Future Modalities: Exploring the Intersection Between Nature and HistoryABSTRACT
This article claims that distinct conceptions of the future emerge from different understandings of the relationship between natural time and historical time. The analysis focuses on three modalities. Koselleck’s modality interprets the relationship between past and present through repetitive structures associated with natural time, allowing the future to be plausible. Simon emphasizes the disconnection between present and future through an entanglement of natural time and historical time marked by disruptive events and unprecedented transformations, rendering the future unfathomable. Jordheim, in turn, frames a nonsynchronous relationship between present-future that stresses the continuity between nature and history, assigning to the future a liminal characteristic. The article concludes that these three modalities correspond to different temporal frameworks and to distinct ways of articulating the continuity or discontinuity between nature and history.
Keywords:
Future; Historical Time; Natural Time; Theory and Philosophy of History
RESUMO
Este artigo afirma que concepções distintas de futuro emergem de diferentes compreensões da relação entre o tempo natural e o tempo histórico. A análise concentra-se em três modalidades. A modalidade de Koselleck interpreta a relação entre passado e presente por meio de estruturas repetitivas associadas ao tempo natural, permitindo que o futuro seja parcialmente plausível. Simon enfatiza a desconexão entre presente e futuro através de um entrelaçamento entre tempo natural e tempo histórico marcado por eventos disruptivos e transformações sem precedentes, tornando o futuro insondável. Jordheim, por sua vez, formula uma relação não sincrônica entre presente e futuro que destaca a continuidade entre natureza e história, atribuindo ao futuro um caráter liminar. O artigo conclui que essas três modalidades correspondem a diferentes regimes temporais e a modos distintos de articular a continuidade ou descontinuidade entre natureza e história.
Palavras-chave:
Futuro; Tempo Histórico; Tempo natural; Teoria e filosofia da história
INTRODUCTION: THREE NEW MODALITIES OF FUTURE
Since the early twentieth century, under the influence of the Annales school, historians have understood that present experience can reveal unresolved problems in the past, leading them to read the present back into the past as that past’s future. Historians have also used the future to expose blind spots in historical interpretation, imagining possible scenarios to reread the past and the present from a forward-looking standpoint (Mudrovcic, 2014, p. 221). The future as a dimension of historical time, although never absent from traditional historiographical practice, has recently become a prominent theme in both historiographic debates and the theory of history. Nowadays, historians are “discussing how to make sense of the past in a world where the future is not what it used to be” (Tamm, 2022, p. 131). In fact, the historical approach to the future has gained more than a historiographic disciplinary function, since, at the same time, the relationship between history and nature attached an additional relevance to it. As the Man-Nature divide erodes and the Earth emerges as a problem, our historical imagination is put under strain: projections and anticipations of the future (Simon; Tamm, 2024) now reach beyond the limits of what has so far shaped collective experience.
Overcoming the divide between history and nature is essential when examining new ways in which the historical future might unfold, giving rise to new forms of the future. Our understanding of the modalities of the future follows Tamm’s definition as the “the variety of possible but not necessary futures figured simultaneously in different societal and cultural practices.” (Tamm, 2022, p. 132). The challenge of thinking about different modalities of the future remains open, as demonstrated by the review presented by Simon and Tamm (2024) of the articles collected in the volume of Historical Futures, published in the journal History and Theory. Extending this effort, this article explores the intricate interplay between nature and history by considering the theoretical challenge of managing diverse and multifaceted temporal connections with the future. More specifically, we recognize that the rise of the historical future as a prevailing trend is associated with two interconnected developments in disciplinary history and theory/philosophy of history.
First, it stems from the growing recognition of time as a central theoretical and historiographic problem. In fact, a longstanding disciplinary consensus affirms the centrality of time in both the practice and the conceptualization of history (Bevernage et al., 2019, p. 420). Yet it was only from the 1990s onward that time began to receive sustained scholarly attention from historians (Lorenz, 2017, p. 109) and theorists of history (Gorman, 2013, p. 156). This renewed focus on what Le Goff (1988, p. 24) called the “fundamental material” of historical work has fueled a radical critique of dominant notions of historical time, along with their underlying metaphysical assumptions (Bevernage, 2008, p. 151). As a result, historians and theorists of history have increasingly engaged with the expanding field of time studies, a transdisciplinary arena-spanning the humanities, social sciences, and the arts-dedicated to examining how conceptions of time operate within specific social contexts (Burges; Elias, 2016, p. 2), as well as the possible connections that form the totality of past, present, future (Fillion, 2014). This movement reverses what Ankersmit pointed out as the lack of philosophical interest in the topic of time in the historicist perspective: “historicism regards everything from the perspective of time-but apparently it is precisely this which makes it impossible to speak about time itself.” (Ankersmit, 2012, p. 30).
Second, the importance of the historical future reflects the increasing challenge for historians to reconsider the relationship between nature and history, and thus between natural time and historical time (Febvre, 1989; Mcneill; Engelke, 2014). Today, historians researching Anthropocene topics must engage with the concept of time as presented by geologists. Rather than focusing generally on natural time, historians have adapted geological timelines for their own purposes, resulting in new interpretations within historical contexts. This interdisciplinary approach has contributed to the development of stratigraphies of time and history (Jordheim, 2022a) which are frequently grounded in geological principles of chronostratigraphy. Furthermore, this convergence has enabled historical thought to broaden its understanding of time toward the deep past-and, by extension, the deep future-of the Earth System, thereby transcending the limits of approximately 6,000 years to which our historical consciousness has been confined in modern times (Jordheim, 2022b). Anthropocene as a temporal concept places both humanities and natural sciences (such as geology) in a shared epistemic framework, allowing them to exchange a “stratigraphic narrative” (Mitchell, 2011, pp. 72-74).
On the one hand, nature and history are increasingly entangled as the Anthropocene unfolds, with human activity affecting natural systems on an unprecedented scale. In fact, according to Sörlin, the Anthropocene debate “will influence how we conceive of future directions for societies and perhaps even what it means to be human in this world” (Sörlin, 2022, p. 65). On the other hand, historians must eventually confront the disciplinary task of naturalizing historical time and, conversely, historicizing natural time. Only then can history and nature be analyzed as interconnected and permeable realms. Consequently, the boundary between natural and human history brings the future into focus as the place where present and past disputes over nature and history converge; it therefore raises the challenge “of having to speculate to some degree on the possible futures that are unfolding in the present, while assuming responsibility for the pragmatic effects of such speculations” (Turin, 2023, p. 707, our translation).
The future is the temporal dimension least familiar to historians; nevertheless, it lies at the boundaries where nature and history negotiate time. In effect, thinking about the future offers explanatory modalities because it formulates concepts of historical time with important ontological and epistemic implications, while also seeking to identify the underlying causes and mechanisms of phenomena that connect nature and history. In this sense, Simon’s general advice compels historical time studies to face the epistemological challenge of partaking a multidisciplinary exchange since “the systemic entanglement of physical and social processes is actually no one’s expertise in the modern disciplinary distribution of knowledge, which demands a new knowledge regime that is yet to be developed.” (Simon, 2022, p. 120).
Building on the preceding discussion of the links between nature, history, and the historical future, the next sections address the following question: How do different ways of relating history and nature produce different images of the future?
To explore this question, the article analyzes how three major theorists of history-Koselleck, Simon, and Jordheim-understand the future. We treat their accounts as complementary approaches to time, each illuminating different aspects of the relationship between historical time and natural time. Reinhart Koselleck (1923-2006), a leading twentieth-century historical theorist, is best known for his work in conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) and for his analysis of modern temporality, especially the notions of space of experience and horizon of expectation. He frames the historical future through an iterative relation that resonates with natural time, even if it ultimately remains detached from the more complex dynamics of historical times. Zoltán Boldizsár Simon, a contemporary philosopher and theorist of history, focuses on how temporality is transformed in the Anthropocene and on the conditions for radically new futures. He argues that historical experience can generate disruptive transitions that separate the future from present and past, driven by an unprecedented intertwining of nature and history. Helge Jordheim, a contemporary historian and cultural theorist, studies regimes of historicity and multiple temporalities, with particular attention to interactions across temporal scales and to the history-nature relation. For Jordheim, futures imagined in the present can be understood within a continuous connection between nature and history.
Together, these perspectives show distinct ways of relating natural time to historical time. The next three sections examine each author in turn and the future modality associated with their account.
KOSELLECK’S MODALITY: REVERBERATIONS OF NATURAL TIME
We will summarize Koselleck’s temporal theory according to two lines: a) the experience and b) the ontology of historical time. Koselleck’s approach to historical experience and the ontology of time presents interconnected strands (Jordheim, 2011), yet he never explicitly linked them (Olsen, 2013). On one hand, he illustrates how the experience of historical time establishes its order, depicting “existential time” (Escudier, 2011, p. 137) as a temporal structure that manifests in different configurations. Experienced historical time can be understood through the semantics of historical time and can be observed in the evolution of conceptual history. On the other hand, Koselleck ontologically defines history as the “historical time proper” (Escudier, 2011, p. 137) as multilayered temporal framework.
Henceforth, we will proceed by summarizing the said two Koselleck’s approaches to historical time.
a) experience of historical time
Koselleck argues that the shifting distance between the “space of experience” and the “horizon of expectation” (Koselleck, 2004, p. 263) reshapes perceptions of the relationship between past, present, and future, thereby historically shaping historical experience. Consequently, diverse temporal experiences manifest within the “linguistic organization of temporal experience,” (Koselleck, 2004, p. 4) revealing a significant shift from the mid-eighteenth century onward toward a modern conception of time. “The technology-induced acceleration of temporal rhythms” (Ewing, 2016, p. 420; Koselleck, 2002) alters this dynamic, transitioning from the shorter experiential distance characteristic of the past-oriented experience of time (Koselleck, 2004, p. 28) to a wider gap typical of the future-oriented historical experience of modernity (Koselleck, 2004, pp. 225-263).
The transition from a past-centered to a future-oriented historical experience also marks a shift in the relationship between natural and historical times. Some societies organize historical events by means of external references, such as natural cycles, cosmological scales, or theological frameworks. In contrast, societies where historical time is shaped by technological acceleration and the growing gap between past and future, increasingly rely on references found within historical events themselves. The modern experience of time enacts an endogenic “temporalization of history” (Koselleck, 2004, pp. 37, 245-246), moving away from the naturalized historical time.
This modern temporalization separates nature from history, enabling a future-oriented experience of time as an intrinsic aspect of human history while relegating nature’s future to an isolated cosmological dimension, which eventually denaturalized historical time. Thus, chronology began to follow historical developments rather than dictate them, making time an active force in history while relegating natural forces to immeasurable or catastrophic external influences upon historical events (Koselleck, 2004, pp. 104, 236).
How is the future perceived in the modern experience of time? In what ways is it experienced?
The acceleration of time is influenced by its formal conditions, which are organized by the temporal markers (space of experience and horizon of expectation) that modify the tensions between past and present based on their rates of deceleration or acceleration (Hellerma, 2020, pp. 202-203). As in the modern temporality the rate of temporal change speeds, the future became the driving force of transformation within time, and the “coefficients of motion and acceleration which are no longer derivative of expectations of the Last Judgment [...] remain [instead] adequate to [...] a world increasingly technical in nature” (Koselleck, 2004, p. 104). The space of experience could not align with the horizon of expectation as historical change “occurs at increasingly shorter intervals of time” (Koselleck, 2004, p. 314), “because the structural preconditions are themselves changing more quickly than had been previously possible” (Koselleck, 2018, p. 265).
In short, the modern experience of time places the anticipated future at the center of temporal perception, detaching it from natural time and situating it within historically shaped rhythms of technological acceleration.
b) multitemporal ontology
Koselleck’s multitemporality encouraged historians and theorists of history to recognize the existence of not only “one historical time, but rather [...] many forms of time superimposed one upon the other” (Koselleck, 2004, p. 2). The relationship between past, present, and future can be compared to geological layers that vary in age, depth, and rate of change throughout Earth’s history (Koselleck, 2018, p. 3). In addition to temporal changes, the sediments of time include “temporal structures” (Koselleck, 2018, p. 94) linked to natural time. Thus, the changing temporal order manifests in repetitive structures, generational limits, biological rhythms, life and death cycles, and extends to evolutionary, geographical, geological, and astrophysical time. In this framework, Koselleck’s multitemporal theory allows temporal structures, under certain conditions, to incorporate a layer linking natural time with the past, present, and future dimensions of historical time.
Firstly, Koselleck recognized the significance of natural time in historical thinking, asserting that history should be examined separately from the natural clock time, nevertheless “If one assumes that historical time remains embedded within natural time without being entirely contained in it; [...] historical interrelations cannot be measured with a clock” (Koselleck, 2002, p. 6). To address this apparent contradiction, Koselleck argues that historical time, though shaped by human and institutional action, can still appear in nature-like patterns of repetition (Koselleck, 2004, p. 2). These “nature-like patterns” are “pregivens [conditions] of possible histories that escape human control but not human use” (Koselleck, 2018, p. 29). The Koselleckian temporal structure intersects natural time through anthropological categories situated at the boundaries of nature and history, so that natural time appears in history through patterns that condition repetitive, natural-like historical time (Olsen, 2013, p. 227). In short, present, past, and future are permeated by repetitive patterns of natural phenomena.
