“Enthusiastically acclaimed in Europe, Cornelis Verhoeven’s The Philosophy of Wonder starts with the premise that any authentic philosophy begins as a posture of wonder before reality. “Wonder is the foundation of the whole of philosophy,” he states. “It is not the beginning of thought in the sense that it might lead on to something better founded, something like philosophical principles, which could be cheerfully manipulated without any ambiguity. Nor does the philosopher begin by wondering, proceed to an examination, and thus (...) rid himself of a tiresome guest. It is not the beginning but the principle, the basic structure. It is not only the beginning but also the end; it guides and accompanies thought. It has not only the first but also the last word” Verhoeven develops his posture-the posture of one who thinks rather than one who merely learns a system-from the starting point of a striking reverence for reality. Wonder is possible only to one who is truly open to what reality is, is ruled by it, and who stands in fascination of the fact that what is there is there. Verhoeven’s approach to authentic thought and philosophy implies a rebellion against prevailing attitudes, against the tyranny of mediocrity that today’s world often imposes. Wonder is a rebellion against certitude and security. Authenticity demands that one remove himself from the tyranny of the revenge, that one slow down in a past-moving world. It demands that one receive reality with reverence and in a mood of contemplation rather than manipulation.The Philosophy of Wonder is neither a textbook nor a do-it-yourself philosophy book with “foundations” and “concepts.” Rather, it is a prod that engenders wonder. Wonder is not a quasi-romantic, wide-eyed passivity; it is an aggressive action, an exciting adventure, an exercise in free fall. Whenever philosophy has become a system, says Verhoeven, it has surrendered its birthright.”- Publisher. (shrink)

Celebrated yoga teacher and activist Seane Corn shares pivotal accounts of her life with raw honesty—enriched with in-depth spiritual teachings—to help us heal, evolve, and change the world “My first lessons in spirituality and yoga had nothing to do with a mat, but everything to do with waking up. They included angels, seeing God, and being in Heaven. But, believe me, not the way you might think.” So begins Revolution of the Soul. What comes next reads like a riveting (...) memoir filled with uncensored moments of joy, pain, wonder, and humor. Except, this book is so much more than that. Seane's real purpose is to guide us into a deep, gut-level understanding of our highest Self through yoga philosophy and other tools for emotional healing—not just as abstract ideas but as embodied, fully felt wisdom. Why? To spark a "revolution of the soul" in each of us, so we can awaken to our purpose and become true agents of change. Just a few of the stops along the way include: The everyday "angels" Seane finds in the gritty corners of New York's 1980s East Village; her early struggles as a total yoga-class misfit; the profound shadow work and body-based practices that helped her to heal childhood trauma, OCD, unhealthy behaviors, and relationship wounding; hard-earned lessons from some of the most heartbreaking places on the planet; and many other unforgettable teaching stories. (shrink)

Colleges, gegveven in het Studium generale aan de Vrije universiteit van Amsterdam in het eerste semester van het academiejaar 1977-'78.

The solemnity, sacrifice, and concern for the state of the soul portrayed at Opie's funeral seems out of place among anarchists on motorcycles. The chapter analyzes if Opie's wake should be regarded as a religious rite as Sons of Anarchy are not a Christian sect, nor do they belong to any religious body that Americans commonly embrace. The chapter touches upon gender inequality in religious rites, and male bonding that becomes a primary good and maybe even something like a religious (...) duty. German classicist Walter Burkert terms such a group is a Männerbund (or MB), literally an “all‐male society.” The chapter explains the significance of ubiquitous symbol for the Sons of Anarchy MC – the Grim Reaper logo. Like the image of Santa Muerte, the Reaper logo is what scholars of religion call a hierophany. Finally, the chapter talks about the tragic flaws in the faith of SAMCRO. (shrink)

Human neoplasms develop following the progressive accumulation of genetic and epigenetic alterations to oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. These alterations confer a growth advantage to the cancer cell, leading to its clonal proliferation, invasion into surrounding tissues, and spread to distant organs. Genes that are altered in neoplasia affect three major biologic pathways that normally regulate cell growth and tissue homeostasis: the cell cycle, apoptosis, and differentiation. While each of these pathways can be defined by a unique set of molecular (...) events, they are not biologically separate. Rather, they function more as an integrated molecular network, and perturbations in one pathway can have profound consequences on another. Insights into what distinguishes the regulation of growth and differentiation in a normal cell versus a cancer cell have led to the development of novel anticancer therapies. BioEssays 24:83–90, 2002. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The casting of maize seeds is a tool used by contemporary daykeepers in the Ayöök area of Oaxaca, Mexico, which along with the prognostications and prescriptions of the 260-day calendar, helps to cure illnesses and afflictions. This divinatory practice was also employed by precolonial tonalpouhque, who were experts of reading the tonalamatl, the pictographic manuscripts with calendrical, ritual and oracular content, such as the now called Borgia Group codices. In this article maize divination will be described and analyzed, arguing that (...) maize divination results in images that can be read in a similar way to these codices. The reading of maize is approached here by employing the concepts of signs and symbols as described by Carl Jung and the notions of chronotope and dialogical narratives by Mijail Bakhtin. The Jungian understanding of divinatory practices as a means of gaining consciousness of oneself is also applied to argue in favor of the therapeutic capacity of reading maize, as it offers relief and triggers action. (shrink)

This paper explores the interrelationship between maize farming, the discourse of modernity, and the performance of a modern farmer in southern Zambia. The post-colonial Zambian government discursively constructed maize as a vehicle for expanding economic modernization into rural Zambia and undoing the colonial government’s urban modernization bias. The pressures of neo-liberal reform have changed this discursive construction in ways that constitute maize as an obstacle to sustained food security in southern Zambia. Despite this discursive change, maize continues to occupy a (...) central position in the farming systems of the region. I argue that the continued prevalence of maize in southern Zambia can be understood as a performance that allows farmers to maintain their identities as modern rural subjects. The paper concludes with the policy implications of the field of performance on two contemporary debates in Zambian food security: the use of GMO crops and the promotion of cassava as a drought tolerant alternative to maize. (shrink)

It is useful to envision two fundamentally different ways by which the timing of plant development is regulated: developmental stage‐transition mechanisms and time‐to‐flowering mechanisms. The existence of both mechanisms is indicated by the behavior of various mutants. Shoot stage transitions are defined by dominant mutants representing at least four different genes; each mutant retards transitions from juvenile shoot stages to more adult shoot stages. In addition, dominant leaf stage‐transition mutants in at least seven different genes have similar phenotypes, but the (...) leaf rather than the shoot is the. focus (and at least two of these genes encode domain proteins.) One mutant, Hairy sheath frayed 1‐0 (Hsf1‐O) simultaneously affects shoot and leaf; this mutant's behavior initiated our interest in plant heterochronism(1). The second type of timekeeping involves time‐to‐flowering. As with most plant but not animals species, cultivars of the maize species vary greatly for the time‐to‐flowering quantitative trait: between 6 and 14 weeks is common. It is via the 'slipping time frames' interaction that takes place between stage‐transition mutants and time‐to‐flowering genetic back‐grounds that unexpected and radical phenotypes occur. We see a reservoir of previously unsuspected morphological possibilities among the few heterochronic genotypes we have constructed, possibilities that may mimic the sort of variation needed to fuel macroevolution without having to posit (as done by Goldschmidt(2)) any special macromutational mechanisms. (shrink)

Understanding the causes of maize landrace loss in farmers’ field is essential to design effective conservation strategies. These strategies are necessary to ensure that genetic resources are available in the future. Previous studies have shown that this loss is caused by multiple factors. In this longitudinal study, we used a collection of 93 maize landrace accessions from Morelos, Mexico, and stored at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) Maize Germplasm Bank, to trace back to the original 66 donor (...) families after 50 years and explore the causes for why they abandoned or conserved their seed lots. We used an actor-centered approach, based on interviews and focus group discussions. We adopt a Multi-Level Perspective framework to examine loss as a process, accommodating multiple causes and the interactions among them. We found that the importance of maize landrace cultivation had diminished over the last 50 years in the study area. By 2017, 13 families had conserved a total of 14 seed lots directly descended from the 1967 collection. Focus group participants identified 60 accessions that could still be found in the surrounding municipalities. Our findings showed that multiple interconnected changes in maize cultivation technologies, as well as in maize markets, other crop markets, agricultural and land policies, cultural preferences, urbanization and climate change, have created an unfavorable environment for the conservation of maize landraces. Many of these processes were location- and landrace-specific, and often led to landrace abandonment during the shift from one farmer generation to the next. (shrink)

The discovery of transgenes in maize landraces in Mexico, a center of diversity for this crop, raises questions about the potential impact of transgene diffusion on maize diversity. The concept of diversity and farmers’ role in maintaining diversity is quite complex. Farmers’ behavior is expected to have a significant influence on causing transgenes to diffuse, to be expressed differently, and to accumulate within landraces. Farmers’ or consumers’ perceptions that transgenes are “contaminants” and that landraces containing transgenes are “contaminated” could cause (...) these landraces to be rejected and trigger a direct loss of diversity. (shrink)

The genetic diversity argument (GDA) is one of the most commonly voiced objections to advances in reproductive and genetic technologies. According to the argument, scientific and technological developments in the realm of genetics and human reproduction will lead to lower genetic diversity, which will threaten the health and survivability of the human population. This discussion explicates and analyzes the GDA and challenges its empirical assumptions. It also discusses the possible significance of the GDA in our overall thinking about genetics and (...) human reproduction and examines two proposals for preserving "useful" genes. (shrink)

A class of maize mutants, collectively known as disease lesion mimics, display discrete disease‐like symptoms in the absence of pathogens. It is intriguing that a majority of these lesion mimics behave as dominant gain‐of‐function mutations. The production of lesions is strongly influenced by light, temperature, developmental state and genetic background. Presently, the biological significance of this lesion mimicry is not clear, although suggestions have been made that they may represent defects in the plants' recognition of, or response to, pathogens. One (...) feature that is common to all lesion mimics is their association with cell death. In plants, as in animals, a number of developmental and pathological processes exist where controlled cell death, whether programmed or triggered in response to physiological or environmental stimuli, constitutes the normal aspect of life. Might disease lesion mimic mutations represent variants where regulation of desirable cell death has gone awry? In this paper we argue that this might be the case, and further conjecture that these mutants offer a unique opportunity for studying the genetic and cellular mechanisms of cell death in plants. (shrink)

Expression and transposition of the Suppressor‐mutator (Spm) transposon of maize are controlled by interacting epigenetic and autoregulatory mechanisms. Methylation of critical element sequences prevents both transcription and transposition, heritably inactivating the element. The promoter, comprising the terminal 0.2 kb of the element, and a 0.35‐kb, highly GC‐rich, downstream sequence are the methylation target sequences. The element encodes two proteins necessary for transposition, TnpA and TnpD. There are multiple TnpA binding sites, both in the 5′ terminal promoter region and at the (...) element's 3′ end. In addition to its role in transposition, TnpA is both a positive and a negative regulator of transcription. TnpA represses the element's promoter when it is not methylated. When the element is inactive and its promoter methylated, TnpA activates the methylated promoter and facilitates both its transient and heritable demethylation. (shrink)

Current models for regulation of parent‐specific gene expression in plants have been based on a small number of imprinted genes in Arabidopsis. These present repression as the default state, with expression requiring targeted activation. In general, repression is associated with maintenance methylation of cytosines, while no role has been found in Arabidopsis imprinting for de novo methylation—unlike the case in mammals. A recent paper1 both reinforces and challenges the model drawn from Arabidopsis. Methylation patterns of two imprinted loci in maize (...) were tracked from gametes to offspring, enabling an exploration of the timing of imprinting. For one gene, fie1, the results were as expected: parent‐specific methylation patterns were inherited from the three types of gamete: egg, central cell and sperm. The behaviour of fie2, however, was a surprise: no alleles were methylated in the gametes, although paternally contributed fie2 is methylated and silent in the endosperm, indicating that, in some cases, plant imprinting requires de novo DNA methylation. This work significantly broadens our understanding of plant imprinting and points to a greater diversity in imprinting mechanisms than has previously been appreciated. BioEssays 28: 1167–1171, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The struggle over genetically-engineered (GE) maize in Mexico reveals a deep conflict over the criteria used in the governance of agri-food systems. Policy debate on the topic of GE maize has become “scientized,” granting experts a high level of political authority, and narrowing the regulatory domain to matters that can be adjudicated on the basis of scientific information or “managed” by environmental experts. While scientization would seem to narrow opportunities for public participation, this study finds that Mexican activists acting “in (...) defense of maize” engage science in multiple ways, using and producing scientific knowledge as well as treating scientific discussions as a stage for launching complex social critiques. Drawing from research in science and technology studies, this article assesses the impacts and pitfalls of three tactics used by maize activists that respond to the scientization of biotechnology politics: (1) using scientific information as a resource; (2) participating in scientific research; and (3) reframing policy problems as broadly social, rather than as solely scientific or technical. The obstacles that maize activists have faced in carrying out each of these efforts indicate that despite diverse and sophisticated engagements between social movements and the scientific field, scientization remains a significant institutional barrier to democratizing agricultural governance. (shrink)

