Complexity Sciences and Education in the Anthropocene

Following the reminder of the scientific reality on which the new epoch named Anthropocene is established, Chap. 5 mentions the work conducted a century ago by Gaston Bachelard on the new scientific spirit. This helps to illuminate the obstacles but also the opportunities offered by the use of the concept of Anthropocene in terms of knowledge and learning about the world. This is followed by the presentation of some elements of an epistemology and teaching of complexity, based on the observation or hypothesis of a partial unpredictability of a system’s behaviour (Nicolis G, Prigogine I (1989) Exploring complexity: an introduction. St. Martin’s Press), as shown by research on the Earth system in the Anthropocene. The issues raised intersect with the work of current theorists of complexity and transdisciplinarity, particularly in the field of self-training, to think about education in the Anthropocene and study the emergence of campuses in the time of the Anthropocene with some specific characteristics. To deepen the anchoring in the epistemology of complexity in the Anthropocene, the Campus de la Transition is studied more specifically in connection with the manuals of the Collectif Fortes. This campus is studied as a case study likely to provide the foundations and tools of a university pedagogy in the Anthropocene through a transdisciplinary approach and according to the foundations of a regenerated humanism (Morin. La Méthode 6. Éthique, 2004). This chapter is composed of three parts: (1) Epistemological and pedagogical issues—the new knowledge of the Anthropocene; (2) Systemic approach and transdisciplinarity; (3) Pedagogy of complexity for a “Great Transition”.