Bruce Clarke
Bruce Clarke is the Paul Whitfield Distinguished Horn Professor of Literature and Science Emeritus in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. His research focuses on systems theory, narrative theory, and ecology. He was the 2019 Baruch S. Blumberg NASA Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress. In 2010-11 he was Senior Fellow at the International Research Institute for Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy (IKKM), Bauhaus-University Weimar. His latest books are Gaian Systems: Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) and, edited with Sebastien Dutreuil, Writing Gaia: the Scientific Correspondence of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He edits the book series Meaning Systems at Fordham University Press, and co-curates the website Gaia Systems.
Phone: 1-806-928-9486
Address: Department of English
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX
USA 79409-3091
Phone: 1-806-928-9486
Address: Department of English
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX
USA 79409-3091
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This passage from The Ministry for the Future has the generic curiosity of presenting scientific statements about the Anthropocene situation along with plausible conclusions based on those constructions, while stationed within the invented story of a climate-fiction novel. My essay is largely addressed to the former, the nonfiction discourse rather than the fictive imagination of our time of climate crisis, although I will eventually bring these two threads together. The apocalyptic content to be explored here is largely drawn from the same stock of documentation as the plausible conclusions that inform Robinson’s narrative. I approach the topical theme of cultural desperation as a reasonable affect and not at all ironically as an overheated response. But sheer desperation left to itself is likely to drive bad decisions and so to compound both itself and its causes. One way to defuse the negative amplifications of such positive feedbacks, as I hope to explain, is by placing them in Gaian context.
metabolic processes. Although the autopoiesis concept would have a significant if heterogeneous reception, both the genomic and the autopoietic
views of life would become contested in their turn by major advances in our understanding of symbiosis as a decisive dynamic that binds living systems into multigenomic communities and collective consortiums. The rise
of holobiont theory, in turn, has led to higher profiles for the ideas of sympoiesis and symbiopoiesis that were critical responses to the original presentation of autopoiesis. In this article, we tackle this confrontation of concepts, especially as played out in Margulis's own work.
to whom the trees themselves are calling out: “The most wondrous products of four billion years of life need help” (O, 165). Richard Powers’ novel offers a fictional reflection on new modes of cross- species understanding by placing its human characters at the margins and in milieux where other species share the same medium and invite them to consort with their symbiotic neighbors. Critical responses to The Overstory novel have already explored a wide range of recent research in plant cognition and communication.
This essay discusses these connections through considerations of animacy, animism, and processes of origina-tion and metamorphosis, as these themes take on form within the narrative. It then draws on Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers’ presentation of “involutionary momentum” as that concept is brought into focus by an episode in the novel’s adaptation of the recent history of forest ecology. In this instance, The Overstory retails this scientific discipline’s struggle out of the grip of neo- Darwinist orthodoxy in order to clear ontological space for the natural dynamics of ecological communication across species and kingdoms, culminating in the depiction of a human character receiving arboreal enlightenment.
radicalism of the later 1960s. A wider-angled view of the American intellectual counterculture is needed. However, this historical nexus is complicated and more often dismissed than brought into clear focus. > Method • This essay assembles a historical sequence of archival materials for critical analysis, linked to a conceptual argument eliciting from those materials the second-order cybernetic concepts of observation, recursion, and paradox. > Results • In this period, von Foerster found the “positive of the negative” in the social and intellectual unrest of that moment and cultivated those insights for the broader constitution of a new cognitive orientation. > Implications • As a successful student of his own continuing course on heuristics, von Foerster left the academic mainstream to ally his constructivist epistemology with the systems counterculture. > Key words • Heinz von Foerster, American counterculture, Biological Computer Laboratory, heuristics, pedagogy, cognition.
This passage from The Ministry for the Future has the generic curiosity of presenting scientific statements about the Anthropocene situation along with plausible conclusions based on those constructions, while stationed within the invented story of a climate-fiction novel. My essay is largely addressed to the former, the nonfiction discourse rather than the fictive imagination of our time of climate crisis, although I will eventually bring these two threads together. The apocalyptic content to be explored here is largely drawn from the same stock of documentation as the plausible conclusions that inform Robinson’s narrative. I approach the topical theme of cultural desperation as a reasonable affect and not at all ironically as an overheated response. But sheer desperation left to itself is likely to drive bad decisions and so to compound both itself and its causes. One way to defuse the negative amplifications of such positive feedbacks, as I hope to explain, is by placing them in Gaian context.
metabolic processes. Although the autopoiesis concept would have a significant if heterogeneous reception, both the genomic and the autopoietic
views of life would become contested in their turn by major advances in our understanding of symbiosis as a decisive dynamic that binds living systems into multigenomic communities and collective consortiums. The rise
of holobiont theory, in turn, has led to higher profiles for the ideas of sympoiesis and symbiopoiesis that were critical responses to the original presentation of autopoiesis. In this article, we tackle this confrontation of concepts, especially as played out in Margulis's own work.
to whom the trees themselves are calling out: “The most wondrous products of four billion years of life need help” (O, 165). Richard Powers’ novel offers a fictional reflection on new modes of cross- species understanding by placing its human characters at the margins and in milieux where other species share the same medium and invite them to consort with their symbiotic neighbors. Critical responses to The Overstory novel have already explored a wide range of recent research in plant cognition and communication.
This essay discusses these connections through considerations of animacy, animism, and processes of origina-tion and metamorphosis, as these themes take on form within the narrative. It then draws on Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers’ presentation of “involutionary momentum” as that concept is brought into focus by an episode in the novel’s adaptation of the recent history of forest ecology. In this instance, The Overstory retails this scientific discipline’s struggle out of the grip of neo- Darwinist orthodoxy in order to clear ontological space for the natural dynamics of ecological communication across species and kingdoms, culminating in the depiction of a human character receiving arboreal enlightenment.
radicalism of the later 1960s. A wider-angled view of the American intellectual counterculture is needed. However, this historical nexus is complicated and more often dismissed than brought into clear focus. > Method • This essay assembles a historical sequence of archival materials for critical analysis, linked to a conceptual argument eliciting from those materials the second-order cybernetic concepts of observation, recursion, and paradox. > Results • In this period, von Foerster found the “positive of the negative” in the social and intellectual unrest of that moment and cultivated those insights for the broader constitution of a new cognitive orientation. > Implications • As a successful student of his own continuing course on heuristics, von Foerster left the academic mainstream to ally his constructivist epistemology with the systems counterculture. > Key words • Heinz von Foerster, American counterculture, Biological Computer Laboratory, heuristics, pedagogy, cognition.
*Gaian Systems* reviews and assesses the different dialects of systems theory brought to bear on the discourse of Gaia. Gaia theory is systems theory. In particular, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’s initial Gaia research was concurrent and conceptually parallel with the new discourse of self-referential systems that emerged within neocybernetic systems theory. A primary outlet for the Gaia hypothesis was CoEvolution Quarterly, the periodical successor to the Whole Earth Catalog. This venue insured that early in their mutual developments, Gaia theory intersected with second-order cybernetics, a leading edge of systems theory’s own epoch of countercultural transformations.
The recent Gaia discourses of Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, and Bruno Latour variously contest its cybernetic status. *Gaian Systems* sharpens this debate by engaging Latour in particular on the issue of Gaia’s systems description. Lovelock and Margulis consistently position Gaia theory as an application of either first- or second-order cybernetic systems theory. From these affirmations and exigencies I extend my own systems-theoretical synthesis under the technical phrase metabiotic Gaia. *Gaian Systems* shows how metabiotic Gaia discourse illuminates current issues in neighboring theoretical conversations, including system boundaries, biopolitics, the immunitary paradigm, symbiosis, the holobiont, astrobiology, the Anthropocene, the geological turn, and the new geocentrism.
