Overview

The debate on the origins of climate change is often considered a contemporary one, arising out of the present crisis. In Chaos in the Heavens, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Fabien Locher show that we have been thinking and debating on the consequences of our action upon the environment for centuries. This question was raised wherever history was accelerating: by the Conquistadors in the New World, by the French revolutionaries of 1789, by the scientists and politicians of the 19th century, by the European imperialists in Asia and Africa until the Second World War. This book shows that climate change was at the heart of fundamental debates about colonisation, God, the state, nature, and capitalism, and that from these battles emerged some key concepts of contemporary environmental science and policy. For a brief interlude, science and industry instilled in us the reassuring illusion of an impassive climate. But, in the age of global warming, we must, once again, confront the chaos in the heavens.

Full Product Details

9781839767227

Table of Contents

Reviews

The upshot of is this brilliant book is that historians have been asking the wrong question. For years we've been trying to date the emergence of a consciousness about the impacts of human activities on Earth's climate. But this awareness long predates modern science, as we learn from the authors' pathbreaking research. The real question, the one at the heart of their book, is why this awareness was always ambivalent and why it evaporated at the turn of the twentieth century. If you want to understand the long path to the climate crisis, read this book. -- Deborah Coen, Professor of History & History of Science & Medicine, Yale University

Author Information

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian of science and technology, previously at Imperial College London, now based in Paris at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He is the author of L’Apocalypse joyeuse. Une histoire du risque technologique and The Shock of the Anthropocene (with C. Bonneuil). Fabien Locher is a historian of science, technology and environment at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He is the author of Le Savant et la Tempête. Etudier l’atmosphère et prévoir le temps au XIXe siècle.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available