Limits of the empirical-epistemological enterprise

Empirical observation measures the change and pace of change of negative anthropological effects. Objective measurement of changes in the world according to science is important for appreciation. Regarding matters revealed empirically, practical but fraught questions arise such as, how quickly and sufficiently can carbon dioxide-absorbing trees be planted to replace those lost to industrial scale deforestation? or how long will it take for increasing renewable energy supplies eventually to substitute completely for carbon-based generation? (For deeper exploration of such issue, see Cowell, 1997). These are great tasks and revelation of stupefying truths with alarming consequences only increases strain on researchers. Although empirical-epistemological observation always will constitute a foundational methodology of inquiry, it is imagined that it would continue in the same passive manner indefinitely as the thermometer of change, unless riding on the back of more insightful strategies in relation to the complexity of the problem. As presently perceived, it does not achieve adequate complexity in describing the Anthropocene and the relationship of humanity to it. Reasons for this will be revealed soon.

Kuhnian departures?

It is fashionable to call significant paradigm shifts in theory ‘Kuhnian’, and it should be considered whether what is to follow here conforms. Thomas Kuhn’s prescription concerns the cumulative formation of scientific discoveries unless or until antimonies appear. Conventional theory then ruptures and a new basis for it is sought (Kuhn 1962/1970). In the present work, the initial theory of observation holds that it has a complexity inadequate for that of the studied field. Relating principally to the methodology of inquiry and only secondarily to discovery, it is no less redolent of Kuhn’s perception. The similarity here is acknowledged, together with the desirable consequent enhancement of methodology that will reveal new outlooks and understanding. For present purposes, and with licence, this substitutive paradigm could at least be termed ‘para-Kuhnian’.

Adequate complexity contra reduction of complexity

The Anthropocene as phenomenon³¹ is highly complex.³² It is more so when progressing from truths in the epistemological enterprise to observing the way humans behave in relation to the world and other dimensions that they introduce. It is essential that the methodology of inquiry be correspondingly adequately complex as to observe at the same level as the complex phenomenological scene.³³

Zelli and Pattberg (2016) have been relied on here for assembling descriptions of anthropological complexity in their edited work. They look, inter alia, at different forms of intricacy and diversity – material, ethical, institutional, spatial – and the relations between them. They report that all authors in the assembled work agree there are several types of growing complexity in the Anthropocene that cannot themselves be reduced. Described is the natural complexity of the planet’s ecology, the psycho-social complexity of humans and their institutions and the political or moral complexity of bringing them together meaningfully.

The debate continues in this most informative work and the following reports it. Regarding the use of network analysis as a tool for visualizing or even untangling complex relations between global governance institutions,³⁴ an author claims that the very concept of the Anthropocene deprives us of this possibility as it is too simplistic and does not do justice to the normative complexity of our environmental situation. Others regard the Anthropocene as a flexible concept, helping to make sense of the immense complexity of the physical and cultural worlds, including the limited human understanding of them. Contributors also differed in their approval of institutional complexity. Some welcomed a diversity of institutions and instruments from an ontological stance, inasmuch as it reflected ethical and legal pluralism and the need for flexible responses in the Anthropocene. Others cautioned that this diversity needs to be grounded in overarching principles like human dignity or ideas of the good society and the good environment.

The preceding digest from the cited work illustrates the complexity of the complexity³⁵ of observing the Anthropocene as a folded concept. Though Zelli and Pattberg write in the area of politics, governance and institutions, it is just one of many of the diverse platforms from which observing can be undertaken. Also clearly intimated is the need for adequate complexity in framing observing.

Complexity revealed like this demonstrates how many themes there must be connected with the Anthropocene. While the plurality of extant observational platforms connotes a complexity of its own, it is more an issue that it requires so many to achieve even the most imperfect account. Therefore, prioritising a specific observational stance endorsed by plainly intended methodology that is adequately complex, at the same time ‘levels up’ an inquiry in relation to the subject and at the same time can reduce it because then only an element of the complexity need be studied at one time. Therefore, complexity will be both accommodated and managed.

The anthropological stance

It has already been commented that there are limits to empirical observing of the Anthropocene, though it still is possible and useful,³⁷ but a perspective is needed that engages with the human contribution to the self-consuming aspects of humanity, like that described by Clark (2012a).

