On the nature of catastrophic forms
On the nature of catastrophic forms
复制标题
论灾难形式的本质
DOI：
10.1057/s41292-017-0038-3
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发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
1.6
通讯作者：
P. Mitchell
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
A. Petryna;P. Mitchell
人类对地球生态系统的影响导致了一个新的地质时代的宣告，人类世。稳定了几千年的地球系统现在受到人为气候变化的威胁，但这种悬而未决的不稳定性还没有得到很好的理解。来自不同学科的研究人员已经组装了“突变”科学的概念工具包，以理论化和模型化非线性变化。我们提供了这些工具包的谱系，追溯到世纪早期和中期的形态发生问题，或有机形式的发展和进化。数学家勒内·托姆（René Thom）受到偶像崇拜生物学家达西·汤普森（D'Arcy Thompson）和康拉德·哈尔·沃丁顿（Conrad Hal Waddington）对生长和形态的研究的启发，在20世纪70年代正式提出了他所谓的突变理论。该理论不仅旨在解释复杂系统中的突变，而且还提出了一种新的启发式的“性质”的灾难形式。托姆的突变理论作为一种思想方法被应用于物理学、社会学和生命科学，但在受到批评后逐渐衰落。然而，随着这一理论的元素循环到今天的突变科学中，灾难形式的本质在科学想象中对生态系统行为的反应中具有重要意义，这些行为不受或甚至不符合对未来的传统预期。
Abstract The impact of humans on the Earth’s ecosystem has led to the declaration of a new geological era, the Anthropocene. Earth systems stable for millennia are now threatened by anthropogenic climate change, but this pending instability is not well understood. Researchers from varied disciplines have assembled conceptual toolkits of “abrupt change” science to theorize and model nonlinear shifts. We offer a genealogy of these toolkits, tracing them back to the early and mid-twentieth century problematic of morphogenesis, or the development and evolution of organic form. Mathematician René Thom, inspired by iconoclastic biologists D’Arcy Thompson's and Conrad Hal Waddington’s studies of growth and form, formalized his so-called catastrophe theory in the 1970s. This theory not only purported to explain abrupt change in complex systems, but also presented a novel heuristic of a “nature” of catastrophic form. Thom’s catastrophe theory was applied as a method of thought in the physical, social, and life sciences, but waned after criticism. However, as elements of this theory recycle into today’s abrupt change science, the nature of catastrophic form assumes importance in a scientific imaginary’s response to ecosystemic behaviors that are not subject to, or do not even correspond to, conventional expectations about the future.
DOI：
10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.06.001
发表时间：
2013-12-01
期刊：
STUDIES IN HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE PART C-STUDIES IN HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGICAL AND BIOMEDIAL SCIENCES
影响因子：
--
作者：
Baedke, Jan
通讯作者：
Baedke, Jan