The Anthropocene’s dating problem: Insights from the geosciences and the humanities

Abstract

The Anthropocene, generally defined, is the time when human activities have a significant impact on the Earth System. However, the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences have different understandings of how and when human activities affected the Earth System. Humanities and social science scholars tend to approach the Anthropocene from a wide range of moral-political concerns including differential responsibility for the change in the Earth System and social implications going forward. Geologists, on the other hand, see their work as uninfluenced by such considerations, instead concerning themselves with empirical data that might point to a ‘golden spike’ in the geologic record – the spike indicating a change in the Earth System. Thus, the natural sciences and the humanities/social sciences are incongruent in two important ways: (1) different motivations for establishing a new geologic era, and (2) different parameters for identifying it. The Anthropocene discussions have already hinted at a paradigm shift in how to define geologic time periods. Several articles suggest a mid-20th century commencement of the Anthropocene based on stratigraphic relationships identified in concert with knowledge of human history. While some geologists in the Anthropocene Working Group have stated that the official category should be useful well beyond geology, they continue to be guided by the stratigraphic conventions of defining the epoch. However, the methods and motivations that govern stratigraphers are different from those that govern humanists and social scientists. An Anthropocene defined by stratigraphic convention would supersede many of the humanities/social science perspectives that perhaps matter more to mitigating and adapting to the effects of humans on Earth’s System. By this reasoning, the impetus for defining the Anthropocene ought to be interdisciplinary, as traditional geologic criteria for defining the temporal scale might not meet the aspirations of a broad range of Anthropocene thinkers.