Initially, an impression could have been created here that the Anthropocene exists in a bubble and that means must be secured of looking inside it, as if with some kind of penetrating spyglass. While seemingly true, such an approach would be denigrated as futile without characterising or contextualising the observer.

That the Anthropocene is directly attributable to human agency is not controversial. Ergo, it insists that inquiries are needed into the anthropological nature of humanity that drives it towards, in Clare Colebrook’s (2013) view, self-extinction. Inquiry can be segregated into human, inhuman, transhuman and posthuman anthropological modes or traditions. Utilised, they both categorise and direct observation. They augment the methodologies of inquiry in that they provide standpoints for observation and identify the mission of observers. They do not constitute methodologies themselves but provide a background against which human agency and the reflexes of the Anthropocene can be perspectivised and contextualised.³⁸ Importantly, too, they deconstruct it so as to reduce complexity. For ease of description and to avoid irritating repetition in the ensuing text, these anthropological perspectives will be alluded to as distinctive modes of observation, or just ‘modes’.

While commenting on these approaches in observational methodology, it will be helpful concomitantly to illustrate some real-life occurrences from the present day and from history that can be or have been observed under each category.

Climate change denial

It might imply methodological impoverishment in the present study to omit deniers of climate change. However, dalliance with the idea need not be protracted. Dunlap and McCright (2011) attribute this human action to conservative politics, economics, defence of carbon energy and manufacturing industries and the deliberate undermining of climate science (ibid, 144–160). In spite of it, these could be equally amenable to observation,⁴¹ as methodology is indifferent to its subject matter.

Humans can observe the effects of their interventions in the environment and quantify them objectively through first order observation. Secondary observation initially must involve critique of first order techniques and the assumptions that observers attach to results. It should introduce thoughtfulness about those interventions and their consequences. A third observational order could propagate recommendations for human behavioural change so as to ameliorate adverse environmental effects as a future-oriented and intellectual exercise.

Repositioning the narrative

The ramifications of Haraway’s proposal greatly exercise the imagination. It is axiomatic from her cyborg thesis that human actors would become posthuman. This is a radical metaphysical transformation of the hereto separately identifiable human and machine into an integral, single machine-person being – no hybrid but a fusion – and inscribed on society as universal. As between human and machine-derived intellect, the functioning of this new being would be indissoluble.

The recent discourse, though, makes it seem as if the only possible destiny for humanity is the posthuman. It is an engaging imaginary but its protagonists can be tendentious. The Anthropocene will continue to witness outrage perpetrated on the environment and posthuman scholars have been silent on how harm might be slowed, ameliorated or reversed. If posthumanity were to represent the ultimate in anthropological progress, the three other modes of observing would be de-substantiated. But posthumanity does not (yet) represent the entirety of relations of humankind to the Anthropocene, thus the methodology of inquiry here will admit, for the moment at least, the three other modes as potentiators of knowledge.

Observing: volte-face

To continue, the notion of becoming posthuman evokes a question arising from appreciation of a posteriori awareness of this as to whether, in turn, the human, inhuman and transhuman could be part of this becoming. If they could, then the manifestation of the Anthropocene would change from that merely communicated by empirical observers to one of embedded beings that relate to the Κάινος, each in their specific ways.

Put differently, the erstwhile modes of observing can now be regarded as always already states of being, an emergent new methodology questioning how observing will be done. The previous distinctions become states of being or of ὄντος.⁵⁹

Then, not only does the original observer’s role become redundant but also can no longer exist because only the four ontological states are possible; there is no longer an ‘outside’ from which observing can be conducted. So, the notion of the impartial peripatetic jobbing observer choosing the mode by which to inquire has evaporated.

From this, observing as the external witnesser of events and how they are observed would cease and instead devolve from the relationship⁶⁰ of the human to the Κάινος qua⁶¹ human; the inhuman qua inhuman; the transhuman qua transhuman and the posthuman qua posthuman. Then the transhuman, to take an example, becomes a being that operates entirely on the basis of the relationship of man to technology in the Anthropocene. Germanely, there is proposed a radical change from observing how the four observational modes have impinged on the Anthropocene to that of their experiencing the Anthropocene as one of them.⁶²

The ontological turn: transforming observing

There are now questions of the nature of inquiry amid the ontological turn,⁶³ how it would function and how it would inform. Each of the previously indicated modes now becomes instead a being uniquely ensconced in its own form. More than just semantically, ‘form’ now requires specific understanding as a drawn distinction in the manner of George Spencer-Brown (1969) that foregrounded Luhmann’s work. In Spencer-Brown’s thesis, observing is infeasible without making a distinction. According to him, an observation is indeed synonymous with the indicative or one-sided use of a two-sided distinction or ‘form’ ⁶⁴

The distinction of these new distinctions indicates that external observers of the form will be precluded because they cannot be of like form, otherwise they will be of the form; and if they are of unlike form, they cannot observe within the form because they are different. So transformed, each can observe only according to its normativity – the human entity observes only through that which makes it human, and so on. Repeated correlation of the human relationship with the Anthropocene via the normativity of the form stimulates recursive self-reference. Operations with regard to events in the Anthropocene can be endorsed as pertaining to a form through normative reference, which is autopoiesis. Recursion creates a discrete boundary for each form and demarcates its interest. It is also ontologically true that a being can be of only a unique form and therefore has no like.

Such propositions demand theoretical leaps. Observing is thematically integral with systems theory here and the driver of this study. In firmly prioritising observing and – in the manner of secondary observation – appreciating limitations of the initial methodological thought, the inquiry accordingly has sought means of deeper understanding.

Analysis of the changes should clarify what has been transformed and how: that is, the ultimate functions and relationships of the forms to the Κάινος. Relying on concatenated assumptions, first, the earlier characterisation of external, perspectivised observers has been supplanted by that of ontological, subsumed beings. Their functions have been exchanged from that of empirically observing the human, inhuman, transhuman, posthuman influences on the epoch to becoming; beings that are of the ‘human’, ‘inhuman’ form, and so forth, in relation to the Κάινος. They then experience the physical environment ‘humanly’, ‘inhumanly’, and so on, according to the nature of their being. They live⁶⁵ the Anthropocene integrally. They have relationships with the Anthropocene engendered by their cohabitation. As ontological beings of a specific nature, their interest concentrates until they recognise only events falling within their unique normative ambit. In the transformation, observing has moved from outside the Anthropocene to the inside⁶⁶ and the outside ceases to exist. Post haec, normativity accrues from what it is to live ‘transhumanly’, ‘posthumanly’ and the rest, so the specificity of the forms’ experience increases with recursive encounters, which corresponds to increasingly autopoietic operation. It parallels systems theory but has arisen through the unique circumstances of inquiry into the Anthropocene. Necessary for conviction by it is acceptance of the transformation of observers into forms that emulate sub-systems of society.

Another gain is to be had in information and hence knowledge via these transformations. Luhmann does not characterise observers other than to state that they observe according to the distinction that separates systems functionally and that secondary observers observe how this is achieved. Nothing is surmised about their nature: Luhmann construes them only as beings that are not part of any system.⁶⁷ They are naturalised simply as animate entities with the capacity to observe. This underpins the earlier construal of the ‘peripatetic jobbing observer’, because it is hard to imagine any other character that could be assumed, prior to the presaged methodological shift. In the new proposition, though, observing forms take on the character of their own function as they live them within the Κάινος.

Normativity, reflexivity, affirmation: Reconstituting observation

Correlating relations in the Anthropocene with the normative standards of each form represents the new methodology of inquiry. It might beguile those trying to look in. Recursive reference of events to standards within the anthropological framework produces normative closure of the forms such that they appear to have become insular, though it is recursive reference that defines their insularity. The anthropological forms in society constitute distinctions, each from the other and collectively; not only that but also ontological beings have substituted for peripatetic observers. The attributes of the new beings derive from their relationship with the Anthropocene.

But uncertainties are ascribed. Earlier, the discourse asserted that the anthropologically characterised Anthropocene lost the outside from which observers could look in, so the theory of observation immediately is bereft of an observer. Next, it is not certain how ontological beings communicate with the outside, even supposing the nature of that outside were known. And an anthropological form also will be impervious to inquiry by other distinctive forms because its operations will not be understood by them.

However, we cannot have come this far and learnt nothing. Some wisdom of the past still can apply. Important is that of reflexivity. Recalling this injunction, the present narrative counsels that beings within forms reflexively can review their own operations. Amid ontological affirmation, they can undertake reflexive self-audit⁶⁸ of their methodologies as part of their ongoing introspection. For instance, internal reviews could amend normative values if it should be required to refocus them. That way, forms would evolve continuously. In turn, methodology would become progressively more adequately complex, that is, enhanced normative values would be more adequately prepared for evolving relationships between forms and the Anthropocene. Now, convergence is identified with the principle of autopoiesis in that reflexive self-audit is akin to it, operationally, with the addition that self-audit imposes discipline on the process.

Repositioning communication: transcendent academe

In reprise, in the configuration where each form is normatively closed though cognitively open to anthropocenic events, absent an outside(r) there is no identifiable means for beings to communicate their sensation of operating in this fashion. There is also a question of to whom beings could communicate because the recently espoused theory is invulnerable to the notion. There must also be clear differentiation between whether discourse concerns autopoietic forms of being that communicate on a normative basis and discernment of how observing can be communicated after the observer has been transformed and moved inside.

Academe is the arch-inquirer/communicator/disseminator of knowledge – a rapporteur par excellence⁶⁹ and prospectively neutral. It comprises a group of beings whose intrinsic nature is inquiry, with communicating deeply embedded in their essence. Because of its compulsion to understand the world abstractly, academe will be able to inquire into the life of the four ontological forms and even to undertake critique of the reflexive self-audit of their methodologies. Academe can then be reckoned transcendent among them, never embroiled in them but never external to them either and able to inquire into any of them without changing its innate nature. It would embrace revelations about the relationship of forms to the Anthropocene. And, so bestowed, this attention endows communication with academic rigour.⁷⁰

It is presumed in this essay, too, that academe is the least likely to be enthralled by Haraway’s cyborg posthuman, for the important reason that the former protects vigorously the capacity for independence in its observing. This amounts to more than mere Enlightenment enterprise and constitutes inquiry more appropriate to the excesses of the modern age. It is capitalised on in this study as overarching, where inquiry into any Κάινος is predominantly cerebral and cognitive.

Retrieving second order observation

Doubt over receiving communications from the inside(r) having been remediated by the inception of transcendent academe, it can be imagined, conterminously, that it would be ideally situated to observe how the new beings would observe their relationship with the Anthropocene, not just the observations themselves.⁷¹ This amounts to second order observing, the cornerstone of methodology in inquiry. The reputation of academe as raconteur par excellence has been upheld; second order observing has been retrieved. The how of observing once more is proclaimed as the essential means of attaining deeper understanding.

Luhmann (reprise), posthuman scholar

Another convergence of theory occurs in this inquiry. Luhmann decentres the human in his theory of social systems that are distinguished only by their function. Humans are supplanted by communication. This marginalisation of humans characterises Luhmann’s theory posthuman (Lovasz 2018). There is therefore a productive association between Luhmann’s account of society and that of the posthuman entity amid the Anthropocene. It signifies consistency and equilibrium between the methodological assertions made here. Both rely constructively on self-reference.

Communication per Luhmann. Infiltrating the posthuman per academe

Regarding communication, because it is doubly contingent, there must exist a being able to receive, understand, deconstruct and respond to what is communicated (Vanderstraeten, op. cit. 2002). Without this, communication would not succeed but academe can operate in the role of both communicator and communicand. To elucidate, transcendent academe would conduct inquiries and communicate conclusions to its community through publication and lectures – its means of expression via its standard methodology.

Recipients of communications are communicands. There is no occasion to seek an outside(r): academe, as depicted here, can permeate the inside transcendently and move among its structures. At the same time, it represents the portal for transmission of knowledge and understanding to the world, this provided academe is not transformed into digital versions of itself and can preserve its distinction. In that ontological dress, academe can infiltrate the posthuman and other forms in the Anthropocene without compromising its immanent character⁷² and has the potential to communicate aspects of the Anthropocene through good journals.

Though Gladden (ibid, 2018), disparages the role of academe amid the posthuman especially, Ferrando (ibid, 2013) and Siddiqui (ibid, 2016) find reasons both to encourage and emphasise its need. Ferrando (ibid, 32) considers the notion of posthumanities has been welcomed in academia to emphasize an internal shift from the humanities to the posthumanities, extending the study of the human condition to the posthuman. À propos Siddique (ibid, 2016, 62–78, 74), a nexus exists between her concern over the posthuman and that for the discipline of education. Citing her opinion directly here, she says,

‘The vitalist materialism of Braidotti’s posthumanism suggests that matter self-organizes and there is no need for an agentic subject to intervene.’ ‘However,’ she asserts vehemently, ‘It is the business of academe to intervene.’⁷³ She continues,

‘Academe’s scholarly, curricular and instructional structures require zoe, or the raw cosmic life force in matter, to present itself in forms that can be learned and manipulated by the agents of higher education. Thus, visions of “posthuman humanities” must address the expansion of sense experience in posthuman empiricism, as well as the formations of posthuman subjectivities, and what all of this may mean for the present agents of higher education.’