Secondly, the stratified nature of the temporal structure prevents the realignment of the past and the present into a straightforward linear timeline. Instead, any revolving sediment of historical time is organized in a multilayered manner. Historical time operates in two rhythms: the diachronic separation between past and present, and their synchronic coexistence as layered times. Historical time is interwoven diachronically and synchronically due to their differing rhythms of temporal change (Koselleck, 2002, p. 30). Therefore, the natural-like patterns of time, which reverberate through historical times, ripple in the diachronically and synchronically arranged structure of time involving the historical past and present towards the historical future.
Additionally, the notion of multilayered historical time gathers temporal change around the paradoxical “contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous.” (Koselleck, 2002, p. 90), which is the syndiachronic vortex of multilayered time. The past and present interact, unsettling any fixed sense of time making historical change a dynamic involvement between them. Natural time patterns offer to a certain extent stability to the contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous. In Koselleck’s framework, therefore the future is what the historical past-present anticipates: an emergent, layered temporality within the vortex of the contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous, also supported by natural-like temporal patterns.
Although natural-like rhythms may lend a degree of stability to the historical future, the future still occupies a distinct position in relation to past and present because, as a dimension beyond direct human experience, it remains in principle open and unknown (Koselleck, 2002, p. 114). How can the historical future be at the same time stable according to its naturally shaped rhythm and “open and unknown”?
Even so, within Koselleck’s multitemporal framework, this tension does not prevent the future from remaining at least reasonably plausible (Koselleck, 2014, p. 126). The degree of accuracy of an anticipation, or even of the possible outcome of a development, involves an “art of combining multiple pieces of experience data” (Koselleck, 2014, p. 192, our translation). In other words, it involves understanding the various distinct layers of historical time as well as the recurring patterns that form them. In the synchronic cut, where the past, present, and future of different strata can coexist on a vertical axis-the contemporaneity of the non-contemporary-certain future conditions can be diachronically anticipated as structural possibilities of repetition (Torres, 2022, p. 155; Koselleck, 2021, p. 49; Koselleck, 2014, passim). Thus, “those who know the conditions of possible histories will not be completely surprised by what the future holds” (Hoffmann, 2022, p. 190).
Although Koselleck does not define natural time precisely, he associates it with stable recurrences that make the future partially estimable. He also shows how this natural-like stability situates historical time within natural time without cancelling the openness of the historical future. As “we live in a metaphor derived from nature” (Koselleck, 2021, p. 104), the multiple layers of repetition that constitute historical time are homologous to natural time (Koselleck, 2014). If the future can be plausibly outlined, it is due to the alignment between historical time and natural time, which, according to Koselleck, should be understood as an indeterminate unity, “remembering that, to a greater or lesser extent, the natural conditions of our life remain present is one of the noblest messages of historical narrative, which has always understood nature and the world of men as a unity” (Koselleck, 2014, p. 89).
Koselleck’s concept of historical time-both as experienced history and as an ontology of time-serves as a foundational framework for the temporal theories of Simon and Jordheim; it plays as a concurrent-antecedent influence, as will become evident in the following discussion.
SIMON’S MODALITY: ENTANGLED HISTORICAL TIME AND NATURAL TIME
Simon departs from Koselleck regarding both the experience of time and the ontology of time. He understands distinctly the relationship between natural and historical time, which in turn sets for a non-Koselleckian future-centered experience of time.
The trends that recently continue and develop the Koselleckian metaphysics of historical time emphasize, in general, the relationship between past and present in historical time. However, “historical futures” is the most recent theory of historical time related to Koselleck’s multiple temporalities. In partnership with Marek Tamm, it was launched in History and Theory n. 60, in March 2021 (Simon; Tamm, 2021, p. 3) and had its preliminary final balance sheet published in the same journal in September 2024 (Simon; Tamm, 2024, p. 303). In fact, the historical futures trend invites historians and theorists to turn towards the future because “what we call ‘historical’ is not confined to relations to the past, but also to the future” (Simon, 2021a, p. 131). The concept of historical futures has gained critical importance in shaping historical thought and understanding, driven by a recent transformation in the experience of time. This transformation intertwines and coexists with both the future-oriented modern temporality of Koselleck and Hartog’s present-centered regime of historicity, known as presentism (Hartog, 2015).
Simon’s approach builds on Koselleck’s thesis that technological progress accelerates historical time, reshaping the relationship between past, present, and future. However, Simon and Tamm caution that the transformations in historical experience go beyond what Koselleck’s concept of multiple temporalities accounted for. As a result, the historical futures is a trend that “clearly departs from Koselleck’s framework” (Simon; Tamm, 2021, p. 11). In the newer experience of historical time, humanity is no longer the central subject of disciplinary history or the historical sense that classical philosophies of history aimed to reveal (Simon, 2018a, pp. 102-103). Indeed, the most recent historical experience introduces unprecedented characteristics that request new conceptual categories for examining the ontology of historical time. As “today’s technological-scientific advances [...] simultaneously evoke and challenge historical understanding” (Simon, 2018a, p. 101).
Historical futures theory places the future at the core of contemporary temporal experience, shifting focus from the relationship between past and present to “the plurality of transitional relations between apprehensions of the past and anticipated futures” (Simon; Tamm, 2021, p. 3). In Koselleck’s future-centered account, modernity temporalizes history by letting an epochal mode of historical experience give time its basic structure. In historical futures, by contrast, the future loses the settled, idealized image that modern past and present once projected as the basis for utopian expectations. Today, the space of experience can no longer plausibly anticipate what the future holds. World history has, in part, fallen into a blind spot that obscures or even obstructs the view of the future from the present. As Simon proposes, this uncertainty compels us to reconsider which narratives remain possible, as emerging temporalities challenge the role of human agency in shaping historical understanding (Simon, 2020a, p. 184).
In Simon’s temporal landscape, the relationship between nature and history becomes central, since historical and natural times are more deeply entangled than Koselleck’s syndiachronic vortex of the multilayered time could account for. Contrary to the Koselleckian Zeitgeist, which describes a shift from history’s dependence on natural time to the modernist “denaturalization of historical temporalities” (Koselleck, 2004, p. 96; Koselleck, 2002, pp. 104-113), Simon and Tamm identify a reverse movement emerging in the twentieth century. This shift exceeds what Koselleck’s account of the intertwined natural-like repetition with historical unpredictability can explain, because it points to a profound transformation in the relation between history and nature. The re-engagement between natural and historical time reveals “changes in the entangled human/nonhuman world” (Simon, 2019b, p. 80). According to the historical futures thesis, technological advancements enable human intervention in natural time, necessitating its historicization. As a result, the “historical modern sensibility” confronts its own dissolution, challenged by “humanity’s temporal other”-a posthuman and transhuman future (Tamm, 2022; Simon, 2018a).
