The Artificial Earth: A Conceptual Morphology

This chapter outlines a method for the interrogation of the morphogenesis of abstractions, which we call “conceptual morphology.” This is a process whereby concepts are interrogated by working through scales of determination to ascertain the integral presuppositions of particular ideas, thus offering a means of altering such an idea to refine its applicability to a particular problematic. This method is demonstrated by tracing the morphology of the concept of “artificiality,” which is to be understood in terms of a logic produced by colonial cosmology with which the planet is conceived as an “artificial Earth.” We argue that the colonial cosmology is not built upon the world as it is found, but is a cosmology that states “this is the world as it should be.” Importantly, we suggest that this logic of artificiality reconstructs not just nature but also existence at large by recursively instating its logic as the de facto epistemic condition. By utilizing the work of Sylvia Wynter and Alfred North Whitehead, and their theorizations of overrepresentation and the concept of the bifurcation of nature, respectively, this chapter argues that the logic of artificiality underpins many of the ways in which we relate to Earth systems in contemporary global techno-capitalist society. A series of key moments in the morphological history of artificiality are highlight and explored: from the European colonial project, through modern enlightenment science and the bifurcation of nature, and finally contemporary discourse proposing geoengineering as a solution to the climate crisis. In each of these moments, certain inscriptions of artificiality have been made, to the point in which the earth itself comes to be seen as an artificial object, or machine, to be controlled and manipulated. This critical conceptual morphology of artificiality allows the advance of a conceptual and practical project for constructing knowledge in our contemporary moment of climate crisis. Beyond the specificities of the chapter’s case study, conceptual morphology provides a method to construct and reengineer concepts necessary for an interpretation and understanding of the contemporary moment that is able to escape the hegemonic colonial-capitalist order of contemporary technoscience.