Exploring the Heavens: Space Technology and Religious Implications Kendrick Oliver, to Touch the Face of God Elizabeth A

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Technology and Culture, Volume 55, Number 4, October 2014, pp. 988-994 (Review)

3XEOLVKHGE\7KH-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV DOI: 10.1353/tech.2014.0106

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tech/summary/v055/55.4.siebeneichner.html

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ESSAY REVIEW Exploring the Heavens: Space Technology and Religious Implications Kendrick Oliver, To Touch the Face of God Elizabeth A. Kessler, Picturing the Cosmos

TILMANN SIEBENEICHNER

Historian Kendrick Oliver’s book on the American space program and art historian Elizabeth Kessler’s book on the images of the Hubble Space Tele- scope, although quite different in their specific objects of study and meth- odological operationalization, reflect a common interest that has attracted increasing attention from scholars of the history of technology: the religious implications of the exploration of outer space, an undertaking that has hitherto being perceived predominantly as secular. Since the ground- breaking study of David Noble on the religion of technology, which claimed that technology and religion have been feeding off each other for a millennium, more and more scholars are taking up the issue.1 Oliver’s To Touch the Face of God: The Sacred, the Profane, and the American Space Program, 1957–1975 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer- sity Press, 2012. Pp. 248. $39.95) addresses the possible religious implications of the U.S. space program in the “long sixties”—that is, in the heyday of the space age, between 1957 and 1975. Oliver characterizes the space age during this period as an essentially charismatic enterprise, part of a long, symbolic tradition in which redemption and divinity are manifested in motions of ascents toward heaven. The author suggests that spaceflight, at least in the United States, “owed much to religious archetypes and sensibilities” (p. 9), and that religious hopes and ambitions were crucial in con- verting a mere space program into a phenomenon worth the term space age. Asking if Americans conceived of spaceflight as a means for mankind’s return to God, Oliver’s book thus takes up three major issues: it tells

Tilmann Siebeneichner is a research associate in the Emmy Noether Research Group “The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the 20th Century” based at the Freie Universität in Berlin. ©2014 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/14/5504-0013/988–94

1. David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology.

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not only the story of relations between religion and the U.S. space program, but also explores religious meanings and practices in secular times, and discusses how they informed and influenced the notion of the space age. The aims of his project are ambitious and Oliver’s systematic approach is all-encompassing and, at times, convincing. Nonetheless, the overall conclusions he draws feel disappointing—not because of the author’s efforts, but rather because of the ways in which he conceives his ESSAY object of interest. REVIEW To Touch the Face of God covers both institutional and individual aspects of this history. Oliver discusses various sorts of religious semantics, as well as spiritual practices, connected with the exploration of space. First, he addresses the question of NASA’s motivations and thus examines the role that religious values played in the development of U.S. space-exploration goals during the 1950s and ’60s. Chapter 1 focuses on NASA’s institutional culture and examines in detail the life-worlds inhabited there, and also in its installations and personnel. Second, in chapter 2, it addresses the implications of spaceflight for religious thought and belief and examines the emergence of exotheology, a discipline concerned with the epistemo- logical status of Christian cosmography, the implications of quantum advances in man’s technological capacity for relations with God, and the compatibility of religious doctrine with the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life. In the third chapter, Oliver takes into account the astronauts’ encoun- ters with a new and completely unknown environment and the possibili- ties it offered for (renewed) spiritual experience. Chapter 3 thus discusses U.S. astronauts as figures of existential significance not because they were the country’s champions in a fateful contest with a rival superpower, but rather because they faced an encounter with their own elemental self and the revelation of what capacities of faith, will, and judgment a man could retain in the most trying of physical conditions. Chapter 4 explores the spiritual responses to spaceflight both in space and on earth. Although strict mission schedules and rather uncomfortable conditions within the spacecraft left little time for spiritual experiences, four out of the eleven Apollo lunar-module pilots returned with new intuitions of the sacred and their own relation to it, which they tried to share with earthly audiences. In discussing the difficulties of communicating spiritual experiences, Oliver also identifies Apollo 8’s prime-time broadcast from lunar orbit on Christ- mas Eve 1968 as one of a few rare moments he classifies as religious occa- sions in the Durkheimian sense: the astronauts’ reading from Genesis evoked “a public paused in a common sensation of sacred time, thoughts deepening into ontology” (p. 169). After having discussed NASA’s attitudes toward religion, the emergence of exotheology, and spiritual responses among astronauts as they were expressed prominently in Apollo 8’s broadcast, Oliver’s analysis of

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reactions to the broadcast ushers in the fourth and final theme of the book: the way in which the survival of a spiritual dimension to the program be- came a subject of organized concern at a grassroots level. After Madalyn Murray O’Hair protested the reading of Christian prayers and scriptures from space, more than 8 million letters and petition signatures in support of the broadcast arrived at NASA headquarters—the largest volume of OCTOBER mail NASA ever received on a single topic. However, it is doubtful whether 2014 this campaign should be interpreted as broad support for religious incli-

