Reviewed by:

• The Anthropocene and the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability by Carolyn Merchant
• Harry Lintsen (bio)

The Anthropocene and the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability By Carolyn Merchant. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. Pp. 232.

Carolyn Merchant became known with The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (HarperOne, 1980). In this previous book, she shows how the perception of nature changed radically during the scientific revolution: people, family, community, nature, and earth formed part of an organic cosmology until the scientific revolution, after which nature was atomized, objectified, and dissected. That change had a clear gender dimension. The feminine metaphor of the nurturing mother earth gave way to the masculine one, in which man dominates and controls nature for his own sake. Her book inspired researchers in environmental history, philosophy, and gender studies.

Her latest book aims to contribute to the current debate of the Anthropocene and climate change. Merchant notes that many publications [End Page 604] have appeared on these themes from science, politics, economics, and policy, but relatively few from the humanities. However, the humanities could inspire new approaches to the challenges facing humanity today.

The book has an attractive design. After an introduction, chapters discuss climate change and the Anthropocene from six disciplines: history, art, literature, religion, philosophy, and ethics and law. In an epilogue, she reflects on the future of mankind and the earth. As a historian, this reviewer will focus on the introduction and the "History" chapter, which have several flaws.

The introduction immediately reveals a problem. According to Merchant, climate change is the hallmark of the Anthropocene. It has been caused by human actions in the past centuries and has disastrous consequences for life on earth. However, treating the Anthropocene with an emphasis on climate change is problematic. The Anthropocene can also be characterized by overfishing, biodiversity, agriculture, industrialization, globalization, and other themes showing the impact of humans on Earth. While Merchant discusses several of these other themes, when it comes to climate change, it is not always clear how it defines the Antropocene. The book lacks a tight storyline.

Another issue: Merchant does not problematize the concepts "climate change" and "Anthropocene" enough. For example, she could have focused more on the long debates and uncertainties about climate change in the twentieth century, instead of noting that early "warnings of what later came to be known as the "'greenhouse effect' … fell on deaf ears" (p. 6). In the past, other scenarios were also considered, such as a short-term temperature drop (and a new ice age) or a positive effect of the CO₂ increase, namely a greening of the earth. The fact that there is now consensus about temperature rise and the extensive negative effects does not alter this.

Regarding the Anthropocene, she discusses a series of alternatives to the concept. An important point is that the concept has a geological interpretation. It should be part of a classification of geological periods and follow after the Holocene. However, is there such a thing as the Anthropocene in a geological sense? Geologists have expressed doubts. Are the discussions not mainly about human impact on Earth, rather than a strict geological classification? For Merchant it is about human impact, and especially the drama that is taking place. The Anthropocene is therefore not a neutral description of an era, but a normative concept.

The chapter "History" does not advance a better understanding of the Anthropocene. The steam engine and thermodynamics are central to this chapter. There is something to be said for that, but Merchant describes the development of the steam engine in an outdated way: in terms of successive inventions and ideas. Anyone who wants to understand the Anthropcene, however, will have to analyze the steam engine and the associated industrialization from an integrated approach, as current transition theories [End Page 605] do (also within the historical discipline). Another issue in this chapter concerns its emphasis on the concept of "entropy." Why attention for this...

审核人：

• 人类世与人文：从气候变化到可持续发展的新时代Carolyn Merchant
• 哈里·林森（生物）

人类世与人文科学：从气候变化到可持续发展的新时代Carolyn Merchant。纽黑文：耶鲁大学出版社，2020 年。Pp。232.

Carolyn Merchant 因《自然之死：女性、生态和科学革命》（HarperOne，1980 年）而闻名。在之前的这本书中，她展示了在科学革命期间对自然的看法如何发生根本性变化：人、家庭、社区、自然和地球构成有机宇宙学的一部分，直到科学革命，之后自然被原子化、客观化和解剖. 这种变化具有明显的性别层面。养育地球母亲的女性隐喻让位于男性隐喻，在这种隐喻中，男人为了自己的利益主宰和控制自然。她的书启发了环境历史、哲学和性别研究领域的研究人员。

她的最新著作旨在为当前关于人类世和气候变化的辩论做出贡献。Merchant 指出，许多出版物[End Page 604]已经出现在科学、政治、经济和政策领域的这些主题上，但人文学科的出版物相对较少。然而，人文学科可以激发应对当今人类面临的挑战的新方法。

这本书的设计很吸引人。在介绍之后，章节从六个学科讨论气候变化和人类世：历史、艺术、文学、宗教、哲学、伦理和法律。在结语中，她反思了人类和地球的未来。作为一个历史学家，这位评论家将重点放在引言和“历史”一章，其中有几个缺陷。

介绍一下子就暴露了一个问题。根据商人的说法，气候变化是人类世的标志。它是由过去几个世纪的人类行为造成的，对地球上的生命造成了灾难性的后果。然而，以气候变化为重点来处理人类世是有问题的。人类世的特征还包括过度捕捞、生物多样性、农业、工业化、全球化和其他显示人类对地球影响的主题。虽然 Merchant 讨论了其中几个其他主题，但当谈到气候变化时，它如何定义 Antropocene 并不总是很清楚。这本书缺乏紧凑的故事情节。

另一个问题：Merchant 对“气候变化”和“人类世”的概念没有足够的问题化。例如，她本可以更多地关注 20 世纪关于气候变化的长期争论和不确定性，而不是注意到早期“对后来被称为“‘温室效应’的警告……置若罔闻”（ p. 6). 过去，还考虑了其​​他情况，例如短期温度下降（和新的冰河时代）或 CO ₂增加的积极影响，即地球绿化。现在就温度升高达成了共识，广泛的负面影响并没有改变这一点。

关于人类世，她讨论了该概念的一系列替代方案。重要的一点是该概念具有地质解释。它应该是地质时期分类的一部分，并在全新世之后。然而，在地质意义上是否存在人类世这样的东西？地质学家对此表示怀疑。讨论的主要不是人类对地球的影响，而不是严格的地质分类吗？对于商人来说，这是关于人类的影响，尤其是正在发生的戏剧性事件。因此，人类世不是一个时代的中立描述，而是一个规范性概念。

“历史”一章并没有促进对人类世的更好理解。蒸汽机和热力学是本章的核心。对此有一些话要说，但商人以一种过时的方式描述了蒸汽机的发展：根据连续的发明和想法。然而，任何想要了解人类世的人都必须像当前的转型理论[End Page 605]所做的（也在历史学科内）从综合方法分析蒸汽机和相关的工业化。本章的另一个问题涉及它对“熵”概念的强调。为什么要关注这个...