Control

The Anthropocene Project. An Encyclopedia

Can we control the earth? Humanity now finds itself caught up in the Anthropocene, rather unwillingly—at least climate change was hardly planned out the way it is unfolding. How is it then conceivable that the human being could possibly develop a controlled solution for the continued development of the earth? When the lines separating nature and culture erode, questions about responsibility shift and who we see as the bearers of hope with new solutions. Do the natural sciences need the humanities to rediscover and define their object, “nature,” or should hope be placed on artists and pedagogues to find solutions to the “wicked problems” in the Anthropocene, for example, that climate change can be rationally established, but not solved in a controlled way. Is humanity as stable and rational as some control scenarios presume? How should the dynamic of global processes be conceived, and can a regime of control be implemented? Anthropocene Observatory documents in multiple episodes how in institutions, laboratories, and workplaces the hypothesis of the “age of humanity” circulates and desires for controllability can be formulated.