Premium
Unravelling the Planetary Boundaries Discourse – Scientism and Utopian Thought
Author(s) -
Hanekamp Jaap C.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of contingencies and crisis management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.007
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5973
pISSN - 0966-0879
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5973.12103
Subject(s) - scientism , planetary boundaries , fallacy , epistemology , humanity , space (punctuation) , grasp , sociology , empirical research , transdisciplinarity , philosophy , political science , computer science , law , linguistics , sustainable development , programming language
In this forum contribution, the planetary boundaries discourse put forward by W. S teffen and colleagues is scrutinized. These boundaries are defined as a ‘safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes that regulate the stability of the E arth system’. Without reference to specific empirical shortcomings, it is shown that this discourse falls prey to the scientistic fallacy as part of utopian thought. Thus the erroneous belief is propagated that reality, through empirical research, can be penetrated to the full whereby a complete, that is, utopian, grasp of human reality can be translated into said ‘operating space’. This discourse is shown to be incoherent and lays waste to any useful research that tries to fathom particular accidents, crises and contingencies.