The term ‘Anthropocene’ is used to describe the beginning of a new period in the Earth's history. The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) has discussed the beginning in 1952 with the appearance of plutonium in the sediments. The naming remains conspicuous: not only did humans exist before this date, but time periods are also usually named according to find spots or the (causative) material of the corresponding rock formation or by time itself (new, newer, very newly etc.). Would the material-related name ‘Plutoniocene’ than be better?
Let's go back to human first. If he is to be the eponym of an epoch, then the question of philosophical anthropology should be allowed to ask what characterises him in particular. André Leroi-Gourhan showed that technology has always been the first nature of human - i.e. technology is a zoological phenomenon. In evolutionary terms, the hand only became a universal gripping organ through the production of hand axes and increasing filigree strikes. Humans are already technites in their skeletal structure. In terms of an evolutionary philosophy of technology, the age of man and his technology therefore begins with the stratigraphic appearance of pre-human Australopiths and their choppers. Because the impact of humans in the sediments can be recognised precisely in these technical traces, beginning with stones and later supplemented by all the other man-made materials and an enormous range of other geological changes the Technocene is the more appropriate term for this era that additionally has its roots before the beginning of the Holocene (Ter-Stepanian 1988).
In view of the seemingly harmless beginning with stone hand axes, the Technocene has become an active factor at the latest with the Industrial Revolution. In this respect, it is no wonder that the term is used in context of Marxian inspired critique of technology (Hornborg 2015) as well as in context of feasibility inspired climate engineering (Fernow 2014). Furthermore, it became the eponym for the much older evolutionary philosophy of technology (Schlaudt 2022). The term becomes fruitful enabling us to tell the geological or evolutionary long-term history, especially with prospect of our future.
But how to tell such a history? In contrast to natural history a man-made narrative needs to make sense in a way. However, this makes the concepts of the ’technocene’ as well as the ‘anthropocene’ normative loaded, which explains their controversy. A narrative form often used by critique of technology is the classic tragedy: the originally good craftsman falls into the clutches of a brutal machine technology that alienates him and leaves nature in ruins. This means that the apocalyptic tipping point of the technocene has already been passed. That seems seductively plausible, but is this the right story to tell? Are there other narrative forms like comedy, tragicomedy or ‘eucatastrophe’ which allow a better approach to technogene climate change?
Literature:
Fernow, Hannes: Der Klimawandel im Zeitalter technischer Reproduzierbarkeit. Climate Engineering zwischen Risiko und Praxis. Springer: Wiesbaden 2014
Hornborg, Alf: The Political Ecology of the Technocene. Uncovering ecologically unequal exchange in the world-system. In: Clive Hamilton, François Gemenne, Christophe Bonneuil (ed.): The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis. Rethinking modernity in a new epoch. London: Routledge 2015
López-Corona, Oliver; Magallanes-Guijón, Gustavo: It Is Not an Anthropocene; It Is Really the Technocene: Names Matter in Decision Making Under Planetary Crisis. In: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 2020, Vol. 8, No. 214.
Leroi-Gourhan, André: Gesture and speech. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 1993 [1964]
Oliver Schlaudt: Das Technozän. Eine Einführung in die evolutionäre Technikphilosophie. Klostermann: Frankfurt 2022
Ter-Stepanian, George: Beginning of the Technogene. In: Bulletin of the International Association of Engineering Geology. Paris: Springer-Verlag 1988, Vol. 38, pp. 133–142