VOL. 55 nations within the space program. Oliver admits that the majority of those participating in the campaign framed their support of the broadcast in terms of support for First Amendment protections of the free exercise of religion and the freedom of speech (many, he further concedes, were prob- ably motivated foremost by the fact that O’Hair had succeeded in her pur- suit of a ban on school prayers in the early 1960s) rather than explicitly supporting religion in space. What seems to have motivated most partici- pants therefore was not so much the support of spiritual ambitions in space as much as a fear of increasingly restricted religious practice in the country, for which the space program served as a surrogate. NASA made little effort to reengineer the campaign into a basis for active support, a move that corresponds with the results of the first chapter. As Oliver concludes here, religious faith was rarely an inspiration for the project of spaceflight; it was salient mostly as a source of validation. Those engaged in these enterprises were either increasingly moved by self- interest or the secular ideologies of nation and state, while others showed a loyalty that seemed both derived from and confined to the activity itself. This mentality influenced perceptions of the ideal astronaut as well. NASA, as Oliver observes, was most concerned with psychological stabil- ity, promoting the ideal astronaut as one being reticent, rational, and stim- ulated more by the operational challenges of the space age than by the op- portunities it seemed to present for markedly new varieties of experience. Thus, as he writes, “the astronaut who spoke with sincerity of a personal questing impulse . . . was the least likely to be trusted with an actual mission” (p. 97). While it is undeniable that the space age introduced significant new elements into each of those religious debates discussed in chapter 3, exotheology remained a speculative prospectus, with more adversaries than supporters. By the end of the long sixties, many Americans were instead reinvesting their faith in a classical cosmos, doubting the assumption of a cosmic destiny for mankind in favor of conservative claims of conven- tional faith. If “the space age ended as an evangelical revival began” (p. 168), as Oliver argues, does this mean (as he suggests) that there was too little religion in NASA’s efforts on space exploration? Or, as the author himself puts it, “did the space age end [because] it had failed to deliver the hoped-for spiritual returns?” (p. 9).

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Certainly, there is more to the space age than the cold rationale of in- novative engineers, eager politicians, and enlightened crowds. But the claim that enthusiasm for a “new technology of transcendence” (p. 170) is fully explained by religion (in its classic understanding) is questionable, since such an approach neglects the political framing of the space age—namely, the cold war. It seems somewhat surprising that although discussing religion with detailed theoretical knowledge and prudence, Oliver completely ESSAY leaves out the role of political religion. Of course, this theoretical approach REVIEW has hitherto been applied predominantly to totalitarian regimes. However, since it aims at exploring political framings and the ways in which they anticipate and substitute religious structures—thus understanding them as essentially secular variations of religious archetypes and sensibilities—such an approach might be of help in situating Oliver’s argument within the broader context of the space age and thereby mediate between the obvious hints for “something” more within the space program on the one hand and the religious shortcomings of its protagonists on the other.2 Kessler’s book Picturing the Cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope Images and the Astronomical Sublime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Pp. 280. $29.95) picks up where Oliver leaves off because it focuses on the Hubble Space Telescope, one of NASA’s most significant post-Apollo projects. Since the first breathtaking images from it were released to wide excitement and acclaim, the telescope has “changed and enhanced humanity’s understanding of the cosmos” (p. 13). Nevertheless, the attitudes toward Hubble’s images have remained ambivalent within astronomy, ranging from enthusiastic praise to dismissals along the lines of being nothing more than crass attempts to curry public favor. Therefore “the history of the Hubble Space Telescope, an instrument associated both with the promise of extended vision and marked by the difficulties of achieving it, offers an opportunity to consider how this ambivalence plays out and how astronomers attempted to resolve this tension in the case of the Hubble images” (p. 74). Problematizing this ambivalence, Kessler’s primary aim is to mediate between attitudes that dismiss the Hubble’s images as purely “pretty pictures” without any scientific value and those that welcome them as valuable scientific tools though show little interest in their awe-inspiring features. For her, both aspects are equally important, since the cultural significance of the Hubble images and their wide circulation within public audiences cannot be explained through their scientific value alone. Although Kessler is right in her assumption that the wide circulation of these pictures offers a nuanced understanding of how they shape our ideas and dreams about the cosmos and our place within it, her way of interpreting the pictures and their cultural significance is somewhat problematic. 2. Joost Augusteijn, Patrick G. C. Dassen, and Maartje J. Janse, eds., Political Reli- gion beyond Totalitarianism.

