Anthropocene, Geoethics, and Geoanthropology: A Systemist’s Mutual Articulation

Introduction

The task is not merely to juxtapose the notions of Anthropocene, geoethics, and geoanthropology, but to show that each remains incomplete without the others. The Anthropocene is not only a geoscientific descriptor of planetary change; it is an epistemological condition in which geosciences encounter human agency as internal to Earth-system dynamics. Geoethics, correspondingly, is not an ancillary moral supplement; it is the normative-reflexive apparatus through which this altered condition of knowledge becomes intelligible as responsibility, judgment, and guidance. Geoanthropology mediates between them by historicising and differentiating human–geological entanglement, thereby preventing both the Anthropocene and geoethics from remaining abstract or unduly homogeneous. The argument therefore proceeds through four nested moves: from the Anthropocene as geoscientific claim with a normative surplus, to geoethics as reflexive response, to geoanthropology as mediating register, and finally to their integration in a closed argumentative loop.

Sediment fan - somewhere on Earth

 

The Anthropocene as Geoscientific Claim and Epistemological Condition

The point of departure must be geoscientific rather than rhetorical. The Anthropocene enters the field through stratigraphic and Earth-system reasoning: anthropogenic change is registered in sediments, ice cores, isotope ratios, and biotic signatures. In this sense, the term initially names a geological condition in which human action has become a dominant driver of Earth-system transformation. Yet the concept carries more than descriptive force. Once geological change is attributed to Anthropos, questions of agency, responsibility, and differential contribution arise from within the concept itself. The Anthropocene is therefore not only a description of altered Earth processes; it is a diagnosis whose very formulation discloses asymmetries of causation and exposure that empirical description alone cannot resolve.

This is why the Anthropocene should be understood as an epistemological condition. It marks a transformation in the object of geoscientific inquiry itself. Geosciences no longer confront an external telluric world alone; they investigate a planetary system in which organised human action has become part of the causal architecture of the observed. Industrial metabolism, infrastructural expansion, energy use, territorial ordering, and political economy are not external “drivers” appended to Earth-system science from outside. They are constitutive dimensions of the very condition being studied. Thus, the Anthropocene gives geoethics its scope because it reveals a world in which knowing Earth dynamics is inseparable from evaluating the human systems that shape them.

 

Earth seen by fish

Geoethics as the Normative-Reflexive Apparatus

If the Anthropocene discloses a normative surplus, geoethics is the form of reflexive work through which that surplus is taken up. The source text is explicit that geoethics is not “applied ethics bolted onto geoscience.” Rather, it is the geoscientific community’s own effort to articulate the responsibilities attending the production, communication, and deployment of geoscientific knowledge in a human-modified Earth system. Two features are decisive: first, reflexivity regarding methods, data governance, institutional position, and communication; second, the claim that Earth-system literacy is a civic capacity rather than merely a professional competence. Geoethics therefore does not simply evaluate conduct after knowledge has been produced; it interrogates the conditions and consequences of knowledge production itself.

The reciprocal dependence of the two concepts becomes clear at this point. Without the Anthropocene, geoethics risks remaining normatively well intentioned but insufficiently specified in planetary scale, urgency, and object. Without geoethics, the Anthropocene remains a diagnosis without prescriptive architecture. More precisely, it lacks a pathway from empirical recognition to normative orientation and from normative orientation to institutional embodiment. Geoethics supplies that pathway. It converts planetary diagnosis into a field of responsibility by asking what follows for geoscientific practice, public reasoning, and governance once Earth-system change is understood as partly constituted by human action. In this sense, geoethics gives the Anthropocene not only ethical salience but also the beginnings of material architecture.

 

Geoanthropology as Mediating Register

The relation between Anthropocene and geoethics would, however, remain too compressed were it not mediated by geoanthropology. Geoanthropology broadens the field from a binary relation between diagnosis and normativity to a historically and socially differentiated account of human–geological entanglement. It performs three functions that are indispensable to the argument. First, it provides temporal grounding by showing that human populations have long been shaped by, and have long shaped, geological substrates through agriculture, mining, settlement, water management, and landscape-oriented cosmologies. The Anthropocene is thus not the beginning of human-geological entanglement, but a threshold within a much longer history whose contemporary scale and intensity are distinctive.

