The issue of the journal Nature (March 25, 2021) contains an article that offers a historical analysis of responses to past forms of climate change and proposes the term combination "History of Climate and Society" (HCS), i.e. a history of climate and society.
The authors of both genders of the article come from the USA, England, Switzerland, Poland, China and Germany and emphasize the importance of local effects for history, which are revealed in the interdisciplinary project involving archaeologists as well as geographers, historians, palaeoclimatologists and representatives of other disciplines. The article goes beyond the usual disaster scenarios and shows that societal reactions to noticeable climate change can also have the opposite effect and be adaptive, not only ensuring the survival of affected populations, but even enabling them to flourish.
The HCS authors advise a combination of sensible preservation and courageous change. Both continuity and flexibility are required, which allows for two comments. Firstly, it should be remembered that the development of human - and ultimately scientific - thought can generally be characterized by the change from a rigid static (divine creation) to an adaptive dynamic (evolutionary becoming). And secondly, within the framework of science, an idea has proven to be viable that applies the principle of dynamics to cognition and states that for every action there is a reaction and for every piece there is a counterpart and that an objective object (!) has only been understood by a subjective counterpart (!) when two complementary aspects compete for attention in the interpretation.
One-sidedness comes to nothing, and the essence always lies in the tension between two poles, which can be called plus and minus or female and male and which keep both thinking and life going. Preservation and change, what has been achieved and what is desired - both formations need to be taken into account if we want to work towards a sustainable world. Perhaps we can turn HCS into a history of humanity, a History of People - which could be abbreviated to HOPE. What else do we have?
