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Emerson, Thoreau, systems, and envir...

McMurry, Andrew Carlson.

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Emerson, Thoreau, systems, and environments (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Niklas Luhmann).

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Emerson, Thoreau, systems, and environments (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Niklas Luhmann)./
Author:	McMurry, Andrew Carlson.
Description:	289 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 59-09, Section: A, page: 3456.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International59-09A.
Subject:	Literature, American. -
Online resource:	http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/9907282
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=9907282
ISBN:	0599051043

Emerson, Thoreau, systems, and environments (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Niklas Luhmann).
McMurry, Andrew Carlson.

Emerson, Thoreau, systems, and environments (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Niklas Luhmann). - 289 p.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 59-09, Section: A, page: 3456.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, 1998.

Emerson and Thoreau are often associated with the "shallow" and the "deep" poles of American environmentalism, respectively. On the one hand, in Emerson we see a source for the reform-minded, conservationist approach which seeks, in a highly anthropocentric manner, to safeguard nature by considering only its utility to humans; on the other hand, in Thoreau we see the stirrings of a biocentric approach, a broader vision of non-human value that would later be articulated even more forcefully by John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and present-day deep ecologists, animal rights theorists, and ecofeminists. This dissertation reassesses Emerson, Thoreau, and their roles in these American "traditions of nature" in light of an emerging paradigm of autonomous systems and environments. Drawing on the pioneering work of Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, social systems theorist Niklas Luhmann claims that key domains of social communication (e.g., the legal, the moral, the economic) may be understood as autopoietic "function systems," which are organizationally closed yet structurally open to their environment. The internal programming of each self-organizing function system works to produce a decision about specific environmental stimuli following a basic system/environment distinction, a binary code by which the system can efficiently steer its operations. As Luhmann puts it, "the system can only see what it can see" because the distinction itself is the means of producing observations, leaving the system "blind" to environmental stimuli which exceed its functionally specific coding capacity. This necessary blindness can create problems, in part because the guiding distinctions of the different function systems frequently appear to work at cross-purposes. This dissertation proposes that the "environment, traditions" Emerson and Thoreau helped shape follow trajectories rooted in systemically conditioned options rather than on totalizing ethical principles--as those traditions would have us believe. We gain new insights into those traditions' profound hold on the American perception of nature when we consider them from the systems perspective outlined above.

ISBN: 0599051043Subjects--Topical Terms:

1017657
Literature, American.

Emerson, Thoreau, systems, and environments (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Niklas Luhmann).
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100 1 $a McMurry, Andrew Carlson. $3 1953767
245 1 0 $a Emerson, Thoreau, systems, and environments (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Niklas Luhmann).
300 $a 289 p.
500 $a Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 59-09, Section: A, page: 3456.
500 $a Adviser: Cary Wolfe.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, 1998.
520 $a Emerson and Thoreau are often associated with the "shallow" and the "deep" poles of American environmentalism, respectively. On the one hand, in Emerson we see a source for the reform-minded, conservationist approach which seeks, in a highly anthropocentric manner, to safeguard nature by considering only its utility to humans; on the other hand, in Thoreau we see the stirrings of a biocentric approach, a broader vision of non-human value that would later be articulated even more forcefully by John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and present-day deep ecologists, animal rights theorists, and ecofeminists. This dissertation reassesses Emerson, Thoreau, and their roles in these American "traditions of nature" in light of an emerging paradigm of autonomous systems and environments. Drawing on the pioneering work of Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, social systems theorist Niklas Luhmann claims that key domains of social communication (e.g., the legal, the moral, the economic) may be understood as autopoietic "function systems," which are organizationally closed yet structurally open to their environment. The internal programming of each self-organizing function system works to produce a decision about specific environmental stimuli following a basic system/environment distinction, a binary code by which the system can efficiently steer its operations. As Luhmann puts it, "the system can only see what it can see" because the distinction itself is the means of producing observations, leaving the system "blind" to environmental stimuli which exceed its functionally specific coding capacity. This necessary blindness can create problems, in part because the guiding distinctions of the different function systems frequently appear to work at cross-purposes. This dissertation proposes that the "environment, traditions" Emerson and Thoreau helped shape follow trajectories rooted in systemically conditioned options rather than on totalizing ethical principles--as those traditions would have us believe. We gain new insights into those traditions' profound hold on the American perception of nature when we consider them from the systems perspective outlined above.
590 $a School code: 0093.
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650 4 $a Philosophy. $3 516511
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791 $a Ph.D.
792 $a 1998
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856 4 0 $u http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=9907282