Busseola fusca is a maize and sorghum pest that can cause significant damage to both crops. Given that maize is one of the main cereals grown in the worldwide, this pest is a major challenge for maize production and therefore for the economies of several countries . In this paper , based on the life cycle of B. fusca, we propose a mathematical model to study the population dynamics of this insect pest . A sensitivity analysis using the eFast method (...) was performed to show the most important parameters of the model. We present the theoretical analysis of the model. More precisely, we derive a threshold parameter 0 , called basic offspring number and show that the trivial equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable whenever 0≤1 , while if 0>1 , the non trivial equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable. The theoretical results are supported by numerical simulations. (shrink)

Maize develops separate male and female flowers in different locations on a single plant. Male flowers develop at the tip of the shoot in the tassel, and female flowers develop on the ears, which terminate short branches. The development of male flowers in tassels and female flowers in ears is the result of selective abortion of pistils or stamens, respectively, in developing florets. Genetic analysis has shown that stamen abortion and pistil abortion are under the control of two different genetic (...) pathways. Local levels of the plant hormone gibberellic acid determine whether or not stamens are suppressed. Pistil abortion is under the regulation of the tassel seed genes, one of which has been shown to encode a short‐chain alcohol dehydrogenase. The tassel seed genes play a role in regulating the fate of inflorescence meristems as well as pistil primordium fate. (shrink)

In September 2012, Gilles-Eric Séralini and seven coauthors published an article in Food and Chemical Toxicology claiming that rats fed Roundup©-resistant genetically modified maize alone, genetically modified maize with Roundup©, or Roundup© for 2 years had a higher percentage of tumors and kidney and liver damage than normal controls. Shortly after this study was published, numerous scientists and several scientific organizations criticized the research as methodologically and ethically flawed. In January 2014, the journal retracted the article without the authors’ consent (...) on the grounds that the research was inconclusive. In June 2014, Environmental Sciences Europe published a slightly modified version of the retracted paper. The publication, retraction and subsequent republication of the Séralini study raise important scientific and ethical issues for journal editors. Decisions to retract an article should be made on the basis of well-established policies. Articles should be retracted only for serious errors that undermine the reliability of the data or results, or for serious ethical lapses, such as research misconduct or mistreatment of animal or human subjects. Inconclusiveness, by itself, is not a sufficient reason for retracting an article, though a flawed study design might be. Retracted articles that are submitted for republication should undergo scientific review to ensure that they meet appropriate standards. Republished articles should be linked to the original, retracted publication. Journals that are reviewing studies with significant scientific and social implications should take special care to ensure that peer review is rigorous and fair. (shrink)

In lowland South America, sacred food plants have taken an ethnographic back seat to psychotropic plants. Yet, such foods are often central to local understandings of mythology, healing, ceremony, and spiritual well‐being. In this article, I elucidate the sacred nature of two kinds of food plants that occupy special sociocultural spaces among the A’uwẽ (Xavante) in Central Brazil: cultivated maize and collected root vegetables. Although these are not the only sacred food plants in A’uwẽ society, they are iconic because they (...) are considered uniquely appropriate gifts during certain ceremonial and ritual events. I also explore how I conducted research about ceremonial ethnobotanical topics in a society that considers most sacred and spiritual knowledge privileged. Both sacred plant foods highlighted here continue to be commonly given as presents expressing gratitude to others during popular ceremonial occasions, thereby maintaining them in the collective consciousness as integral components of contemporary social life. (shrink)