In terms of the work here then, Siddique’s agents of higher education become empirical posthuman observers especially able to cognise and communicate.⁷⁴

Ultimacy: academe and utopian posthumanity

Posthumanism and transhumanism frequently are projected theoretically as utopian. Views abound on the nature of utopia and the possibility of its existence. Bostrom (2008) outlines the conditions for realisation of it in life. In economics, Barnett and Morse (1963/2001) define utopia as the situation where ‘society has free and costless access to an infinitely large stock of currently unused natural resources.’ Arias-Maldonado (2020) comments on aspects of the ‘Green Utopian Fantasy’ amid the Anthropocene. Michael Hauskeller (2012: 41) compares it to the mythical land of Cockaigne and declares the transhumanist account of posthuman existence an ‘obvious wish-fulfilment fantasy’. Speculating enthusiastically that the world might evolve ultimately into a comprehensively posthuman condition, Gladden, (ibid, 2018), relying on Herbrechter (2013), speaks of ‘technologized posthumanism’ as

‘a group of fields that are on the vanguard of the technologization of academia. Posthumanities of the latter sort advocate the replacement of “analog” [sic] or literacy-based knowledge structures with virtualized digital collections of data.’ (ibid, 53).

Coenen (2007) deliberates exhaustively on utopia amid ‘converging technologies’⁷⁵ but disparages the role of academia in clarifying the interrelations of the utopian tradition, ‘technofuturism’ [sic] and Science and Technology, which is driven by advocates of opposing traditions. How utopian perspectives influence the operations of academe amid posthumanism are therefore crucial to the potential for inquiry.

Utopian conjecture can be problematic⁷⁶ and hyperbolic outlooks sometimes the product of fantasy.⁷⁷ Implied idealistic perfection can be difficult to imagine. Nothing in the Haraway/Braidotti/Hayles theses that decentre ανθρωπός necessarily suggest attainment of an ideal or ultimate state, even though they might consider the world improved by their suggested transformations.

Reified, a theory of utopian posthuman existence could have significant consequences for inquiry within the Anthropocene. Utopia could forfend inquiry by academe on the basis that everything is optimal. However, in this imaginary, is it implied that humans will no longer be subject to cataclysmic environmental events? The futuristically enhanced capacity of posthumans might mitigate some of them but much depends on whether environmental harms can be remediated in posthumanity or that it is not already too late for some of them. Is it really that, rather than signifying salvation through a posthuman utopia, extinction is inevitable? There is a disconnect between the theory and the possible reality.

Allowing free thought for an instant, in a contest potentiated between the threatened extinction of species from climate change (Urban, 2015) and a utopian existence where all life’s problems are resolved, which would attest the ultimate truth? The issue would provide rich grounds for observing amid an appropriate methodology, except that, on one account, the observers themselves might perish in the process.

Recovering the narrative, if posthuman sensing in utopia were the panacea for all human problems, might not the circumstances of the Anthropocene eventually evaporate and be substituted by a new geological stratum reflecting the next Κάινος? (Suggested: στρώμα όντων (stróma ónton: ‘layer of beings’), or, freely adapted, ‘ontocene’).

Speculation indeed but it could be real. If the world’s environmental problems could be relegated to insignificance through a truly utopic state, might it then be unamenable to academic inquiry on account of the following? Systemic problems absented due to supposed optimisation could signify reduced internal anthropocenic dynamism moving towards entropy. Then, regardless of methodology, there would be no events or phenomena into which to inquire, thereby obviating the necessity.

If a state of utopia is an elaborate fancy, then it represents no more than a distraction. If real, it could constitute an obstacle to inquiry and its relationship to academe then would be crucial. However, of Gladden’s view of posthumanism as substituting ‘virtualized digital collections of data’ for human inquiry (ibid, 53), the present study advises that, seen this way, utopic posthumanism would deprive it of intellectual reasoning. Making use of data requires cerebral engrossment. With the posthuman being regarded as no more than a super data-gathering entity, academe consequently would be impoverished.