Second, geoanthropology differentiates the Anthropos. A major weakness in simplified invocations of the Anthropocene is their tendency to totalise humanity as though all humans contributed equally to planetary disruption and were equally positioned in relation to its effects. The source text counters this by emphasising inequalities of contribution, exposure, and capacity, and by indicating that such differentiation can be operationalised empirically, for example through quintile-based analyses of wealth, income, and energy consumption. Geoanthropology therefore prevents the Anthropocene from functioning as a homogenising species label and prevents geoethics from addressing an undifferentiated moral subject. It makes the normative inference chain socially credible because responsibility can then be allocated in relation to historically and materially structured asymmetries.

Third, geoanthropology offers a social theory of the “geo”. Geological realities are not merely the passive background of social existence; they are enrolled in practices, contested in governance, and interpreted through different territorial and ontological relations. Questions such as who governs access to geological knowledge, whose relations to geological substrates are recognised, and how Earth-system processes are institutionalised in public decision-making connect geoethics directly to environmental justice and to the geo-civic domain. Geoanthropology is therefore not an auxiliary field appended to the argument. It is the mediating register that links Earth-system diagnosis to differentiated social worlds and thereby enables geoethics to operate with historical and political precision.

 

Hydropower - somewhere on Earth, anywhere.

Systemic Closure of the Argument

The argument reaches full force when these three terms are grasped as a closed loop rather than as a linear chain. The Anthropocene names a planetary condition in which geological change is causally attributable to human systems, thereby generating a normative surplus that empirical description alone cannot discharge. Geoethics is the reflexive framework through which geoscientists, and by extension geo-literate citizens, take up that surplus as a matter of responsibility in knowledge production, communication, and governance. Geoanthropology historicises and differentiates the human-geological entanglement, showing that causal contribution, vulnerability, and capability are unevenly distributed across social formations. The loop closes because this differentiation refines the geoethical claim and, in doing so, sharpens the Anthropocene diagnosis by giving it socially actionable content.

Stated compactly, the Anthropocene identifies a planetary threshold, geoethics governs the normative responsibilities generated by that threshold, and geoanthropology differentiates the social structures through which those responsibilities are unevenly held. Together they form an empirical-normative-social triad adequate to a systemist account of planetary change. The gain of this formulation is not only conceptual elegance. It makes the inference chain traceable: from diagnosis, to responsibility, to differentiated social allocation, and finally to the possibility of civic and institutional embodiment.

 

Relation to the Four-Realm Model

Within the four-realm model of the telluric, social, conceptual and artefactual realms, this triad can be positioned without strain. The Anthropocene is first disclosed in the telluric realm, but only as a condition already coupled to the social realm through human causation. Geoanthropology works across that telluric-social interface by historicising and differentiating forms of human entanglement with geological processes. Geoethics belongs primarily to the conceptual realm, where responsibilities are articulated, judged, and justified. The artefactual realm then becomes the space in which this normative-reflexive apparatus acquires material architecture through institutions, infrastructures, pedagogies, legal devices, and practices of governance. In that sense, the four-realm model does not duplicate the present argument; it operationalises it.

 

Anthropocene not only in year 2022

Conclusion

The mutual dependence of Anthropocene, geoethics, and geoanthropology is therefore not accidental but structural. The Anthropocene without geoethics remains an empirically powerful diagnosis that lacks prescriptive and material architecture. Geoethics without the Anthropocene remains a normative vocabulary whose planetary scope and urgency are underdetermined. Both without geoanthropology remain insufficiently historical, insufficiently social, and insufficiently attentive to differentiated responsibility. Taken together, however, they yield a coherent framework for understanding planetary-scale anthropogenic change as simultaneously geoscientific, normative, and socio-historical. The resulting conclusion is distinctly geo-civic: a viable civic order under Anthropocene conditions must be Earth-aligned, reflexive about its geoscientific foundations, attentive to asymmetries of contribution and exposure, and capable of embodying responsibility in material and institutional forms.

This text was generated by ChatGPT prompted with an input generated by Claude. Both LLMs are trained by the author, who edited the text slightly.

