Earth system science (ESS) and modelling have given rise to a new conceptual framework in the recent decades, which goes much beyond climate science. Indeed, Earth system science and modelling have the ambition “to build a unified understanding of the Earth”, involving not only the physical Earth system components (atmosphere, cryosphere, land, ocean, lithosphere) but also all the relevant human and social processes interacting with them. This unified understanding that ESS aims to achieve raises a number of epistemological issues about interdisciplinarity. We argue that the interdisciplinary relations in ESS between natural and social / human sciences are best characterized in terms of what is called ‘scientific imperialism’ in the literature and we show that this imperialistic feature has some detrimental epistemic and non-epistemic effects, notably when addressing the issue of values in ESS. This paper considers in particular the core ESS concepts of Anthropocene, planetary boundaries and tipping points in the light of the philosophy of science discussions on interdisciplinarity and values. We show that acknowledging the interconnections between interdisciplinarity and values suggests ways for ESS to move forward in view of addressing the climate and environmental challenges.

近几十年来，地球系统科学（ESS）和建模催生了一个新的概念框架，其范围远远超出了气候科学的范围。事实上，地球系统科学和建模的目标是“建立对地球的统一认识”，不仅涉及地球系统的物理组成部分（大气、冰冻圈、陆地、海洋、岩石圈），还涉及所有相互作用的相关人类和社会过程。跟他们。 ESS 旨在实现的这种统一理解提出了许多有关跨学科的认识论问题。我们认为，ESS中自然科学和社会/人文科学之间的跨学科关系最好用文献中所谓的“科学帝国主义”来表征，并且我们表明，这种帝国主义特征具有一些有害的认知和非认知影响，特别是当解决 ESS 中的价值观问题。本文根据关于跨学科性和价值观的科学哲学讨论，特别考虑了人类世、地球边界和临界点的核心 ESS 概念。我们表明，承认跨学科和价值观之间的相互联系为 ESS 解决气候和环境挑战提供了前进的道路。