New Review Essay on the Anthropocene

Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero, and Robert S. Emmett, editors. Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. xiv, 225. Paper $30.00.

Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Pp. xiii, 312. Cloth $24.95.

Jason M. Kelly

The American Historical Review, Volume 125, Issue 3, June 2020, Pages 951–955, https://doi-org.proxy.ulib.uits.iu.edu/10.1093/ahr/rhz583

Published: 29 June 2020

“In the appendix to the French edition of his Elements of Geology in 1839, the geologist Charles Lyell introduced a new word into the scientific lexicon: “Pleistocene.” He described it as a fusion of the Greek words “pleiston” (πλεῖστος) and “kainos” (καινός)—a neologism meant to designate the most recent geological epoch. As he described it, the Pleistocene was the epoch “which has elapsed since the earth has been tenanted by man” (Lyell, Principles of Geology [1833], 3:52). Over the course of the 1830s, Lyell and his compatriot William Whewell introduced a number of new designations into the geological lexicon: the Eocene (“dawn of the new”), the Miocene (less recent), and the Pliocene (more recent).

Drawing from the work of eighteenth-century natural philosophers such Giovanni Arduino, they introduced these -cenes as attempts to refine an empirically grounded geological chronology. Of course, establishing a geochronology was not without controversy. Neptunists, Catastrophists, and Diluvialists all battled for intellectual legitimacy. The stakes were high. The international conversation about geology had scientific, philosophical, and religious implications. For some, it was a matter of the ultimate consequence—the veracity of the Christian scriptures.

In the following decades, there would be debates over the most valid geochronological divisions. Scientists would argue over the most appropriate way to establish chronological boundaries—whether a biological or geological marker was more reasonable. They would dispute the age of the earth. But by the end of the century, it was clear that biblical literalism had lost its hold over the earth sciences. No great flood had ever covered the planet, and Bishop James Ussher’s “young earth” chronology needed to be abandoned. Scientists increasingly accepted the notion of deep time—of a planet developing over not thousands of years, but millions and maybe even billions of years…”