Bibliography generated by ChatGPT and checked by the author. 

 Anthropocene as geoscientific and epistemological condition

·        Crutzen, P. J., & Stoermer, E. F. (2000). The “Anthropocene.” Global Change Newsletter, 41, 17–18.
This is the concise founding intervention. It is the best opening citation for the term’s initial geoscientific crystallisation. (commons.gc.cuny.edu)

·        Steffen, W., Grinevald, J., Crutzen, P. J., & McNeill, J. R. (2011). The Anthropocene: Conceptual and historical perspectives. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 369(1938).
This is one of the strongest bridge texts between geological reasoning and wider historical framing; it is especially useful for your introductory section. (Royal Society Publishing)

·        Lewis, S. L., & Maslin, M. A. (2015). Defining the Anthropocene. Nature, 519(7542), 171–180.
Use this where you want a rigorous discussion of formalisation, markers, and competing start dates. (Nature)

·        Zalasiewicz, J., Waters, C. N., Williams, M., & Summerhayes, C. P. (eds.) (2019). The Anthropocene as a Geological Time Unit: A Guide to the Scientific Evidence and Current Debate. Cambridge University Press.
This is the most useful book-length reference when you want the geological case and the debate around formal designation in one place. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

2. Geoethics as normative-reflexive apparatus

·        Di Capua, G., Peppoloni, S., & Bobrowsky, P. T. (2017). The Cape Town Statement on Geoethics. Annals of Geophysics, 60, Fast Track 7.
This is the normative charter text. It is especially apt when your essay moves from diagnosis to responsibility. (IAPG geoethics)

·        Peppoloni, S., & Di Capua, G. (2022). Geoethics: Manifesto for an Ethics of Responsibility Towards the Earth. Springer.
This is the clearest single-volume articulation of geoethics as an ethics of responsibility toward Earth and is highly relevant for your conceptual section. (Springer)

·        Peppoloni, S., & Di Capua, G. (2021). Current Definition and Vision of Geoethics. In M. Bohle & E. Marone (eds.), Geo-societal Narratives: Contextualising Geosciences (pp. 17–28). Palgrave Macmillan.

This is especially relevant for your essay because it links geoethics to geo-societal framing and Earth-system concerns in a way close to your own vocabulary. (IAPG geoethics)

3. Geoanthropology and the differentiated Anthropos

·        Renn, J. (2022). From the History of Science to Geoanthropology. Isis, 113(2), 377ff.
This is probably the strongest direct reference for the mediating role your essay assigns to geoanthropology. It explicitly argues for a transdisciplinary science able to understand the techno–Earth system integratively. (Chicago Journals)

·        Renn, J. (2020). The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene. Princeton University Press.
This is valuable where you want to support the claim that the Anthropocene is also an epistemological condition and that knowledge itself becomes part of the story. (mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de)

·        Chakrabarty, D. (2009). The Climate of History: Four Theses.
This remains one of the key humanities references for thinking the entanglement of geological and historical time and for showing why the Anthropocene destabilises older distinctions between natural and human history. (forum-transregionale-studien.de)

·        Clark, N., & Szerszynski, B. (2020). Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences. Polity.
This is very useful if you want to strengthen the paragraph on the social-theoretical mediation between planetary processes and social life. (politybooks.com)

·        Bonneuil, C., & Fressoz, J.-B. (2017). The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us. Verso.
This is the best critical-historical counterweight to homogenising uses of “Anthropos,” and it supports your emphasis on unequal responsibility and contested narratives. (versobooks.com)

·        Antweiler, C. (2024). Anthropology in the Anthropocene: An Earthed Theory for Our Extended Present. Springer.
This is a good recent addition when you want a more explicitly anthropological route into geoanthropology. (Springer)

4. Systemism, technosphere, and material architecture

·        Bunge, M. (1996). Finding Philosophy in Social Science. Yale University Press.
This is the best broad philosophical source for grounding your systemist method in a serious philosophy of the social sciences. (Yale University Press)

·        Bunge, M. (2000). Systemism: The alternative to individualism and holism. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 29(2), 147–157.
This is the most direct citation if you want to justify the systemist move itself and the need to think relations, structures, and mechanisms together. (ScienceDirect)

·        Haff, P. K. (2014). Humans and technology in the Anthropocene: Six rules. The Anthropocene Review, 1(2), 126–136.
This is especially important for your phrase about the Anthropocene needing “material architecture,” because it clarifies the technosphere as an emergent Earth-system component. (ResearchGate)

GeoCivics for a Planetary Habitat

People’s normative frameworks and practices within the planetary habitat called Earth require understanding the human World and the natural Earth, rooted in a shared epistemological foundation. This essay sketches how.

