Kieran Suckling’s post Against the Anthropocene, originally posted here on July 7 and subsequently shared with the International Commission on Stratigraphy’s Anthropocene Working Group by Andy Revkin, has elicited a round of emailed back-and-forths from some noteworthy individuals, including paleobiologist Jan Zalasiewicz and paleoecologist Anthony Barnosky.
As this debate would be of interest to readers of this blog (and because it hasn’t been shared elsewhere), I’ve decided to share some of that conversation by permission of the individuals involved.
Tony Barnosky first sent around his article Palaeontological evidence for defining the Anthropocene, referring to it in a response to Suckling as follows:
“Interesting read, but I disagree, for reasons explained in the attached. Short version: the same sorts of paleontological criteria that were originally used to define the Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene differentiate the Anthropocene.”
To this, Kieran replied:
“Tony, I don’t see any disagreement between your paper and my post. Regarding whether we have entered a new geological epoch, my post notes that the geological record will show a marked, rapid global homogenization of biological diversity due to the combination of extinctions and invasive introductions. Indeed, I think the preferred anchor for the new epoch is paleontological, because as you point out, this will make it consistent with the methodological determination of prior epochs. It would also counteract the unwarranted mushrooming of the Anthropocene idea to the point where it is coextensive with civilization or even humanity, rather than focusing on large-scale, global anthropological impacts.
“My complaint is not with the idea of a new epoch, it is with the proposal to name it the “Anthropocene.” There has been much debate about the existence, timing and marker of the Anthropocene, there has been very little about its name. This is problematic because as Adrian points out in the post I was responding to, naming is a profoundly sociological act. The naming[s] of geological epochs are semanticly rich, overdetermined events in which names are not simply neutral monikers for pre-existing objects, they profoundly influence the meaning, direction and acceptance of the naming event. If the proposed name of current epoch were the Homogenocene, for example, the cultural discussion would be much less anthropocentric, even laudatory (the God Species, etc.), and much more focused on what has happened to other species.
“As you examine how past epochs were determined, finding them predominately differentiated by biostratification, I examine how these epochs were named, finding them predominately focused on species composition. In this regard, the Anthropocene is anomalous. None of the epochs in the Cenozoic era were named after the cause of the epoch change. There is no Bolidocene. They were all named after the relative newness of the resulting species composition. Thus I ask, why this departure from the geological naming tradition? Why now? How does it relate to the history of informal epoch names going back to the first moment scientists determined the earth had ages at all? Is it an accident that from the very beginning (i.e. Buffon’s seven stage earth history in 1770s) geologists have always informally named the current time the Age of Man? How does it relate to the two thousand year long tradition of western anthropocentrism which in one way or another has always defined the earth as of/by/for humans? Why does the relative popularity of Age of Man terms (Human Epoch, Periode Anthropeian, Era of Man, Epoque Anthropique, Duration of Mankind, Dynasty of Man, Anthropozoic, Anthropolithic, Psychozoic, Terrain Humain, Période Homozoïque, Anthropogene, etc. (I’ve found over two dozen separate terms)) follow a statistically significant sine wave pattern with new terms arising as the popularity of old terms declines?
“My thesis is that the formal naming convention anomaly represented by “Anthropocene” is due to the unacknowledged and un-thought-through crossover with the consistent informal anthropocentric naming convention. As in the past, the crossover causes both intellectual confusion and excitement. As in the past it is causing many researchers and pundits to focus less on the effect of human actions, than on the detectability of impact, indeed with the sheer presence of humans, making the idea unworkably expansive and unscientific. And, as it has consistently happened since the 1770s, this broad sense of the Age of Man seamlessly blends in a valorization and naturalization of human dominance.”
