Seldom are we privileged to witness an international philosophical movement, which in addition to being a philosophical revolution, vindicates the values and concerns of a critical anthropological approach in Spirituality from the analytic tradition. The work of critical realists is potential remedy for the ills, dichotomies and lacunae inherent in the Western philosophical and spiritual traditions. Critical realism and philosophy of meta-reality, it is claimed, not only emancipate philosophy but, science and society as spiritual. This dissertation explores the many points of confluence and exposes dimensions of living and studying spirituality, which challenge us to think of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and rational (reflexive) judgement in a mode, which cautions against the naive relativism, tacit irrealism and other mistakes which tend to over-characterise our academic discourse with social linguistification, to the detriment of humanity and our utopian freedom and flourishing. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / M. Th. (Christian Spirituality)

Seldom are we privileged to witness an international philosophical movement, which in addition to being a philosophical revolution, vindicates the values and concerns of a critical anthropological approach in Spirituality from the analytic tradition. The work of critical realists is potential remedy for the ills, dichotomies and lacunae inherent in the Western philosophical and spiritual traditions. Critical realism and philosophy of meta-reality, it is claimed, not only emancipate philosophy but, science and society as spiritual. This dissertation explores the many points of confluence and exposes dimensions of living and studying spirituality, which challenge us to think of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and rational (reflexive) judgement in a mode, which cautions against the naive relativism, tacit irrealism and other mistakes which tend to over-characterise our academic discourse with social linguistification, to the detriment of humanity and our utopian freedom and flourishing. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Christian Spirituality)

This PhD responds to a two fold problem with the philosophy of design and the practice of design. The philosophical problem is stated as the discrepancy between a dominant philosophical framework that orders the world according to eternal essences and the actual conditions of the world in which we exist: the conditions of becoming and of flux. Commencing with a critique of the western metaphysical tradition of statics this research project proposes that we need to find a way of describing an evolutionary model of practice, and by so doing to provide a revitalised narration of process. Consequently, the PhD explores the meanings of process through a critical examination of an ensemble of projects created by the author. Within this framework, a number of questions are posed in order to explore the proposition of a process practice. These questions are: What is process? How does one think process? Indeed, how do we get to grasp change? What are the consequences of process thinking on the practices of design, their fields of operation, and their productions? And, how can the thematising of process contribute to the design of the constructed environment, as well as reconfigure the practices of design? This thematising of process is argued to involve a necessary address to the constitutive and interrelated characteristics of process: space/time, movement, change, form and matter. Such an address is also seen to problematise the status of the object, the paradigms of representation, the modes of creation, the economies of exchange, and the structures of community, and to offer a modality of practice which would re-imagine the forms of social exchange to offer an ethical alternative to the tyranny of supply and demand, and thereby reconfigure the potential for dwelling. Making an overview of the discourses and practices engaging with theories of becoming, this thesis argues that almost all of these re-inscribe statics and that consequently the practice of design seems to drag behind our understanding of the world. Through a meditation on dis/appearance, in which the dynamics of being and becoming and the restless ambiguity of the gap are examined, the work establishes a process vocabulary, and makes clear through a material practice, the domains of process thinking, its inclinations, and the kinds of operations and procedures that flourish there. Foregrounding the fertile character of process practice, the PhD then proceeds to introduce notions of the movement-form, the duration-form, the transformational-form, the geometry of encounter, and to argue for physical form as an in-movement poise. Advocating new modes of approach and of attentiveness, and demonstrating new generative methods, this PhD argues that process thinking is not simply an operational stance, but an ethical position that identifies a field of care, and that consequently the design practices be expanded by taking seriously the relationship between process thinking and place making. Thus, this thesis concludes by advocating a mode of place making which, rather than reproduce planned environments as systems of control, configures place as the discursive contested place of encounter and exchange.

The aim of this study was to analyze the subject \"Environmental Education\" offered in the course of Biological Sciences - Federal University at Uberlândia, from 2009/1-2, to understand its limits and possibilities for the improvement of the Environmental Education in the formation of a biologist. The parameters and guidelines were taken from Tbilisi theoretical discussion. The discussion about subject, specialization, curriculum and (inter)disciplinarity in the context of the ongoing paradigm changes in Science also was considered to the analysis and the relationship between Biology and environmental issues. Within the qualitative research, we have chosen the case study, which has been widely used since the 1990s by researchers of Environmental Education. We have selected the discipline as a case, covering the students, the teacher in charge, practices in the classroom and in the field, as well as its insertion in the area of Teaching Practice of the Course Pedagogical Program and at the Institute of Biology of UFU. The strategies for the construction of the survey data were observation and participation in class in two semesters, analysis of the pedagogical course program, a questionnaire for students, interviews with some students who attended the courses and interview with the teacher in charge. The data analysis allowed the construction of the following categories: the subject in the course pedagogical project of the course; the subject in the course; the hours and location of the subject in the curriculum; the subject and students\' conceptions about Environmental Education; the teaching strategies in the subject; cultural studies in the subject; the subject and the research in Environmental Education; (inter)disciplinarity of the subject and the teaching practices during the subject. The research evidenced the difficulty for interdisciplinary work between the teachers; offering the discipline at the end of the course decreased the chances of the students involvement in research in the area, and the great volume and complexity of the texts used brought difficulties to the future biologists; despite the strangeness of the students to the anthropogenic nature adopted in the subject, it was very appreciated by them; no major advances were found in the students conception of Environmental Education; the course hours were insufficient for practice as well as for the development of projects of social changes; cultural studies permeated the subject with a well explored use of films and texts quite instigating. Data analysis subsidized by the theoretical referential chosen indicated that the offer of Environmental Education as a discipline, though it doesn t constitute in an ideal situation consists of an advance to its insertion on the course and that the course meets some assumptions for environmental education waved in Tbilisi going beyond these guidelines under the influence of other theoretical contributions that support the discussions in the area. / O objetivo da presente pesquisa foi analisar a disciplina Educação Ambiental (EA), do curso de Ciências Biológicas da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (UFU), ministrada em 2009/1 e 2009/2, para entender seus limites e possibilidades para o desenvolvimento da Educação Ambiental na formação do biólogo, tendo como parâmetros as orientações de Tbilisi e a discussão teórica a respeito. A discussão teórica sobre disciplina, especialização, currículo e interdisciplinaridade no contexto da mudança de paradigma da Ciência também foi considerada para sustentação da análise, bem como a relação entre a Biologia e a questão ambiental. Dentro da pesquisa qualitativa, optei pelo estudo de caso, o qual vem sendo bastante utilizado desde a década de 1990 por pesquisadores da EA. Selecionei a disciplina como um caso, abrangendo nele os alunos, a docente responsável, as práticas disciplinares em sala e em campo e a inserção da mesma na área de Prática de Ensino, no Projeto Pedagógico do curso e no Instituto de Biologia da UFU. As estratégias para a construção dos dados da pesquisa foram a observação e participação nas aulas nos dois semestres, análise do projeto pedagógico do curso, aplicação de questionário para os alunos da turma, entrevista com alguns alunos que cursaram as disciplinas e entrevista com a professora responsável. A análise dos dados permitiu a construção das seguintes categorias: a disciplina no projeto pedagógico do curso; a presença da disciplina no curso; a carga horária e a localização da disciplina na grade curricular; a disciplina e as concepções dos alunos sobre EA; estratégias didáticas da disciplina; os Estudos Culturais na disciplina; a disciplina e a pesquisa em EA; a disciplinaridade e a interdisciplinaridade da EA e a postura docente durante a disciplina. A pesquisa evidenciou a dificuldade para o trabalho interdisciplinar entre os próprios professores das disciplinas do núcleo de formação pedagógica; a oferta da disciplina no final do curso diminuiu as possibilidades do envolvimento dos alunos com a pesquisa na área; o grande volume e a complexidade dos textos utilizados trouxeram algumas dificuldades para os futuros biólogos; apesar do estranhamento dos alunos à natureza antrópica adotada na disciplina, a mesma foi muito valorizada por eles; não houve grandes avanços entre os alunos na concepção Tradicional de EA; a carga horária foi insuficiente para a parte prática bem como para o desenvolvimento de projetos de transformação social; os Estudos Culturais perpassaram a disciplina com uma bem explorada utilização de filmes e textos bastante instigantes. A análise dos dados subsidiada pelo referencial teórico escolhido indicou que o oferecimento da Educação Ambiental como disciplina, embora não se constitua em uma situação ideal consiste em um avanço para sua inserção no curso e que a disciplina atende alguns pressupostos para a Educação Ambiental acenados em Tbilisi, indo além dessas orientações sob influência de outros aportes teóricos que subsidiam as discussões na área. / Doutor em Educação