47
Anthropocene, etymologically Mycenaean, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, or
Koine, and Medieval Greek. By 1873, the Italian geologist and priest Antonio
Stoppani acknowledged what he termed the Anthropozoic era,
3
and by 1999 the
term “homogenocene” had come in to use,
4
a geological catastrophe unleashed by
the sum total of reckless personalities all galvanized into but one species, and succeeding previous times, by comparison melodious and softly modest, the Holocene.
5
It is unclear whether Antonio Stoppani, George Rolleston, Vladimir Vernadsky,
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, even Albert Schweitzer, or his cousin Jean-Paul Sartre,
could actually have had any empirical evidence at hand to have divined so broadly
the “rupture” in biological integrity resulting from the all-encompassing human
inflictions upon global ecosystems we now understand to be true.
6
Shakespeare
seems to have anticipated, at least, the dialectic between a living and a dead world
in his final singly written play, “The Tempest” (1610/1611), as the grand prestidigitator Prospero uses and counters the indigene, some kind of savage, all-clever
Caliban. The island of shipwrecks ultimately sends its otherwise doomed wilderness players home to a refined and celebratory Naples. That a time would come
when England’s tears were considered by the Puritans running Parliament so great
as to forbid the performance of a Shakespeare, a ban lasting 18 years, was just one
more glitch among many of humanity’s tempests.
7
But none would ever ascend to today’s Sixth Extinction Spasm, the first to ever
be caused by but one species.
6.2 The Sum Total of Destructions
Picasso heroically represented the breach in his “Guernica” and famously spoke of
the many destructions inherent to the very process of art. Oswald Spengler and later
Arnold Toynbee easily anticipated the chronicles of ill-fitting Homo sapiens laid out
3 Crutzen, P. J. (2002). “Geology of mankind”. Nature. 415 (6867): 23. Bibcode:2002Natur.415...23C.
doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/415023a. PMID 11780095
4 Michael, Samways (1999). “Translocating fauna to foreign lands: here comes the
Homogenocene”(PDF). Journal of Insect Conservation. doi:https://doi.org/10.1023/
A:1017267807870
5 Steffen, Will; Grinevald, Jacques; Crutzen, Paul; McNeill, John (2011). “The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives” (PDF). Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A. 369: 843; See also, Crutzen,
Steffen (Winter 2017). “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of
Nature”. Ambio. Vol. 36, No. 8: 619.
6 See “Was the Anthropocene anticipated?” Clive Hamilton, Jacques Grinevald, First Published
January 28, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019614567155, The Anthropogenic Review, Sage
Journals, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2053019614567155?journalCode=anra#,
Accessed December 3, 2018; See also, Modifications of the External Aspects of Organic Nature
Produced by Man”s Interference. London, 1880.
7 Firth, C.H.; Rait, R.S., eds. (1911). “September 1642: Order for Stage-plays to cease”. Acts and
Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office. hdl:2027/
inu.30000046036137. OL 6559925M.
6.2 The Sum Total of Destructions
Anthropocene, etymologically Mycenaean, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, or
Koine, and Medieval Greek. By 1873, the Italian geologist and priest Antonio
Stoppani acknowledged what he termed the Anthropozoic era,
3
and by 1999 the
term “homogenocene” had come in to use,
4
a geological catastrophe unleashed by
the sum total of reckless personalities all galvanized into but one species, and succeeding previous times, by comparison melodious and softly modest, the Holocene.
5
It is unclear whether Antonio Stoppani, George Rolleston, Vladimir Vernadsky,
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, even Albert Schweitzer, or his cousin Jean-Paul Sartre,
could actually have had any empirical evidence at hand to have divined so broadly
the “rupture” in biological integrity resulting from the all-encompassing human
inflictions upon global ecosystems we now understand to be true.
6
Shakespeare
seems to have anticipated, at least, the dialectic between a living and a dead world
in his final singly written play, “The Tempest” (1610/1611), as the grand prestidigitator Prospero uses and counters the indigene, some kind of savage, all-clever
Caliban. The island of shipwrecks ultimately sends its otherwise doomed wilderness players home to a refined and celebratory Naples. That a time would come
when England’s tears were considered by the Puritans running Parliament so great
as to forbid the performance of a Shakespeare, a ban lasting 18 years, was just one
more glitch among many of humanity’s tempests.
7
But none would ever ascend to today’s Sixth Extinction Spasm, the first to ever
be caused by but one species.
6.2 The Sum Total of Destructions
Picasso heroically represented the breach in his “Guernica” and famously spoke of
the many destructions inherent to the very process of art. Oswald Spengler and later
Arnold Toynbee easily anticipated the chronicles of ill-fitting Homo sapiens laid out
3 Crutzen, P. J. (2002). “Geology of mankind”. Nature. 415 (6867): 23. Bibcode:2002Natur.415...23C.
doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/415023a. PMID 11780095
4 Michael, Samways (1999). “Translocating fauna to foreign lands: here comes the
Homogenocene”(PDF). Journal of Insect Conservation. doi:https://doi.org/10.1023/
A:1017267807870
5 Steffen, Will; Grinevald, Jacques; Crutzen, Paul; McNeill, John (2011). “The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives” (PDF). Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A. 369: 843; See also, Crutzen,
Steffen (Winter 2017). “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of
Nature”. Ambio. Vol. 36, No. 8: 619.
6 See “Was the Anthropocene anticipated?” Clive Hamilton, Jacques Grinevald, First Published
January 28, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019614567155, The Anthropogenic Review, Sage
Journals, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2053019614567155?journalCode=anra#,
Accessed December 3, 2018; See also, Modifications of the External Aspects of Organic Nature
Produced by Man”s Interference. London, 1880.
7 Firth, C.H.; Rait, R.S., eds. (1911). “September 1642: Order for Stage-plays to cease”. Acts and
Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office. hdl:2027/
inu.30000046036137. OL 6559925M.
6.2 The Sum Total of Destructions