ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2024
Spread of the cycles: a feedback perspective on the Anthropocene.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mechanisms of cultural diversity in urban populations.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Environmental change and globalization dynamics in Roman Anatolia: Stabilizing an accelerating system.Science advances · 2025Article
- Unbalanced social-ecological acceleration led to state formation failure in early medieval Poland.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Housing inequality and settlement persistence are associated across the archaeological record.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Our fragile future under the cumulative cultural evolution of two technologies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- How greedy is too greedy? A network toy model for evaluating the sustainability of biased evolutionary dynamics.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Evolution of the polycrisis: Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Social-ecological niche construction for sustainability: understanding destructive processes and exploring regenerative potentials.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Towards understanding human-environment feedback loops: the Atacama Desert case.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Positive feedbacks in deep-time transitions of human populations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
What propelled the human 'revolutions' that started the Anthropocene? and what could speed humanity out of trouble? Here, we focus on the role of reinforcing feedback cycles, often comprised of diverse, unrelated elements (e.g. fire, grass, humans), in propelling abrupt and/or irreversible, revolutionary changes. We suggest that differential 'spread of the cycles' has been critical to the past human revolutions of fire use, agriculture, rise of complex states and industrialization. For each revolution, we review and map out proposed reinforcing feedback cycles, and describe how new systems built on previous ones, propelling us into the Anthropocene. We argue that to escape a bleak Anthropocene will require abruptly shifting from existing unsustainable 'vicious cycles', to alternative sustainable 'virtuous cycles' that can outspread and outpersist them. This will need to be complemented by a revolutionary cultural shift from maximizing growth to maximizing persistence (sustainability). To achieve that we suggest that non-human elements need to be brought back into the feedback cycles underlying human cultures and associated measures of progress. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'.
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