The ancient Greeks subjected nature to human questioning. As personified in the natural observations of Aristotle and the other work of his Lyceum, they pointed the way to our natural science. They believed in the unity of man and nature. So, today, must we. In the modern view, nature is something separate and apart from man that is to be subordinated to human purpose. Nature, too, is still treated today as something without limit. Our science, and the technology it has produced, are behind the material bounty that is enjoyed by billions of people in the modern world and that is sought by billions more who hope to share in it by securing and embracing the benefits of technology. Continued technological innovation and dissemination is necessary for sustainable development. Yet there is a long list of potential risks if technology is not deployed properly. Moreover, we humans are increasingly shaped and made captive even of the technosphere we have created that increasingly pervades our biosphere. The choices we make about technology will do much to shape our future. In making those choices, we must reorient our relationship with nature. We must see the world and our place within it differently. We must see ourselves as part of one connected form of life that is connected to all the other forms of life, which are in turn all connected to the rest of nature on the imperiled Earth and are mutually dependent on all these planetary connections for perpetuating life.

One of the leitmotifs of W.G. Sebald’s work is his idiosyncratic appropriation of the term Naturgeschichte (natural history). This essay explores the different intellectual traditions from which he borrows to mould this vital subtext. These range from the cultural practice of embedding scientific observations in narratives, evolutionary history, and the entropic cosmology of modern physics to the use of Naturgeschichte in critical theory, the German-Jewish tradition of reflecting on creaturely life, and the perception of warfare as a ‘natural history of destruction’. This overview of Sebald’s diverging concepts of natural history highlights some of the limitations and contradictions inherent in their eclectic narrative employment in works such as After Nature, The Rings of Saturn, A Place in the Country, The Natural History of Destruction, and the abandoned Corsica Project. In so doing, however, evidence is marshalled for the argument that it is precisely this syncretism that allows Sebald to explore the human condition in the Anthropocene, which is marked by the gradual replacement of the biosphere through the technosphere.

The Anthropocene concept was developed by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen beginning in 2000 to reflect the realisation that human impacts had pushed Earth outside of the stable conditions of the Holocene Epoch. It quickly became a framing concept for the Earth System science community, with subsequent, ongoing analysis as a potential addition to the Geological Time Scale unit by geostratigraphers. The term's use then spreading widely to other disciplines. The Anthropocene may be described via striking, partly irreversible changes to the Earth’s physical surface (‘lithostratigraphic’), to its surface chemistry (‘chemostratigraphic’) and to its biology (‘biostratigraphic’). Its beginning is best placed around the mid-twentieth century at the same time as the sharp change in Earth System trajectory, driven by an expanding technosphere. Time will tell whether it becomes formalized, but its geological reality as the beginning of a major new chapter in Earth history is now beyond doubt.