All in all, the Simonian historical future asserts itself as a new ontology of historical time by introducing the concept of “evental temporality” (Simon, 2019a, p. 75). This concept redefines the relationship between past, present, and future, as well as reshaping historical change. Evental temporality aligns the historical futures trend with a “rebranded philosophy of history” (Simon, 2019a, pp. 74-75; see also Simon, 2019b, pp. 2-3), demanding a new mode of temporality.
By emphasizing the past-future relationship-particularly the “imaginary of unfathomable futures” and “unprecedented change” (Simon, 2019a, p. 78)-historical futures diminishes the future-oriented historical sensibility and acknowledges the potential failure of human control over the future. Most importantly, the disruptive temporality introduced by historical futures necessitates a new temporal, non Koselleckian framework that accommodates the evolving relationship between natural and historical time. That is, it demands the historicization of natural time.
The relationship between nature and history is being reconsidered in the context of a new understanding of historical time (Simon, 2018b, p. 118). Historical and natural time are entangled in such a way that the prospects of future and transitional temporal relations must be recast/rephrased in terms of a discontinuous temporality3 that presides over the synchronic-diachronic axis of Koselleck’s temporal structure. The intertwining of history and nature, rooted in discontinuity, stands in contrast to the modern temporal, Koselleckian framework, which presupposes a teleological continuity between them (Simon, 2020a). Comparatively , the evental time conveys the idea of the future as a disruptive temporality that breaks the diachronic axis of historical time. Consequently, the new configuration of the relationship between past, present, and future, disrupts the contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous. Furthermore, the fragmented remnants of the dismantled, self-legitimizing, human-centered narrative of modernity challenge the conventional links between past, present, and future, since “there is no continuity in change, only change without continuity” (Simon, 2018a, p. 114).
The future-oriented conception of time reshapes the interplay between Koselleck’s ontological framework of temporality and the lived experience of history. For the temporal sensibility, the realm of natural time included historical periodization (Koselleck, 2004). However, as the modern concept of history steadily appeared, “Natural time [...] belong to the conditions of historical temporalities, but the former never subsumes the latter” (Koselleck, 2004, p. 96). The historical future thesis claims instead that the submission of natural to historical time fails in as much as an evental temporality rules the relationship between past, present, and future, since “Tinkering with and entangling nature through technology is the main driver of altering planetary conditions to the extent that may compromise the continuation of the flourishing of human societies” (Simon, 2022, p. 120).
The evental temporality conveys a new ontology of historical time as far as the temporal continuity is frustrated as an outcome of the past and the present. In fact, the temporal horizons that the present launches discontinue the temporal horizons to such an extent that “the future ceases to be made of the same matter as the past” (Danowski; Viveiros De Castro, 2017, p. 26). Along with the challenge of the continuous way of conceiving historical temporality, the evental temporality “evokes and defies historical understanding as such” (Simon, 2018a, p. 114).
Where modern thought framed nature through distance and difference, today the human and nonhuman worlds are seen as entangled, with boundaries that are hard to clearly draw (Simon, 2020b). The aspiration to overcome the human condition, driven by techno-scientific posthumanism, and the intrusion of Gaia (Stengers, 2015), as suggested by the Anthropocene proposition, challenge the stability of the archaic modern time. From then on, complex, discontinuous relations need to be considered that defy the claim of exclusivity to human affairs.
According to Simon, the future, if not minimally plausible, changes its status and opens to a multitude of diverse and disconnected historical futures. These futures cannot be tamed by narratives that would qualify them as the realization of a specific past, nor can they be seen as the result of a continuous historical process (Simon, 2021b; 2023). “Being futures of entangled physical and social systems planetary futures do not have a vision of the best sociopolitical constitution as their telos” (Simon, 2022, p. 123). Rather than the continuous development of a single subject along a unified path, the future, when considered in the plural, involves the emergence of new historical subjects (Simon, 2016; 2018d; 2019b; 2023).
This is why the uncertain future, once reasonably controlled by prognosis, now becomes a future that is impossible to know or predict in terms of its content. Its main defining characteristic is its unfathomability (Simon, 2023; 2025). This change in status affects our expectations from the intertwined human and nonhuman world. Technological and ecological debates provide examples of futures where the past is not contained (Simon, 2025), thereby evading the limits of modern thought and its conformation to a plausible process.
Instead of a differentiation between past experiences and future expectations-a distinction that might be associated with a processual narrative-there exists a disjunction between the past and the future (Simon; Tamm, 2021; Simon, 2023). Building on Koselleck’s concept of multiple temporalities, Simon and Tamm assume that this separation leads to the emergence of various historical transitions from the past to the future. In other words, it creates a range of coexisting historical futures, each with its own interpretation of the past and expectations for the future (Simon; Tamm, 2021; 2024), since “a multiplicity of historical futures collide with trajectories of the human and the natural worlds that no particular viewpoint is equipped to address adequately.” (Simon; Tamm, 2021, p. 22).
On the one hand, the idea of a “multiplicity of immanent possible futures” (Simon; Tamm, 2024, p. 308) challenges presentist theories that suggest the future is closed off due to an overwhelming focus on the present, as seen in the works of François Hartog (2015). The complex relationships between different historical futures create a field of intense dispute without a single form of historical change. As Simon and Tamm (2024) state, “there is never only one future at stake, but all possible ones. And the possibilities of historical futures are playing out in their interactions” (Simon; Tamm, 2024, p. 316).
On the other hand, the unfathomable nature of historical futures presents us with the cognitive challenge of seeking a better understanding of our contemporary historical situation without resorting to the same categories that organized modern historical knowledge (Simon, 2023). Thus, Simon warns that the need to establish other cognitive strategies would have as its starting point the effort to avoid projecting the past onto the future, the familiar onto the unknown (Simon, 2025). While a processual view of history can coexist with a disruptive perspective (Simon, 2019a), it often hinders rather than helps our grasp of future possibilities (Simon, 2025), since the relation between history and nature has taken on a significance that modern processual time could not accommodate.
JORDHEIM’S MODALITY: THE STRATIGRAPHY OF HISTORICAL TIMES
In proposing a stratigraphy of historical times-while aligning with Koselleck-Jordheim significantly modified the Koselleckian concept of multitemporal modality, both in terms of its theoretical framework and its geological metaphor of historical time. As a result, he introduced a somewhat distinct perspective on the relationship between nature and history, along with a new positioning of the future within dimensions of time.
Jordheim highlights that Koselleck’s theory of multiple temporalities constitutes a “general theory, a metatheory, of historical times” (Jordheim, 2012, p. 152). According to Jordheim, Koselleck’s conception of temporality posits that the past consists of multiple layers, whose persistence in the present accommodates the discontinuous periodization of historical time to reveal a “diachronic movement through the synchronic moment” (Jordheim, 2012, p. 166). The multiple temporalities that diachronically shape the present moment release the past, allowing representation to “regain [the] historicity” of historical experience, even amidst the growing discontinuity between the past and future in the wake of modernity (Jordheim, 2012, pp. 153-154).
