- Industry: Biology
- Number of terms: 15386
- Number of blossaries: 0
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Terrapsychology is a word coined by Craig Chalquist to describe deep, systematic, trans-empirical approaches to encountering the presence, soul, or "voice" of places and things: what the ancients knew as their resident genius loci or indwelling spirit. This perspective emerged from sustained ...
An evergreen forest growing in a wt, humid climate. Rainforest coverage prevents desertification and drought and hosts more than half the world's animal species. Every day unchecked industrial development flattens a patch of rainforest the size of New York City.
Industry:Biology
The classification of life, starting with Aristotle's attempts. Botanist Carl Linneaus worked out a system in 1735 whose primary categories are still in use. From largest to smallest, here is how we fit them:
* Kingdom: Animalia (animals)
* Phylum: Chordata (with nerve chords)
* Subphylum: Vertebrata (and backbones)
* Superclass: Gnathostomata (and jaws for biting)
* Class: Mammalia (the young feed on mother's milk)
* Order: Primata (primates
* Suborder: Haplorrhini (dry-nosed)
* Family: Hominidae (erect, walking mammals)
* Genus: Homo (humans and their close relatives, all now extinct but us)
* Species: Homo sapiens (this two-name genus/species form is called binomial nomenclature)
Industry:Biology
The fusion of growing metropolitan areas into a megalopolis. An intermediate stage in the development of what Lewis Mumford referred to as necropolis, an example of which is tenemented Rome around the time that the Western Empire fell. Necropolis is the final stage in decadence, bureaucratic alienation, hatred of life, and urban implosion.
Industry:Biology
A rigid, primarily granitic slab floating on the asthenosphere, a layer of semi-molten upper mantle. The plates average 125 kilometers of thickness and are pushed rather than pulled by currents in the mantle. (See Plate Tectonics. ) The continents riding atop the plates occupy 29% of the planet surface.
Industry:Biology
The hypothesized passing on of something learned, but not through the discredited Lamarckian theory of evolution (the inheritance of what previous generations experienced). Walking upright could be an example, as a band of our ancestors imitated some forgotten hominid who preferred that style of locomotion and then gave rise to descendants whose genes favored the behavior. The Baldwin Effect fills in a gap in how natural selection is thought to work by explaining how learnings normally invisible to it become innate.
Industry:Biology
Anything that eats or damages what we eat. Too many pests mean not enough predators, like fish or birds for mosquitos and gopher snakes for gophers, who also avoid daffodils, elderberry cuttings, and castor beans. Teas made of chamomile, stinging nettle, comfrey, or horsetail discourage harmful fungi. Marigolds control whiteflies, spearmint, tansy, and pennyroyal control ants, Mexican marigold controls nematodes and root pests, as do French marigolds; yellow nasturtiums decoy black aphids, which are repelled by spearmint, stinging nettle, southernwood, and garlic, and borage repels tomato worms while attracting helpful bees.
Industry:Biology
The perceived split between people and nature normally traced back to French philosopher Rene Descartes but with roots in monotheism, Plato, and still older sources. Val Plumwood has named five features that characterize dualism: backgrounding, radical exclusion, incorporation, instrumentalism, and homogenization.
Industry:Biology
The apparent deflection of an object in motion because of the Earth's rotation. Low pressure systems in the northern hemisphere turn counterclockwise (clockwise in the southern hemisphere). Think of the apparent curve caused by a child trying to walk a straight line from the center of a carrousel to the edge as it spins.
Industry:Biology
