19. October 2007 09:04
Make space for the humanities, says the ‘Vienna Vision’
Representatives from both the sciences and the humanities will present a joint vision on the future of humans in space at an international conference in Italy later this month. The ‘Vienna Vision on Humans in Outer Space’, to be launched at the International Lunar Exploration Working Group conference in Sorrento on October 22-26, arose from a meeting in Vienna last week.
Until recently the humanities had little input into European space policy which has been dominated by political and industrial as well as scientific considerations. The proposers hope that the Vienna Vision will establish a clear voice for a new and broader constituency to contribute to the future of human beings in space.
The Vienna conference, on October 11-12, was billed as “the first comprehensive trans-disciplinary dialogue on humans in outer space.” It brought space scientists face to face with historians, lawyers, political analysts, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, writers and others. It was organised jointly by the European Science Foundation (ESF), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Vienna-based European Space Policy Institute (ESPI).
“This current project involves both the humanities and the space sciences, two domains which traditionally do not speak to each other very often, “said Dr Monique van Donzel, of ESF. “It focuses on the human quest for odysseys beyond the atmosphere, so elements of both the humanities and the space sciences have an interest.”
Professor Luca Codignola, a historian at the University of Genoa, told the conference: “We have two different visions of the same story - the more hard vision of the scientist and the more soft vision of the humanist - but we are dealing with the same idea, with human thought and with human beings either here on Earth or wherever we’re going to be.”
The Vienna vision will be centred on three “odysseys” representing three stages in the exploration of space. The first, already in progress, is the presence of people in orbit around the Earth. The second is in the near future when humans return to the Moon and go on to Mars. The third odyssey contemplates a more distant future when people have established settlements on other worlds, the first children are born off the Earth and, perhaps, we have made contact with other forms of life.
In developing themes for the Vienna Vision the conference heard several examples of how insights from the humanities can inform the development of space policy and extend ownership of the venture to a wider constituency beyond engineers and scientists.
Historians explained how an understanding of the effects of European explorers settling in the Americas could help humankind anticipate problems arising from contact with civilisations elsewhere in the universe. While face-to-face contact with other civilisations is exceedingly unlikely in the foreseeable future, the detection of radio signals from distant worlds would have immense implications for our philosophy and religion. Even the discovery of extinct bacterial life on Mars, which many scientists think is possible, would demonstrate that life is not unique to Earth and so have a big impact on our culture.
Of more immediate relevance is the extension into space of the rule of law. Space law, enshrined in international treaties and other agreements, has been developed from the traditional laws of the sea where vessels adopt the jurisdiction of their country of registration. The advent of space vehicles assembled from modules supplied by different states, run by intergovernmental agencies and manned by multinational crews has shown the limits of such model. Plans to establish bases on the Moon, and perhaps on Mars, call for a rethink of how both civil and criminal law could be applied and enforced beyond the bounds of Earth.
Human spaceflight is expensive and cannot be justified by science alone, the conference agreed, and policy makers should recognise that the urge to explore comes from our nature as human beings. We are not merely ‘superior robots’ and the cultural motives for space exploration should not be overlooked. “This is what humans do for a living,” said Dr Jean-Claude Worms of ESF, “They explore.”
Inspiration can come from modest sources. Dr Claude Nicollier, a former ESA astronaut who flew four missions on the US space shuttle in the 1990s, revealed that as a child he had been inspired to become an astronaut after reading ‘Explorers on the Moon’, one in a series of ‘Tin Tin’ comic books by Belgian cartoonist Hergé.
Professor Kai-Uwe Schrogl, Secretary-General of ESPI, who is chairing the work of drafting the Vienna Vision, said that the meeting had been an “outstanding intellectual experience” and presented a “fantastic opportunity” for scholars from many disciplines to exert real influence on the development of future space policy.
After the Sorrento conference the Vienna Vision will be taken to several international gathering including the International Space Exploration Conference in Berlin on November 8-9, and possibly to bodies of the United Nations.
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Media contact:
- Dr. Monique van DonzelE-Mail