The Earth supports a planetary habitat in which humans and other living beings coexist. Planetary-scale anthropogenic change turns this coexistence into a material and political condition: human practices couple to Earth’s natural dynamics, so that the habitual partition between ‘nature’ and ‘society’ becomes analytically misleading and normatively evasive [1] [2] [3]. 

To foreground this coupling, an epistemological concept is conceived: a nexus of the human World and the natural Earth as a single, co-constituted configuration. This nexus is pictured as an amalgam of diverse elements (materials, organisms, infrastructures, institutions, semiotic resources, cultural universes) whose coherence is fluid and whose boundaries are adaptable [4]. This concept makes evident that cultural, social, and ethical practices are not ‘external drivers’ of the planetary habitat; they are endogenous features that determine how the planetary habitat is inhabited, modified, and governed. 

Within the planetary-habitat framing, several theoretical contributions are combined: The concept of an Anthroposphere [5], i.e. humans’ planetary habitat, designates the range of human niches - people, cultures, institutions, and the built environment - as they reshape and are reshaped by biophysical processes. The concepts of a Technosphere and an Ergosphere [6] capture the material-operational substrate of these niches, including infrastructures and organisational networks that process energy, matter, and information/entropy at various scales. Taken together, these concepts help locate material constraints (Technosphere), civic purposes (Anthroposphere), and people’s leverage points for intervention (Ergosphere). Yet these ‘spheres’ are not neatly nested: the same objects (for example, a dam, a port, a data centre, a standard, or a regulatory agency) appear in multiple configurations. Subsequently, the concept of the nexus between the human World and the natural Earth invites analysing open boundaries rather than proposing a closed system.

Traditional Earth and geosciences focus on Earth’s telluric features, i.e. material attributes, dynamics and processes. As is often the case in STEM disciplines, social attributes are secondary, and cultural attributes receive even less emphasis. However, advances in Earth System Science [7], the debate over the concept of the Anthropocene, and the expanding corpus of geoethical insights have jointly rendered the co-constitution of telluric (Earth-related) dynamics and societal organisation unavoidable. Therefore, the term nexus emphasises the co-constituting of tellurian dynamics without dissolving material constraints into discourse or freezing social life into a simplistic model. The notion of a ‘Nexus of human World and natural Earth’ proposes an epistemic device for disciplined level-switching between planetary constraints, social organisation, artefactual infrastructures, and conceptual regimes.

To construct the nexus, insights are assembled from different sources: Earth System Science (including theories of social-ecological systems and complex-adaptive dynamics), Bunge’s materialism and systemism, and anthropological-philosophical resources. These include interpretations of Arendt’s ‘human condition’, Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, Jonas’s ethic of responsibility, and Renn’s account of knowledge-driven ‘sphere of work’ (Ergosphere1 ). The resulting construct is systemist in its insistence on materiality, causal powers, structured explanation and practice-sensitivity. 

To render the notion of a nexus operational, an ideal-typical description is conceived, comprising four realms (of systems or assemblages). The telluric realm gathers natural processes and their constraints; the social realm gathers relations of coordination, conflict, and authority; the conceptual realm gathers mental/cognitive concepts, semiotic resources or symbolic universes including knowledge claims and legitimating narratives; and the artefactual realm gathers human-made assemblies of material and symbolic structures. The artefactual realm generalises the concept of an Ergosphere and is pivotal: it is the privileged means where telluric constraints, social relations, and conceptual regimes assemble into tellurian features of the Anthroposphere through infrastructures, standards, devices, routines, and organisational forms. Notably, the artefactual realm includes intangible structures (norms, practices, protocols, models, and narratives) alongside tangible ones (machines, buildings, networks).  