In this essay, through the concepts of cosmotechnics and technodiversity proposed by Yuk Hui, I present an exploratory sketch regarding the search for a Mesoamerican cosmotechnics from the perspective of the deep relationship that pre-Hispanic cultures have maintained with maize since ancient times. I consider that this relationship expresses a particular Mesoamerican cosmotechnics that—in Hui’s terms—manages to unify “the cosmic order and the moral order through technical activities” in these societies, even to the present day. Similarly, I argue that the (...) biological, agricultural, and gastronomic techniques—such as the milpa, chinampas, and nixtamalization—which have historically been woven around maize are an example of technodiversity that has persisted and withstood the onslaught of the capitalist logic. Finally, I affirm that this cosmotechnics has the potential to be configured as a cosmopolitics that must first overcome the obstacles of nationalist and identity discourses that became prevalent in post-revolutionary Mexico through the indigenist turn, and that are currently configured around the defence of traditional maize against the attempts to introduce its transgenic equivalent in recent decades. (shrink)

Smallholder producers are the collective most likely to be affected by the introduction of GMOs globally, yet the least included in public debates and consultation about the development, implementation or regulation of this agricultural biotechnology. Why are the voices and arguments of smallholder farmers being excluded from national and international GM debates and regulation? In this article, we identify barriers which prevent smallholder farmers in Mexico from having a voice in public political, economic, scientific and social fori regarding the GM (...) maize controversy. Through the analysis of empirical data from a case study in Mexico, we identify political, institutional, economic and ontological reasons that lie behind that exclusion. We conclude with an appraisal of smallholder farmers’ perspectives on GM maize and their visions of Mexico’s rural future, within which they demand a meaningful and rightful space. (shrink)

Local seed systems remain the fundamental source of seeds for many crops in developing countries. Climate resilience for small holder farmers continues to depend largely on locally available seeds of traditional crop varieties. High rainfall events can have as significant an impact on crop production as increased temperatures and drought. This article analyzes the dynamics of maize diversity over 3 years in a farming community of Yucatán state, Mexico, where elevated levels of precipitation forced farmers in 2012 to reduce maize (...) diversity in their plots. We study how farmers maintained their agroecosystem resilience through seed networks, examining the drivers influencing maize diversity and seed provisioning in the year preceding and following the 2012 climatic disturbance. We found that, under these challenging circumstances, farmers focused their efforts on their most reliable landraces, disregarding hybrids. We show that farmers were able to recover and restore the diversity usually cultivated in the community in the year following the critical climate event. The maize dynamic assessed in this study demonstrates the importance of community level conservation of crop diversity. Understanding farmer management strategies of agrobiodiversity, especially during a challenging climatic period, is necessary to promote a more tailored response to climate change in traditional farming systems. (shrink)

Information about the structure, function and regulation of the maize Suppressormutator (Spm) transposable element has emerged from the genetic and molecular characterization of both deletion mutations and an unconventional type of reversible genetic change (epimutation). The element is subject to an epigenetic mechanism that can either stably inactivate it or specify one of a variety of heritable programs of differential element expression in development. The essay explores the relationship between the Spm element's epigenetic developmental programming mechanism and the determinative events (...) central to plant development and differentiation. (shrink)

Since Darwin, there has been a long and arduous struggle to understand the source and maintenance of natural genetic variation and its relationship to phenotype. The reason that this task is so difficult is that it requires integration of detailed, and as yet incomplete, knowledge from several biological disciplines, including evolutionary, population, and developmental genetics. In this ‘post‐genomic’ era, it is relatively easy to identify differences in the DNA sequence between individuals. However, the task remains to delineate how this abundant (...) genetic diversity actually contributes to phenotypic diversity. This necessitates tackling the problem of hidden genetic variation. Genetic polymorphisms can be conditionally cryptic, but have the potential to contribute to phenotypic variation in particular genetic backgrounds or under specific environmental conditions. A recent paper by Lauter and Doebley highlights the contribution of hidden genetic variation to traits characterizing the morphological evolution of modern maize from its wild grass‐like progenitor teosinte.1 This work is the first to demonstrate hidden variance for selected (agronomically ‘adaptive’) traits in a well‐characterized model for morphological evolution. BioEssays 24:685–689, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Gender and social inclusion efforts in agricultural development are focused on making uptake of agricultural technologies more equitable. Yet research looking at how gender relations influence technology uptake often assumes that men and women within a household make farm management decisions as individuals. Relatively little is understood about the dynamics of agricultural decision-making within dual-adult households where individuals’ management choices are likely influenced by others in the household. This study used vignettes to examine decision-making related to maize plot management in (...) 698 dual-adult households in rural Kenya. The results indicated a high degree of joint management of maize plots (55%), although some management decisions—notably those related to purchased inputs—were slightly more likely to be controlled by men, while other decisions—including those related to hiring of labor and maize end uses—were more likely to be made by women. The prevalence of joint decision-making underscores the importance of ensuring that both men’s and women’s priorities and needs are reflected in design and marketing of interventions to support maize production, including those related to seed systems, farmer capacity building, and input delivery. (shrink)

One of the major adjustments brought on by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a change in the relationship between Mexican agricultural support institutions and the small-scale agricultural sector. Post-NAFTA restructuring programs sought to correct previous inefficiencies in this sector, but they have also had the effect of marginalizing the producers who steward and manage the country’s reserve of maize (Zea mays) genetic diversity. Framed by research suggesting that certain maize varieties in a rain-fed farming region in southern (...) Sonora are in danger of loss due chiefly to long-term drought, this article explores the ramifications of post-NAFTA agricultural policies for in situ maize diversity conservation. Qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews with agricultural support institutions and participant observation with farmers, were used to gather data on dryland farmers’ access to research and extension, as well as possibilities for collective action. In southern Sonora, agricultural support is oriented primarily toward high-tech production, and there are structural barriers to small-scale farmers’ access to research and extension institutions. Further, collective action around agriculture is limited. These circumstances represent significant limitations to farmers’ options for accessing new techniques which might help maintain maize diversity in the context of economic and environmental change. (shrink)

When genetically modified (GM) imported corn was found growing in Oaxaca and the Tehuacán Valley of Puebla, Mexico (2000–2002), it intensified the debate between activists, academics, and government officials about the effects of trade liberalization on Mexican corn farmers and maize biodiversity. In order to understand the challenges faced by corn farmers and in situ diversity, it is important to contextualize GM corn within the recent neoliberal corn regime and its regional manifestations. This essay offers (...) a case study of how indigenous corn farmers from the southern Tehuacán Valley have adapted to such neoliberal reforms and economic crisis by combining local corn production with US-bound labor migration. (shrink)

The corn wolf : writing apotropaic texts -- Animism and the philosophy of everyday life -- The stories things tell and why they tell them -- Humming -- Excelente zona social -- I'm so angry I made a sign -- Weeks in Palestine : my first visit -- A go slow manifesto -- Iconoclasm dictionary -- The obscene in everyday life -- Syllable and sound -- Don Miguel.

Research is being conducted on how corn and the llama, extremely modest elements linked to everyday Andean life, had a prominent religious significance in pre-Hispanic Peru and continue to assume, in much of the Andean Quechua culture, syncretic connotations as a result of more than five centuries of cultural and religious transformations. Likewise, a religious duality is established between these - which seems to be the organizing matrix of the complex symbols of the Andean Quechua culture - that manifests (...) itself in a series of symbolic relationships of opposition, complementation, and analogical and homological equivalence. The theoretical perspective is to conceive religion as a cultural system, with its subjective and symbolic dimension in the terms of Clifford Geertz, and with its objective dimension as proposed by Manuel Marzal. For the study, significant ethnographic work has been carried out in the peasant communities of Lorensayocc and Anansayocc in the Quinua district and in others in Ayacucho region. Additionally, chronicles and other ethnographic sources referring to Cusco and Puno, in southern Peru, have been reviewed. (shrink)

Edgar Zilsel's famous thesis, which argues that modern experimental science was born from the union of artisans and intellectuals in the 16th century, received little support when Zilsel proposed it in the 1940s. In recent years, however, with the turn toward social and cultural history of science, the “Zilsel Thesis” has undergone something of a revival as historians rethink the relevance of artisanal knowledge for the history of early modern science. This essay looks at the Zilsel Thesis in a global (...) setting – specifically a colonial Iberian setting – and argues for its relevance in framing natural history, medicine, and the impact of science on everyday life. Using the examples of corn, quina, and cochineal, this essay argues that the agronomic, chemical, and entomological knowledge accumulated over generations of practice by indigenous practitioners was in fact artisanal knowledge that was passed on to European intellectuals in “global trading zones” to become part of the Western scientific patrimony. (shrink)