Outer Space Religion and the Overview Effect: A Critical Inquiry into a Classic of the Pro-Space Movement

Abstract

The Overview Effect by Frank White (1987) aims at creating a “philosophy of space” for the American space program and the pro-space movement. As such, it has become something of a classic. It describes an evolutionary process set in motion by the first astronauts venturing into space and seeing Earth from an extraterrestrial perspective. According to White, this process is guided by universal forces and ultimately leads to the universe becoming intelligent and self-aware. However, The Overview Effect has not only found readers among space enthusiasts; it has also been cited in various literature, some of it academic and dealing with historical and societal aspects of spaceflight. This article examines White's overview thesis and demonstrates that it is fundamentally religious. Thus, evidence of the presence of religion in the American pro-space movement is presented, while at the same time the use of White's thesis in academic literature is put into question.

Notes

Frank White, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987); Frank White, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, 2nd ed. (Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., 1998). For White's background in management consultancy, see Albert A. Harrison and Douglas A. Vakoch, “Introduction: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence as an Interdisciplinary Effort,” in Albert A. Harrison and Douglas A. Vakoch, eds., Civilizations Beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Life and Society (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011), 1–28, 4.

Mark Whittington, “Frank White, Author of The Overview Effect, Gets it Wrong about Obama's Policy,” blog post, 3 July 2012), http://www.examiner.com/article/frank-white-author-of-the-overview-effect-gets-it-wrong-about-obama-s-policy (accessed November 2012).

See the overview of White's appearances on The Space Show, http://www.thespaceshow.com/guest.asp?q=118 (accessed January 2013). Also, see the program for the Overview Effect conference, http://archive.spacefrontier.org/Events/NewSpace2007/#wednesdayanchor (accessed January 2013); for a report on the conference, see Eliza Strickland, “Scratch a Space Nut, Find a Starry-Eyed Hippie,” Wired, 20 July 2007, http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2007/07/overview (accessed January 2013). On the Harvard event, see Anonymous, “Everybody Loves an Astronaut,” HarvardExtensionHub, 2012, http://www.extension.harvard.edu/hub/news/everybody-loves-astronaut (accessed January 2013).

Frank White, The SETI Factor: How the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is Revolutionizing Our View of the Universe and Ourselves (New York: Walker and Company, 1990). On The SETI Factor being a companion to The Overview Effect, see David Livingston, “Broadcast #117 with Guest Frank White” (The Space Show, 8 May 2003), http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=117 (accessed January 2013). Also, see Frank White, The New Camelot, Book One: Camelot and the Overview Effect (Kindle book, 2012); and Frank White, Decision: Earth – Book One: Alone or All One? (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse; Kindle version, 2003).

Frank White, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987), 21–23.

Ibid., 48–51, 73–75.

Pro-space: Giancarlo Genta and Michael Rycroft, “Will Space Actually Be the Final Frontier of Humankind?” Acta Astronautica 58 (2006): 287–295, 294; psychological effect: Peter Suedfeld and G. Daniel Steel, “The Environmental Psychology of Capsule Habitats,” Annu. Rev. Psychol. 51 (2000): 227–253, 230; and Lawrence A. Palinkas, “The Psychology of Isolated and Confined Environments: Understanding Human Behavior in Antarctica,” American Psychologist, 58:5 (May 2003): 353–363, 360; mystical experience: Rhea White, “The Amplification and Integration of Near-Death and Other Exceptional Human Experiences by the Larger Cultural Context: An Autobiographical Case,” Journal of Near-Death Studies, 16:3 (1998): 181–204, 193–94. A number of the works cited in this section were found using Google Scholar (September 2012), which offered 98 citations of The Overview Effect.

David Lavery, Late for the Sky: The Mentality of the Space Age (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), http://davidlavery.net/LFS/ (accessed October 2012); NASA: Laura Betz, “‘Beautiful Earth’ Combines Live Music, American Indian Perspectives with NASA Science and Technology” (20 April 2012), http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/beautiful-earth_prt.htm (accessed October 2012). NASA has not endorsed the overview effect as such though, for example, former NASA employee Alan Ladwig has embraced the term as team member of The Overview Institute, see David Livingston, “Broadcast #1891 with Guest Frank White,” The Space Show (11 November 2012), http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1891 (accessed January 2013). On management literature, see David Rock and Linda J. Page, Coaching With the Brain in Mind: Foundations for Practice (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 392–93; J. Michael Adams and Angelo Carfagna, Coming of Age in a Globalized World: The Next Generation (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, Inc., 2006), 221–222; and Barbara Shipka, “Leadership: A Sacred Journey,” http://barbarashipka.com/leadership-a-sacred-journey (accessed November 2012), and originally published in the Fall 1996 World Business Academy Journal as “Perspectives in Business and Global Change.”

