NoteResurrection from the Solar Time
Throughout history, humans have developed various devices and principles to understand, monitor, and even regulate the sun. Sundials, employed for over two millennia, serve as a prime example of how humanity has harnessed the star's movements to manage time and calendars, embedding it into social constructs...
TermAgency
Traditionally understood as the capacity of human actors to act and influence their surroundings, agency has long been regarded as an exclusively human quality—a form of power distinct to human autonomy. "Modern humans" have historically obscured this multiple forms of agencies by maintaining the binary opposition of Nature/Culture, entrenching object/subject distinctions...
TermAnthropocene
The Anthropocene, as a debatable geological epoch, was first proposed by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000. Crutzen argued that the Earth System had undergone irreversible mutations, entering a state where the current epoch Holocene was no longer appropriate...
TermBlackboxing
Blackboxing refers to the process by which objects, scientific constructions or technical works become opaque and obscure due to their own success. When an entity stabilizes, a machine runs efficiently, or a matter of fact is settled, it becomes a "black box"—where focus shifts only to its inputs and outputs, while the complexity within is hidden from view...
TermComposing
In contrast to the ideas of a linear, inevitable flow of time toward universal “progress” in modernity, composition suggests an approach leans towards diverse prospects rather than a singular, unified future. Derived from the Latin componere, “to compose” emphasises putting thing together with care while preserving their heterogeneity...
TermGreat Acceleration
In 2019, Jan Zalasiewicz, building on the work of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), modified the group's logo based on a calculated pattern developed by AWG scientist Clément Poirier. The pattern features an almost-horizontal line that abruptly transitions into a near-vertical rise on its right-hand end, indicating the unprecedented increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere from the earth/ocean system over the past 15,000 years...
TermInstitution
Science studies pay close attention to the institutions that facilitate the construction of facts. Traditionally, institutions were seen as stable and autonomous, functioning on the objective nature independently from subjective society and human interactions. However, institutions are dynamic processes, shaped through ongoing mediation and negotiation between a variety of actors—both human and non-human...
TermMetamorphosing
Metamorphosis borrows from the term's roots in biology and geology, elaborated into a inherent property of the world itself. While in biology, metamorphosis describes an abrupt change in an animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation, and in geology (as metamorphism) it refers to the transformation of rock formations due to extreme heat or pressure, this idea applies more broadly to encompass all agents and their subsistence within the world...
TermNetwork
Unlike the technical sense of network we perceived from infrastructures like: Internet, sewage, subway or telephone lines, networks are dynamic fields where agency is distributed across all participants—human, non-human, technologies, and the active milieu—each actor interacting, influencing, and metamorphosing one another...
Termres extensa
Mind-body, culture-nature, and res cogitans-res extensa—this set of Cartesian dualisms forms the foundation of the Modern Constitution. It separates the world into two domains: nature, governed by objective physical laws (res extensa), and culture, driven by human thought and societal acts (res cogitans). The modern notion of space is closely tied to the Scientific framework of res extensa which forces nature into blackboxing...
TermWorld-systems
A world-system is not the system of the world but a system that becomes a world. It operates like a matrix of mirrors, each reflecting fragments of power dynamics through a core-periphery divide that obscures the entanglements between nature, society, and knowledge. This divide is not merely geopolitical; it is epistemic, with the core shaping what is seen, understood, and valued...