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The Hidden Connections
''The Hidden Connections'' is a 2002 book by Fritjof Capra, in which the author proposes a holistic alternative to linear and reductionist world views. He aims to extend system dynamics and complexity theory to the social domain and presents "a conceptual framework that integrates life's biological, cognitive and social dimensions". Summary The book is divided into a theoretical part (chapters 1 – 3) and a more practical part with application examples (chapters 4 – 7). Part One The first part begins with an introduction to prebiotic and biotic evolution theory and highlights the importance of membranes in this context. The author then goes into the details of different theories on cognition, consciousness, language and social co-ordination. His claim is that all biological and social phenomena are the result of the network characteristic of life. Therefore, system dynamics is the appropriate tool for analysing such phenomena. In the centre piece of his book, Capra then ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fritjof Capra
Fritjof Capra (born February 1, 1939) is an Austrian-born American author, physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist. In 1995, he became a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. He was on the faculty of Schumacher College which was disestablished in 2024. Capra is the author of several books, including '' The Tao of Physics'' (1975), '' The Turning Point'' (1982), ''Uncommon Wisdom'' (1988), ''The Web of Life'' (1996), and '' The Hidden Connections'' (2002), and co-author of ''The Systems View of Life'' (2014). Life and work Born in Vienna, Austria, Capra attended the University of Vienna, where he earned his PhD in theoretical physics in 1966. He conducted research in particle physics and systems theory at the University of Paris (1966–1968), the University of California, Santa Cruz (1968–1970), the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (1970), Imperial College, London (1971–1974) and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1975–198 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Organizational Learning
Organizational learning is the process of creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge within an organization. An organization improves over time as it gains experience. From this experience, it is able to create knowledge. This knowledge is broad, covering any topic that could better an organization. Examples may include ways to increase production efficiency or to develop beneficial investor relations. Knowledge is created at four different units: individual, group, organizational, and inter organizational. The most common way to measure organizational learning is a learning curve. Learning curves are a relationship showing how as an organization produces more of a product or service, it increases its productivity, efficiency, reliability and/or quality of production with diminishing returns. Learning curves vary due to organizational learning rates. Organizational learning rates are affected by individual proficiency, improvements in an organization's technology, and improveme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Books By Fritjof Capra
A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, mostly of writing and images. Modern books are typically composed of many pages bound together and protected by a cover, what is known as the ''codex'' format; older formats include the scroll and the tablet. As a conceptual object, a ''book'' often refers to a written work of substantial length by one or more authors, which may also be distributed digitally as an electronic book (ebook). These kinds of works can be broadly classified into fiction (containing invented content, often narratives) and non-fiction (containing content intended as factual truth). But a physical book may not contain a written work: for example, it may contain ''only'' drawings, engravings, photographs, sheet music, puzzles, or removable content like paper dolls. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Systems Science
Systems science, also referred to as systems research or simply systems, is a transdisciplinary field that is concerned with understanding simple and complex systems in nature and society, which leads to the advancements of formal, natural, social, and applied attributions throughout engineering, technology, and science itself. To systems scientists, the world can be understood as a system of systems. The field aims to develop transdisciplinary foundations that are applicable in a variety of areas, such as psychology, biology, medicine, communication, business, technology, computer science, engineering, and social sciences. Themes commonly stressed in system science are (a) holistic view, (b) interaction between a system and its embedding environment, and (c) complex (often subtle) trajectories of dynamic behavior that sometimes are stable (and thus reinforcing), while at various ' boundary conditions' can become wildly unstable (and thus destructive). Concerns about Earth-scale ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supercar
A supercar, also known as an exotic car, is a street-legal sports car with race track-like power, speed, and handling, plus a certain subjective ''cachet'' linked to pedigree and/or exclusivity. The term 'supercar' is frequently used for the extreme fringe of powerful, low-bodied mid-engine luxury sportscars. A low-profile car may have limited ground clearance, but a handling-favorable center of gravity and a smaller frontal area than a front engined car. These characteristics can reduce supercars' aerodynamic drag, enabling higher top speeds. Since the 2000s, the term hypercar has come into use for the highest-performance supercars. Supercars often serve as the flagship model within a vehicle manufacturer's sports car range and typically feature various performance-related technology derived from motorsports. Some examples include the Ferrari 458 Italia, Lamborghini Aventador, and McLaren 720S. Automotive journalism typically reserves the predicate 'hypercar' for l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cradle-to-cradle Design
