Uncanny Nature — Why the Concept of the Anthropocene is Relevant for Historians of Technology

Abstract

Historians of science and technology have already singled out how scholarships in these fields is particularly suitable to deal with the narratives in the longue-durée concerning chances at the crossroad of science, technology, and the environment. We further argue that the challenges of the Anthropocene require us a deeper engagement with materiality, summoning historians and philosophers of science and technology to a wide debate in which the underpinnings and effects of crucial conceptual categories (nature, society and technology in the first place), and the subsequent disciplinary boundaries, are put into question.