ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Star Gazing: Buckminster Fuller and the Early History of Planetary Thought

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

English Abstract

Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) is often seen as a pop star of the Space Age. The globetrotting philosopher of media and technology and architect of the iconic geodesic domes appears to embody Cold War techno-optimism and 1960s ideals of self-empowerment. However, upon closer inspection, Fuller's celebrated techno-utopianism emerged much earlier – in the interwar period.
My paper zooms in on Fuller's highly idiosyncratic first book ‘Nine Chains to the Moon: An Adventure Story of Thought’ (1939), which he co-wrote with his assistant Viola Cooper. I will reconstruct how Fuller (and Cooper) came to think intensely about planet earth as early as the mid-1930s while attempting to extrapolate from the history of science and technology a telos of an ever-increasing efficiency in humanity’s utilization of planetary resources – a process which Fuller called ‘ephemeralization.’ As the title of his book suggests, external views and statistical inventories of the physical properties of the Earth led Fuller to claim that ‘[m]an is […] empowered to a sense of personal contact with all astronomical bodies of the universe.’
Based on contextual readings of published sources and archival material, the paper contributes to a genealogy of planetary thinking, taking into account its proponents’ oft-nonchalant interpretation of established scientific facts. At the same time, I will probe its potential for a ‘planetary history’ which is not limited to reconstructing global connections.

Author

• David Kuchenbuch, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg