Stephen Wood - Cambridge Alumni

Stephen Wood - Cambridge Alumni
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Stephen Wood
Cambridge Alumni
Zoology
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Stephen Wood is an independent researcher in phenomenology and the environment. He has a PhD in systematic zoology from the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum in London.  He has held an honorary fellowship in the Theoretical Physics Research Unit at Birkbeck College, London.  In 2017 he was a participant on the inaugural Evolving Science Association fellowship programme in holistic science at the Nature Institute in upstate New York.
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Papers - An Ontology of Living Being
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Papers - A Phenomenology of Encounter
Papers - Phenomenological Geography
Papers - Systematic Biology
Conference Proceedings ANPA
Conference Proceedings Semantic Arts
Thesis Chapters
Presentations
10
EAPs by vol (1990-2020)
Papers
Papers - An Ontology of Living Being by Stephen Wood
A Fishkeeper’s View of Animal Welfare
Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology
, 2021
The essay is inspired by my experience of keeping Gustav, a betta or Siamese fighting fish, while...
more
The essay is inspired by my experience of keeping Gustav, a betta or Siamese fighting fish, while working in California 2007-2008.  I present the notion of animal being-in-the-world as described in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of nature (Merleau-Ponty, 1945 [1963]).  This sets the stage for the agency-based approach to animal welfare advocated by Wemelsfelder (1997, 2001, 2007).  I describe the observations of an experienced betta keeper (Song, 2006) and show how Song shares with Wemelsfelder a concern for the behavioural style or body language of animals under human care, a concern that springs from their appreciation of animals as personal, sentient beings in their own right.
Papers - A Phenomenology of Encounter by Stephen Wood
Learning to See: Connecting with nature at home and at work
Science and Mathematics Group of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain Newsletter
, 2018
Describes an experience of learning to see the trees at home and at work, which transformed my un...
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Describes an experience of learning to see the trees at home and at work, which transformed my understanding of the local landscape.
An Understanding-Grounded Approach to Science Education
Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology
, 2020
In this essay, I distinguish between two contrasting approaches to science teaching, which I name...
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In this essay, I distinguish between two contrasting approaches to science teaching, which I name knowledge-grounded and understanding-grounded. In the knowledge-grounded approach, the student is asked to acquire and to apply knowledge with little guidance on how to develop the necessary understanding to make that knowledge personally real.  In contrast, the understanding-grounded approach seeks to make knowledge more personally vivid and meaningful by bringing the student to an overall understanding of the subject, within which relevant knowledge is situated and takes
on a deeper, more comprehensive, first-person significance.
Drawing on British philosopher J.G. Bennett’s insights into the nature of scientific activity, I illustrate how the understanding-grounded approach appeals to the four aspects of scientific activity that Bennett identifies as contact, vision, knowledge, and technique.
To provide a thematic focus, I reflect on the implications of understanding-grounded and knowledge-grounded approaches for sustainability education. I argue that the understanding-grounded approach has the advantage of being more inclusive and less hierarchical, allowing a greater number of students to advance toward the teacher’s own state of expertise.
Jizz - Science or Poetry
Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology
, 2023
In this essay, I continue my examination of plant and animal encounters in place. In a previous e...
more
In this essay, I continue my examination of plant and animal encounters in place. In a previous essay, I described a spectrum of encounters with birds
ranging from obliviousness to heightened contact (Wood 2023). I explained how, in the most intensely heightened encounters, I captured the bird’s jizz, that unique quality of a living being that allows an identification in a flash of insight.
Here, I explore the theme of jizz in more detail. What does jizz offer the science of ornithology? Is jizz identification reliable? Is jizz with its poetic images and flashes of insight unsuited to an analytical, rational
approach to ornithology?
The Changing Qualities of Nature Encounters - Taking a Walk Around the Lake at Lunchtime—2
Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology
, 2023
In this essay, I continue my examination of plant and animal encounters in place. In a previous e...
more
In this essay, I continue my examination of plant and animal encounters in place. In a previous essay, I showed how my experiences of the lake at my workplace shifted from year to year (Wood 2022). I explained how, now alert to the natural rhythms of the place, I could perceive with greater depth and notice novel, surprising elements. Here, I explore the theme of noticing in more detail.
Phenomenological geographer David Seamon identified noticing as one mode of
place encounter. He located the modes of obliviousness, watching, noticing, and
heightened contact on a spectrum running from greater separateness to greater oneness between human experiencers and their surroundings (Seamon 2015, Part 4, figure below). My focus is the shift from obliviousness to noticing and the oneness with nature marked by moments of heightened contact.
Intertwining with Nature - Taking a Walk around the Lake at Lunchtime—1
Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology
, 2022
In this essay, I work to understand a particular place in Provence, France. The unlikely source o...
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In this essay, I work to understand a particular place in Provence, France. The unlikely source of inspiration is a busy motorway exit near the sprawling shopping center of Avignon Nord. The essay may challenge preconceptions about how nature might be experienced in a suburban setting and give a message of hope that wildness can be found in unlikely places. In recounting my journey, I address the following questions:
▪ How long does it take to get to know a place and its wildlife?
▪ What is the right attitude to have?
▪ Is it easy or difficult to maintain this attitude?
▪ Is getting to know a place a lonely task, or are other human beings helpfully involved?
▪ What are the different processes intertwining human being and place that allow this “getting to know” to be successful?
Papers - Phenomenological Geography by Stephen Wood
Moving and Ongoing Place Processes
Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology
, Jun 2016
In this essay, I interpret a recent experience of moving house as an ongoing process. I describe...
more
In this essay, I interpret a recent experience of moving house as an ongoing process.  I describe the delicate balance of six place processes and how they may conflict or mutually reinforce one another, drawing on the work of phenomenological geographer David Seamon (2012, 2014).
Moving: Re-Making a Lifeworld
Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology
, Jan 2016
I explore a personal experience of moving to a new house. I highlight several themes, including h...
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I explore a personal experience of moving to a new house. I highlight several themes, including horizontality and verticality; loss and unavailableness; action space and wayfinding; and comfortableness and anxiety.  These themes mark the challenge of making a new home and draw on parallel experiences of inhabiting, moving, and home-making in my childhood and at university.
Favorite Places: Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Place Attachment
Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology
, 2014
Wood is an independent researcher in phenomenology and the environment. He has a PhD in systemati...
more
Wood is an independent researcher in phenomenology and the environment. He has a PhD in systematic zoology from the University of Cambridge and has held an honorary fellowship in the Theoretical Physics Research Unit at Birkbeck College, London. His essay, "Lichens and the Cry of the Earth," appeared in the winter 2014 EAP.
[email protected]
. © 2014 Stephen Wood.
Lichens and the Cry of the Earth
Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology
, 2014
Wood is an independent researcher in phenomenology and the environment. He studied systematic zoo...
more
Wood is an independent researcher in phenomenology and the environment. He studied systematic zoology at the University of Cambridge and has held an honorary fellowship in the Theoretical Physics Research Unit at Birkbeck College, London. This essay was written in 2008, after Wood's return from an Earth Jurisprudence course at Schumacher College in Totnes, England. At the time, he was living in Nîmes in the south of France.
[email protected]
. © 2014 Stephen Wood.
Papers - Systematic Biology by Stephen Wood
The first use of “Homology” and “Analogy” in the writings of Richard Owen
Archives of Natural History 22: 255-259
, 1995
The aims of this paper are twofold:
(1) To correct errors in the history of Richard Owen's writ...
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The aims of this paper are twofold:
(1) To correct errors in the history of Richard Owen's writings presented by Sloan (1992) in his edition of Owen's Hunterian lectures of 1837, specifically that the terms "homology" and "analogy" are not distinguished in those lectures, as claimed by Sloan.
(2) To bring to the attention of a wider audience the existence of an article by Richard Owen on the Cephalopoda, in Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology (Volume 1, 1836), and specifically, to point out that there is a passage in the article in which Owen does use "homology" and "analogy" as distinct terms.
Monophyly and comparisons between trees
Cladistics 10: 339-346
, Dec 1994
The Farris method for assessing the empirical status of groups, as either monophyletic, paraphyle...
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The Farris method for assessing the empirical status of groups, as either monophyletic, paraphyletic or polyphyletic, is discussed. The reasons for presenting the method in terms of the behaviour of abstract, rather than real, characters are upheld. The method (i) reflects the insight that monophyly and related terms are used in comparisons between trees, (ii) avoids the problems associated with definitions based on the exclusion of subgroups, (iii) avoids the contentious issue of inclusion vs. exclusion of a group's most recent common ancestor. The Farris method is shown to be equivalent to the cluster distortion method for comparing the shapes of a pair of trees. Descriptor variables for each cluster in a reference tree are mapped on to a comparison tree. If a cluster's descriptor requires homoplasy then the cluster is a nonmonophyletic group. If the cluster descriptors behave according to Wagner parsimony, the kind of nonmonophyletic group is determined by the kind of homoplasy exhibited by the descriptor variable. The single cluster distortion coefficient is shown to be equal to (1-ri), where ri is the retention index of the descriptor variable on the comparison tree. The overall distortion coefficient acts as a tree comparison metric and is defined as (1-RI) where RI is the ensemble retention index.
A Hierarchical Theory of Systematics
Evolutionary Theory 10: 273-277
, 1994
Beatty (1982) claims that the pattern philosophy of the cladistic method is antagonistic to evolu...
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Beatty (1982) claims that the pattern philosophy of the cladistic method is antagonistic to evolutionary theory. I show that the pattern philosophy is consistent with evolution if one takes into account the nature of hierarchical systems, as elucidated by Allen and Starr (1982). A surprising correspondence is revealed between the hierarchy theory of Allen and Starr (1982) and the pattern philosophy of Rieppel (1988). Rieppel (1988) describes two complementary approaches to systematics, called taxic and transformational.  These are respectively equivalent to the linguistic and dynamic approaches to hierarchical systems described by Allen and Starr (1982).
Conference Proceedings ANPA by Stephen Wood
Encountering Birds: A Phenomenology of Jizz
Chiasmus: Proceedings of ANPA 37-38
, 2018
I describe how my encounters with birds illustrate the ornithological
notion of ‘jizz,’ the chara...
more
I describe how my encounters with birds illustrate the ornithological
notion of ‘jizz,’ the characteristic way a bird appears to the watcher. I
argue that jizz captures the notions of the ‘inscape’ and ‘instress’
proposed by the 19th century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. In turn,
Hopkins’ terms.provide the basis for the triad of identity, as proposed
by philosopher and polymath John Bennett.
The Quantum Potential and the Epigenetic Landscape
Foundations: Proceedings of ANPA 28
, 2007
In this paper I compare the account of quantum measurement given in the Bohm interpretation with ...
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In this paper I compare the account of quantum measurement given in the Bohm interpretation with the account of biological development given by Waddington. This is a comparison of two pictures: Bohm’s quantum potential and Waddington’s epigenetic landscape.
The Comprehensive Categories of Life
Proceedings of ANPA 26
, 2005
In this paper, I show how Peirce’s triadic philosophy – present in his categories of first, secon...
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In this paper, I show how Peirce’s triadic philosophy – present in his categories of first, second and third and in his semiotics of sign, object and interpretant –illuminates the study of living things. Connecting Peirce’s philosophy to the three levels of living organization described by Maturana and Varela (1987), I justify Peirce’s conclusion that all living things have a primitive form of mind.  Turning to classification, I discuss different schools in terms of preference for different kinds of relation, monadic, dyadic or triadic. I reveal that Peirce discovered the triadic logic of cladistics almost a hundred years before Nelson and Platnick (1981). I describe the three stages of cladistic classification in semiotic terms, showing that each involves the discovery of a particular kind of sign.
Modularity and Mereology
Boundaries: Proceedings of ANPA 24
, 2003
In the first section, ‘Morphology and Classification’, I give a brief account of the history of m...
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In the first section, ‘Morphology and Classification’, I give a brief account of the history of morphology and classification, examining the philosophical and theoretical basis of these disciplines. I criticise Darwin’s contribution, questioning whether the explanations he gives in The Origin of Species are valid. I favour the cladistic theory of classification, which rejects the need for evolutionary assumptions.  In ‘Genes and Modules’, I reject neo-Darwinism’s materialistic emphasis on genes. Nucleic acid genes rely on the infrastructure of the cell to carry out their role as replicators. The cell is a modular system of bounded compartments, on which the whole delicate balance of metabolism relies. In ‘Parts and Wholes’, I contrast the mereology of Darwin with that of cladistics: historical groups comprising ancestor and descendants vs. relationships of organisms comprising common characters. These considerations of mereology lead on to a discussion of the appropriate theoretical basis of morphology and classification. In ‘Specifications and Instances’, I suggest such a basis is to be found in category theory.
The Holographic Principle in Biological Development and Quantum Physics
Correlations: Proceedings of ANPA
, 2002
The holographic principle posits that the world is "a network of holograms, each of which contain...
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The holographic principle posits that the world is "a network of holograms, each of which contains coded within it information about the relationship between the others" (Smolin, 2000: 178). In this paper, this principle is used to sketch a unified understanding of morphology spanning biological development and quantum physics, agreeing with empirical results indicating the key role of hierarchies of holographic surfaces in both of these domains.
Conference Proceedings Semantic Arts by Stephen Wood
The Equation between Semantics and Data Quality
I examine the equation between semantics and data quality and discuss suitable methods for data i...
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I examine the equation between semantics and data quality and discuss suitable methods for data integration. As a rare example of a data quality based semantic technology, I take the ClearCore product from Infoshare Ltd.  I guide the reader through the process of using ClearCore and give examples from financial and retail services projects. The term ontology is found useful in describing the process of data integration, which comes to be seen as uncovering the ontology that underlies the data. The stages of validation and matching involve the specification of different kinds of business rules, constraining and generative respectively. The software helps to elicit these rules from human analysts and thus behaves as an expert system, accumulating a domain-specific knowledge base.
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The market for semantic technology solutions could surpass demand for traditional systems, emphasizing data integration's relevance.
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Thesis Chapters by Stephen Wood
Systematics of the Macrourid Fishes
The systematics of rattail fishes (Teleostei: Gadiformes, Macrouridae) is reexamined focussing on...
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The systematics of rattail fishes (Teleostei: Gadiformes, Macrouridae) is reexamined focussing on the Coryphaenoides group of genera, including Albatrossia, Lionurus, Chalinura and Nematonurus.  The data matrix consists of 69 osteological characters based on personal observations, 17 characters, generally of the soft anatomy, from various published sources and 34 characters reported from peptide mapping of muscle-type lactate dehydrogenase.
--An evolutionary systematics of morphology requires, firstly, a historical concept of homology and secondly, a scientific basis for the recognition of patterns.  Viewing the organism as  a hierarchy of constraint, homology is a relationship of development constraint inherited by parts of organisms.  Taxa are types, relationships of constraint inherited by organisms.  If, from the morphological perspective, taxa are relationships not groups, conventional concepts of monophyly and related terms cannot apply to them.  In practice they describe comparisons between trees.  The creation/discovery of patterns is embedded in the practice of systematics and has its basis in the intelligent abilities of human beings.  Morphology deals with the linguistic aspect of evolution, rather than with its dynamic genetic aspect.  Dynamic and linguistic aspects are complementary yet incompatible.  The scientific status of morphology is shown to rest on this principle of complementarity.
--Through cladistic analysis of a large number of published characters, I investigate the scenarios and relationships of gadiform fishes that have recently been proposed.  The results of the rattail analysis are thus placed within the broader context of gadiform ecology and evolution.  In cladistics, parsimony plays the role of Popper's empirical concept of simplicity, as a method of estimating the hypothesis of highest empirical support.  Assumptions are made about the likely pathways of evolution in the way the characters are coded.  Original classifications of the Gadiformes and the Macrouridae are proposed.  Within the gadiforms there is a general trend from jaw precision to jaw protrusion.  An index of protrusion/precision shows a negative correlation with depth.  Rattails show low values of the index indicating high jaw protrusion.  However, within the family the trend is towards higher jaw precision, and the precision/protrusion index is positively correlated with maximum depth.
--The discovery of cartilage in the exoskeleton of rattail fishes was an unforeseen result of the method of preparation.  In rattails alcian blue reveals hyaline cell cartilage at the margins of certain dermal elements where it is gradually replaced by bone.
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