The Anthropocene, generally defined, is the time when human activities have a significant impact on the Earth System. However, the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences have different understandings of how and when human activities affected the Earth System. Humanities and social science scholars tend to approach the Anthropocene from a wide range of moral-political concerns including differential responsibility for the change in the Earth System and social implications going forward. Geologists, on the other hand, see their work as uninfluenced by such considerations, instead concerning themselves with empirical data that might point to a ‘golden spike’ in the geologic record – the spike indicating a change in the Earth System. Thus, the natural sciences and the humanities/social sciences are incongruent in two important ways: (1) different motivations for establishing a new geologic era, and (2) different parameters for identifying it. The Anthropocene discussions have already hinted at a paradigm shift in how to define geologic time periods. Several articles suggest a mid-20th century commencement of the Anthropocene based on stratigraphic relationships identified in concert with knowledge of human history. While some geologists in the Anthropocene Working Group have stated that the official category should be useful well beyond geology, they continue to be guided by the stratigraphic conventions of defining the epoch. However, the methods and motivations that govern stratigraphers are different from those that govern humanists and social scientists. An Anthropocene defined by stratigraphic convention would supersede many of the humanities/social science perspectives that perhaps matter more to mitigating and adapting to the effects of humans on Earth’s System. By this reasoning, the impetus for defining the Anthropocene ought to be interdisciplinary, as traditional geologic criteria for defining the temporal scale might not meet the aspirations of a broad range of Anthropocene thinkers.

中文翻译：

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人类世的约会问题：来自地球科学和人文科学的见解

一般而言，人类世是人类活动对地球系统产生重大影响的时间。但是，自然科学，人文科学和社会科学对人类活动如何以及何时影响地球系统有不同的理解。人文和社会科学学者倾向于从各种各样的道德政治问题来探讨人类世，包括对地球系统的变化负有不同的责任以及未来的社会影响。另一方面，地质学家认为他们的工作不受这些考虑因素的影响，而是以经验数据来关注自己，这些经验数据可能指向地质记录中的“黄金高峰”，即表明地球系统发生了变化的峰值。因此，自然科学与人文/社会科学在两个重要方面不一致：（1）建立新地质时代的动机不同，（2）识别新地质时代的参数不同。人类世间的讨论已经暗示了如何定义地质时期的范式转变。有几篇文章建议根据人类历史知识确定的地层关系，将人类世始于20世纪中叶。尽管人类世间工作组的一些地质学家表示，官方类别应该远远超出地质范围，但它们仍然受到定义时代的地层惯例的指导。但是，管理地层学家的方法和动机与管理人文主义者和社会科学家的方法和动机不同。地层学约定定义的人类世将取代许多人文/社会科学观点，这也许对减轻和适应人类对地球系统的影响更为重要。通过这种推理，定义人类世的动力应该是跨学科的，因为用于定义时间尺度的传统地质标准可能无法满足广泛的人类世思想家的期望。