*Gaian Systems* uniquely traces the particular signature of Lynn Margulis on the evolution of Gaia theory. Other critical treatments tend to take Lovelock’s Gaia as the last word on the topic. In fact, Margulis occasionally published her own variations on Lovelock’s cybernetics. This study is the first to follow Margulis’s lead to see what the autopoietic turn can add to Gaia’s conception and description. *Gaian Systems* also makes selections from Margulis’s unpublished professional correspondence available for the first time. Additionally, no previous study has gone into this level of detail on the commerce of the Gaia hypothesis with the systems counterculture, the remarkable collegial network established by the Whole Earth Catalog, CoEvolution Quarterly, and the Lindisfarne Association.
Informed evocations of Gaia theory now accompany a growing sense of emergency over an Earth system in peril of entering a new regime unconducive to many current life forms, including, of course, our own. The rise of Gaia theory preceded and prepared for the current recognitions of a global climatic and environmental crisis. These trends have run together with a discourse of the Anthropocene through which to acknowledge the massive accumulation of humanity’s activities now altering the functioning of the Earth system. However, whatever its current state may be, we now effectively observe the Earth system of our present concern through the Gaia concept, a massively complex but newly concrete presence for our planetary imagination to grasp as a way to a symbiotic planet whose resources are more evenly distributed. The current phrase “Earth system” is the mainstreamed locution for Lovelock’s original thought of Gaia over half a century ago as a “biological cybernetic system.” Gaia is systems thinking at and for the planetary level.
Introduction: An Epistemological Transition
Part 1. Gaia Discourse
1. A Paradigm Shift
2. Thinkers of Gaia
3. Neocybernetics of Gaia
Part 2. The Systems Counterculture
4. The Whole Earth Network
5. The Lindisfarne Connection
6. Margulis and Autopoiesis
Part 3. Gaian Enquiries
7. The Planetary Imaginary
8. Planetary Immunity
9. Astrobiology and the Anthropocene
This collection brings together specialists in paleontology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory, geobiology, developmental systems theory, archaeology, history of science, cultural science studies, and literature and science to address the multiple themes that animated Margulis’s science. These include astrobiology and the origin of life, ecology and symbiosis from the microbial to the planetary scale, the coupled interactions of Earthly environments and evolving life in Gaia theory and Earth system science, and the connections of these newer scientific ideas to cultural and creative productions.
•links diverse literatures to scientific disciplines from Artificial Intelligence to Thermodynamics
•surveys current theoretical and disciplinary approaches from Animal Studies to Semiotics
•traces the history and culture of literature and science from Greece and Rome to Postmodernism.
Ranging from classical origins and modern revolutions to current developments in cultural science studies and the posthumanities, this indispensible volume offers a comprehensive resource for undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers.
With authoritative, accessible, and succinct treatments of the sciences in their literary dimensions and cultural frameworks, here is the essential guide to this vibrant area of study.
In response to the apparent dissolution of boundaries at work in the contemporary technosciences of emergence, neocybernetics observes that cognitive systems are operationally bounded, semi-autonomous entities coupled with their environments and other systems. Second-order systems theory stresses the recursive complexities of observation, mediation, and communication. Focused on the neocybernetic contributions of von Foerster, Francisco Varela, and Niklas Luhmann, this collection advances theoretical debates about the cultural, philosophical, and literary uses of their ideas. In addition to the interview with von Foerster, Emergence and Embodiment includes essays by Varela and Luhmann. It engages with Humberto Maturana’s and Varela’s creation of the concept of autopoiesis, Varela’s later work on neurophenomenology, and Luhmann’s adaptations of autopoiesis to social systems theory. Taken together, these essays illuminate the shared commitments uniting the broader discourse of neocybernetics.
Contributors. Linda Brigham, Bruce Clarke, Mark B. N. Hansen, Edgar Landgraf, Ira Livingston, Niklas Luhmann, Hans-Georg Moeller, John Protevi, Michael Schiltz, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela, Cary Wolfe
New stories have emerged from cybernetic displacements of life, sensation, or intelligence from human beings to machines. But beyond the vogue for the cyborg and the cybernetic mash-up of the organic and the mechanical, Posthuman Metamorphosis develops neocybernetic systems theories illuminating alternative narratives that elicit autopoietic and symbiotic visions of the posthuman.
Systems theory also transforms our modes of narrative cognition. Regarding narrative in the light of the autopoietic systems it brings into play, neocybernetics brings narrative theory into constructive relation with the systemic operations of observation, communication, and paradox.
Posthuman Metamorphosis draws on Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Niklas Luhmann, Cary Wolfe, Mieke Bal, Katherine Hayles, Friedrich Kittler, and Lynn Margulis to read narratives of bodily metamorphosis as allegories of the contingencies of systems. Tracing the posthuman intuitions of both pre- and post-cybernetic metamorphs, it demonstrates the viability of second-order systems theories for narrative theory, media theory, cultural science studies, and literary criticism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jZo3E09RVI&feature=youtu.be
A longer version, with documentation: “‘Gaia is not an Organism’: The Early Scientific Collaboration of Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock,” in _Lynn Margulis: The Life and Legacy of a Scientific Rebel_, ed. Dorion Sagan (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2012), 32-43.
- Links diverse literatures to scientific disciplines from Artificial Intelligence to Thermodynamics
- Surveys current theoretical and disciplinary approaches from Animal Studies to Semiotics
- Traces the history and culture of literature and science from Greece and Rome to Postmodernism
Ranging from classical origins and modern revolutions to current developments in cultural science studies and the posthumanities, this indispensible volume offers a comprehensive resource for undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers.
Part One: Literatures and Sciences Introduction 1. AI and ALife - John Johnston 2. Alchemy - Mark S. Morrisson 3. Biology - Sabine Sielke 4. Chaos and Complexity Theory - Ira Livingston 5. Chemistry - Jay Labinger 6. Climate Science - Robert Markley 7. Cognitive Science - Joseph Tabbi 8. Cybernetics - Søren Brier 9. Ecology - Stacy Alaimo 10. Evolution - David Amigoni 11. Genetics - Judith Roof 12. Geology - Stephen A. Norwick 13. Information Theory - Philipp Schweighauser 14. Mathematics - Brain Rotman 15. Medicine - George Rousseau 16. Nanotechnology - Colin Milburn 17. Physics - Dirk Vanderbeke 18. Psychoanalysis - Arkady Plotnitsky 19. Systems Theory - Bruce Clarke 20. Thermodynamics - John Bruni Part Two: Disciplinary and Theoretical Approaches Introduction 21. Agricultural Studies - Susan Squier 22. Animal Studies - Richard Nash 23. Art Connections - Robert Pepperell 24. Cultural Science Studies - Maureen McNeil 25. Deconstruction - Vicky Kirby 26. E-Literature - Joseph Tabbi 27. Feminist Science Studies - Susan Squier and Melissa Littlefield 28. Game Studies - Ivan Callus and Gordon Calleja 29. History of Science - Henning Schmidgen 30. Media Studies - Mark B. N. Hansen 31. Philosophy of Science - Alfred Nordmann 32. Posthumanism - Neil Badmington 33. Science Fiction - Lisa Yaszek 34. Semiotics - Paul Cobley Part Three: Periods and Cultures Introduction 35. Greece and Rome - Emma Gee 36. Middle Ages and Early Renaissance - Arielle Saiber 37. Scientific "Revolution" I: Copernicus to Boyle - Alvin Snider 38. Scientific "Revolution" II: Newton to Laplace - Lucinda Cole 39. Romanticism - Noah Heringman 40. Industrialism - Virginia Richter 41. Russia - Kenneth Knoespel 42. Japan - Thomas Lamarre 43. Modernism - Hugh Crawford 44. Postmodernism - Stefan Herbrechter