Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Composing a Cosmic View: Three Alternatives for Thinking Scale in the Anthropocene

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Scale in Literature and Culture

Part of the book series: Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies ((GSLS))

Abstract

The advent of Anthropocene thinking heralds both an opportunity to rethink the relationship between the human and other scales in the universe, and the danger of re-inscribing an anthropocentric, technocratic form of scalar engagement implicit in Paul Crutzen’s introduction of the Anthropocene concept. Horton proposes to denaturalize this form of universalism by examining three alternative cosmic views: the microcosm–macrocosm of Paracelsus, the serialized cosmos of Walt Whitman, and the resolved or mediated cosmos of Kees Boeke. Each of these alternatives offers its own scalar problematics, ethics, and politics of the human. Taken as a whole, they remind us of the compositional nature of scale and offer forking paths forward toward an Anthropocene of difference rather than of human mastery.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Works Cited

  • Boeke, Kees. “Bilthoven, Holland’s International Children’s Community.” The Clearing House 13, no. 2 (October 1, 1938): 106–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps. New York: John Day Co., 1957.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Sociocracy.” Accessed August 31, 2014. http://worldteacher.faithweb.com/sociocracy.htm.

  • Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (2009): 197–222.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, Tom, Claire Colebrook, and J. Hillis Miller. Twilight of the Anthropocene Idols. London: Open Humanities Press, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conger, George Perrigo. Theories of Macrocosms and Microcosms: In The History Of Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1922.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cosgrove, Denis. Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crutzen, Paul, and Eugene Stoermer. “The ‘Anthropocene.’” IGBP Newsletter 41 (May 2000): 17–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. New York: Penguin, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eames, Charles, and Ray Eames. A Rough Sketch for a Proposed Film Dealing with the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe. Pyramid Media: 1968. Film.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Powers of Ten. Pyramid Media: 1977. Film.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson. New York: Vintage, 1964.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Joseph, Fiona. Beatrice: The Cadbury Heiress Who Gave Away Her Fortune. Birmingham: Foxwell Press, 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morton, Timothy. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Office of Johnson and Tannenbaum. “Letter to Offices of Kaplan, Livingston, Goodwin, Berkowitz & Selvin.” TS, August 13, 1971. Eames Archive, Library of Congress.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paracelsus. “Concerning the Nature of Things.” In The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, Volume I, edited by Arthur Edward Waite, 120–94. N.p.: Martino Fine Books, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Hermetic Astronomy.” In The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, Volume II, edited by Arthur Edward Waite, 282–314. N.p.: Martino Fine Books, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “The Composition of Metals.” In The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus: Volume I, edited by Arthur Edward Waite, 114–19. N.p.: Martino Fine Books, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parikka, Jussi. A Geology of Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. The Anthrobscene. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  • Szasz, Eva. Cosmic Zoom. National Film Board of Canada: 1968. Film.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitman, Walt. “Preface.” In Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition, 3–20. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Song of Myself. In Leaves of Grass, 29–78. Philadelphia: David McKay, 1892.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Zach Horton

Authors
  1. Zach Horton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

    Michael Tavel Clarke

  2. Department of English, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

    David Wittenberg

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Horton, Z. (2017). Composing a Cosmic View: Three Alternatives for Thinking Scale in the Anthropocene. In: Tavel Clarke, M., Wittenberg, D. (eds) Scale in Literature and Culture. Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64242-0_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation