The New Lexicon of the Anthropocene and Some Divergent Narratives
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphil.2026.1.02Keywords:
Anthropocene, lexicon, narratives, geological taxonomy, Earth Sciences, Environmental HumanitiesAbstract
Surprisingly, although the term “Anthropocene” belongs to a geological taxonomy, it was categorically rejected by the scientific community of geologists. Their verdict was that we cannot grant the human species a geological force. However, the wider group of Earth Sciences has proposed a conceptual scheme starting from the “Anthropocene” as a keyword and several narratives have been developed, the best known being that of climate change as an effect of human activities. But the new lexicon of the Anthropocene has been developed spectacularly in the humanities, so we can already talk about an environmental humanities focused on this topic. My goal in this paper is to clarify the epistemologically distinct ways in which these three frameworks of thought work narratively.
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