“The Planet at the End of the Mind: Natural History in the Anthropocene”

The era now known as the Anthropocene is often said to have been ushered in circa 1784, with the invention of the steam engine–the same moment in which natural historians were first advancing a comprehensive, planetary view of nature as profoundly historical. The “post-human/post-nature” challenge posed by natural history is thus hardly new; it has been present in–perhaps even a driver of–intellectual history for two centuries. In the early decades of this period, literature, history, and natural history were responding to this challenge conjointly; the puzzle might then be, Why have humanists failed for so long to attune themselves to the planetary dimensions of human being?

Sponsored by the HI Science Studies Research Workshop