In this article we investigate whether long-term radioactive waste management by means of geological disposal can be understood as a social experiment. Geological disposal is a rather particular technology in the way it deals with the analytical and ethical complexities implied by the idea of technological innovation as social experimentation, because it is presented as a technology that ultimately functions without human involvement. We argue that, even when the long term function of the ‘social’ is foreseen to be restricted to (...) safeguarding the functioning of the ‘technical’, geological disposal is still a social experiment. In order to better understand this argument and explore how it could be addressed, we elaborate the idea of social experimentation with the notion of co-production and the analytical tools of delegation, prescription and network as developed by actor-network theory. In doing so we emphasize that geological disposal inherently involves relations between surface and subsurface, between humans and nonhumans, between the social, material and natural realm, and that these relations require recognition and further elaboration. In other words, we argue that geological disposal concurrently is a social and a technical experiment, or better, a long-term socio-technical experiment. We end with proposing the idea of ‘actor-networking’ as a sensitizing concept for future research into what geological disposal as a socio-technical experiment could look like. (shrink)

The view that religious orthodoxy stifled geological progress has had many distinguished exponents, one of the earliest being Georges Cuvier. To Cuvier, however, efforts to combine Genesis with geology ended before the middle of the eighteenth century, and opened the way not for progress but for wild speculation. We may admire the genius of Leibniz and Buffon, he declared, but this should not lead us to confuse system-building with geology as ‘une science positive’. While Cuvier's younger contemporary, Charles (...) Lyell, agreed that ‘extravagant systems’ had retarded progress, he insisted that ‘scriptural authority’ had had a similar effect until late in the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Since its origin in 15th century European imperialism, the globe has been an object of conquest involving regimes of territorial exclusion and various forms of land abstraction now known as nationalism, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialism. Coming to think like the Earth system and generating politics grounded in it could pose a welcome disruption of these systematically controlling orders only if such planetary thinking is grounded in a nondominating orientation. We propose that this grounding be geological wonder, the open consideration of (...) Earth as a system exceeding human narcissism. Following Dipesh Chakrabarty's distinction between the globe and the planet, we articulate planetarism in an emerging cosmology decentering human life while emphasizing human limits. Globality, by contrast, is a modern, narcissistic formation that geological wonder unsettles. We draw on Martha C. Nussbaum's politics of wonder to articulate a postglobal, disruptive virtue. (shrink)

My aim in this essay is to lead the reader through the complexity of Hegel’s philosophical understanding of organic nature by highlighting its distinctive theoretical features and by examining these historically, both against the background of the approaches, achievements and trends of the empirical sciences of his time and in light of their scholarly reception.1 First, I focuss on Hegel’s definition of the ‘universal form’ of life, pointing to what the connection is, in his philosophy of nature, between the structure (...) of conceptual and living processes in the path to the individualization of matter. Second, since Hegel calls animal life “the truth of organics,” 2 I shall try to explain how in the philosophy of nature the Idea of life comes to differentiate itself into certain essential characteristics of immediate, finite and individual animals, passing through the stages of geological nature and vegetable organisms. (shrink)

Hutton made a geological collection to illustrate his theory of the Earth, and frequently cited phenomena displayed by specimens in it to support his arguments. His followers also considered that the evidence provided by the collection would help to establish his views. After Hutton's death it was given to the Royal Society of Edinburgh which, however, under the terms of its charter, was obliged to lodge it in the Natural History Museum of the University. The Museum's curator, the Wernerian, Robert (...) Jameson, thought the collection of little account, and neither displayed it nor kept it together. By the mid-1830s most of it had been dispersed or thrown away, and nothing is known of it since. The list of specimens compiled by its first trustees has also disappeared. By piecing together information in Hutton's writings and letters, and in those of his friends, we learn something about the contents of the collection and how it was formed, and also add to our knowledge of his acquaintance. The final section of the article brings together all Hutton's descriptions of his rocks and minerals and, in doing so, demonstrates the weight of proof that he rested on careful visual analysis of hand specimens. (shrink)

In 2012, the Geological Time Scale, which sets the temporal framework for studying the timing and tempo of all major geological, biological, and climatic events in Earth’s history, had one-quarter of its boundaries moved in a widespread revision of radiometric dates. The philosophy of metrology helps us understand this episode, and it, in turn, elucidates the notions of calibration, coherence, and consilience. I argue that coherence testing is a distinct activity preceding calibration and consilience, and I highlight the value of (...) discordant evidence and trade-offs scientists face in calibration. The iterative nature of calibration, moreover, raises the problem of legacy data. (shrink)

