Category archives: Humanities & Social Sciences

Anthropocene rejected and what it means from an epistemological perspective

Anthropocene rejected and what it means from an epistemological perspective

GeosciencesPhilosophy of science

By Invited Researcher

The geologists of the International Commission on Stratigraphy’s Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) made a substantial decision on March 4, 2024 , by rejecting the proposal to formally acknowledge the beginning of the Anthropocene—a new geological epoch attributing humanity’s emergence as the primary force shaping the Earth’s strata. This proposal, led by the Anthropocene Working […]

Raiders of the lost purpose (3): Philip Goff’s neo-animism

Raiders of the lost purpose (3): Philip Goff’s neo-animism

Philosophy of science

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

The most recent, and probably most imaginative of the significant contributions to the philosophical debate on whether contemporary science confirms, or at least points to some kind of strongly teleological cosmology, is Philip Goff’s book Why? The Purpose of the Universe . In this book’s arguments, the author builds both upon the ideas about cosmological […]

Scientific censorship for a greater good?

Scientific censorship for a greater good?

EpistemologyPhilosophy of sciencePsychologySociology

By Invited Researcher

“Censorship” is not a pleasant word to anyone. Its connotations are almost always negative and, in the first instance, an effort should be made to find circumstances that justify a restriction of information. Even more so in the scientific field, where empirical evidence should prevail over authority, tradition, rhetorical eloquence or social prestige. Science seeks […]

Raiders of the lost purpose (1): fine tuning

Raiders of the lost purpose (1): fine tuning

Philosophy of science

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

Since more than a century ago, every generation has a moment in which religious believers experience an agonising urge to persuade themselves that the ‘truths’ of their religion are compatible with the sophisticate description of the universe that contemporary science is unfolding. Every now and then this leads to the landfall of some best-selling books […]

Lunar Anthropocene

Lunar Anthropocene

AnthropologyGeosciences

By César Tomé

Human beings first disturbed moon dust on Sept. 13, 1959, when the USSR’s unmanned spacecraft Luna 2 alighted on the lunar surface. In the following decades, more than a hundred other spacecraft have touched the moon — both crewed and uncrewed, sometimes landing and sometimes crashing. The most famous of these were NASA’s Apollo Lunar […]