Additionally, the change in understanding the status of historical time offers an alternative perspective, which departs from the Koselleckian framework, on how nature and history are related. Jordheim’s stratigraphical model raises an epistemic challenge, demanding dialogue between the disciplines of history and geology regarding the concept of time. Influenced by the Anthropocene debate, geologists have adopted a historian-like role, as they have effectively proposed a history of the Earth. Likewise, historians have turned to geology to enrich their understanding of the experience of historical time (Bonneuil; Fressoz, 2016, p. 63). On one hand, human forces acquire a natural potency strong enough to influence geological time. On the other hand, natural time emerges as an active historical agent, interacting with human forces to the extent that it acts and can be acted upon within historical times.
In effect, Jordheim’s argument moves past the stratigraphic model-which reframes nature and history in Anthropocene terms-to outline a new ontological approach to historical time. Historical epistemology’s new modalities of the historical future do not reject ontological assumptions, allowing epistemology and ontology of historical time to be seen as complementary rather than opposed or exclusive4 (Cardoso Jr., 2023, pp. 15-16). In fact, this dialogue between natural and historical times also raises an epistemic-ontological question: how can we make sense of continuity between inorganic and organic domains.
Historians and geoscientists exploring the relationship between nature and history face a profound task; that is, rethinking the long-standing concept of two distinct histories-one belonging to the Earth and the other to Humanity. Consequently, the effort to reconcile human-centered and planet-centered conceptions of time carries paradigmatic implications both for geoscientists and historians. Their respective disciplinary frameworks have traditionally excluded the notion of a unified, continuous timeline that integrates natural and human histories within a single temporal framework (Jordheim, 2022a, pp. 21-22). According to Jordheim, the attempt to unify human and natural history faces a fundamental temporal challenge: reconciling the approaches of historians and historical theorists with the divergent temporal frameworks employed in natural sciences such as geology, biology, and meteorology (Jordheim, 2022b, p. 391).
According to Jordheim’s account of the epistemic and ontological dialogue between historians and other disciplines’ timeframes, Koselleck’s stratigraphy of historical time proposed by the turn of the twentieth to the twenty-first century can be seen as transdisciplinary as it included “biology, geology, chemistry, and physics, but also history and anthropology” (Jordheim, 2022b, p. 404). Accordingly, the continuum of nature and history that historians and theorists recently adopted resumes the mode historians thought of history two hundred years ago. Historians began to conceive human history within the same continuum as natural and historical time, much like Earth sciences had already done then, reversing a long-standing tradition.
According to Jordheim, by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, human history was temporalized within “the horizontal, linear, uniform, homogeneous time of historical progress” (Jordheim, 2022a, p. 23), whereas natural history, including geological history, was framed within “the vertical, multilayered, heterogeneous time of rock and mountain formations in the Earth’s crust” (Jordheim, 2022a, p. 23). History was temporalized horizontally through nations and cultures, leading to its denaturalization. In contrast, nature was temporalized vertically through geological deposits, climate shifts, Earth’s movements, and biological fossils, making it dehumanized.
However, by the mid-twentieth century, some historians and theorists began to challenge the conventional temporalization of their discipline. To achieve this, the historians’ “stratigraphic model” has been developed (Jordheim, 2017a). From then on, Febvre (relation between nature and history [ Febvre, 1989]); Braudel (“levels of historical reality” [Braudel, 1982, p. 71]); Pomian (“strata of time” [Pomian, 1984, pp. 109-111]); and Koselleck (“layers of time” [Koselleck, 2018, p. 3]) have sought to conceptualize historical time as multilayered, akin to the approach geologists have employed for over two centuries. In fact, the “stratigraphy of time and history” (Pomian, 1984, p. 334) reconnects with a “way of thinking which once emerged from within Western historiography” (Jordheim, 2022a, p. 36) in the late seventeenth century when historians and naturalists conceived time geohistorically.
Jordheim argues that history has been denaturalized by reducing time to human terms (Jordheim, 2022b, p. 410), but the Anthropocene challenges this view by highlighting humanity’s role as a geological force disrupting planetary life. The climate crisis requires us to reconnect human history with natural processes, which can be described as a renaturalization of history and historiography (Jordheim, 2022b, p. 416). The singularity of a linear anthropological time operationalized according to the concept of progress is not sufficient to explain historical change today. Jordheim’s stratigraphic model extends the analogy with geosciences into a holistic framework, attributing to historical time a holistic, radiating influence. To this end, everything that was represented as a passive exteriority devoid of agency must be understood as capable of transformation: historical time and natural time are understood through a continuum whose common quality is precisely the multiple times that constitute them (Jordheim, 2022a). In effect, Jordheim revives the tradition of conceptualizing historical time through an analogy with geological time, as Koselleck did, while updating the geological metaphor to address the need for disciplinary history to engage with the ongoing Anthropocene debate.
The central issue, therefore, is the coordination between the multiple times of human life and those of natural phenomena. This recovers the importance of different chronological procedures (Jordheim, 2019), since it is a matter of admitting and measuring different forms of life, each with its own dynamics, rhythm, and duration (Jordheim, 2022b). Following Herder’s inspiration, it is a matter of linking time scales to life scales, paying attention to a set of durations that are not limited to the human and phenomenological realm, but are linked to a multispecies and multimaterialist conceptualization of life. Whether stone, plant, animal or human, all express a time that is not homogeneous, absolute and, therefore, independent of things, but multiple, heterogeneous and whose temporality is inherent to their different forms of life: “the only thing that is certain is that solids are subject to change, never quite immutable” (The Lifetimes Research Collective, 2022).
Looking beyond temporal scales that ordinary human cognition can grasp-often limited to the roughly 6,000 years of sacred history, a biblical timeframe whose “temporal ‘straightjacket’” historians have been slow to leave behind (Jordheim, 2022b; 2017a)-turns our attention to natural timescales measured in millions and billions of years. For Jordheim, this recovery, followed by pluralization of natural time is a trend that can be observed in Koselleck’s texts from the 1980s, with the metaphor that characterizes his theory of historical times being the greatest representation of this change in his reflections: sediments of time. The use of geological references, specifically stratigraphic ones, is not gratuitous; it is a conceptual loan that emphasizes the epistemic and methodological dialogue with the natural sciences: if strata, or sediments of time, have a productive semantic application when dealing with the multiple layers of historical time, it is also linked to a knowledge literally concerned with the sedimentations that formalize the longue durées of terrestrial geohistory: “a reintegration of history and nature would mean engaging with the plurality of natural times, alongside, and in addition to the plurality of historical times, and questioning the distinctions between the two” (Jordheim, 2022b, p. 414).
The challenge is to think about the deep time configured in this temporalization of nature through the theory of multiple temporalities, that is, how these multiple nonsynchronies relate to each other under the synchronization (Jordheim, 2017b; 2014; 2022c) of a planet understood as “a multiple, living sphere of coexistence that is prevalent today” (The Lifetimes Research Collective, 2022, p. 14). This engagement implies the inclusion of repetitive structures layered at different depths that evade the scope of modern anthropocentric thinking, whether in retroaction to the distant life of the planet deposited in rock sediments, or towards historical futures in which we wonder what will remain, as sediment, from a moment of anthropogenic change. Thus, “Koselleck’s layers or strata of time make up the conditions not only of possible histories but of history itself: it is a theory of historical time that leads into multiple futures” (The Lifetimes Research Collective, 2022, p. 16).
Considering this geological turn in temporal studies (The Lifetimes Research Collective, 2022; Maniglier, 2020), one of the many possibilities for questioning historical futures lies precisely in the material continuity aspect that allows us to reflect on time in the form of sediments in the field of geology. “What is the stuff that futures are made of?”. Starting from this question, The Lifetimes Research Collective5 invites us to reflect on how past, present, and future are connected by matter. This approach involves considering future from a geomaterialist perspective, emphasizing fossils and the processes of fossilization, “Out of everything that modern global culture has turned into air, made light, invisible, ungraspable, and transient, from fossil fuels to all kinds of plastic gadgets, what will solidify, petrify, ossify, turn heavy, turn to stone, fossilize?” (The Lifetimes Research Collective, 2022, p. 7).
Considering transitions from the past to the future through the lens of fossilization emerges as an experiment from a historical perspective that integrates the connections between historical and natural times, as required in the Anthropocene. This is because fossils, as products of organic lives that have slowly transformed into inorganic materials, decentralize human beings and contribute to writing history “through the pocketing of asynchronicities in layers of sedimentary rocks” (The Lifetimes Research Collective, 2022). If human times can be integrated into this history that points to a deep future, it is only in their capacity as future anthropogenic fossils, that is, “fossilized remnants of human existence and activity” (The Lifetimes Research Collective, 2022, p. 10) as part of the world’s natural biomass. Rather than being connected through a horizontal timeline, the relationship between past, present, and future is considered vertically, following the logic of sediment accumulation. This means that the old and the recent are interpreted as deeper and shallower layers, respectively (Jordheim, 2022a). In this context, the future is understood through the persistence of materials transforming into solidified and petrified forms, moving away from an approach focused on hopes, fears, anticipations, and expectations. Instead of an absence of transformation, the framing of the problem regarding fossils evokes a form of transformation through permanence.
The concept of solido intra solidum6 refers to a geological process where organic life is restructured within material sediments, which move slowly in relation to rock. Consequently, what remains undergoes transformation, altering its inherent temporal structure and oscillating between different ontological states: from organic to inorganic. If the Anthropocene provides a conceptualization for our current climate crisis, dialogue between historical disciplines and the natural sciences emerges as a condition of possibility for historical thinking that is attentive to multiple temporalities and extremely extended periods. Borrowed from geology, the concept of fossil is thus presented as a cornerstone for a historical approach that transcends the Man-Nature duality and whose temporal structure can be expanded towards a reflection on possible historical futures:
the question itself is redirected from the past to the future, thus opening up another kind of temporal imagination and horizon-not only what fossils tell us about the deep past (the lives, durations, and rhythms) but also how ongoing processes of fossilization force us to rethink our own deep, or not-so-deep, futures (The Lifetimes Research Collective, 2022, p. 25).
Moreover, Jordheim’s stratigraphy of history eventually reshapes the concept of the contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous with consequences for the Jordheimian modality of future. If fossilization reinforces the vertical multilayered time, it shall affect its horizontal dimension. His solution emphasizes nonsynchronous over synchronicity, to desynchronize spurious synchronicities. In fact, for Jordheim, “the most fundamental temporal feature of history is indeed Ungleichzeitigkeit, nonsynchronicity, inherent in all concepts, languages, cultures, and events” (Jordheim, 2014, pp. 505-506). He understands that synchronicity, as a cultural practice, is rooted in Western modernity and embedded in historiographical traditions that attempt to synchronize multiple historical times through a diachronic narrative, stabilizing and/or effacing non-synchronous temporalities (Jordheim, 2017b, p. 88).
The reconfiguration of Koselleck’s central concept paves the way for a reconsideration of natural time as one of the layers within multilayered historical time. Natural time should be seen not only as a reiterative rhythm that echoes through the human world, shaping patterns of historical repetition. In Jordheim’s stratigraphy of history, nature emerges as an effective temporal layer, fully entitled to coexist with and actively intervene in human temporal structures. Natural time is continuous with historical time; it is neither external to history nor does it disrupt it from the outside. Instead, it integrates nonsynchronous temporalities, stretching from Earth’s deep past to the historical present in the diachronic axis of the multilayered time, where it converges with, and fossilizes into, synchronous time. Natural time does not merely adhere to the fleeting and incidental ripples of an immeasurable past; rather, it now acts as the very nonsynchronous force driving desynchronization within the continuum of natural-historic time. Natural time works as a temporal agent of desynchronization that adds to the historical desynchronization conveyed, for instance, by the decolonial approach of history.
It makes the nonsynchronicity of the synchronicity, instead of producing synchronicity as a spurious or spoiling temporal cultural experience (modern regime of historicity) and/or historiographical practices (historicism), which conspicuously mime natural time as a linear time for the sake of colonialist, imperialist, or gender abuses in history.
In short, Jordheim’s asynchronous continuum of natural-historical time rests on a multi-scaled ontology. It designates the ontological “in-between”; it is not a separate realm but a relational condition that makes all-encompassing participation and movement possible. The liminal future thus is based on this graded ontology that shows the continuous transformation between natural and historical times.
LAST REMARKS
The impending environmental degradation and global warming, which threaten the conditions of habitability on the Earth System, are issues that compel us to think (Deleuze, 2018). In this context, the persistent problem of the relationship between history and nature assumes distinct contours and different forms of engagement. As Donna Haraway (2019) suggests, it is a matter of understanding how we have inhabited the problem and, rather than seeking definitive answers, creating conditions under which different practices and forms of knowledge may coexist within the same field of problematization (Stengers, 2005; 2018; 2023).
Guided by the argument that new modalities of the future are underpinned by different understandings of the relationship between natural time and historical time, we have seen that, according to the three lines of inquiry employed, Simon’s concept of “historical futures” and Jordheim’s strathistorical model can be traced back to Koselleck’s multitemporality. Nevertheless, they ultimately diverge from it to varying degrees.
