Life And Process

Alfred North Whitehead is arguably the most original 20th-century philosopher of nature and metaphysics. In recent decades a number of physicists have produced ground-breaking new theories in fundamental physics influenced by his process philosophy. In contrast, few biologists are even aware that Whitehead’s radical rethinking of the Cartesian assumptions implicit in 19th-century sciences might be relevant to their enterprise. This book seeks to fill this gap by exploring how Whitehead’s process ontology might provide a new philosophical foundation for the biosciences of the 21st century. The central premise shared by all of the volume’s authors is the idea that all living processes are irreducible processes. Each chapter focuses on assumptions implicit in some of the core concepts of biology– such as organism, evolution, information, and teleology – that play crucial explanatory roles in the biosciences, but as metaphysical concepts fall outside its purview. The authors each identify important shortcomings implicit in contemporary biological paradigms and show how an approach grounded in a process-oriented metaphysics can avoid them.

This book provides a survey of key process-philosophical approaches that, in conversation with selected concepts across the biological and physical sciences, help us to think about living processes, or ‘lived time,’ at different scales of functioning. The first part is written from an opening perspective on the question of the differing scales of analysis provided by Alfred North Whitehead. In particular, his interest in questions arising from the quantum mechanical reconciliation with classical mechanics informs the first two chapters that address problematic categorizations of life as variously ‘despotic,’ ‘invasive,’ or as primitive (in the radically more-than-human case of micro-organisms), whose potential recategorization relies on our willingness to acknowledge changes in value depending on the scale at which we view them. The second part of the book concerns methodologies, in the light of works by Henri Bergson, whose intertwining concerns with epistemology and ontology in his theories of mind and life serve as a model for a process philosophy of biology. The chapters focus on techniques used across philosophy and the sciences to visualize processes that are otherwise unavailable to us due to the limitations of our perceptual faculties, no matter how sophisticated the tools for analysis, from microscopes to telescopes, have become. This book concludes with a consideration of the relations between parts and wholes in process, panpsychist, and ecological terms. It revisits the question of ecological balance and the place of human activities in relation to it, with reference to works of Charles Hartshorne and William James.

Concepts of Biology is designed for the single-semester introduction to biology course for non-science majors, which for many students is their only college-level science course. As such, this course represents an important opportunity for students to develop the necessary knowledge, tools, and skills to make informed decisions as they continue with their lives. Rather than being mired down with facts and vocabulary, the typical non-science major student needs information presented in a way that is easy to read and understand. Even more importantly, the content should be meaningful. Students do much better when they understand why biology is relevant to their everyday lives. For these reasons, Concepts of Biology is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand.We also strive to show the interconnectedness of topics within this extremely broad discipline. In order to meet the needs of today's instructors and students, we maintain the overall organization and coverage found in most syllabi for this course. A strength of Concepts of Biology is that instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Concepts of Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand--and apply--key concepts.

In this booklet compiled from Life-study of John, Witness Lee considers the Lord Jesus’ resurrection as presented in the Gospel of John. “The record in the Gospel of John regarding the Lord’s resurrection is different from that in the other three Gospels. The record of the Lord’s resurrection in Matthew, Mark, and Luke is nearly the same. John’s record, however, is vastly different. The Gospel of John always has the viewpoint of life. According to John’s Gospel, the Lord has come to be the expression of God to be received by us as life, and He died and resurrected to impart Himself into us as life…John 20 and 21 are written from this point of view.”

This four-volume work allows the reader to form one picture of the world in which the perspectives from science, beauty and grace, and commonsense intuitions are interlaced.

Life Cycle of a Process Plant focuses on workflows, work processes, and interfaces. It is an ideal reference book for engineers of all disciplines, technicians, and business people working in the upstream, midstream, and downstream fields. This book is tailored to the everyday work tasks of the process and project engineer/manager and relates regulations to actions engineers can take in the workplace via case studies. It covers oil, gas, chemical, petrochemical, and carbon capture industries. The content in this book will be interesting for any engineers (from all disciplines) and other project team members who understand the technical principles of their work, but who would like to have a better idea of where their contribution fits into the complete picture of the life cycle of a process plant. This book shows the basic principles and approaches of process plant lifecycle information management and how they can be applied to generate substantial cost and time savings. Thus, the readers with their own knowledge and experience in plant design and operations can adapt and implement them into their specific plant lifecycle applications. Authors bring their practical and hands-on industry expertise to this book Covers the entire workflow process of a process plant from project initiation and design through to the commissioning stage Cost estimations which relate to process plants are discussed Covers the program and project management in O&G industry

This volume is a collection of texts authored by an international team of linguistic scholars who provide their response to the concept of 21st century holism in language studies. The expertise of its contributors is reflected in the thematic scope of the book; it discusses topics such as the concept of harmony in interpersonal communication, semiotic and cultural phenomena handled by discourse analysis, selected aspects of religious discourse, and the study of proverbs or educational processes, to name but a few. 21st century holism embraces a solid theoretical base in post-Newtonian physics (quantum theory in particular), and departs from materialistic and atomistic perspectives based on Darwinism or cognitivism, however tempted we may be to allow the inertia of these in Western science and culture. Once a scholar decides to shift their paradigmatic perspective, thinking style, and research methodology, they start to co-build a collective mental representation herein referred to as ‘the culture of consciousness’.

This volume presents the meta-proposals of the ecolinguistic paradigm within contemporary language and communication studies, and will serve to incite further scholarly work within this research program. Eclectic and interdisciplinary as the contributions gathered here are, they all pertain to a dynamic, multilayer approach to human communication. The ecolinguistic framework delineated and put forth for consideration here is founded on the large and vibrant scientific plane of the holistic paradigm, also referred to in the book as the post-Newtonian paradigm. As such, the contributions complement the mainstream linguistic focus on the cognitive and material forms of the language system with another perspective, pointing to non-cognitive communication modalities active in the communication process along with the (neuro-)cognitive machinery. The human communication process is seen here as a life process occurring in the context of other life processes, intraorganismically, interorganismically, transpersonally and ecosystemically, to enumerate these layers of the communication grid.