A story of making

“Geo-societal Narratives - contextualising Geosciences.”

The drafting of the book “Geo-societal Narratives - contextualising Geosciences” [1] was a unique experience: The group of authors was assembled in late 2019 by correspondence. The outlay of the book was agreed upon in early 2020 by correspondence. The book was drafted by correspondence. No meetings, not even by video! Although the book's essays relate little to the COVID-19 pandemic, the turmoil of 2020/2021 facilitated the cooperation because it called for cooperation (Marone and Bohle, 2020). This experience recalls what in the past was named ‘Republic of Letters’ (Mokyr, 2016).

What made this book possible?

All co-authors cooperated, although they never met face-to-face, and most did never meet in the past. The co-authors' scientific networks were segregated from each other before the publication project. More than half of their connections went through the editors' weak links on (scientific) social media platforms. A simple analysis of past cooperation indicates less than two bilateral links between authors. The number drops below one when the editors are excluded from the analysis.

Hence, the willingness of all co-authors to cooperate with unknown peers as well as the trust of the publisher’s editors in this untested partnership was paramount for the making of the book.

 

What is the didactic idea of this book?

So far, geoscientists have engaged with the implications of 'responsible science' on their own. However, studying the societal relevance of geosciences requires the interaction of earth-sciences / geosciences and people-sciences, that is, the social sciences, political sciences, and humanities. Therefore, this book gathers scholars from the people-sciences to join geoscientists in studying geosciences' societal contexts. In that sense, this book offers an antithesis to simplistic views of societal geo-dynamics.

 

What is the background to this book?

Contemporary societies use geosciences know-how in business, public undertakings, and cultural activities (Bohle, 2021). In times of anthropogenic global change, geoscience expertise shall enable people to take care of seven-billion-plus fellow humans. Therefore, geoscience expertise needs a comprehensive understanding of the social and political facets of the 'human condition' (Hamilton, 2017), a ‘human planet’ (Lewis and Maslin, 2018).

So far, and like scientists from other disciplines, professional geoscientists have engaged with the concept of 'responsible science' (United Nations, 2013). This book is a cross-disciplinary exchange of narratives of various philosophical, applied, or political subjects to strengthen interdisciplinary inquiry.

 

What is this book about?

This book initiates a direct exchange between scholars in 'Earth sciences'  (geosciences) and 'People sciences'  (Castree, 2017) in the spirit^[2] of the philosopher and physicists Mario Bunge (1919-2020) and his imperative 'Enjoy life and help live'. Mario Bunge is inspiring because he taught the rebellious character of philosophy that it must be linked with the best of up-to-date science, be happy to give society something in exchange for the education getting, be tolerant regarding all authentic philosophies and rational debates among them. This book applies that philosophy is about engineering thinking, hence 'A philosophy without ontology is invertebrate; it is acephalous without epistemology, confused without semantics, and limbless without axiology, praxeology, and ethics. ^[3]'

 

What is the methodology of this book?

The editors created an environment to extract novel ideas. They gathered a diverse group of authors who, so far, did not cooperate. Ideas and opinions are juxtaposed, e.g. how to approach anthropocentrism in the Anthropocene. As sketched in the first chapter (Bohle and Marone, 2021), the emphasis was on breaking new ground in a common quest for ‘societal geosciences’.

 

References:

Bohle, M. (2021). ‘Citizen, Geoscientist and Associated Terra-former’, in Global Threats in the Anthropocene: From COVID-19 to the Future, eds. L. Mercantanti and S. Montes (Il Sileno Edizioni), 169–186.

Bohle, M., and Marone, E. (2021). ‘Why Geo-societal Narratives?’, in Geo-societal Narratives (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 1–16. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-79028-8_1.

Castree, N. (2017). Speaking for the ‘people disciplines’: Global change science and its human dimensions. Anthr. Rev. 4, 160–182. doi:10.1177/2053019617734249.

Lewis, S. L., and Maslin, M. A. (2018). The Human Planet - How We Created the Anthropocene. London: Penguin Random House.

Marone, E., and Bohle, M. (2020). Geoethics for Nudging Human Practices in Times of Pandemics. Sustainability 12, 7271. doi:10.3390/su12187271.

Mokyr, J. (2016). Institutions and the Origins of the Great Enrichment. Atl. Econ. J. 44, 243–259. doi:10.1007/s11293-016-9496-4.

United Nations (2013). World Social Science Report 2013. , ed. UNESCO OECD Publishing doi:10.1787/9789264203419-en.

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[1] https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030790271

[2] https://a-g-i-l.de/mario-bunge-the-big-questions-come-in-bundles-not-one-at-time/ (accessed 23rd February 2021).

[3] Bunge, M. (2016) Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist. Springer Biographies, Springer, 496 p. (p 406).