Observations and experiences, for example, the Columbian Exchange, global reservoir construction, the Montreal Protocol, deep-sea mining, mean sea-level rise, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, and observations from the geoscience-society interface, complement the theoretical grounding of the concept of a nexus between human World and natural Earth. 

Because the planetary habitat is complex-adaptive, the different realms are co-constitutive rather than separable: objects and attributes interlace, drift, and re-stabilise. Earth System Science formalisms describe constraints and tendencies. Accompanying system notions, the notion of assemblages signals partial closures, including temporary stabilisations that can be undone and remade through innovation, crisis, policy, and cultural reframing. Seen through system and assemblage lenses, the proposed heuristic is for practical use: it operationalises reflexive, geoethically informed civic participation in shaping the future of a cohabited planetary habitat - Earth-aligned civics attentive to material limits, plural values, and distributed agency. 

Founded on the concept of an ‘artefactual realm’, the notion of ‘tellurian discourses’ is designed to indicate discourses on the emergence of the artefactual. This confluence mediates how humans cohabit Earth rather than discourses about ‘the social’ interventions into ‘the telluric’ or vice versa. Concepts and observations show how geoscientific insights and socio-cultural attributes co-produce frame and action, and how geoethics provides a vocabulary for civic responsibility under uncertainty.

1 "[w]ith their rapidly evolving culture, humans have introduced an 'ergosphere' (a sphere of work, as well as of technological and energetic transformations) as a new global component of the Earth system… changing the overall dynamics of the system". [8] [p.7]

1. Otto IM, Wiedermann M, Cremades R, et al (2020). Human agency in the Anthropocene. Ecological Economics 167:106463. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106463
2. Thomas JA (2022). Altered Earth. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
3. Jansson F (2026). The dynamics of cultural systems. (pre-print, arxiv.org) 1–36
4.  Spies M, Alff H (2020). Assemblages and complex adaptive systems: A conceptual crossroads for integrative research? Geogr Compass 14:. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12534
5. Huggett R (2024). Earth’s spheres: Conceptual and definitional debates. Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091333241275465
6. Renn J (2020). The Evolution of Knowledge - Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene. Princeton University Press, Oxford, UK
7.  Steffen W, Richardson K, Rockström J, et al (2020). The emergence and evolution of Earth System Science. Nat Rev Earth Environ 1:54–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-019-0005-6
8. Renn J (2018). The Evolution of Knowledge - Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene. HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology 12:561. https://doi.org/10.2478/host-2018-0001

The church might leave the village, not yet.

 

Comment to Carsten Herrmann-Pillath:

  The limits of knowledge in AI: Why AI can never achieve human intelligence

 

“Die Kirche im Dorf lassen” (keep the church in the village), a German proverb praising the status quo.

The proverb reminds us to acknowledge that we deliberate (only) about ‘non-humanoid AI’, as CHP emphasises when discussing GAI. Still, it remains open what kind of body a non-humanoid intelligent entity might have. For example, consider an AI that ‘handles’ the operation of a power grid peppered with multiple sensors tracking the condition of the installations. What kind of body would that AI sense?

KI: The picture shows a stone wall with water seeping through it, and the seepage has caused a bright orange discolouration on both the stones and the cobblestones below.

The evolution of biological intelligence, including its human form, is closely related to sensorial and modelling functions applied to both the external environment and the body [*]. The functioning of these increasingly complex ‘Intelligence Systems’ evolved from ‘bacteria’ intelligence onward. These biological ‘Intelligence Systems’ (of the body, senses, nervous system, and brain) exhibit an increasingly complex interplay between processing received sensorial inputs and modelling expected sensorial inputs. Combining ‘processing and modelling inputs’ leads to a (more or less) intelligent practice, that is, an action of the body unto the environment or the body (scratching and picking off the lice).

Compared to this ‘wealth of sensing and modelling’ a LLM is poor. However, the LLM accesses a (vast) variety of descriptions of (human) ‘intelligent practice’. These descriptions (for example, books or other texts) are ‘external representations’ of those practices [1]. These external representations vary, are limited and biased. However, they represent different realisations of (same/similar) intelligent practices of humans, including the impact of ‘the bodily’.

