Civilizing Earth

Abstract

This essay explores a strategy for the creation of consilience among the sciences of nature and humanity. The relatively new discipline of Earth System Science provides the overall framework. This field seeks a top-down system’s approach to this planet, embracing the full span of geological history. The ultimate goal of the proposed undertaking is to combine two mathematical models, one representing Earth history and dynamics and the other for the process of civilisation, in Elias’s sense – that is, the dynamics of the ’world of humanity’, from the origins up to its present state. As neither of these models is available at present, all I can do here is to help and prepare the ground for their construction. Some implications for our worldview are briefly discussed.