The End of Natural Disasters

Lorraine Daston

Director emerita, 

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin

Visiting Professor, 

University of Chicago

 

"The End of Natural Disasters"

 

The purely natural disaster, for which no one is to blame, is an Enlightenment category. Previously, there were just disasters, and plenty of blame to go around. In the age of anthropogenic climate change, we are fast losing the category of the natural disaster – and with it, the concept of blameless evil.