The LLM derives (more or less) typical patterns [2] of these external representations of ‘intelligent practice’. Subsequently, it presents (the user of the LLM) with an artefact, i.e., a replication of ‘the typical description’, although with some variations. The human user can apply this replication to local/punctual practices (or not). The user might experience success (or not) and tune practices, including the use of an LLM. ‘Unhappily’, the LLM does not benefit (directly) from the user’s practice, namely, to tune the LMM process to derive (better) ‘typical patterns’.

Hence, when discussing LLMs, the proverb reminds us to acknowledge that we deliberate (only) about using text/language-based patterns [3] that describe the status quo of intelligent human practices. However, the related use cases are wide-ranging, given the ample use of text/language in human cultures. Hence, metaphorically speaking, ‘wir lassen die Kirche im Dorf’ (we keep the church in the village), and a noticeable evolution of the LMM is not happening.

Summarising, the strength of the (current) LMM process, as seen from a human perspective, is that an LMM is using a very large corpus of inputs, i.e. ‘general social knowledge’ [**], which is now in reach of (individual) humans (for the good or the bad). Of similar interest is that the functional principle underlying the LLM is (just) ‘replicator with variation’, which is the essence of (any) evolution, yet. The weakness of the (current) LMM process is that its built-in evolution option is underdeveloped. That is, a ‘replication leading to a successful human practice’ is not fed back into the LLM process (directly). Such feedback might occur (at the level of individual users) through the design of a prompt that references previous ‘successful replicators’. If that way of working occurs, a process might start moving LLM-human-couple towards a GAI (including the human bodily practice) and the ‘die Kirche könnte  das Dorf verlassen’ (the church might leave the village).

[*] see: Bennett, Max. 2023. A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains. New York: Mariner Books.; Barret, Lisa Feldmann. 2018. How Emotions are Made - The Secret Life of the Brain. ´Mariner Books.

[**] see discussion about ‘general social knowledge’: https://www.rosalux.de/news/id/50774/unser-wissen-in-einem-topf; https://technosphere.blog/2026/01/31/marxs-technosphere-and-the-ai-powered-transition-to-postcapitalism-re-reading-the-fragment-on-machines/

[1] The expression “external representation” is taken from J. Renn’s works [Jürgen Renn (2020) The evolution of knowledge.  Princeton University, page 242] meaning: “External representation: Any aspect of the material culture or environment of a society that may serve as encoding of knowledge (landmarks, tools, artifacts, models, rituals, sound, gestures, language, music, images, signs, writing, symbol systems etc.). External representations can be used to share, store, transmit, appropriate, or control knowledge, but also to transform it. The handling of external representations is guided by cognitive structures. The use of external representations may also be constrained by semiotic rules characteristic of their material properties and their employment in a given social or cultural context, such as orthographic rules or stylistic conventions in the case of writing.”

[2] For many users, the way the function of an LLM is a ‚black box‘ (as many modern technologies) https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bbm:978-3-031-97445-8/1

[3] including image treatment because it is often made via textual descriptions

 At the occasion of the Geoethics Day 2024

Referring to two attributes of the year 2024, namely the unbroken drive of artificial intelligence and the decision of the geological establishment to consider a geological epoch ' Anthropocene' to be non-appropriate, ChatGPT4.0 was promoted to assess the decision [*]. In addition, the AI provided a picture to portray IUGS's choice. 

[*] https://www.iugs.org/_files/ugd/f1fc07_40d1a7ed58de458c9f8f24de5e739663.pdf

An Exploration: History of Science & Geo-philosophical Studies

Introduction

In the first instance, geoethics emerged as an intra-disciplinary endeavour in responsible geosciences. During the last few years, geoethics’ scope expanded [1] [2]. Therefore, my study programme aggregates insights from other disciplines, iteratively reconstructs geo-philosophical enquiries, and consolidates philosophical foundations. 

