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Big is a Thing of the Past: Climate Change and Methodology in the History of Ideas
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 77, Number 2, April 2016
- pp. 305-321
- 10.1353/jhi.2016.0019
- Article
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The climate crisis has raised questions about the proper scale of historical analysis in the Anthropocene. After explaining how this methodological crisis differs from an earlier stand-off between proponents of microhistory and total history, this paper suggests a role for intellectual history in moving us beyond the current debate. What is needed is a history of “scaling”; that is, we need to historicize the process of mediating between different frameworks of measurement, even those that might at first appear incommensurable. Historical examples are explored in which such a process of commensuration has allowed for a pluralism of perceptions of space and time.