Cradle-to-cradle design (also referred to as 2CC2, C2C, cradle 2 cradle, or regenerative design) is a biomimetic approach to the design of products and systems that models human industry on nature's processes, where materials are viewed as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms. The term itself is a play on the popular corporate phrase "cradle to grave", implying that the C2C model is sustainable and considerate of life and future generations—from the birth, or "cradle", of one generation to the next generation, versus from birth to death, or "grave", within the same generation. C2C suggests that industry must protect and enrich ecosystems and nature's biological metabolism while also maintaining a safe, productive technical metabolism for the high-quality use and circulation of organic and technical nutrients. It is a holistic, economic, industrial and social framework that seeks to create systems that are not only efficient but also essentially waste free.Lov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1999 Seattle WTO Protests
The 1999 Seattle WTO protests, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle, were a series of anti-globalization protests surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, where members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington on November 30, 1999. The Conference was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations. The negotiations were quickly overshadowed by massive street protests outside the hotels and the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. The protests were nicknamed "N30", akin to J18 and similar mobilizations. The large scale of the demonstrations, estimated at no fewer than 40,000 protesters, dwarfed any previous demonstration in the United States against a world meeting of any of the organizations generally associated with economic globalization, such as the WTO, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Organizations and planning Planning for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genetic Determinism
Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether in embryonic development or in learning. Genetic reductionism is a similar concept, but it is distinct from genetic determinism in that the former refers to the level of understanding, while the latter refers to the supposed causal role of genes. Biological determinism has been associated with movements in science and society including eugenics, scientific racism, and the debates around the heritability of IQ, the basis of sexual orientation, and evolutionary foundations of cooperation in sociobiology. In 1892, the German evolutionary biologist August Weismann proposed in his germ plasm theory that heritable information is transmitted only via germ cells, which he thought contained determinants (genes). The English polymath Francis Gal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biotechnology
Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that involves the integration of natural sciences and Engineering Science, engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms and parts thereof for products and services. Specialists in the field are known as biotechnologists. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used by Károly Ereky in 1919 to refer to the production of products from raw materials with the aid of living organisms. The core principle of biotechnology involves harnessing biological systems and organisms, such as bacteria, yeast, and plants, to perform specific tasks or produce valuable substances. Biotechnology had a significant impact on many areas of society, from medicine to agriculture to environmental science. One of the key techniques used in biotechnology is genetic engineering, which allows scientists to modify the genetic makeup of organisms to achieve desired outcomes. This can involve inserting genes from one organism into another, and con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells Oliván (; born 9 February 1942) is a Spanish sociologist. He is well known for his authorship of a trilogy of works, entitled '' The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture''. He is a scholar of the information society, communication and globalization. Castells is the full professor of sociology, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), in Barcelona. He is also the university professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair Professor of Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Additionally, he is the professor emeritus of sociology and professor emeritus of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for 24 years. He is also a fellow of St. John's College at the University of Cambridge and holds the chair of network society at Collège d’Études Mondiales, Paris. The 2000–2014 research survey of the Social Sciences Citation Index rank ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and is the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. In 2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth most cited author of books in the humanities. He has academic appointments in approximately twenty different universities throughout the world and has received numerous honorary degrees. His works are divided into four stages: The first one involved outlining a new vision of what sociology is, presenting a theoretical and methodological understanding of that field based on a critical reinterpretation of the classics. His major publications of that era include ''Capitalism and Modern Social Theory'' (1971) and ''The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies'' (1973). In the second ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
