The years between 1770 and 1830 are the great decades when geology became the science we recognize today, the science that gave us the concept of deep time and that is focused on re constructing Earth’s past and explaining the immense forces that gave Earth ’s crust its present form; the science that decentred humanity’s place in t ime. In the early twenty-first century, the Anthropocene has complicated an d confused this picture, and some have objected that it seems to put humans back at the centre (others have embraced this human-centred approach). The re is no shortage of historical and conceptual confusion surrounding the An thropocene. This paper will try to shed some light on the Anthropocecene an d will do so from two unusual points of departure: Goethe, who witnessed an d participated in the great changes of the revolutionary decades around 180 0; and Max Frisch, the author of Man Appears in the Holocene(Der Mensch erscheint im Holozaen: Eine Erzählung, 1979).
< b>Ernst (Ernie) Hamm is an historian of science in the Department of Science, Technology and Society at York University in Toronto, Ontario. His work focuses on the history of the geosciences, the sciences in the Enl ightenment, Romantic science, Goethe’s scientific work and the interac tions of the natural and human sciences.