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Nuclear science as globalizing agent: from radiocarbon to the Nuclear Anthropocene
Wed, July 15, 2:30 to 4:00pm, Edinburgh International Conference Centre, Floor: Level 2, Lammermuir 1English Abstract
In Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (1992) sociologist Roland Roberston defined globalization as "the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole”. While transportation and communication technologies have played a leading role in the first part of this definition, I argue here that nuclear sciences have contributed much to the second. In this paper, I present how nuclear science, and particularly isotope studies, critically shaped the evolution of geophysics from 1945, leading not only to new conceptualizations of the earth, but indeed to a transcultural unification of the study of (past) cultures by means of the development of radiocarbon dating.