ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the ancient concept of sophia the promise of new thinking in the Anthropocene. The idea of the Anthropocene as a new epoch in geological history was first proposed by Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000. Historically, rational science and economics shared a common logic in the pursuit of consistency and stability, prediction and control, particularly in the role of equilibrium theory, in the history of economics and that of planetary stability in the history of physics. In contrast, rational thinking is described as a ‘formal analytical process and fixed path of reasoning producing absolute facts that are quantifiable and that provide the basis for reliable knowledge’. At a pragmatic level, it holds out the possibility of a reconstruction of knowledge – a new epistemology based on a convergence of thinking across existing knowledge cultures that accepts common sense and uncertainty.
