Chapter 05: Welcome to the Anthropocene

At the start of this chapter, we are told about a card experiment that tests people’s perception of incongruity and provides us with an example of a paradigm shift. As the experiment tells us that the paradigm shift can be told as a “My God!” reaction to an anomaly that becomes too noticeable to ignore, it is used to describe the history of the science of extinction. Scientist that were used to represent this point were George Cuvier, WIlliam Lyell, and Charles Darwin who all helped develop principles based on time and findings. While on the topic of extinction, the chapter the topic shifts to the Anthropocene era, present day, where Paul Crutzen states that “it seems appropriate to assign the term ‘Anthropocene’ to the present, in many ways human-dominated, geological epoch” (p. 108). This could show us the theme that humans have altered natural systems, because Paul Crutzen would go on to list changes such as transforming the land surface of the planet, putting dams on rivers, tampering with ocean produce, etc. This could mean that once humanity is able to traverse the universe better than we can now, or even start interacting with planets, it could cause the shift into a new era [P/C].