Abstract
Culture is not structurally different from ecological transformation processes, but echoes them in human species-specific creative forms. It expresses our own poetic interpretation of the ever-recurring theme of coping with the irresolvable paradox of autonomy and wholeness. That is why human culture cannot control and engineer nature as a passive, non-living object. Human culture and that what we have been calling “nature” are two sides of one thing which we could more aptly call “aliveness”.
“There must be a kind of painting totally free of the dependence on the figure–or object–which like music, illustrates nothing, tells no story, and launches no myth. Such painting would simply evoke the incommensurable kingdoms of the spirit, where dream becomes thought, where line becomes existence”.
(Michel Seuphor (in Lispector 2014:xvi))
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Böhme, G., & Böhme, H. (1996). Feuer, Wasser, Erde, Luft: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Elemente. München: C. H. Beck.
Langer, S. K. (1953). Feeling and form. New York: Scribner’s.
Leopold, A. (1949). A sand county almanach and sketches here an there. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lispector, C. (2014). Agua viva. London/New York: Penguin.
Oelschlager, M. (1991). The idea of wilderness: From prehistory to the age of ecology. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Schama, S. (1996). Der Traum von der Wildnis. Natur als Imagination. München: Kindler.
Snyder, G. (1992). No nature: New and selected poems. New York: Pantheon.
Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Weber, A. (2003): Natur als Bedeutung. Versuch einer semiotischen Theorie des Lebendigen. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Weber, A. (2016). Aliveness. In: Biopoetics. Biosemiotics, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0832-4_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0832-4_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-024-0830-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-024-0832-4
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)