{"id":9925,"date":"2018-11-07T10:14:05","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T15:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=9925"},"modified":"2018-11-07T10:19:32","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T15:19:32","slug":"koinocene-or-coenocene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/11\/07\/koinocene-or-coenocene\/","title":{"rendered":"Koinocene (or C\u0153nocene)?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peircian thinker Gary Fuhrman has posted an interesting piece on the naming of the Anthropocene, entitled Holocenoscopy<\/a>. Noting that the word\u00a0Holocene<\/em>\u00a0means nothing more than “entirely<\/em> recent,” as opposed to the Pleistocene, which means “most<\/em> recent,” so there’s really nowhere left to go with naming geological periods after their recentness, Fuhrman suggests we look to another meaning associated with the Greek suffix -cene<\/em>: not the new<\/em> (kainos, \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2) but the common<\/em> (koinos, \u03ba\u03bf\u03b9\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2). (Christians may recognize the term koinonia<\/em>, \u03ba\u03bf\u03b9\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd\u03af\u03b1, as a reference to fellowship and communion.)<\/p>\n

The latter is the root of the word cenoscopy, <\/em>or c\u0153noscopy, <\/em>which C. S. Peirce defines as “the sort of science that is founded upon the common experience of all men,” as recognized under that name by Jeremy Bentham, “in opposition to\u00a0idioscopy<\/em>, which discovers new\u00a0phenomena.”\u00a0Cenoscopy, Fuhrman notes,<\/p>\n

is closely allied to what Peirce called \u2018critical common-sensism.\u2019 Common sense in our time sees that philosophy, and even religion, ought to be working hand in hand with globally-based sciences such as ecology and climate science. Ironically, it\u2019s the so-called \u201cpopulist\u201d politicians of our time, with their hate speech and antiscientific disinformation, who are working against the common sense that could save us from ourselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interestingly, the only other reference I can find to this play between kainos<\/em> and koinos<\/em>, with a mention of cenoscopy<\/em>, is from another book on Peirce, Cornelis de Waal’s Peirce: A Guide for the Perplexed\u00a0<\/em>(Bloomsbury, 2013). Because of its lucid summary of Peirce’s categories (which long-time readers will know my fascination for), I’ll quote the passage in full:<\/p>\n

To recapitulate, according to Peirce three, and only three, categories present themselves in all that comes before the mind\u2014no matter whether we speak of the most vivid sense impression or the faintest flight of fancy\u2014and he calls them firstness, secondness, and thirdness. They are, first, the pure quality of being what it is, positively, and independently of anything else; second, the unmediated opposition of a first to something it is not; and third, a positive relation between two firsts that are second to each other.<\/p>\n

Reminiscent of the ongoing Pythagoreanism in mathematics […], Peirce also calls them the cenopythagorean categories, where the prefix ceno<\/em> echoes at once the Greek kainos<\/em> (new) and koinos<\/em> (common). At one point Peirce even reads them into the first three numbers of the Pythagorean decad: \u201cOne<\/em> was the origin; two<\/em>, stalwart resistance; three<\/em>, mediation and beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere Peirce refers to them as the Protean categories, after Proteus the Greek sea god who can foretell the future but who constantly changes his shape to avoid that he has to, so that he only answers those who can catch him. The same is true for the categories. They too appear in countless guises and are often hard to discern. This is all but to be expected as they universally apply to anything we can possibly think of, whether it is a toothache, the spatial relations of a twelve-dimensional hypercube, a conflict of values, Hamlet\u2019s relation to Shakespeare, a paradigm shift, or the determination of guilt in a criminal case.\u00a0(p. 46, paragraphing added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this sense, what we need as a designation for our time is not an “even newer new” (Transholocene?), nor the anthropocentric new many of us have settled on (Anthropocene), but a new that is finally a common world as well — a Koinocene,<\/em>\u00a0a Common New World, a world held in common by the commoners who ally together to take care of it.<\/p>\n

Or C\u0153nocene.<\/em>\u00a0(But with its different-sounding c’s, that spelling merely highlights the inadequacies of English alphabetics<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peircian thinker Gary Fuhrman has posted an interesting piece on the naming of the Anthropocene, entitled Holocenoscopy. Noting that the word\u00a0Holocene\u00a0means nothing more than “entirely recent,” as opposed to the Pleistocene, which means “most recent,” so there’s really nowhere left to go with naming geological periods after their recentness, Fuhrman suggests we look to another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688615],"tags":[123667,520620,53473,520615,105,520619,520612,619,455018,520614,520618,520613,16870,520611],"class_list":["post-9925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropo_scene","tag-anthropocene","tag-c-s-peirce","tag-categories","tag-christianithy","tag-commons","tag-coenocene","tag-geological-designations","tag-geology","tag-holocene","tag-kainos","tag-koinocene","tag-koinos","tag-peirce","tag-pleistocene"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2A5","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10098,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/03\/17\/p-n-transition-or-toward-the-neocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":0},"title":"P-N transition, or, toward the Neocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 17, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"It's nice to see archdruid John Michael Greer's proposal for a \"Pleistocene-Neocene transition\" get a little traction in the science press -- specifically, in a Science Alert article by psychologist Matthew Adams. Greer, whose writings on religion and ecology are respectably out-of-the-box, advocates against the Anthropocene label on the basis\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/03\/Titanicentersicefields-2.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/03\/Titanicentersicefields-2.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/03\/Titanicentersicefields-2.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/03\/Titanicentersicefields-2.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7686,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/07\/07\/against-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":1},"title":"Against the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The following is a guest post by Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the nonprofit\u00a0Center for Biological Diversity. It follows the discussion begun\u00a0here\u00a0and in some\u00a0AESS conference sessions, including Andy Revkin's keynote talk\u00a0(viewable here)\u00a0and responses to it (such as\u00a0Clive Hamilton's).\u00a0 I In considering why the name \u201cAnthropocene\u201d has been proposed, why it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"setting-sun-smokestacks","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/07\/setting-sun-smokestacks-275x179.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9811,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/08\/12\/welcome-to-the-meghalayan\/","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":2},"title":"Welcome to the… Meghalayan?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Geology watchers were more than a little surprised last month to learn that we are living in a new age called the Meghalayan, which apparently began about 4200 years ago. After all the\u00a0excitement\u00a0over the\u00a0Anthropocene, it seems that a rival group of geological stratigraphers -- one tasked with naming the sub-parts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9278,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/05\/18\/the-sf-of-sustainability\/","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":3},"title":"The SF of sustainability","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Since it's the Holocene\u00a0that has provided the conditions for the (human-led) biogeochemical experimentation that has now likely achieved a runaway state, and since \"Holocene\" was never anything other than a placeholder term -- it only means \"entirely new\" -- it seems inappopriate to replace it with the term \"Anthropocene.\" \"Holocene\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9722,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/06\/20\/10-years-of-late-holocene-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":4},"title":"10 years (of Late Holocene life)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 20, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"(Or twice the video below.) Immanence passed its tenth anniversary last month and somehow failed to celebrate it. (The actual anniversary, May 11, marks the posting of\u00a0this two-line fragment.\u00a0Regular posts took another seven months to appear, or at least to take on a permanent form.) To celebrate, I recently re-did\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/EkCc_qiI7UA\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7722,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/08\/05\/anthropocene-debate-continues\/","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":5},"title":"Anthropocene debate continues","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Kieran Suckling's post Against the Anthropocene, originally posted here on July 7 and subsequently shared\u00a0with the International Commission on Stratigraphy's\u00a0Anthropocene 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9925"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9937,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925\/revisions\/9937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}