Dynamical systems are composed of parts that participate in organized behavior that persists through many internal time cycles. The coherence of action of a set of parts that otherwise might have no relation to oneContinue reading
3.2 Technosphere Now
In this essay I sketch out a physical framework for the technosphere, Earth’s newest sphere. My goal is to articulate some of the implications of being human in the Anthropocene, given our inescapable role as partsContinue reading
3.1 What I mean by a system
I take a system to be a recognizable set of parts that dissipates energy through participation of those parts in mutual collective (organized) behavior. Parts can be systems (subsystems). The technosphere is a system ofContinue reading
2.5 Three revolutions
The “two revolutions” projected at the end of my last post are expanded here to “three revolutions”. These are major transformations that bear emphasizing among a large number of significant changes over time in howContinue reading
2.4 Breaking the Anthropocene Illusion
The Anthropocene Illusion–that human agency is the driving force of the modern world–helps us navigate that world at human scale. It makes clear the connection between our desires and the actions we take to achieveContinue reading
2.3 The Anthropocene Illusion
The Anthropocene Epoch has been proposed as a name for the current phase of Earth history. Used in this sense it is a geological term. Taking the Anthropocene seriously as a geological concept offers theContinue reading
2.2 Does the Anthropocene warrant recognition in The Geological Time Scale?
Humans, society, institutions, and technology arise from, and are components of, the Earth. In principle, therefore, they lie within the scope of geology, the scientific study of the Earth. Of course this doesn’t mean thatContinue reading
2.1 What is the Anthropocene?
This question has more than one answer. There are multiple interpretations of what “Anthropocene” means, a complication to which I will return in subsequent posts. Here I focus on the use of “Anthropocene” as aContinue reading
1.0 The Set Up
I want to share some efforts of mine over the past few years to develop a framework for thinking about the status and future prospects of humans in the Anthropocene Epoch—the proposed new unit ofContinue reading