Science

The Anthropocene Project. An Encyclopedia

With the division of labor between politics and science in the course of the Enlightenment, miracle healers and universal geniuses were abolished. Instead, disciplines were divided, subjects of instruction were introduced, specialists born. Proofs, evidence, and matter moved to the center of interest. Knowledge became controllable, facts believable. But what do we see when we say “tree”? Even when we depict it? Is it possible to read the same book twice? See a film several times? What about forgetting? What about the body, that recalls memories or environmental influences? What about the world beyond laboratories and mounds of data? What about the contradictions, the things we overlook, the new, what accompanies us between species extinction and adaptation? Perhaps it helps to conceive science in the Anthropocene as a process that is structured by ideologies and knowledge cultures, that emerges in conversation and is in constant transformation.