To this, Jan Zalasiewicz replied as follows:
“Interesting debate here. Names are tricky things – and loaded, too, as Kieran points out. In stratigraphy I think they’re most often quirky: the Quaternary, for instance, that is most decidedly archaic now that the Primary and Secondary have gone and the Tertiary has been abolished (though it is geologically undead, and is still in so much use in practice that it may well return). There are names that are have been wonderfully and logically thought through – the Orosirian and Statherian periods of the Precambrian – but that have almost never been used in anger (and will probably fade and disappear).
“Geologists (and wider communities) tend to vote with their feet, and here the Anthropocene has won through in practice from among a clutch of candidates (Andy’s own Anthrocene, the Homogenocene, the Myxocene) largely I think because Paul Crutzen, as one of the (deservedly) most widely respected and influential scientists in the world, was there to give it a critical push, at exactly the right time. When the Geological Society of London made the first stratigraphic analysis of the term a few years later it was simply reacting to events – the term was out there and being widely used as though it was formal. It was already a fact on the ground.
“Yes, the term can have, or can imply, some resonances that are non-ideal. The Anthropocene is not about being able to detect human influence in stratigraphy, but reflects a change in the Earth system (of which the most important and long-lasting is the change to the biological system). Still less should it be used in any triumphalist sense. It just happens to be humans that are currently driving the current global changes: a few millennia on from now it may well be the big secondary positive feedbacks that are dominant, such as polar albedo, methane etc. These kinds of things do need to be emphasized in the characterization of the phenomenon.
“But the ‘anthropo’ effect of the word has its good sides too – it has genuinely brought the humanities (history, philosophy, economics and so on) into the debate in a very big way – and with that has come a genuine interest by this very large community into the geological context of global change in general and in the methodologies of stratigraphy in particular (for me at least, this has been a unique and rather wonderful consequence). I doubt if that would have happened if a more neutral name had emerged.
“Re analogies – well, the Carboniferous reflects the rise of woody plants, and the Cretaceous that of a calcifying microplankton. There isn’t a Bolidocene, because that particular discovery came well after that particular part of geological time had been codified (though I suspect it might well have been proposed if Sedgwick, Murchison or Lyell had found the iridium layer and put two and two together). The Anthropocene doesn’t seem too far out on a limb as regards the history of geological neologisms – humans ARE currently the major driver of global change – and, incidentally, we are currently about one-third of terrestrial vertebrates by biomass, so something of a biostratigraphic marker in ourselves.
“In the end, I suspect we will have to be pragmatic. Trying to rename the Anthropocene would cause a very great deal of confusion, in geology and beyond, if the history of previous attempted changes to popular and widely used stratigraphic names is anything to go by. Even though the Anthropocene has only been around for 15 years, it has developed surprisingly deep – or at least widespread – roots.
“So, the point made by Kieran is good – and important. But, not least for pragmatic reasons, I tend to side with Tony and the reasoning he puts forward in his Geol Soc volume paper. We have a term that, warts and all, is here and that has the potential to be a functional part of the Geological Time Scale. But for sure it is of real value to explore and explain what this word ‘Anthropocene’ really means (and what it should not mean) in terms of Earth process.”
The debate continues. Kieran has sent in a long-ish response to Jan (shared with the AWG), some of which comes from his manuscript-in-progress, and I suspect there will be more discussion.
what could they ever point to that might actually decide such a to and fro?
tick-tock people we are running out of time…
dmf, pointing to how geologists have identified and named epochs in the past goes a long way toward resolving the issue. As Mr. Suckling points out, they do so by describing how the state of biological diversity differs between adjacent epochs. It is holistic approach that puts the earth and its life at the center of the analysis which makes sense since they are naming the whole of the earth. Changing course to name epochs after their dominant force is a curious decision. Curiouser still, is to only do that when we ourselves are the dominant force. It does seem like these geologists are letting religious-metaphysical bias come in the back door via the name Anthropocene.
