Capitalizing on forty years of intensive ecological studies, this anthology presents a collection of widely dispersed major publications on theoretical and practical Mediterranean, global environmental and landscape issues. These range from Mediterranean ecosystems and vegetation types in California and Israel, to the significance of fire in the evolution of cultural Mediterranean landscapes in the Pleistocene and Early Holocene with special reference to Mt. Carmel; and from the development of Tanzania Masailand, a sociological and ecological challenge to multifunctional, self-organizing biosphere landscapes and the future of our Total Human Ecosystem.

Each chapter features a comprehensive study of ecological and landscape issues, synthesized in the introduction, and woven with autobiographical experiences. The concluding chapter calls for a transdisciplinary shift in all environmental scientific fields and particularly in landscape and restoration ecology, to cope with the complex, closely interwoven ecological, socio-economical, political and cultural crises facing human society during the present crucial transition from the industrial to the post-industrial, global information age.

Updating and broadening the scope of the groundbreaking Springer book on Landscape Theory and Applications by the author and Lieberman (1994), this is a unique transdisciplinary attempt based on advanced systems complexity theories, which link the natural and human sciences. It will be of value for all those dealing with land and landscape study in the broadest sense as academic scientists, researchers and scholars, professionals and practitioners and students.

Soviet philosophy can no longer be ignored by any serious student of contemporary thought. It is the work of academic philosophers who, on the whole, are neither more nor less competent than their colleagues in the free world. They have, however, inherited a reputation for the dogmatic repetip. on of superannuated doctrines. This reputation, en gendered by poor work under political pressure, was justified until about the mid-fifties. However, in the mid-sixties, when declining pressures make for the toleration of a wider scale of qualified opinion, it is no longer that. The present survey of Soviet thought in the mid-sixties, comprising papers by Western specialists in its major domains, gives an up-to-date account of an impressive field of philosophical endeavor which, awakened from dogmap'c slumbers, rapidly gains in interest and encourages hopes of becoming a valuable component in the vast complex of contemporary philosophy. The studies on Soviet logic and atheism have originally appeared in a special issue of Inquiry (Vol. 9,1) devoted to philosophy in Eastern Europe and edited by the present writer on behalf of Professor Arne Naess. The other papers of this volume are reprinted from Studies in Soviet Thought, the only Western philosophical review entirely dedicated to systematic studies in this field. The necessary permissions by editors and publishers have been granted and are gratefully acknowledged. ER VIN LASZLO v CONTENTS INTRODUCTION J. M."

Capitalizing on forty years of intensive ecological studies, this anthology presents a collection of widely dispersed major publications on theoretical and practical Mediterranean, global environmental and landscape issues. Each chapter features a comprehensive study of ecological and landscape issues, synthesized in the introduction, and woven with autobiographical experiences. The concluding chapter calls for a transdisciplinary shift in all environmental scientific fields and particularly in landscape and restoration ecology, to cope with the complex, closely interwoven ecological, socio-economical, political and cultural crises facing human society during the present crucial transition from the industrial to the post-industrial, global information age.

Updating and broadening the scope of the groundbreaking Springer book on Landscape Theory and Applications by the author and Lieberman (1994), this is a unique transdisciplinary attempt based on advanced systems complexity theories, which link the natural and human sciences.

There are greatly divergent modes of thinking and widely differing problems subsumed as belonging to the domain of eontemporary philosophy. Some philosophers may weil find that they have little more in eommon with their coileagues than their interest in exposing a problem on the level of thought, systematically, and with the optimum regard for the validity of their argumentation. The traditional confliet between philosophie schools lies in the solution different thinkers propose to a problem. In our day, however, there is a deeper schism between the exponents of different sehools than a difference in the problem's solution. The conflict involves already the formulation of the problem. There are at least two general modes of pursuing philosophical investigation where no conflict in the solution of problems not beeause there would be agreement among the thinkers, is possible, but because the problems attacked by the thought of one school are not taken into consideration by the adherents of the other. In general, it may be said without fear of serious opposition that the kind of problems dealt with by neo-positivists and positivistic analysts are seldom if ever closely examined by ontologists, metaphysicians, existentialists and certain other schools of the speculative branch of philosophy, while these philosophers deal with problems which are generally regarded to be outside the scope of philosophie inquiry by positivists and analysts.