How the practice and theory of ‘comparative Justice’ [a] emerged in geoethical studies illustrates this learning programme:· From early on [3], the practice of ‘comparative Justice’  characterised geoethical thinking. For example, the ‘Cape Town Statement on Geoethics’ (2106) stressed that ethically sound operational practices depend on the respective environmental, social and cultural settings [4], or worded differently, “a strong awareness of the technical, environmental, economic, cultural and political limits existing in different socio-ecological contexts” [b].  The Indian Economist, Philosopher, and Nobelist Armatya Sen investigated the Rawlsian theory of ‘Justice as Fairness’ in the book ‘The Idea of Justice’ [5], published in 2010, showing why ethically just choices “taken in a specific social and cultural setting, that respect the ethical norms of this setting, may appear unethical elsewhere”, to quote scholars in geoethics [6] (p.30). Hence, from the onset, geoethics advocated pluralism of ethically sound choices (i.e., comparative Justice). However, those (the author included) who pursue developing geoethical thinking only recently noticed essential philosophical studies supporting this approach.

This experience illustrates that interdisciplinary and comparative study could further geo-philosophical enquiries, including geoethics. In the following, this exploration is extended, venturing into the field of the theory of the history of science.

Problem Statement

Part One

In recent years, it became clear (for me) that geoethics is a notion in plural. It could be schematised like this:

geoscientific topic + philosophical insight = geophilosophical enquiry

Subsequently, the enquiries could be written as a mathematical ‘set’: {GT _i; PI _j} = {GPE _i,j}. 

Considering that for a given geo-philosophical appraisal the geoscientific topics and philosophical insights likely are composites the description of a geophilosophical appraisal should be

{ {GT _i ; PI _j } _{i=1,n; j=1,m} } = {{GPE _i,j } _n,m } =  {GEA _n,m }.

The number of specific geophilosophical enquiries ( GPE _i,j) and appraisals (GEA _n,m) is vast because geoscientific topics (GT _i ) are numerous and the applicable (philosophical) insights (PI _j) into moral, epistemic or social features of human practices are many.  

Example: 

To illustrate why to pursue this quest to schematise geoethics: The Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) of the Ediacaran period [c] is a unique geoscientific feature. How to rule sampling this site for research purposes?

This question is a specific geophilosophical appraisal (i.e., geoethical issue). It first includes a geoscientific topic, “GT sampling the Ediacaran GSSP for research”, and second, a philosophical insight about applicable norms “PI j”, for example, a specific set of deontological rules [d] [7]. 

Although the outcome of the given geophilosophical enquiry will depend on the chosen deontological rules, the geophilosophical appraisal can be described as {GE sampling the Ediaaran GSSP for research, various deontological rules }. This set of enquiries might be pretty vast, although not as vast as the set of geophilosophical enquiries into the sampling of geoheritage sites [8] [9] [10] for research, training or education. 

As this examples show, no end is visible to the diversity of geophilosophical appraisal. Hence, the issue arises: What systemic description of geophilosophical appraisals is possible?

Part Two

In the first instance, a conceptual description of all geophilosophical enquiries “GE i;j” may appear of little practical value for responsible geosciences. However, the recent development of geoethical thinking raises the stakes. Initially, professional experiences led geoscientists to put together epistemic-moral hybrids [11], e.g. The Cape Town Statement on Geoethics [4], a relatively regular program of responsible sciences [12]. Then, combining geosciences and political philosophies more comprehensively, geo-philosophical assessments of human practices as part of the Earth System emerged [1] [2].

Hence, geoethical thinking addresses more general subjects than the responsible conduct of geoscience professionals [9] [10]. The respective geo-philosophical enquiries assess the Human-Earth Nexus by amalgamating insights into (a) the dynamics of the Earth System; (b) socio-historical features of human societies; (c) philosophical appraisals of socio-political choices.

Given such a complex geo-societal application context of geoethical thinking, understanding the general nature of geo-philosophical appraisals is needed.  Again, the issue arises: What systemic description of geo-philosophical enquiries is possible?

A partial Remedy – An Exploration

Drawing on the experience made with the concept of ‘comparative Justice’, a systemic approach to describe geo-philosophical enquiries are likely found outside geosciences. I discovered an approach in J. Renn’s book “The Evolution of Knowledge – Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene” [13].

