Antropocene. “Scientific priesthood”, “crise de la science” e opinione pubblica

What débâcle could be more evident than the genocides, droughts, financial collapses and floods playing out on today’s traditional and digital battlefields? Fueled by big tech’s energy appetite, wars and renewed colonial grabs for lithium, nickel and cheap labor reveal planetary instabilities: old strategies for new débâcles. Nineteenth-century thinkers foresaw this downfall: Ouida’s warning against playing Prometheus, Darwin’s species–environment interdependence, Marsh’s book on civilizations felled by environmental devastation, and Reclus’ grasp of their political meaning. Later, the controversy sparked by Brunetière’s 1895 attack on positivism and scientism reveals a persistent inability to transcend extremes. Educational and research systems tied to economic and political lobbies have fed the same polarization: scientism versus the rejection of science. The Anthropocene is its outcome – the apotheosis of our ignorance about who we are and where we stand, beyond nature and culture.