This paper began with the assumption that the habitual practices of knowledge-creation, which have shaped the day-to-day contexts of teachers and researchers, are not greatly different from the practices that have led to human-made catastrophes in the Anthropocene. I pondered over my experiences as a researcher in an attempt to gain insights for thinking about and engaging in knowledge-creation differently to become more response-able in the Anthropocene. Inspired by post-qualitative research practice, I re-turned, like an earthworm, (to) two research events. (...) A theoretical framework informed by critical posthumanism and feminist new materialism guided the process. Through these re-turns, I came to understand that creating knowledge is a complex and indeterminate process that always accompanies the ‘more-than’. Attending to the notion of knowledge-ing, I discussed the ways in which knowledge emerged as a flow that was neither fully graspable nor static through more-than-human intra-actions. What I propose in this paper is not a methodological technique, but rather, a mode of practice that might disrupt our sense of Cartesian self. I offered some suggestions for teachers and researchers to reimagine the practices of knowledge-creation as a way of reinventing their subjectivity and responding to the damaged earth more responsibly. (shrink)

This paper studies the capture of organisms and materials in soil construction – a branch of ecological engineering dedicated to making soil in order to compensate for soil degradation. This approach takes all organisms to be ‘ecosystem engineers’, and often refers to earthworms as ‘collaborators’ in making soil. I examine the claim that such a convocation of worms amounts to a redistribution of agency and the underlying assumption that form-taking is the shaping of raw matter according to pre-existing forms. (...) Drawing on processual anthropology, I question the distinction between living and material components of soils, and between growing and making. I elaborate on soil scientists’ description of soil growth as pedogenesis in order to propose a view in which soil materials, along with organisms, participate in soil’s transformative and generative fluxes. I envisage the process as a concrescence, an experimentation that brings humans, worms, and soil materials together in new ways. (shrink)

Although The Origin of Species contained just a single visual illustration, Charles Darwin's other books, from his monograph on barnacles in the early 1850s to his volume on earthworms in 1881, were copiously illustrated by well-known artists and engravers. In this 2006 book, Jonathan Smith explains how Darwin managed to illustrate the unillustratable - his theories of natural selection - by manipulating and modifying the visual conventions of natural history, using images to support the claims made in his texts. (...) Moreover, Smith looks outward to analyse the relationships between Darwin's illustrations and Victorian visual culture, especially the late-Victorian debates about aesthetics, and shows how Darwin's evolutionary explanation of beauty, based on his observations of colour and the visual in nature, were a direct challenge to the aesthetics of John Ruskin. The many illustrations reproduced here enhance this fascinating study of a little known aspect of Darwin's lasting influence on literature, art and culture. (shrink)

Our image of Darwin is hardly that of a German metaphysician. By reason of his intellectual tradition—that of British empiricism—and psychological disposition, he was a man of apparently more stolid character, one who could be excited by beetles and earthworms but not, we assume, by abstruse philosophy. Yet Darwin constructed a theory of evolution whose conceptual grammar expresses and depends on a certain kind of metaphysics. During his youthful period as a romantic adventurer, he sailed to exotic lands and (...) returned to construct a theory that attacked the citadels of orthodoxy. In the long process of theory construction, he explored difficult philosophical questions—for instance, the nature of reason and the mind-body problem. Moreover, he founded that theory.. (shrink)

Buddhist texts generally prohibit the killing of all sentient beings. This is certainly the case in vinaya texts, which contain strict guidelines on the preservation of all human and animal life. When these vinaya texts were translated into Chinese, they formed the core of Buddhist behavioural codes, influencing both monastic and lay followers. Chinese vinaya masters, such as Daoxuan?? and Yijing??, wrote extensive commentaries and accounts, introducing Indian concepts into the Chinese environment. In this paper, we focus on an often (...) neglected aspect of inflicting harm on sentient beings: namely, the injury that may be caused to some of the world’s smallest animals — insects. Some insects produce economically valuable products, such as silk and honey; others, such as mosquitoes and bedbugs, are annoying or dangerous; and still others are innocent victims of essential human activities, such as earthworms that are killed when farmland is tilled. Yet, all of these are sentient beings that — according to Buddhist principles — should not be harmed or killed. What this implies for Chinese vinaya masters, and especially the highly influential Daoxuan, is the core question of this paper. As we will see, their responses are mixed, but they always attempt to remain true to the basic principles of Buddhism. (shrink)

Persons are creatures with a range of personal capacities. Most known to us are also people, though nothing in observation or biological theory demands that all and only people are persons, nor even that persons, any more than people, constitute a natural kind. My aim is to consider what non-personal minds are like. Darwin's Earthworms are sensitive, passionate and, in their degree, intelligent. They may even construct maps, embedded in the world they perceive around them, so as to be (...) able to construct their tunnels. Other creatures may be able to perceive that world as also accessible to other minds, and structure it by locality and temporal relation, without having many personal qualities. Non-personal mind, on both modern materialist and Plotinian grounds, may be the more usual, and the less deluded, sort of mind. (shrink)

It is necessary to complement next‐generation sequencing data on the soil resistome with theoretical knowledge provided by ecological studies regarding the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) in the abiotic and, especially, biotic fraction of the soil ecosystem. Particularly, when ARB enter agricultural soils as a consequence of the application of animal manure as fertilizer, from a microbial ecology perspective, it is important to know their fate along the soil food web, that is, throughout that complex network of feeding interactions (...) among members of the soil biota that has crucial effects on species richness and ecosystem productivity and stability. It is critical to study how the ARB that enter the soil through the application of manure can reach other taxonomical groups (e.g., fungi, protists, nematodes, arthropods, earthworms), paying special attention to their presence in the gut microbiomes of mesofauna‐macrofauna and to the possibilities for horizontal gene transfer of antibiotic resistant genes. (shrink)

Lead shot deposited in fields and woodlands near shooting rangesand intense, upland, hunting adds an enormous tonnage of lead toenvironments, worldwide. This contamination is not remedied bybanning lead shot use only for waterfowl hunting. Lead pelletsdisintegrate extremely slowly, during which time they may beingested from the soil by wild birds, livestock, or silage-makingmachinery, and cause sublethal or fatal lead poisoning. Leadpellet corrosion products contaminate soil, surface waters, andground waters, often exceeding permissible levels. Plants do notconcentrate much lead from the soil, (...) except when grown in acidicsoils of heavily-contaminated shooting ranges. Inheavily-contaminated sites, earthworms ingest leadcompounds which are bioaccumulated in higher consumersof food webs. Non-toxic substitutes made from steelor bismuth are available internationally and areeffective for all types of hunting and targetshooting. Many nations are slow to require their use,despite the marked awareness of the problems of leadshot contamination and toxicosis. This is due tohunters and international sport shooting organizationsopposing the use of non-toxic substitutes and overtemphasis by government agencies on the burden ofscientific proof for every situation, rather thantaking preventative action according to thePrecautionary Principle. The ethical approach ofDenmark and The Netherlands, which banned all uses oflead shot, is advocated as a precedent for othernations to adopt. (shrink)

Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human mind, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, ...

The Green Revolution in India which was heralded in the 1960‘s was a mixed blessing. Ambitious use of agro-chemicals boosted food production but also destroyed the agricultural ecosystem. Of late Indian farmers and agricultural scientists have realized this and are anxious to find alternatives – perhaps a non-chemical agriculture – and have even revived their age-old traditional techniques of natural farming. Scientists are working to find economically cheaper and ecologically safer alternatives to agro-chemicals. Blue-Green Algae Biofertilizers, Earthworm Vermicomposts, biological control (...) of pests and herbal biopesticides are showing promise. Saline agriculture and sewage farming are also being promoted in India to augment food production in the face of water scarcity. There is a move to search for alternative foods, which are more nutritious, cheaper and have shorter harvest cycles. Farm and food policy in India has to change its outlook before there can be a second green revolution. (shrink)