Extraterrestrial Imperative and calving planets
Dear Patrick,
I'm not too familiar with the pregnant Earth metaphor, but
I suspect it goes back to Krafft Ehricke. Ms Engdahl
includes an appropriate quote at the URL:
<http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space/quotes.htm>
referencing Update on Space Vol. I (1981).
The true source ought to be quite older, thought, since I
don't hold "Update" and that collection was published just
few years before Ehricke left us.
More to the point, Ehricke's no metaphor but an allegory,
with a "clever" fetus analyzing the situation inside the
womb, vs humanity and the planet. I'd advise prudence with
metaphors: should a planet calve -- what do we get? A
metallic asteroid? <g> As wise people say: "The map is not
the territory."
And, while Ehricke did repeatedly use quite a number of
biological terms, including womb and umbilical, in the
extraterrestrial imperative discussions, his usage went
beyond the mere analogy, in that he was trying to describe
novel evolutionary processes with known words, thus
extending their meanings.
Take care!
----
BTW: Most people know Lazarus Long's wisdom:
"When a place gets crowded enough to require IDs, social
collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The
best thing about space travel is that it made it possible
to go elsewhere."
Robert A Heinlein (1973)
But Ehricke wrote as well:
"That, perhaps, is the greatest promise of space: if
entered, it can always be a home. It is too large to ever
be turned into a prison."
Krafft A Ehricke (1975) -- JBIS 28, 723
----
Finally, to the economist may interest this critique to a
statement by Dr Keyworth, then Reagan science advisor:
"... there is justification in the long run for investing
social overhead in major technological advances that will
form the basis for new commercial industries and new jobs
-- for _creating wealth_. NASA is the foremost candidate
for such a symbiosis of the public and private sectors.
Viewing R&D as "deficit spending" is an error."
KAE (1982)
Of course, in the ensuing years, the space agencies have
done their... "best" to show Keyworth right and Ehricke's
fealty wrong!
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
--
Space Future | To unsubscribe send email with the subject "unsubscribe"
www.spacefuture.com | to "sf-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx".