XXI Century Science: Oceanography

A collection of scientific, historical, and cultural studies about the ocean.

The ocean is often seen as a separate and alien space that is beyond our control, yet human activities affect both the ocean itself and our perception of it. It is not just scientific discoveries that cause oceanography to evolve as a discipline, but also global economic and political processes.

Edited by Armen Avanessian, Werner Boschmann, and Karen Sarkisov in dialogue with Stefan Helmreich and published in English, Oceanography brings together contemporary writing that seeks to expand our understanding of the ocean. The authors featured in the collection trace links between industrialisation and the destruction of aquatic ecosystems, consider the ocean as a living organism, and propose paths for further research in molecular biology, genetics, and bioinformatics.

This shift in understanding—from the ocean as deep, dark, vast, and mostly inaccessible and not (except to mariners and fishermen) terribly important to the ocean as a vast abode of life, both familiar and strange, and a place on which all life, both marine and terrestrial, depends—is one of the most important cultural and scientific shifts of the twentieth century.

– Naomi Oreskes, excerpt from “Scaling Up Our Vision”

Oceanography is the first book in the “XXI Century Science” joint publishing series by V–A–C Press and Sternberg Press. The series is devoted to resonant research in the natural and social sciences.