Overline: Lecture
Headline: The Human Imprint: Nature, Time, and Law in the Anthropocene

Human history has been entwined with the history of nature since the earliest accounts of creation. The advent of the environmental sciences secularised those histories, postulating new causal and consequential connections between nature and humanity. The Anthropocene is but the latest of the narratives that tie the laws of the Earth to the activities of nature’s most interventionist offspring: the human species. In this talk, Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, will trace the modern scientific narratives of human-nature relationships through the parallel lens of environmental law. She will ask what difference the concept of the Anthropocene—in particular, its embrace of the geologic timescale—makes to our notions of responsibility toward a planet that we not only inhabit but also consume and transform through human enterprise.

Organisers:

Christoph Rosol (Max Planck Institute für the History of Science)

Lino Camprubi (Max Planck Institute für the History of Science)

Stefan Schäfer (IASS)

Venue:

Max Planck Institute für the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany

Contact and Registration

The Anthropocene Lectures are open to the public. No registration required.

About This Series

The Anthropocene—the geological epoch of humanity—has established itself as a key concept within a wider scientific and social discourse. In the midst of the dramatic and destabilizing changes to the basic conditions for life on our planet, new epistemic potentials for human action upon the Earth are to be explored.

In the framework of the Anthropocene Lecture series, a number of distinguished speakers accentuating the Anthropocene debate are invited to respond to a topic that will be a central challenge for many generations to come. The lectures take place at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam.