Christian concepts of the Divine from the ancient Greeks to modern ecotheology. From Augustine to Hildegard of Bingen, Genesis to Frederick Douglass, and physics to sociology, this volume opens the intersections of Christian theology and science to new concepts, voices, and futures. The central goal of the handbook is to bring new perspectives to the foreground of Christian theological engagement with science, and to highlight the many engagements today that are not often identified as 'science-theology' discussions. The handbook thus includes several aspects not found in previous handbooks on the same topic: significant representation from the three major branches of Christianity-Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant; multiple essays on areas of modern science not traditionally part of the “theology and science” dialogue, such as discussions of race, medicine, and sociology; a collection of essays on historical theologians' approaches to nature and science. T&T Clark Handbook to Christian Theology and the Modern Sciences is divided into 3 sections: historical explorations, encompassing a eleven chapters from Aristotle to Frederick Douglass; Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox surveys of theology-science scholarship in the 20th and 21st centuries; and ten explorations in Christian theology today, from Einsteinian physics to decolonial sociology. The 24 chapters than span the volume offer the reader, whether scholar, student, or layperson, an essential resource for any future conversations around science and Christian theology.

Biospherian Mark Nelson offers insider perspectives on Biosphere 2 and bold insights into today's global ecological challenges--Provided by publisher.

Artists and writers portray the disorientation of a world facing climate change. This monumental volume, drawn from a 2020 exhibition at the ZKM Center for Art and Media, portrays the disorientation of life in world facing climate change. It traces this disorientation to the disconnection between two different definitions of the land on which modernizing humans live: the sovereign nation from which they derive their rights, and another one, hidden, from which they gain their wealth—the land they live on, and the land they live from. Charting the land they will inhabit, they find not a globe, not the iconic “blue marble,” but a series of critical zones—patchy, heterogenous, discontinuous. With short pieces, longer essays, and more than 500 illustrations, the contributors explore the new landscape on which it may be possible for humans to land—what it means to be “on Earth,” whether the critical zone, the Gaia, or the terrestrial. They consider geopolitical conflicts and tools redesigned for the new “geopolitics of life forms.” The “thought exhibition” described in this book can opens a fictional space to explore the new climate regime; the rest of the story is unknown. Contributors include Dipesh Chakrabarty, Pierre Charbonnier, Emanuele Coccia, Vinciane Despret, Jerôme Gaillarde, Donna Haraway, Joseph Leo Koerner, Timothy Lenton, Richard Powers, Simon Schaffer, Isabelle Stengers, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Jan A. Zalasiewicz, Siegfried Zielinski Copublished with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe