Editor's Introduction The Drama of the Anthropocene: Can Deep Ecology, Romanticism, and Renaissance Science Rebalance Nature and Culture?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12195
• Date: 01 September 2017
• Published date: 01 September 2017

The AMERICAN JOURNAL of

ECONOMICS and SOCIOLOGY

Published Q U A R T E R L Y in the interest of constructive

synthesis in the social sciences, under grants from the

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Volume 76 September 2017 Number 4

Editor’s Introduction

The Drama of the Anthropocene: Can Deep

Ecology, Romanticism, and Renaissance

Science Rebalance Nature and Culture?

Introduction

Every species on Earth adapts to an environment. There is only one

apparent exception: Homo sapiens. Our tool-using capacity has

enabled us to devise ways of living beyond ordinary natural limits

by modifying our surroundings. Taken to an extreme, that capacity

has also allowed us to change the landscape, the atmosphere, the

oceans, and the biogeochemical cycles that support life. By doing

so, we have harnessed nature in the short run to make our lives eas-

ier and more comfortable. But the short run may come to an end

soon. The scale of human operations has changed the Earth and

undermined its capacity to support life. For that reason, the current

geological era is sometimes referred to as the Anthropocene—the

age of human influence on the Earth. The global destructiveness of

our species is the ultimate environmental problem.

The following essay by Robert Schimelpfenig addresses the

Anthropocene not as a series of specific environmental problems

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 76, No. 4 (September, 2017).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12195

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C2017 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

but as a general problem of how humans relate to nature. Are we in

it, outside it, or somewhere in between? This is an enduring existen-

tial problem because our species is a hybrid of biology and culture.

We have to eat and drink to survive, and yet we can live in cities

that separate us from immediate biological necessities. Because of

our hybrid character, we are not sure whether we should try to con-

trol nature or adapt to it. At the heart of this question is a deeper

one: Can we know the world without knowing ourselves? If we are

part of the world, not outside it, then we are participants, not just

observers. Yet, modern thought teaches us to treat nature as an

external object. Since we are part of nature, this stance is an illusion.

But unless we can see our own position vis-

a-vis nature clearly,

how can we know how to act? Our current practices are destructive

of life on the planet, so we must be doing something wrong. How

can we rectify our actions if we do not know where we stand?

Climate change is the global environmental issue most often refer-

enced in discussing the imbalance we have created, but radioactive

waste, species loss, ocean acidification, deforestation, desertification,

novel infectious diseases, depletion of soils and fish stocks, and con-

tinuous growth of human population all threaten the survival of

modern civilization. How then shall we think about the future of life

on the Earth and the human role in either destroying it or preserving

it? Will we be able to find a new way of organizing our lives, laws,

and livelihoods to prevent catastrophe? Can we find a suitable role

for humans in nature’s script for the drama of the Anthropocene?

These are the questions posed by the author of the following essay.

Schimelpfenig begins by defining the Anthropocene as the era of

modern science, when an indelible rift between nature and culture

was created in which humans began to treat nature as observers.

On that basis, he argues that the problems we face today are a result

of 500 years of thinking that we can live outside nature. By viewing

nature as if through a window, we have changed the Earth more

radically than any other species and interfered with the chances of

survival of other life forms. Other species alter the local environ-

ment by stabilizing soil, fixing nitrogen, building nests, modifying

stream flows, or pollinating flowers, but they change the landscape

over millennia or millions of years, not in a few years or decades.

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology796