Whats often missed but implicit in this short and powerful video is also what scientists fail to understand about the publics loss of serious interest in space in terms of its exploration. The Copernican revolution was only in a minor sense about heliocentrism vs geocentrism, more primarily it was a projection of spatiality itself as homogenous. Medieval maps are maps of places, not maps of space. For the majority of the public, the exploration of space was a traveling to other places, but the results were inherently disappointing, the Moon, Mars and beyond lack any characteristics of place. Mars in popular imagination was a place, not a dusty red rock with very little atmosphere. The inconsequentiality of Earth from a post Copernican view therefore collapsed in the public imagination. Places exist on Earth, not on other planets. Thus what became inconsequential again for the public was anything other than Earth. For many consequentiality became even more localized, the difference between where someone is and the next village, as difference of place, re-appropriated a (changed) importance that vies with the medieval. The difference between the Milky Way and Andromeda in contrast sank back into the inconsequentiality of the homogenous. It became uninteresting.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 12:04:33 +0000
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