Let’s Not Talk About the Anthropocene

Jay Foster

The Hungarian philosopher of science Imre Lakatos once complained that Thomas Kuhn had reduced scientific research to “mob psychology." In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn famously suggested that scientific communities organized their inquiry around particular paradigms of successful research, like Copernicus’ heliocentrism, Lavoisier’s mass chemistry or Faraday’s field theory. Kuhn’s paradigms have a family resemblance with Lakatos’ research programs, so it’s likely not this feature of Kuhn’s account that irritated Lakatos. The irritation was Kuhn’s further suggestion that scientists changed paradigms or research for reasons that were basically arational if not entirely irrational. The community of researchers is guided less by reason and logic and more by a psychological impulse to chase after specific scientific successes or potential successes. This impulse was colourfully described as a “contagious panic.” Whatever the specific merits of Lakatos’ characterization of Kuhn, it would seem difficult to deny that, for better or worse, there is at least a little mob psychology at work in academic research. The recent stampede towards “the Anthropocene” may be an apt example.