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Earthlings from the Unseen Universe

The French sociologist Bruno Latour has repeatedly described humans as “earthlings” (terrestres) and has thus stressed the point that there is no alternative for us to chose from: we are bound to this earth and part of its system. This of course is not at all new. From Gaia to Jörd to Erda humans have felt a sound (and often: spiritual) connection to our planet. Lynn Margulis' and James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis – thus being a scientific approach to describing earth as a living system – has also gained some spiritual fame.

There is nonetheless another perspective which has been vocalized by Alfred Wallece for instance: He was convinced that “man's body may have been developed from that of a lower animal (…); but … that we possess intellectual and moral faculties which could not have been so developed, but must have had another origin; and for this origin we can only find an adequate cause in the unseen universe of Spirit.” The German anthropological term "Mängelwesen" ("uncomplete being") goes very much along this line.

These two perspectives on man: pure earthling or moral & intellectual non-earthling can be seen as the gate poles to sociological anthropology. In my talk I would like to discuss in how far adopting the term “anthropocene” into sociological language might add to this very old discussion about the sociological positioning of man in the universe.

Details

Author
Jonas Grutzpalk1
Institutionen
1HSPV NRW, Germany
Veranstaltung
GeoSaxonia 2024
Datum
2024
DOI
10.48380/h52t-j680