Geology has long fought to free itself of religious orientations. They would do well today to stick to science by accurately describing the changes brought by humans and naming the epoch after the changes, not humanity. As Mr. Zalasiewicz says, this would reduce public interest, but that is probably a good thing. The high interest level is caused by pandering to a harmful, very long held belief that humans are specially born to rule the earth.
Climate and biodiversity scientists have managed to communicate the reckless and dangerous level of human impact on climate and species without simultaneously conveying the opposite “we’re number one” message by name the planet or the times after humans. Geologists should see the danger in the naming path they are going down.
mike s. your comment is chock-full of associations (accusations?) that an academic can make hay of for decades and hardly an endpoint.
That people are so willing to continue with this sort of business as usual approach to global-weirding tells me that the tragic/epic aspects of the continuing collapses haven’t really registered with the folks involved.
dmf, you seem to think that people can’t fight environmental collapse and simultaneously debate intellectual ideas. Why should that be? If you google the three people mentioned in the debate above (Suckling, Zalasiewicz, and Barosky) you’ll find them doing lots of work battle global warming and extinctions.
If you don’t find these type of debates useful, feel free to spend your time differently, but there is nothing to be gained from mocking other people who you know very little about.
not interested in mocking but surely pointing out that there is no natural/objective ends to such academic “debates” is to a bring a bit of ethnography back to/on the academy, no room for reflexivity in these matters?
Here is the full text of Kieran Suckling’s response to Jan Zalasiewicz, per Kieran’s request:
Jan,
The naming of the Cretaceous and Carboniferous cut against rather than set precedence for the term “Anthropocene” as neither names the dominant geological force of the period. The Cretaceous is the last period of the dinosaurs and first period in which small mammals appear in the fossil record. It begins with the first appearance of the ammonite Berriasella jacobi and ends at the K-Pg(T) extinction event marked by a global iridium-rich band. It was given the name “chalk” (Latin “creta”) because of the massive chalk beds which formed in the late Cretaceous composed of marine invertebrates, especially Coccolithophores, which exploded in number due to global sea level rise combined with the breakup of Pangaea and Gondwana which created new sea bed habitats. So unlike “Anthropocene,” Cretaceous does not refer to a purported geologic driver of the period. A name for that might look more like Pangeadividaceous. Nor is it named even for the dominant biological component of the chalk layer (Coccolithaceous?).
Carboniferous means “coal-bearing” and refers to the immense coal beds composed of very high lignin-content plants which did not decompose upon death because now-common bacterial and fungal species capable of digesting them had not yet evolved. Coal is not considered a geological driving force of the period and thus Carboniferous is not a naming precedent for Anthropocene.
To understand the geological naming convention, it is helpful to look at the overall pattern and recent time periods. The names are almost exclusively based on broad species composition, with the most recent Cenozoic era being the most explicit in this regard.
– All four eons in the earth’s history are named for the broad composition of life which characterize them:
Hadean: “Hellish” referring to molten conditions unsuitable to life
Archaean “Beginning” of life. All species belong to the domain Archae.
Proterozoic “Early life”. Appearance of eukaryotes and multi-cellular life.
Phanerozoic “Visible life”. Animal life is abundant. Our current eon.
– All three eras in the current Phanerozoic are named for the broad composition of life which characterize them:
Paleozoic “Ancient life”. Fish, arthropods, amphibians and reptiles appear. Ends at Permian-Triassic extinction event.
Mesozoic “Middle life”. Informally, Age of Reptiles. Appearance of birds, small mammals. Ends at Cretaceous–Paleogene (Cretaceous-Tertiary) extinction event.
Cenozoic “New life”. Informally, Age of Mammals. Our current era.
– As the Cenozoic is the time of “new life” forms, it period and epoch divisions (with the exception of the Quaternary*) are consistently named for the degree to which the species composition is similar to its current state.
CENOZOIC PERIODS
Paleogene “Ancient” new life. Diversification of mammals and birds, appearance of modern plants.
Neogene “New” new life. Mammals and birds take on modern appearance.
