title: Big is a Thing of the Past: Climate Change and Methodology in the History of Ideas.
abstract: The climate crisis has raised questions about the proper scale of historical analysis in the Anthropocene. After explaining how this methodological crisis differs from an earlier stand-off between proponents of microhistory and total history, this paper suggests a role for intellectual history in moving us beyond the current debate. What is needed is a history of "scaling"; that is, we need to historicize the process of mediating between different frameworks of measurement, even those that might at first appear incommensurable. Historical examples are explored in which such a process of commensuration has allowed for a pluralism of perceptions of space and time.
authors.forename: Deborah R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Coen