The Stratigraphic Fallacy or the Anthropocene as an Epistemic Question

This paper provides an epistemic investigation of the Anthropocene idea. It highlights the intrinsic epistemic ambiguity/ peculiarity of this idea, which emerges halfway between ideology and geology and subverts the traditional distinction between the “two cultures” (natural and human sciences), going beyond the difference between physis (nature) and techne (culture) itself. To prove that the Anthropocene is a “threshold concept" capable of shaking the very foundation of the sciences and forms of knowledge that study it (in particular geology), I will deal with Carlos Gray Santana’s critical discussion of this aspirant geological epoch. More precisely, I will focus on the Stratigraphic Fallacy at the base of his “Stratigraphic Miso-Anthropocene”. In conclusion, I will put forward an ad hoc definition of the Anthropocene inspired by Timothy Morton’s work: the Anthropocene is an epistemic hyperobject with a (geo-) historical barycenter.