The anthroposphere as an anticipatory system: Open questions on steering the climate

Climate change research and action counteracting it affect everyone and would involve cross-societal transformations reshaping the anthroposphere in its entirety. Scrutinizing climate-related science and policies,we recognize attempts to steer the evolution of climate according to expected (or modelled) futures. Such attemptswould turn the anthroposphere into a large “anticipatory system”, inwhich human society seeks to anticipate and, possibly, to govern climate dynamics. The chief aimof this discussion paper is to open a critical debate on the climate change paradigm (CCP) drawing on a strategic and systemic framework grounded in the concept of anticipatory system sensu Rosen (1991). The proposed scheme is ambitiously intended to turn an intricate issue into a complex but structured problemthat is to say, to make such complexity clear and manageable. This framework emerges from concepts borrowed from different scientific fields (including future studies and system dynamics) and its background lies in a simple quantitative literature overview, relying upon a broad level of analysis. The proposed frameworkwill assist researchers and policy makers in thinking of CCP in terms of an anticipatory system, and in disentangling its interrelated (and sometimes intricate) aspects. In point of fact, several strategic questions related to CCP were not subjected to an adequate transdisciplinary discussion:what are the interplays between physical processes and social-political interventions, who is the observer (what he/she is looking for), and which paradigm is being used (or who defines the desirable future).