ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Scales of the Earth: Space, Science and the Specters of Planetary History 01

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

While the sciences have never been confined to the terrestrial world, it was only in the latter half of the twentieth century that data obtained from instruments beyond Earth’s atmosphere began to play a constitutive role. The two-part symposium 'Scales of the Earth: Space, Science and the Spectres of Planetary History' historicizes the production, mediatization and consumption of orbital space from a multiplicity of disciplinary perspectives. Building on and extending work on ‘astroculture,’ the symposium contours planetary history as a complementary approach focused on the historicity of the planet and its orbital environments.

The seven contributions directly take up the three elements contained in the general conference theme ‘Shifting Perspectives: Plural Worlds, Contested Sciences.’ First, they chart a major shift in perspective, the discovery of the orbital view on the planet; second, they explore how that ex-orbitant view paradoxically led to a pluralization of world-views; finally, they analyze in nuanced ways how the extension of human activities beyond the atmosphere has contributed to the contestation of the sciences.

Addressing a blind spot in recent debates on the Anthropocene, global environments and the so-called planetary turn, the symposium interrogates how the meaning of planetary scale can be altered and extended to include the Earth’s increasingly contested and congested orbits. Participants include eight junior and senior scholars from China, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain and the United States working in history of science and technology, geography, philosophy, me­dia studies, religious studies and sociology.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Amanda Rees, University of York, UK

Individual Presentations

• Turning Planetary: Rethinking Earth from Orbit - Alexander C.T. Geppert, New York University/NYU Shanghai

• Spaceflight and the History of the History of Science - Brad Tabas, Institut Polytechnique de Paris

• Star Gazing: Buckminster Fuller and the Early History of Planetary Thought - David Kuchenbuch, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

• Mediated Orientation in Space and Expanded Artistic Practices in the 1960s - Haitian Ma, University of Amsterdam

Session Organizer

• Alexander C.T. Geppert, New York University/NYU Shanghai