Quaternary Controversial holder over name from primary/secondary/tertiary system. Suppressed 2004-2008. Our current period.
CENOZOIC EPOCHS
Paleocene: ancient new fauna
Eocene dawning of new fauna
Oligocene few recent fauna (compared to today)
Miocene less recent fauna (appearing)
Pliocene more recent fauna (appearing)
Pleistocene most recent fauna (have appeared)
Holocene entirely recent fauna (are present). Our current epoch.
In short, no era, period or epoch of the Phanerozoic is named after a geological agent. With the exception of the historically derivative Quaternary, all are biocentric, i.e. are descriptive of the biotic composition of the planet as a whole. The term Anthropocene would be anomalous to this naming convention. Something like “Homogenocene” which describes the current state of biological diversity vis a vis previous epochs and period would be much more consistent with the geologic naming convention.
Now Anthropocene proponents may want to rationally debate and promote a deviation from the geologic convention. The point of my post is to point out that to date there has been very little debate about the name and virtually no recognition of its anomalous character. It has simply, and wrongfully, been assumed that an epoch name must describe the dominant force of the time. Coming from a humanities background (Philosophy), I see a great need for deeper thinking about the name, the effect of naming, and the relationship of the name to western values in general and the history of geology in particular.**
—
Jan, you suggest “the time was right” to advance the idea of the Anthropocene. The Greeks called this rightness kairos. But the rightness is less an answer than a question. Why was the time right? Is there something about western psychology and history that made this the right time? Check out the graph below from a manuscript I have in progress. It shows the relative cultural popularity of four “Age of Man” terms from 1825 when Cuvier simultaneously invented the geologic now and named it the “Age of the Human Species” to 2008. There is a remarkably consistent rise, fall and replacement of each term. Knowing only of the first three curves, one could predict with great accuracy the advent of the term “Anthropocene.” Consider in this regard Andy’s use of Anthrocene in 1992 and a number of passing uses of Anthropocene in published geology texts during the 1980s (the latter seem to be misreferences to the AnthropoGene).
My contention is living in the Age of Man is deeply but conflictually held western value. Since the 11th century, it was satisfied/created by the interwined ideas of Divine Providence and the Great Chain of Being. These ideas began collapsing at the end of the 18th century at the very same time that proto-geologists such like Buffon began to recognize by the fossil record that the earth is very old, humans very young, and that geology has a history. They fought against the Christian notions of creation, the flood, a short earth history, permanent species existence, and an essentially simultaneous creation of all life but they retained its core anthropocentric value. Thus Buffon, who developed the first essentially secular, proto-scientific geologic periodization in his Epochs of Nature defines the seventh and current epoch as the time when “When the power of Man (the Sovereign of the Earth) assisted the operations of Nature.” Buffon describes these operations in great detail, finding much as today, that they consist primarily of driving species extinct, moving others around the globe, and warming the climate. From that birth moment, geology has at all times described the current time as the Age of Man. But it has done so with continuous conflict, confusion and misgivings. When the conflicts reach a peak the then current term declines in popularity. When popularity declines to level unable to sustain the psychological need to be in the Age of Man, a new term appears and become rapidly popular. Then it comes under for being unscientific and logically untenable, starting the process over again. The Anthropocene is the early period of rise following the marginalization of the AnthropoGene. Now is its kairos.
NGRAM (Click for image)
Pardon the typos in this hastily written response. It is late night in Paris. In a few hours I’m off to the Jardin des Plantes which was overseen by Buffon for many decades and houses the National Museum of Natural History which at one time was directed by Cuvier.