Accordingly, we heuristically distinguished three modalities of the future: the plausible future (Koselleck), the unfathomable future (Simon), and the liminal future (Jordheim).
It is important to emphasize that the modalities of the future examined here address time on two interrelated levels, distinguished for the purposes of comparison and analysis. First, they showed the historical experience of natural time-focusing on the future-to classify the kind of transition (mild or disruptive) from past to present in epistemic terms appropriate to historical understanding. Second, these perspectives understand ontologically natural time as either continuous or discontinuous in relation to historical time. Koselleck’s, Jordheim’s, and Simon’s future modalities articulate the relationship between natural and historical time through both levels.
Beyond its guiding question-how different understandings of the history-nature relation yield different future modalities-we hope this exercise both encourages and helps sustain the development of new ecologies of practices (Stengers, 2005).
Data Availability Statement:
The research data are available in the body of the document.
REFERENCES
- AHLSKOG, Jonas. The Idea of a Philosophy of History. Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, v. 22, n. 1, pp. 86-104, 2018.
- ANKERSMIT, Frank. Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012.
- BEVERNAGE, Berber. Time, Presence, and Historical Injustice. History and Theory, v. 47, pp. 149-167, May 2008.
- BEVERNAGE, Berber et al. Philosophy of History After 1945: A Bibliometric Study. History and Theory, v. 58, n. 3, pp. 406-436, 2019.
- BONNEUIL, Christophe; FRESSOZ, Jean-Baptiste. L’évenement Anthropocène: la Terre, l’histoire et nous, nouvelle édition révisée et augmentée. Paris: Points, 2016.
- BRAUDEL, Fernand. On History. Translated by Sarah Matthews. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
- BURGES, Joel; ELIAS, Amy J. Introduction: Time Studies Today. In: BURGES, Joel; ELIAS, Amy J. (Eds.). Time: A Vocabulary of the Present. New York: New York University Press, 2016. pp. 1-32.
- CARDOSO JR., Hélio Rebello. Rebranded Philosophy of History: New Varieties of Discontinuity and Spatial Frames of Historical Time. Revista de Teoria da História, Goiânia, v. 24, n. 1, pp. 58-71, 2021.
- CARDOSO JR., Hélio R. Varieties of Temporalization: Disciplinary Tasks Related to Historical Time. História da Historiografia, Ouro Preto, v. 16, n. 41, pp. 1-24, 2023.
- DANOWSKI, Déborah; CASTRO, Eduardo Viveiros de. The Ends of the World. Translated by Rodrigo Nunes. Cambridge, UK; Malden, USA: Polity Press, 2017.
- DELEUZE, Gilles. Diferença e repetição. Translated by Luiz Orlandi e Roberto Machado. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2018.
- ESCUDIER, Alexandre. Temporalization and Political Modernity. In: SEBÁSTIAN, Javier Fernández. Political Concepts and Time: New Approaches to Conceptual History. Santander: Cantabria University Press, 2011. pp. 131-163.
- EWING, Alexander Blake. Conceptions of Reinhart Koselleck’s Theory of Historical Time in the Thinking of Michael Oakeshott. History of European Ideas, v. 42, n. 3, pp. 412-429, 2016.
- FEBVRE, Lucien. Combates pela história. Translated by Leonor Martinho Simões e Gisela Moniz. Lisboa: Editorial Presença, 1989.
- FILLION, Réal. The Continuing Relevance of Speculative Philosophy of History. Journal of the Philosophy of History, v. 8, n. 2, pp. 180-195, 2014.
- LE GOFF, Jacques. Histoire et mémoire. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.
- GORMAN, Jonathan. The Limits of Historiographical Choice in Temporal Distinctions. In: LORENZ, Chris; BEVERNAGE, Berber (Eds.). Breaking up Time: Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. pp. 155-175.
- GRUNER, Rolf. The Concept of Speculative Philosophy of History. Metaphilosophy, v. 3, n. 4, pp. 283-300, Oct. 1972.
- HARAWAY, Donna. Seguir con el problema: Generar parentesco en el Chthuluceno. Translated by Helen Torres. Buenos Aires: Edición Consonni, 2019.
- HARTOG, François. Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time. Translated by Saskia Brown. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
- HELLERMA, Juhan. Koselleck on Modernity, Historik, and Layers of Time. History and Theory, Middletown, v. 59, n. 2, pp. 188-209, 2020.
- HOFFMANN, Stefan-Ludwig. Sobre la antropología de la experiencia histórica en Reinhart Koselleck y Hannah Arendt. In: TORRES, Felipe (Ed.). Conceptos que hacen historia(s): a partir de Reinhart Koselleck. Translated by Camila González S. Santiago: Pólvora Editorial, 2022. pp. 151-196.
- JORDHEIM, Helge. Against Periodization: Koselleck’s Theory of Multiple Temporalities. History and Theory, v. 51, n. 2, pp. 151-171, 2012.
- JORDHEIM, Helge. Does Conceptual History Really Need a Theory of Historical Times? Contributions to the History of Concepts, v. 6, n. 2, pp. 21-41, 2011.
- JORDHEIM, Helge. Introduction: Multiple Times and the Work of Synchronization. History and Theory, v. 53, n. 4, pp. 498-518, 2014.
- JORDHEIM, Helge. In the Layer Cake of Time: Thoughts on a Stratigraphic Model of Intellectual History. In: GOERING, Daniel Timothy (Ed.). Ideeengeschichte heute: Traditionen und Perspektiven. Verlag, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2017a. pp. 195-214.
- JORDHEIM, Helge. Natural Histories for The Anthropocene: Koselleck’s Theories and The Possibility of a History of Lifetimes. History and Theory, v. 61, n. 3, pp. 391-425, 2022b.
- JORDHEIM, Helge. Stratigraphies of Time and History Beyond the Outrages upon Humanity’s Self-Love. In: EKSTRÖM Anders; BERGWIK, Staffan (Eds.). Times of History, Times of Nature: Temporalization and the Limits of Modern Knowledge. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2022a. pp. 19-44.
- JORDHEIM, Helge. In Sync/Out of Syn. In: SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár; DEILE, Lars (Eds.). Historical Understanding: Past, Present and Future. London: Bloomsbury, 2022c. pp. 45-56.
- JORDHEIM, Helge. Synchronizing the World: Synchronism as Historiographical Practice, Then and Now. History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History, v. 7, n. 1, pp. 59-95, April 2017b.
- JORDHEIM, Helge. Return to Chronology. In: TAMM, Marek; OLIVIER, Laurent (Eds.). Rethinking Historical Time. New Approaches to Presentism. London; New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. pp. 43-56.
- KOSELLECK, Reinhart. Estratos do tempo: estudos sobre história. Translated by Markus Hediger. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto: PUC-Rio, 2014.
- KOSELLECK, Reinhart. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Translated by Keith Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
- KOSELLECK, Reinhart. Uma latente filosofia do tempo. Organizado por Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht e Thamara de Oliveira Rodrigues. Translated by Luiz Costa Lima. São Paulo: Editora Unesp Digital, 2021. E-Book.
- KOSELLECK, Reinhart. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Translated by Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2002.
- KOSELLECK, Reinhart. Sediments of Time: On Possible Histories. Translated by Sean Franzel and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2018.
- LEITE, Augusto B. de Carvalho Dias. On the Metaphysical Role of Historicity. História, São Paulo, v. 42, pp. 1-11, 2023.
-
LIFETIMES. [s.d.]. Available at: Available at: https://temporalities.uio.no/ Accessed on: 3 jun. 2026.
» https://temporalities.uio.no/ - THE LIFETIMES RESEARCH COLLECTIVE. Fossilization, or the Matter of Historical Futures. History and Theory, v. 61, n. 1, pp. 4-26, March 2022.
- LORENZ, Chris. The Times They Are a-Changin’ On Time, Space and Periodization in History. In: CARRETERO, Mario; BERGER, Stefan; GREVER, Maria (Eds.). Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. pp. 109-131.
- MANIGLIER, Patrice. How Many Earths? The Geological Turn in Anthropology. The Otherwise, issue 1, pp. 61-75, Jan. 2020.
- MCNEILL, J. R.; ENGELKE, Peter. The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.
- MINK, Louis O. Is Speculative Philosophy of History Possible? In: MINK, Louis O. Historical Understanding. Edited by Brian Fay, Eugene O. Golob, and Richard T. Vann. Ithaca; New York: Cornell University Press, 1987. pp. 147-162.
- MITCHELL, Peta. “The Stratified Record Upon Which We Set Our Feet”: The Spatial Turn and the Multilayering of History, Geography, and Geology. In: DEAR, Michael et al. (Eds.). Geohumanities: Art, History, and Text at the Edge of Place. New York: Routledge, 2011. pp. 71-83.
- MUDROVCIC, María Inés. Time, History, and Philosophy of History. Journal of the Philosophy of History, v. 8, n. 2, pp. 217-242, 2014.
- MUNZ, Peter. The Shapes of Time: A New Look at the Philosophy of History. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1977.
- OLSEN, Niklas. History in the Plural: An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013.
- POMIAN, Krzysztof. L’ordre du temps. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1984.
- SCHOLZ, Oliver R. Philosophy of History: Metaphysics and Epistemology. In: KAISER, Marie I. et al. (Eds.). Explanation in the Special Sciences: The Case of Biology and History. Dordrecht; Heidelberg; New York; London: Springer, 2014. pp. 245-253.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. Disconnective Futures: Uncertainty, Unfathomability, and the Collapse of Narrative Crisis Management. Frontiers of Narrative Studies, v. 9, n. 2, pp. 208-231, 2023.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. Domesticating the Future through History. Time & Society, v. 30, n. 4, pp. 494-516, 2021b.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. The Epochal Event: Transformations in the Entangled Human, Technological, and Natural Worlds. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020b.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. Historical Futures and the Pull of the Past: On the Poverty of Imagination. Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, April, v. 29, n. 4, pp. 595-619, 2025.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. History Begins in the Future: On Historical Sensibility in the Age of Technology. In: HELGESSON, Stefan; SVENUNGSON, Jayne (Eds.). The Ethos of History: Time and Responsibility. Oxford; New York: Berghahn, 2018d. pp. 192-209.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. History in Times of Unprecedented Change: A Theory for the 21st Century. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019b.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. (The Impossibility of) Acting Upon a Story That We Can Believe. Rethinking History, v. 22, n. 1, pp. 105-125, 2018b.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. Judging the Past, Blaming the Past, Hailing the Past. In: ZHANG, Baosheng; MAN, Thomas Yunlong; LIN, Jing (Eds.). A Dialogue between Law and History: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Facts and Evidence. Singapore: Springer, 2021a. pp. 129-150.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. The Limits of Anthropocene Narratives. European Journal of Social Theory, v. 23, n. 2, pp. 184-199. 2020a.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. Planetary Futures, Planetary History. In: SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár; DEILE, Lars (Eds.). Historical Understanding: Past, Present and Future. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. pp. 119-129.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. The Story of Humanity and the Challenge of Posthumanity. History of the Human Sciences, v. 32, n. 2, pp. 101-120, 2018a.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. The Transformation of Historical Time: Processual and Evental Temporalities. In: OLIVER, Laurent; TAMM, Marek (Eds.). Rethinking Historical Time: New Approaches to Presentism. London; New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019a. pp. 71-86.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár. We are History: The Outlines of a Quasi-Substantive Philosophy of History. Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, v. 20, n. 2, pp. 259-279, 2016.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár; TAMM, Marek. Historical Futures. History and Theory, v. 60, n. 1, pp. 3-22, 2021.
- SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár; TAMM, Marek. The Opening of Historical Futures. History and Theory, v. 63, n. 3, pp. 303-318, 2024.
- SÖRLIN, Sverker. Environmental Times Synchronizing Human-Earth Temporalities from Annales to Anthropocene, 1920s-2020s. In: EKSTRÖM Anders; BERGWIK, Staffan (Eds.). Times of History, Times of Nature: Temporalization and the Limits of Modern Knowledge. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2022. pp. 64-104.
- STENGERS, Isabelle. Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Practices. Cultural Studies Review, v. 11, n. 1, pp. 183-196, 2005.
- STENGERS, Isabelle. Making Sense in Common: A Reading of Whitehead in Times of Collapse. Translated by Thomas Lamarre. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2023.
- STENGERS, Isabelle. A proposição cosmopolítica. Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, São Paulo, Brasil, n. 69, pp. 442-464, abr. 2018.
- STENGERS, Isabelle. No tempo das catástrofes: resistir à barbárie que se aproxima. Translated by Eloisa Araújo Ribeiro. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2015.
- TAMM, Marek. Future-oriented History. In: SIMON, Zoltán Boldizsár; DEILE, Lars (Eds.). Historical Understanding: Past, Present and Future. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. pp. 131-140.
- TORRES, Felipe. Utopía y aceleración. Temporalización de la historia según Reinhart Koselleck. In: TORRES, Felipe (Ed.). Conceptos que hacen historia(s): a partir de Reinhart Koselleck. Translated by Camila González S. Santiago: Pólvora Editorial, 2022. pp. 197-225.
- TURIN, Rodrigo. Antropoceno e futuros presentes: entre o regime climático e regimes de historicidade potenciais. Topoi, Rio de Janeiro, v. 24, n. 54, pp. 703-724, set./dez. 2023.
- WHITE, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014 [1973].
