What can we do, what should we do?
John Maynard-Smith and Eörs Szathmáry (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995; Szathmáry and Maynard Smith 1995) famously argued that evolution has undergone highly significant ‘major transitions’ in the very units of evolution and the mechanisms by which evolution proceeds. Incorporating the technosphere fully within their schema of ‘major transitions’ would involve expanding the definition of the …
Continue reading "The technosphere as a ‘major transition’?"
What does it mean to be an agent in the ‘critical zone’, the near-surface environment of the Earth where most living things reside and have evolved? This is a complex, dense, folded world, a commons where the powers of each entity – abiotic, living or technological – are dependent on those around it. The character …
Continue reading "Agere and gerere – on ‘action’ in the critical zone"
In current debates about the technosphere, human agency is often taken as a given: Humans are conceived as creators of the technosphere. Anthropocentrism seems also implicit in the term ‘anthropocene’, as many critics point out. One reason for this human-centred approach is that the evolutionary framework for analysing the technosphere is not well developed. Some …
Continue reading "A Unified Evolutionary Approach to the Biosphere and the Technosphere?"
Figure: The human imprint on Earth can easily be seen at night. Is this imprint simply a manifestation of thermodynamics? Image source: NASA/NOAA. I really like to think that I am free to decide on what I like, want and what I do, manifestations of what one commonly refers to as free will. Or one …
In Andrew Jarvis’ previous post I read that on the one hand we might just observe evolutions that are “most likely”, and on the other hand that the economy is a “low-probability” structure. How can a low-probability structure be most likely? This apparent contradiction applies for all living systems. The Maximum Entropy approach to evolution …
Continue reading "Solving the Puzzle of Emergent Order: The Case for Maximum Entropy Thinking"
Just because humans form part of this thing we generally call the 'economy', and may at times appear free to choose how to spend what income it affords them, we mustn't simply assume they sit in the driving seat. Economies are complex objects, and the defining feature of complex things is that the whole is …
For some scholars, the technosphere should be approached as a physical phenomenon in the first place. For example, geologists would measure it in terms of artefacts that accumulate in layers of sediments, such as plastics, or Earth system scientists would approach it as the artefacts that make up the infrastructure of human societies, buildings, roads, …
Continue reading "The Challenge: Agency in the Technosphere"
This blog was inspired by two workshops held in 2018 at Lancaster University and at Erfurt (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies) devoted to agency and technosphere. The blog is managed by Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, Max Weber Centre, who is also a lead contributor, and is supported by a team of regular contributors: …
Congratulations on deciding to visit our site. Or did you? Did you decide to pay us a visit? Or where you merely acting out some purely deterministic plan? These are not the sorts of questions we are interested in here. Rather than consider whether individual's possess free will, we instead explore the notion that humanity …
Thanks for joining me! Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