Kieran
Here’s a response from Jan Zalasiewicz to Kieran Suckling (shared by email):
“Dear Kieran,
“Thanks once again for your very detailed comments – again, much food for thought. Just a few comments off the cuff:
“The Cretaceous was originally named for the chalk deposits that are especially common in the upper Cretaceous. However, there are also substantial strata that look for all the world like – and are lithologically – chalk (complete with impressive flint layers) around the boundary with the Jurassic (indeed they are included in the Jurassic, which has been and is a problematic boundary to define. The Chalk – as the beginning of large-scale carbonate input into deep-water oceanic settings – was something of an environmental driver in the global environment.
“This is even more true of the Carboniferous, where it is the burial of the coal that brought down carbon dioxide that likely was a key factor in the Permo-Carboniferous ice age that, amongst other things, modulated the deposition of the coal itself by far-field effects on sea level (so these days it would be considered very much a driver of Earth process).
“As regards other geological time units, Alex Wolfe has noted the Ediacaran Period is based on a mix of lithological, geochemical and palaeontological features. An even clearer case is the preceding Cryogenian (already in use, and likely soon to be more formally defined) for Snowball Age times – here the glacial driver of the characteristic sedimentary assemblage of strata is clearly identified in the name – and there is precious little biological content to help in defining and recognizing the unit.
“Regarding the Anthropocene, one might say that the name reflects the stratigraphic signals that define the strata as much as they do the ‘driver’. These signals have a heavy human influence, either directly or indirectly, i.e. one can consider the unit a little à la Cretaceous. Physically, there are the ‘urban strata’ lithofacies/trace fossil systems, technofossils of various sorts (all now very widespread) and so on. Chemically, there are increased heavy metals in sediments, a variety of organic pollutants (some geologically long-lived), and the human-induced changes in isotopes of carbon, nitrogen etc. Biologically, if one regards the biostratigraphic signal of species invasions and extinctions a little too far from being a direct human signal per se (although these changes are directly human-driven), then humans themselves (now one-third of terrestrial vertebrate biomass) are (or will be) something of a biostratigraphic signal in themselves, just as coccolithophores were in the Cretaceous. This is especially so if the details of human morphology as modified in/around the Anthropocene (e.g. tooth fillings, titanium hip joints, scrambled bone isotopic signals arising from a globalized diet, and so on) are considered.
“So, the rules and traditions, such as they are, around the naming of geological time units are probably sufficiently plastic to make this new term not a complete outlier.
“This is not to that there shouldn’t be debate around the term ‘Anthropocene’ itself. The point you raise about the inherent messages that words carry is important. One does have to stress that the important thing about the Anthropocene is that the world has changed in a manner that impacts upon its geological strata, and not centrally that one can now detect a human imprint in strata now forming or (worse) that it can be regarded as some kind of symbol of human dominance over the planet. The points you raise will generate some discussion, I suspect, when the AWG meet in a couple of month’s time.
“With best wishes
“Jan”
And a reply to Jan Zalasiewicz from Kieran Suckling:
“Thanks for this thoughtful response, Jan. I’ll give your naming convention counter-examples more thought and write later as I’m in transit.
“A quick note regarding historical/cultural influence though. The history of ideas, as opposed to biography, is not very much a question of causal relationships between individuals. Thus Buffon’s relevance is not that one could connect a string of individuals (A to B to C…) over 250 years such that Buffon is the original, the cause, and Crutzen the copy, the effect. What is important rather, is what you pointed toward in saying Crutzen’s proclamation caught fire because the time was right. It’s “rightness” lays in its reflection (and unique deflection) of the zeitgeist. The historical questions I raise concern the anthropocene as a very old, core aspect of the western zeitgeist. It is this zeitgeist that causes Age-of-Man terms to recur over and over again with great consistency from the origin of geology as a science to this day.
