School of History and Philosophy of Science
RESEARCH SEMINAR
[The University of Sydney]
[https://d31hzlhk6di2h5.cloudfront.net/20260223/16/66/f0/75/412d1c1f66a3c48a2cc1b8a7_1276x852.jpg]
Planetary Health beyond Spaceship Earth?
Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney)
Dates: Monday, 2/3/2026
Start Time: 5:30pm
Venue: Carslaw Building (F07), Level 2, Room 275
How to register: Free, no registration required
Website:
https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/<https://t.e2ma.net/click/cjcgfy/44z6tvnb/sny4d3e>
Abstract: For more than ten years, concern about the impacts on human health of
degradation of the earth’s life-support systems has been expressed in terms of
‘planetary health’. The current and future effects of climate change on health
and well-being thus come under the rubric of planetary health. We realise now
that the health of all species depends on ecosystem health, now scaled up to
encompass the planet. But what ideas shaped this understanding of our
dependence on the planet as a semi-closed feedback system? Many of the concepts
of planetary health - including ‘life-support systems’, ‘safe operating
systems,’ and even ‘planetary boundaries’ – derive from 1960s systems theories
and cybernetics, as developed in the NASA space program. Planetary health is
still largely confined by our sense of living on spaceship earth. How might we
come to imagine planetary health otherwise, beyond the limits of a closed
system?
Bio: Warwick Anderson is Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance and
Ethics in the Discipline of Anthropology and the Charles Perkins Centre at the
University of Sydney. He was formerly an ARC Laureate Fellow in the History
Department at Sydney. A co-conspirator in postcolonial studies of science, he
has written extensively on science, race, and colonialism; medicine and white
masculinity; kuru, cannibalism, and sorcerer scientists; and autoimmunity and
tolerance of self. His current research is focused on disease ecology and
planetary health. In 2023, he was awarded the John Desmond Bernal Prize of the
Society for Social Studies of Science, in recognition of lifetime achievement
in science and technology studies. In 2025, he received the Arthur J. Viseltear
Prize for lifetime achievement in public health history from the American
Public Health Association.
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