Extinction
edited by Claire Colebrook
Introduction: Framing the End of the Species
Scientific events have their own consistency and it is often a mistake for humanities scholars to reduce such complexities to ‘worldviews’ or the history of ideas. To pass from quantum uncertainty to postmodern literary styles reduces the disciplinary specificity of scientific discovery and functions, and risks presenting literature and culture as reflections or contexts for scientific facts. Yet it is also the case that certain scientific events do not occur as facts within history but rather open up a new experience and possibility of history, and a new way in which the very relation between history and science might be considered. When Darwin posited that the human species had a beginning within the history of life, this was not only a fact about ‘our’ history; it also opened up formal problems for the imagination: how could our understanding of the human and the humanities proceed with a sense of the processes of life beyond human time? (more)
The Anthropocene
- Will Steffen
- The Anthropocene, Global Change and Sleeping Giants: Where on Earth Are We Going?
- Jan Zalasiewicz et al.
- Are We Now Living in the Anthropocene?
- Jan Zalasiewicz et al.
- Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene
- Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams and Will Steffen
- The New World of the Anthropocene
Time and Discipline
- K. J. Willis
- How Can a Knowledge of the Past Help to Conserve the Future? Biodiversity Conservation and the Relevance of Long-term Ecological Studies
- Valentí Rull
- Ecology and Palaeoecology: Two Approaches, One Objective
Ecosystems and Biodiversity
- Jeremy B. Jackson
- Ecological Extinction and Evolution in the Brave New Ocean
- Harold A. Mooney
- The Ecosystem Service Chain and the Biological Diversity Crisis
- Norman Myers and Andrew H. Knoll
- The Biotic Crisis and the Future of Evolution
Mass Extinction
- S. A. Wooldridge
- Mass Extinctions Past and Present: A Unifying Hypothesis
Comprehending Extinction
- Robert M. May
- Ecological Science and Tomorrow’s World
- Stephen Jay Gould
- The Evolution of Life on Earth
- Valentí Rull
- Beyond Us: Is a World Without Humans Possible?
- Sarda Sahney and Michael J. Benton
- Recovery from the Most Profound Mass Extinction of All Time
- Jessica H. Whiteside et al.
- Compound-specific Carbon Isotopes from Earth’s Largest Flood Basalt Eruptions Directly Linked to the end-Triassic Mass Extinction
- Richard J. Behl
- Glacial Demise and Methane's Rise
- Don N. Page
- Possible Anthropic Support for a Decaying Universe: A Cosmic Doomsday Argument