Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Connor Graham, Asia Research Institute, and Tembusu College, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

This work-in-progress paper at the intersection of philosophy of science and climate fiction (‘cli-fi’) studies explores how knowledge in, and about, the ‘anthropocene’ is reflected in literature. In doing so, it develops a perspective on how we might approach the changing nature of the human experience in an age of rapid environmental and social change. Anthropogenic climate change, of course, is one of the main drivers, if not the defining feature, of the anthropocene, and it poses an epistemological challenge, in that it forces us to trade first-hand experience (e.g. of the weather) as the traditional empiricist basis of knowledge for an altogether more elusive notion of ‘climate’, which can only be gained from aggregating a highly diverse range of data produced by science. In the concept of the ‘anthropocene’, this removal from immediate human experience – somewhat ironically, given that the very label asserts human agency – becomes even more pronounced, since various ‘markers’ that are inaccessible to human experience (atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, traces of radioactive elements, etc.) have been proposed as criteria for the onset of the anthropocene. At the same time, anthropocenic changes will arguably leave few aspects of human life and civilization untouched, which is why the literary imagination can help us make sense of what it means to know, desire, and act in the age of the anthropocene.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Axel Gelfert is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore and Convenor of the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Minor Programme. He has published widely on issues in the philosophy of science and technology, historical and social epistemology, and the interaction between science, arts, and the humanities. He has held visiting fellowships at Collegium Budapest (Institute for Advanced Study) and at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh. Before turning to philosophy, he studied Theoretical Physics at the Humboldt University, Berlin, and the University of Oxford. He is the author of A Critical Introduction to Testimony (Bloomsbury 2014) and How to Do Science With Models: A Philosophical Primer (Springer 2016).

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