Foreword

Since the year 2000, at the very beginning of the new century, chemist P. J. Crutzen and biologist E. F. Stoermer proposed the term “Anthropocene” to designate the “new” epoch in which we live, international cultural studies, i.e., all disciplines concerned with human culture, have been well aware that a confrontation with the natural sciences is now unavoidable. Sciences seemingly far removed from the so- called “humanities,” such as geology, climatology, physics, and chemistry. Within a few years the writings of a historian like Dipesh Chakrabarty, who was able to make a connection between climatic events and capitalist economy, would have made this confrontation even more inescapable.