The development of geology during the first half of the nineteenth century is now considered to be more complicated than was once thought. The positivistic picture of two conflicting schools, one of them allegedly modern and progressive, the other supposedly conservative and scriptural, is too simplistic and misleading. First, the influence of the Bible has been exaggerated. It is true that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Flood had been given an important role as a geological agent, but (...) in the early nineteenth century there were hardly any professional geologists who defended this view. At least, it is not correct to associate either neptunism, catastrophism, or diluvialism with the Mosaic tradition. Secondly, the use of such terms as ‘catastrophism’ and ‘diluvialism’ has been unfortunate in so far as they have led to biblical associations; these terms must be given a more precise meaning. Thirdly, in the evaluation of the geology of the period, not enough weight has been given to the historical context. From our knowledge of modern geology alone it is not possible to judge what was loose speculation or empirical science at that time. Lyell's contributions to geology, as well as those of his opponents, should be considered and examined in more detail. (shrink)

Many millions of geological specimens are contained in geological museums throughout the world. These collections, some of which date back to the sixteenth century, constitute a rich resource for historians of the geological sciences. The utilization of this resource has been uneven, due to a number of factors, including the background of the researcher, and the state of the collections. In the past two decades major strides have been made in the documentation of collections held in British museums, and compendia, (...) including those for collections in other countries, are now available. Geological collections provide quality primary source material, and can shed light on a range of interesting topics including the nature and scope of geological travels, the often complex relationships between geologists and collectors, and the rationale behind the formulation of geological theories by earlier geologists. (shrink)

Vertebrate paleontology was not readily incorporated into interdisciplinary activities at the University of Chicago. During the university’s first forty years serious disputes arose over the subject’s parameters and departmental affiliation. Only after World War II did a cooperative, interdisciplinary program emerge. Changes in biology and geology influenced that development, but even more important were local research and educational initiatives that provided the impetus and resources to create an innovative program.

Abstract:This essay argues for lyric as an anthropomorphic pattern of thought which shapes our readings of poetry and Earth. Theorizing what I call "lyric geology," the essay foregrounds two critical conjunctions: (1) the historical co-emergence of the normative lyric subject and the human species as geologic agent; and (2) the anthropomorphic genealogy of literary criticism called "lyricization" as it dovetails with Sylvia Wynter's account of the "over-representation" of colonial man as "the human itself." Reading across a seemingly eclectic archive—Charles (...) Lyell, Robert Knox, Richard Owen, and a maroon known in the Mauritian imperial archive as Simon—I show how the colonial anthropos as self-consciously theorized in and across the nineteenth century materially effectuates on a planetary scale the very racialized anthropomorphosis fallaciously naturalized as lyric. So understood, man's generic "over-representation" and lyric are co-constitutive projects. Together, they proliferate a human fantasy whose flat speciesism at once reproduces and effaces white supremacist violence and colonial dispossession. (shrink)

The overexploitation of the Earth is not merely a question of natural resources management. According to an eco-phenomenological approach, the intertwining between man, environment, and habitat can be conceived in new forms. This paper discusses motivations for such a change of perspective focusing on eco-phenomenology, paying specific attention to the critical reception of Husserl’s short manuscript on the Earth (Overthrow of the Copernican Theory in the Usual Interpretation of a World View) by Merleau-Ponty and Patočka. Merleau-Ponty outlines a living (...) class='Hi'>geology while Patočka defines the dynamic of the manifestation of appearance as a real “science of movement”. In both cases, and thanks to the Husserlian original intuition, we have the opportunity to question the ecosystem of the primordial and topological space that lays the foundations for a phenomenological cosmology. (shrink)

The author details his experience in using geology field trips to provide hands-on learning for his students and opportunities to assess student learning of key course concepts.

Nine essays that provide detailed information about the early geological exploration of the southeastern United States Originally presented under the aegis of the Geological Society of America, these essays cover observations and studies made between 1796 and the 1850s. Each essay includes fascinating biographic sketches of the author, a bibliography, and an index.

To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, the Carolina Geological Society invited forty-three authors to contribute to the creation of The Geology of the Carolinas. The only comprehensive, modern treatment of the subject, the volume has been prepared for a diverse readership ranging from undergraduate students to specialists in the fields of geology and related earth sciences. Following the editors' general introduction are chapters on Precambrian and Paleozoic metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Appalachian Blue Ridge and Piedmont; rocks of (...) early Mesozoic rift basins, formed just before the opening of the Atlantic Ocean; Cretaceous and Tertiary sedimentary deposits of the Atlantic Coastal Plain; Quaternary geology and geomorphology; Cenozoic tectonism, including evidence for the recurrence of large earthquakes near Charleston; and an overview of mineral resources in the Carolinas. The book includes an index of field guides produced by the society and a thorough bibliography. By introducing exciting new concepts and focusing on challenging problems on the frontiers of research, this authoritative book will stimulate research in the years to come. The Editors: J. Wright Horton, Jr., is a research geologist for the United States Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. Victor A. Zullo is a professor of geology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. (shrink)

In this age of interdisciplinary interaction, we probably owe one another disclosures of our qualifications for commenting on each other’s profession. And you might well wonder why a philosopher would be asked to address this distinguished society of professiona l geologists. So, let me give what information I can about my qualifications to talk this evening about, of all things, the ethics of water geology.

This article argues for the relevance of mythical signification in our geological epoch. More than this, it contends that we need to revise our assumptions about media and communication systems in order to grasp the importance of myth in an era where the future of human and nonhuman life on the Earth is entirely uncertain. To make this case, I focus on the growing consensus in the sciences and theoretical humanities that mythical stories about geological and planetary processes cannot simply (...) be disqualified or disregarded because they do not conform to the norms of modern scientific epistemology. Whether these stories come to us from pre-modern civilizations and attempt to give... (shrink)

Abstract:This article examines how two American theorists, Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler, deploy geologic language during the 1990s moment when their feminist careers morphed into queer careers. I argue that the precise composition of this institutional shift – methodological, material, and epistemological – is both reflected and refracted in the figure of the rock. A symbol that connotes fixity in short time spans, but dynamism in long ones, the rock oscillates between facticity and dissolution, mirroring shifting notions of sex and (...) gender in the 1990s. In her retrospective account of the emergence of queer theory, Rubin’s use of a fossil metaphor ushers the field toward a non-reproductive and non-procreative genealogy, illuminating a different temporal texture to such seemingly fixed structures as sex, gender, and sexuality. Butler’s inherited geologic language conceives of gender as the process of sedimentation that resists the biological determinism of identity-based feminist politics. Examining the rock provides crucial readings of Butler’s materiality, one that oscillates between fixed being and dynamic becoming, stability and change, surface signification and depth excavation. (shrink)

The Geological Society of London was the first learned society to be devoted solely to geology, and its members were responsible for much of the spectacular progress of the science in the nineteenth century. Its distinctive character as a centre of geological discussion and research was established within the first five years from its foundation in 1807. During this period its activities were directed, and its policies largely shaped, by its President, George Bellas Greenough, on whose unpublished papers this (...) account is chiefly based.The Society began as a small scientific dining club in London, but it developed rapidly into a learned society with a nation-wide membership. It became so independent in outlook and so active in research that it was felt to threaten the esteem of the Royal Society; and little more than a year after its foundation it clashed with the Royal Society so violently that its continued existence was for a time uncertain.Its development into a large independent society was the outcome of its ‘Baconian’ view of the importance of collecting geological facts as a surer basis for geological theories. For this purpose it initiated an ambitious scheme for co-operative research, which would unite the efforts of ‘philosophers’ with those of ‘practical men’. Only personal reasons seem to have kept the most prominent of the practical men—William Smith—from co-operating with the Society. (shrink)

The 1850s through early 60s was a transformative period for nascent studies of the remote human past in Britain, across many disciplines. Naturalists and scholars with Egyptological knowledge fashioned themselves as authorities to contend with this divisive topic. In a characteristic case of long-distance fieldwork, British geologist Leonard Horner employed Turkish-born, English-educated, Cairo-based engineer Joseph Hekekyan to measure Nile silt deposits around pharaonic monuments in Egypt to address the chronological gap between the earliest historical and latest geological time. Their conclusion (...) in 1858 that humans had existed in Egypt for exactly 13,371 years was the earliest attempt to apply geological stratigraphy to absolute human dates. The geochronology was particularly threatening to biblical orthodoxy, and the work raised private and public concerns about chronological expertise and methodology, scriptural and scientific authority, and the credibility of Egyptian informants. This essay traces these geo-archaeological investigations; including the movement of paper records, Hekekyan’s role as a go-between, and the publication’s reception in Britain. The diverse reactions to the Egyptian research reveal competing ways of knowing the prehistoric past and highlights mid-Victorian attempts to reshape the porous boundaries between scholarly studies of human antiquity. (shrink)

This paper works with the modern concept of the geological hotspot track – the building processes and movements of volcanic island chains – applied strategically to one of its illustrative formations, the Madeira Archipelago. By analogy, however, the concept works equally well to describe the important early 19th-century scientific knowledge-building activity that produced Charles Lyell's On the Geology of Some Parts of Madeira (1854). A central section of the paper uncovers the contributions to knowledge of this geology before (...) Lyell's, and in particular, Excursions of Madeira and Porto Santo (1825) by Mr [sic] T. Edward Bowdich. A thorough examination of this text then constitutes an important case study for literal and figurative investigation of geological hotspot tracks. The main argument proposed is that current specialist research forgets its submerged and longer histories to its detriment. Insights contained in older information often supply reminders of the key questions and contributions from the past that provide checks and balances for further developments of a field. By promoting multi-level, multi-stranded and multi-lingual investigation of the history of 19th-century geology in Madeira before Lyell (1854) as central to hotspot track research, this paper marks nodal conditions that constitute advancement in critical knowledge-building within and outside the discipline of geology. (shrink)

NOTE: this is actually in the Routledge Handbook of Eco-Phenomenology, Edited By Michael T. Heneise, Cassandra Falke, Espen Dahl, Alice Sundman, Edvard Lia (the error is due to a bug that is being fixed in PhilPapers) -/- Eco-phenomenology ultimately requires radical reflection on our bodily being on Earth as the origin of thinking. Husserl approaches this origin through imaginative variations, involving space travel that reveal the Earth as an immovable “originary ark.” This leads to the methodological challenge of gleaning rigorous (...) empirical evidence of an origin so fundamental that it vanishes as a background of experience. I argue that total solar eclipses offer a fleeting epoché that, by changing our lit world, or letting us glimpse a spherically rounded Moon moving over the Sun, reveals how everyday, Earthbound vision occludes perception of a planet moving in a larger cosmos. Eclipses momentarily dig up and un-Earth this “moving-Earth.” They are a down-to-earth echo of astronauts seeing Earth from space and a planetary-scaled echo of radical reflection revealing the lived body as the origin of thinking. Eclipses, though, are very rare and nearly impossible to see without going blind. A Husserl born on a planet with weekly, non-blinding eclipses might never have thought “the Earth, it does not move.” Regarding eco-phenomenology, beings born of such a planet might not have experienced their planet as a vanishing, immovable, inexhaustible background resource to be endlessly dug up and used. This is likely the first article on eclipses in the phenomenological and philosophical literature. (shrink)

This paper proposes a ‘geology’ of the new mediascape as an alternative way of studying today’s digital convergence. By geology, I mean a particular physical condition of media platforms, consisting of the lower stratum of fluid atomic particles or binary signals and the upper stratum of cultural sediments as the solidified patterns of these atoms, both of which are circulating through ceaseless re-sedimentation and re-atomization. The discourses of digital convergence that overwhelmed media studies for the first decade of (...) the twenty-first century could be reinterpreted from this geological perspective in relation to such questions; how the old cultural forms that have hitherto solidified into specific physical structures of ‘old media’ are re-atomized into a series of zeros and ones; and how they are re-sedimented into specific algorithms simulating these old forms. Tracing geological metaphors in the cultural historiography of the early twentieth century’s cultural critics, as in works by Siegfried Kracauer, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin, this article extends the origin of the convergence culture even to this so-called ‘age of technological reproduction’ in terms of how the human and technological modes of cultural production have converged upon a geological infrastructure of mediascape. The convergence was in this sense an event that happened between different agents of cultural production, namely humans and non-humans, as much as between different media forms. (shrink)

들뢰즈와 과타리의 「도덕의 지질학」에서 중요한 역할을 하는 건 “덴마크의 스피노자주의자 지질학자” 옐름슬레우(Louis Hjelmslev)다. 들뢰즈와 과타리는 그가 언어활동에도 관심이 있었지만, 더 중요한 건 언어활동에서 ‘지층화’를 뽑아내는 일이었다고 진술한다. 요컨대 들뢰즈와 과타리의 전략은 옐름슬레우의 언어학을 바탕으로 ‘지층의 과학’, 즉 ‘지질학’을 구성하는 일이었다.이 고원에 등장하는 지층, 지층화, 평면 등의 개념은 모두 옐름슬레우한테서 왔다. 따라서 이들 개념이 옐름슬레우 본인한테는 어떤 의미였고 들뢰즈와 과타리가 어떻게 전유했는지 살피는 일은 충분히 의미 있는 작업이다.옐름슬레우의 ‘기호 함수’ 개념은 들뢰즈와 과타리한테서 ‘기호 기계’를 거쳐 ‘(추상적인) 기계’로 가공된다. 「도덕의 지질학」은 3개의 (...) 거대 지층, 즉 ‘물리-화학지층’, ‘유기체 지층’, ‘기호-사회 지층’을 다루는데, 이 셋을 관통하는 것이 ‘기계’의 작동 즉 지층화다. 따라서 후속 연구에서 각 지층에서 기계가 어떻게 다르게 작동하는지 파악할 수 있는 중요한 분석 도구를 마련했다.옐름슬레우의 언어 분석은 언어 ‘생산’의 논리를 알게 해주며, 궁극적으로는 의미론의 영역을 훨씬 넘어서는 일반 기호 이론으로 인도한다. 들뢰즈와 과타리는 기호 이론을 존재하는 모든 것의 작동 원리로 격상시킨다. 최소의 요소들로부터 우주 속 무한한 생성을 설명하는 원리, 들뢰즈와 과타리가 옐름슬레우한테서 찾아 낸 교훈이 그것이다. (shrink)

Conceiving of nuclear energy as a social experiment gives rise to the question of what to do when the experiment is no longer responsible or desirable. To be able to appropriately respond to such a situation, the nuclear energy technology in question should be reversible, i.e. it must be possible to stop its further development and implementation in society, and it must be possible to undo its undesirable consequences. This paper explores these two conditions by applying them to geological disposal (...) of high-level radioactive waste. Despite the fact that considerations of reversibility and retrievability have received increased attention in GD, the analysis in this paper concludes that GD cannot be considered reversible. Firstly, it would be difficult to stop its further development and implementation, since its historical development has led to a point where GD is significantly locked-in. Secondly, the strategy it employs for undoing undesirable consequences is less-than-ideal: it relies on containment of severely radiotoxic waste rather than attempting to eliminate this waste or its radioactivity. And while it may currently be technologically impossible to turn high-level waste into benign substances, GD’s containment strategy makes it difficult to eliminate this waste’s radioactivity when the possibility would arise. In all, GD should be critically reconsidered if the inclusion of reversibility considerations in radioactive waste management has indeed become as important as is sometimes claimed. (shrink)

At the time America was discovered, three activities related to Earth Sciences were carried out by the native Indians (Amerindians would be a better term) in what is now the Colombian territory: gold and emerald mining and salt extraction; the first one is recognized as the main motivation for Spaniards to conquer the entire mainland and to oblige Indians to work in gold mines; this servitude, together with the new diseases brought from Europe and the occupation of croplands by cattle (...) and horse raising, caused the reduction of indigenous people in 90%, as it was demonstrated by historians as Colmenares (Historia económica y social de Colombia, 1537–1719. Universidad del Valle, Cali, 1973). This situation motivated Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas to obtain from the Council of Indies to bring of African slaves, who were more resistant than Indians to work in the gold mines. The main argument behind was de las Casas conviction that Indians had a soul and thus should be considered as “true human beings.” This episode, which signified the forceful translation of hundreds of thousands of Africans to America, should deserve a mention in a topic as “Geoethics.”. (shrink)

Geología de un planeta desierto (2013) es una novela que se desarrolla en Antofagasta; una ciudad del norte de Chile cuyas tierras acogieron a Patricio Jara –el autor de este libro– y su familia durante gran parte de su vida. En Geología, Jara cuenta la relación de un hijo (Rodrigo) con su padre –quien aparece en la novela como un fantasma; el progenitor de Rodrigo–, aquel hombre trabajador, que por razones externas a el, tuvo que jubilar prematuramente a los cincuenta (...) años. Aquel hombre no pudo reponerse a aquel golpe, por lo que se vuelve un hombre alcohólico como forma de olvidar su desdicha. (shrink)