“At the beginning of the 18th century virtually everyone believed the earth and humans to be about 6,000 years old. The Age of Man was an unthinkable concept because the earth was not thought to have ages and humans were not thought to differ temporally from other species or processes. It was universally believed, however, that the earth and all it’s bounty were created for humans. The idea is called Providence. We were made in the image of God, and since the lower replicates the higher, we lord over the beasts of the earth as God lords over us. Natural dominion was lost when we were cast from the garden into the wilderness, but dominion can be regained through the artificial works of man which, generation by generation, will construct a garden of the wilderness. By the end of the 18th century, due to the decline of biblical literalism and the rise of confidence in rational observation, a large number of intellectuals thought the earth was tens if not hundreds of thousands of years old. The idea of extinction was gaining ground and the first glimmer of young humans and proto-evolution was dawning. Buffon, the most famous scientist in Europe, and a constant thorn in the side of The Church, brings all these idea together for the first time systematically in The Epochs of Nature. Two things stand out about it to me. First, while denounced by the church for its scientific claims, its anthropocentric claims ruffled no religious or Enlightenment feathers. Second, as soon as it was conceptually possible to think the Age of Man (i.e. recognize a temporal distinction between earth and human), proto-geologists did exactly that. And they have done so ever since. DeLuc, Cuvier, Lyell, LeConte, Stoppani, Morlot, Haeckel, Miller, Vezian, Gervaise, Dana, Chamberlain, Geikie, Pavlov, etc. all critique the science and presumptions of those that came before. All fight to free geology of inherited religious sentiment. Yet all agree, that the Now is the Epoch of Man. It’s interesting in this regard that their opinion on why this should be differ so much. Lyell argues that the human impact is not geologically significant. Stoppani argues that it is. Dana is unsure. Cuvier and Morlot offer no opinion on the matter. It doesn’t matter finally because as a core cultural meme, the Age of Man is highly overdetermined, it easily encompasses contradictory causal arguments.
“The N-Gram I sent earlier shows the oscillating relative popularity of several Age of Man terms since 1820. The prior terms had larger cultural penetration than Anthropocene as of 2008, but the latter is on similar exponential growth trend and will at least equal prior terms in a few years. It differs from the last high-popularity term by a single letter: anthropogene’s “g” is replaced with a “c”. The pattern is a classic historical pattern of substitution/evolution of core semiotic terms. The current substitution proposal has unique characteristics, but so did all past substitutions, they must in order to succeed in a culturally dynamic system. Uniqueness is essential to cultural repetition. The current proposal, however, can not evade its long, well-structured historical context which, not coincidentally, is coextensive with geology itself.
“Though terms such as Psychozoic and Anthropozoic did appear in the geologic timescale tables of the most prominent geology text books of their day, and became the names of scientific and popular journals (as well as appearing in novels, poems, paintings, etc.), they were ultimately rejected as formal names by the international nomenclature bodies of the day because of their clearly anthropocentric character and religious roots. They lived on as informal names which was more fitting given the huge spectrum of (often radically conflicting) values, emotions and aspirations they necessarily evoked as core western culture memes. The same fate, in my opinion, should befall the anthropocene. It is here to stay (until the next inevitable substitution in 50-70 years) no doubt, but it should do so as an informal name rather than embroil geology yet another struggle over anthropocentrism. Geologist only recently, if grudgingly and imperfectly, resolved the controversy over the legitimacy of the Quaternary. As Gibbard and Walker show in Jan and Michael’s book from earlier this year, that controversy was substantially driven by the problematic early anthropocentric assumptions of the concept. It’s time to move beyond these convolutions.
“Kieran”
Historians and philosophers of many stripes have concluded that our current state of environmental degradation and human peril was caused by the long held belief that this is the planet and age of man. Humans are above and are the technological masters of nature.
In this light, naming the age after ourselves yet again is the continuation of dangerous thinking, not the antidote. A name reflecting the impoverished condition of other species would encourage a discussion and recognition of the planet without bringing in all the proud, Age of Us, nature is dead, we can and should control everything language that has become very common among Anthropocene boosters
people seem to be missing the basic fact that “anthropocene” is generally used as much (if not more) as a category of pathology/epidemiology as geology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakos