As we have seen in previous weeks, climate knowledge during the Enlightenment was based on varying and not necessarily empirical methods of measurement. We have been able to develop increasingly accurate climate models and the natural sciences have progressed a lot in the last several centuries. There was a major focus on how climate was experienced in the study of climatology that we have since moved away from. However, the ideals behind the study of climate changed have remained more consistent since this period. As with the readings from week 4, climate recordings were not standardized, and instruments were not being utilized to maximum efficiency.
I was very interested in the idea that climate science, or climatology is a recently developed discipline. As is very obvious from this class, climate science was very present in the Enlightenment. The colonial/imperial motivations aside, I think that there is a level on which the concept of this recency is a way to limit the severity of climate change. It reminds me of the perception by many people that there are a lot more queer people today than in past decades as a way to delegitimize peoples’ relationship with their identity.
Foucault’s idea of the three branches of natural sciences, these being biology, economics, and linguistics does not hold to today but was very interesting to think about. This separation has had a big impact on how research is conducted and categorized. While there has been a lot of interdisciplinary study within the sciences when studying climate this has not extended to the social sciences or humanities. This is a holdover from the overwhelming Enlightenment urge to classify things, as seen with Foucault. When these things are separated from each other, especially in these categories has implications for how we view climate science. Life and work are intrinsically connected and yet there is still a barrier between fields spawned by “biology” and fields spawned by “economics”. Climate science has broadly been taken under the realm of biology; how might the field look different if it had been classified differently? How might people be more willing to engage with the climate crisis if we could understand climate as an economic problem and not a “environmental” problem.
It is impossible to separate climate science, and frankly natural sciences generally from the ideology of the colonial period. Having grown up with two scientist parents there is something almost sacrilegious about the use of science for imperial expansion and management. It must be acknowledged that this is the root of these disciplines and something they are still used for today. From nuclear weapons to Israeli military technology, science funding is intrinsically tied to the expansion and maintenance of empire from the Enlightenment to today. This is even a factor in the readings for this week in which the study of forestry was used to make Indian forests more financially useful.