Beyond Anthropocene?

After many years of debates and research, the International Union of Geological Science issued the final verdict: We do not (yet) live in the Anthropocene. This decision, despite its authority, will not quell the widespread usage of the term in non-geological scholarship and public debates. Specialist journals and numerous books are dedicated to exploring the implications of this term. The decision did not deny that something fundamental has changed with planet Earth and that humans are the root cause. Hence, a compromise proposal counts this as a ‘geological event’. Still, that would not rescue the term for a geological epoch. Since we cannot expect non-geologists to stop using the term, we face a terminological conundrum.

The arguments are on the table, and I do not want to recount them here. Though widely used, the term Anthropocene is not generally accepted in the social sciences and the humanities. Many critics point out that the term hides the real causalities and culprits in the human drama, referring to abstract ‘anthropos’ only (and not to the white capitalist males, for some). In my view, the term is descriptively misleading because it does not recognise the autonomous evolutionary status of the technosphere. However, the term rightly suggests that with the rise of the technosphere, humans have assumed the critical role of having regulatory agency in the Earth system and, therefore, a solid ethical responsibility. This responsibility heralds the Anthropocene and less the factual human impact.

The decision against recognising the Anthropocene raises essential questions about the status of the geological sciences. The decision grounds on sound and accepted criteria of stratigraphic analysis. What is the meaning of such criteria? Over the past decades, the geologist Victor Baker has explored the notion of semiosis to approach geology on philosophical terms. ‘Geosemiosis’ means that geology is the science of the material signs of the planet, in most straightforward words. Typically, this is restricted to non-living signs, distinguishing geology from the more recent Earth system sciences, where the term Anthropocene has been rapidly adopted. For geology, material signs are taken as indicators of Earth’s past system processes. Material signs like fossils suggest hypotheses about those processes that can no longer be directly observed. Baker argues that geology follows a different logic of explanation than physics, which can be elucidated by referring to Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy of signs and science. One remarkable feature of geology is thinking in very long periods, which often implies that processes with very low velocities assume a critical causal role, such as, most famously, the continental drift hypothesis in. the early 20th century. This hypothesis was later confirmed and is essential for understanding plate tectonics and for practical applications of geological knowledge, such as predicting earthquakes. For the pragmatist Peirce, such practical applications are the key to assessing the truthfulness of scientific knowledge.

Against this brief sketch, what is unique about the Anthropocene case? First, the phenomenon evolves in a much shorter time span than geological time frames: For past assessments of the transition between epochs, a few centuries are irrelevant. The speed of change induced by human impact compares to the effects of scores of asteroids falling on Earth within a few decades. Second, suppose geologists confine their focus to non-living material signs. In that case, the fact is that within this short time, entirely new substances and objects have appeared globally, which are as alien as asteroids arriving from outer space. This fact materialises technosphere evolution and, as such, qualifies as a geological sign indicating the emergence of that new layer of Earth system regulation. In a sense, marginalising this observation stays in tension with the methodological focus of geology on physical materiality. Third, from that angle, the Anthropocene does not have descriptive status but is a geological hypothesis motivated by these signs. As a hypothesis, it needs empirical testing, which, however, is not accumulating further evidence in terms of signs but insights on causal mechanisms. Here, the Anthropocene case differs radically from all other previous cases of fixing epochs, as geologists can observe these causal processes in real time. Fourth, this means that the status of the Anthropocene is not descriptive but is a macro-prediction which, as such, is fallible.

Hence, in the geosemiotic approach, there are principled differences between the former assessment of geological epochs and the current case. From the pragmatist point of view, what counts in this case is that geology assumes performative epistemological and pragmatic dynamics for the first time, as familiar from social sciences such as economics. When economists develop new concepts of property rights, this affects policy making and human behaviour, thus changing the object of their study, perhaps in a way that the original theories are confirmed. The concept of the Anthropocene has had performative effects as well in raising awareness in the public and offering spaces for shifting fundamental conceptions on policies, eventually also affecting human behaviour. However, the argument must be cautiously weighed in the context of geology: does establishing a new epoch change the planet? Even in the narrow sense, geology has performative effects, such as when geologists and engineers develop technologies for fracking, which affects the regional geological processes and engages human behaviour. Indeed, most practising geologists are involved in such engineering projects, which has motivated the development of the distinct field of geoethics. In the case of the Anthropocene, I come back to my previous point, namely that the term captures the new human responsibility for the planet, now including the technosphere. Hence, adopting the term would recognise its performative powers and, by implication, would change the disciplinary identity of geology.

To sum up, the Anthropocene case is radically different from other issues of stratification as it relates to a hypothesis that can be tested against real-time data on present planetary changes. Further, this hypothesis has performative powers. Therefore, the decision to adopt the term cannot be judged on conventional geological science criteria but is fundamentally ethical. In a sense, adopting the Anthropocene is a matter of precaution, in the double meaning of accepting it as well confirmed for the time being, and regarding it as a beacon for responsible human action in the future.