Scholars of the History of Science recently developed a theory of the Evolution of Knowledge [13] [14] [15]. When applying this thery to societies experiencing anthropogenic global change, they discern the concept of an ergosphere to depict the essence of the Human-Earth Nexus:

“With their rapidly evolving culture, humans have introduced an “ergosphere” (a sphere of work, as well as of technological and energetic transformations) as a new global component of the Earth system, in addition to the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, and the biosphere, thus changing the overall dynamics of the system.“ [15] [p. 7].

When studying the theory of the Evolution of Knowledge from a Geoethics perspective, it results that the respective study subjects overlap, and subsequently, there is potential to transfer concepts and notions.

In the following, the interest is in transfer from the History of Science to enrich geo-philosophical enquiries, i.e., geoethical studies. Several concepts/notions seem applicable for a systemic description of geo-philosophical appraisals because they offer general concepts/notions for assessing human practices. In particular, the three following concepts, ‘borderline problem’, ‘economy of knowledge’, and ‘external representation’ are of interest because [13]

• (i) a ‘borderline problem’ is defined as “problems that belong to multiple distinct systems of knowledge. Borderline problems put these systems into contact… (and sometimes into direct conflict) with each other, potentially triggering their integration and reorganisation” [p.427];
• (ii) an ‘economy of knowledge’ is defined as “societal processes pertaining to the production, preservation, accumulation, circulation, and appropriation of knowledge mediated by its external representation” [p.429];
• (iii) an ‘external representation’ is defined as “any aspect of the material culture or environment of a society that may serve as an encoding of knowledge” [p.224].

I like to argue: A given geo-philosophical enquiry, “GE i,j” describes a specific borderline problem that links a geoscientific topic and a philosophical insight. The subsequent appraisal shall be into (a) the economy of knowledge associated with the borderline problem, looking into (b) societal processes and (c) external representations mediating the knowledge.

The geoethical issues of hydrology [16], including recent events [e] ‘encoding’ the associated knowledge [17], illustrate the power of these generic concepts/notions (borderline problem, economy of knowledge, and external representation) from the History of Science. Although the notions are pretty general, the concepts are intuitive and provide structure to geo-philosophical enquiries. The least intuitive notion might relate to the concept of ‘external representation’ because it englobes anything with a material side that is shaping how society ‘records’ knowledge for use and practices. In this sense, and as examples, the Cap Town Statement on Geoethics [4] and the geoethics sessions at the EGU General Assembly are external representations of geoethics.

Conclusion

Taking a geo-philosophical perspective means, per se, specifying a borderline problem, an economy of knowledge, and an external representation. Subsequently, J. Renn’s (and coworkers) theory of the Evolution of Knowledge [13] offers a methodology to standardise geo-philosophical enquiries, namely studying:

1. · What is the given Borderline Problem?
2. · What is the given Economy of Knowledge?
3. · What is the given External Representation?

To illustrate the application of this study programme: When studying GSSP sites, Finney and Hilario conclude [10]:

“These international geostandards [GSSPs] are an essential part of the geological heritage of the world and therefore they should be included whenever possible in national or regional geosite or natural monument inventories to ensure their protection. They also represent a great educational and even touristic resource for local communities, as exemplified by the Basque Coast UNESCO Global Geopark”.

The authors sketch in these two phrases the geoethical borderline problem (GSSP as protected sites), the economy of knowledge (scientific, educational and touristic resources), and external representation (national inventories, UNESCO Global Geopark). Using the initial ‘schematic’ notation, the Finney and Hilario geophilosophical appraisal can be specified as:

 geoscientific topic "GSSP" 

+ 

philosophical insights "rules for protection national heritage”. 

Further research will show how practical the concepts of borderline problem, the economy of knowledge, and external representation will be for geophilosophical appraisals.

 

Acknowledgement: This text is an extended abstract of the accepted contribution EGU23-1024 to the EGU General Assembly 2023 (Vienna); https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-1204

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[a] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/#CompVersNonCompJust
[b] http://www.geoethics.org/definition
[c] The bronze disk in the lower section of the picture below, Ediacara, South Australia. Ediacaran Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point - Wikipedia; By Peter Neaum at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12030107
[d] Examples for destructive sampling: https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2572/figures/1
[e] See, for example, the 1st Congress on Geoethics and Groundwater Management (GEOETH&GWM'20), Porto - Portugal 2020

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