全球变暖与历史学发展的四个论题

气候变化科学对以人类为中心的人文主义史学具有重要影响。科学家关于气候变化的观点不仅挑战了人类支撑历史学这门学科的观念,而且挑战了后殖民与后帝国时代历史学家在过去20年来,回应战后非殖民地化与全球化势态时所运用的分析策略。现在的历史知识构建以人文主义史学关于人类历史与自然史古老区分的失效为历史学科的大前提,将人类视为一种地质力量的人类世观念严格限定了人文主义史学,要求资本主义历史与地球和人类进化的更大尺度的历史进行对话。有记载的历史与深层历史进行这种对话是一个探索历史理解界限的过程。

The Climate of History: Four Theses

The science of climate change has important influences on humanist histories of human beings.What scientists have said about climate change challenges not only the ideas about the human that usually sustain the discipline of history but also the analytic strategies that postcolonial and postimperial historians have deployed in the last two decades in response to the postwar scenario of decolonization and globalization.The current construction of historical knowledge presupposes a loss of the old distinction between human and natural histories.The idea of the Anthropocene which considers humans as a geological force severely qualifies humanist histories.This requires us to put histories of capitalism in conversation with the histories of the evolution of earth and human beings.Such conversation between recorded histories and deep histories is one process of exploring the limits of historical understanding.