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Kessler turns to the notion of the sublime in order to understand, and promote, an experience of the cosmos that is both visual and rational. In her view, such an experience can address not only experts, but the public as well. Described by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant as a product of a tension between the senses and reason, the sublime, to Kessler, functions as more than an aesthetic system for the Hubble images. Indeed, “[i]t pro- OCTOBER poses an epistemology” (p. 227) that allows for a (re)presentation of the 2014 universe in a way that engages all human capacities, and in doing so over-

VOL. 55 comes what she calls the “narrow definitions” (ibid.) of both art and science, urging “us forward rather than letting us fall back on what we can know and identify with certainty” (p. 230). Thus Kessler’s book is more than just an analysis of the ways in which the Hubble images influence the contemporary cultural imagination; it is also—and maybe most impor- tantly—a plea for a new understanding of the cosmos, one that invites us “to see the cosmos as vast, wondrous, and awe inspiring, while also pro- posing that it is not as distant and alien as one might assume” (p. 228). Kessler’s book contains only four chapters, each of them illuminated with brilliant images of various nebulas, galaxies, and star fields that, as the author emphasizes, are not simply illustrations, but instead vital evidence for her claim that through visual representation one can trace the cultural implications of newly acquired knowledge and understanding. It is worth mentioning that these brilliant images are not “naturalistic” in the common understanding of the word. That is not to say, as Kessler re- peatedly insists, that the Hubble produces false pictures (or falsely colored pictures, as some critics have supposed); rather, the digital makeup of the telescope brings together two modes of representation: number and image. Thus the Hubble’s views of the cosmos are results of a doubly mediated process, translated first from celestial objects into data, and then translated a second time into images—a process Kessler investigates in great detail, along with the actors involved and the aesthetic traditions they drew on. Therefore, her first chapter addresses older aesthetic traditions and illus- trates visual similarities between Hubble’s images and views of the Ameri- can West by artists like Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and William Henry Jackson. Rather than creating something entirely new, the astronomers who processed these images, challenged as they were by an increasing reliance upon digital technology for both the production and distribution of the images, turned to a tradition of visualization and representation that Kessler convincingly traces back to Romantic images of the American West. She is able to show that representations of both the cosmos and the American West share striking aesthetic similarities, and that both were responses to the broader cultural challenges associated with transforming an amorphous space—the American West of the nineteenth century and the cosmos of the twentieth century—into a place that can be explored,

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known, and understood. Both “present the landscape in a manner that en- courages exploration and excites a sense of curiosity” (p. 193). How this is done is addressed in the next two chapters in which Kessler examines the history of the telescope itself, from its earliest planning stages through the formation of the Hubble Heritage Project, which is responsible for the production and distribution of its images. Focusing on the crafting process of the images, the author outlines in great detail the tensions in- ESSAY volved in producing images that are both aesthetically appealing and scien- REVIEW tifically valid. The fourth and last chapter discusses the cultural implications of the aesthetic similarities introduced in chapter 1, highlighting a “meta- phorical and phenomenological frontier” (p. 227) that is made visible by the Hubble images and intelligible through the notion of the sublime. While her theoretical approach seems very well-suited to explain the images’ aesthetic and scientific appeal, it raises several questions for the historian. Kessler’s notion of the sublime is rooted in its eighteenth-century definition—an “enlightened” idea that strictly separates reason and belief. Historically, this understanding was significant in making way for the process of secularization—the diminishing of religious authority in all aspects of social and political life—but its results are increasingly being questioned. A range of scholars has argued that levels of religion within contemporary social and political life have not declined, advocating instead a closer and critical look at the conjunctions of religious and secular issues in modern societies. Drawing on the notion of the sublime without attending to these new interpretations leaves out a class of enthusiastic public responses to the Hubble images; for example, those who claimed that they had seen the face of Jesus within the extraterrestrial landscapes are labeled by Kessler as “unscientific” (p. 107). Although she admits that such responses support the notion that the images are more than pretty, she pays no specific attention to the spiritual implications that might have accompanied the promise of new insights into the workings of the universe. As a result, Kessler inadvertently rees- tablishes those “narrow definitions” of art and science that she originally intended to overcome. Thus, while her book is, without a doubt, a deep and thoughtful study that considers the aesthetic appeal and cultural significance of contemporary astronomy, it overlooks what Noble has shown in his comprehensive work on the religion of technology: that reason is only one option for mediating between the awe-inspiring implications of modern technology and the strict objectivity of enlightened science. Religion is another perhaps equally significant one, especially when it comes to the exploration of the heavens. Comparing Oliver’s and Kessler’s books leaves one in something of a paradox. While Oliver displays a strong interest in the possible religious inspirations and implications of the U.S. space program, he ultimately

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finds NASA avoiding the spiritual overtones of space exploration. Kessler, on the other hand, pays little attention to such spiritual overtones, although the dispersed evidence presented in her book suggests that spiritu- ality is certainly at stake in contemporary space exploration and enthusiasm. Ever since the beginning of the space age, human efforts to reach for the stars have been accompanied by various hopes for a better future and OCTOBER mankind’s renewal in space—essentially religious issues. Although tech- 2014 nologies were crucial in overcoming gravity, their success prompted scien-

VOL. 55 tists and space enthusiasts to make sense of humans’ destiny in space, a process that was and still is influenced by religious issues. In what ways and to what significance are questions worthy of further research, as both books make clear.

Bibliography Augusteijn, Joost, Patrick G. C. Dassen, and Maartje J. Janse, eds. Political Religion beyond Totalitarianism: The Sacralization of Politics in the Age of Democracy. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Noble, David F. The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. New York: Knopf, 1997.

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