Abstract

This Opusculum reflects critically on an important period of modern science. The German philosopher Gernot Böhme (1937-2022) called it in 1993 the “Baconian Age”. Paul Crutzen (1933-2021), honoured by the Nobel award for his role in the discovery of the ozone-hole in the stratosphere, called it around 2000 with a wide resonance the “Anthropocene”. Up to today, this period is largely dominated by the rise of two widely conflicting sciences, economy and ecology, resulting in severe general problems of present science. In 1995, the sociologist Allan Irwin (*1955) published the idea that amateur scientists could and should play an important part in supporting ecological ideas, calling their scientific role “citizen science”. The author of this Opusculum underlined this in 2014 to be a major means for overcoming the mistakes of the Anthropocene. The text describes the general framework, the rise and decline of Irwin’s idea, discerning between different stages, countries and actors. Presently, it has lost most of its original power and has become a mere method of professional science. Nevertheless, we badly need transformations of our scientific identity.