Mette Brylde and Nina Lykke, Cosmodolphins: Feminist Cultural Studies of Technology, Animals and the Sacred (London: Zed Books, 2000), 53–54, 74; Peter Dickens and James S. Ormrod, “Outer Space and Internal Nature: Towards a Sociology of the Universe,” Sociology 14:4 (2007): 609–626; Peter Dickens and James S. Ormrod, Cosmic Society: Towards a Sociology of the Universe (London: Routledge, 2007), 134–141; Hans-Dieter Mutschler, “Technik als Religionsersatz,” Scheidewege: Jahresschrift für skeptisches Denken 28 (1998/99); James S. Ormrod, “Pro-Space Activism and Narcissistic Phantasy,” Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society 12:3 (2007): 260–278. Also, see James S. Ormrod, “Phantasy and Social Movements: An Ontology of Pro-Space Activism,” Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest 8:2 (2009): 115–129.

J. A. Dator, Social Foundations of Human Space Exploration, Springerbriefs in Space Development (New York: Springer, 2012), 37; Albert A. Harrison, Starstruck: Cosmic Visions in Science, Religion and Folklore (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 92; Albert A. Harrison, “Humanizing Outer Space: Architecture, Habitability, and Behavioral Health,” Acta Astronautica 66 (2012): 890–896, 891; Albert A. Harrison and Steven J. Dick, “Contact: Long-Term Implications for Humanity,” in Allen Tough, ed., When SETI Succeeds: The Impact of High-Information Contact (Bellevue, WA: Foundation for the Future, 2000), http://ieti.org/tough/books/succeeds.htm (accessed September 2012), 7–31, 16; Christopher M. Hearsey and Jim Pass, “The Astrosociological Paradigm: The Interplay between Ecologies and Environment,” American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2012, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1940991 (accessed September 2012); Henry Holly, Virginia Woolf and the Discourse of Science: The Aesthetics of Astronomy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 108, 137–38; Roger F. Malina, “Moist Realities: The Arts and the New Biologies,” Leonardo 29:5 (1996): 351–53, 351; Jun Okushi and Marilyn Dudley-Flores, “Space and Perceptions of Space in Spacecraft: An Astrosociological Perspective,” AIAA Space 2007 Conference & Exposition, 18–20 September 2007, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2007, http://www.astrosociology.com/Library/PDF/Contributions/Space%202007%20Articles/Space%20and%20Perceptions.pdf (accessed November 2012); Robert Poole, Earthrise: How Man first Saw the Earth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 97, 179, 191 and in various notes; and G. G. Reibaldi, “The Importance of Space Policy Teaching in Communicating Space Activities to Society,” Acta Astronautica 53 (2003): 997–1000, 999.

National Commission on Space, Pioneering the Space Frontier: The Report of the National Commission on Space (New York: Bantam Books, 1986).

See White, The Overview Effect (note 5), 102; on the overview effect structuring the report see Gerard O'Neill, “Foreword,” in ibid., xiii–xiv; in the report special thanks was given to Frank White, among others, National Commission on Space (note 11), 202.

See also Howard E. McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 140, 154–156.

National Commission on Space (note 11), 25.

Ibid., 3.

White, The Overview Effect (note 5), 104.

Ibid., xviii.

David Livingston, “Broadcast #1891 with Guest Frank White,” The Space Show (11 November 2012), http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1891 (accessed January 2013).

Frank White, The Overview Effect (note 5), 75–76.

Ibid., 9.

Ibid., 115–117.

Ibid., 77–78.

Ibid., 61–62.

Ibid., 86–87.

Ibid., 116.

Ibid., 43 and 65. It is White himself who uses the term “evolutionary ladder,” ibid., 173.

Ibid., 100, 117–118, 168–173.

Ibid., 155–156, 186.

Ibid., 43.

Ibid., 66.

Ibid., 118.

Ibid., 192; Frank White, “The Overview Effect, the Cosma Hypothesis, and Living in Space,” in Sherry Bell and Langdon Morris, eds., Living in Space: Cultural and Social Dynamics, Opportunities, and Challenges in Permanent Space Habitats, An Aerospace Technology Working Group Book (Milton Keynes, UK: Lightning Source UK Ltd., 2009), 3–10.

Ibid., 70.

Frank White, The Overview Effect (note 5), 75–76, 149–157.

Ibid., 72.

Ibid., 184.

In this connection, it is interesting to note that the overview effect conference in 2007 started with a guided meditation during which the audience visualized leaving Earth; see Strickland (note 3).

Frank White, The Overview Effect (note 5), 75–76, 149–157, 185.

David Livingston, “Broadcast #284 with Guest Frank White,” The Space Show (5 December 2004), http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=284 (accessed January 2013); and David Livingston, “Broadcast #732 with Guests David Beaver and Frank White,” The Space Show (17 June 2007), http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=732 (accessed January 2013).

Karen Lisa Goldschmidt Salamon, “‘Going Global from the Inside Out’: Spiritual Globalism in the Workplace,” in Mikael Rothstein, ed., New Age Religion and Globalization (Århus: Aarhus University Press, 2001), 152.

Ibid., 161. Indeed, during this period the concept “corporate religion” gained currency in business management circles.

Quoted in ibid., 159.

Ibid., 164. The “new weightlessness of power” is a quote by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.

Ibid.

Poole, Earthrise (note 10), 160–162.

The term “astrofuturism” was introduced in De Witt Douglas Kilgore, Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).

Denis Cosgrove, “Contested Global Visions: One-World, Whole-Earth, and the Apollo Space Photographs,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 84:2 (June 1994): 270–294; William Bryant, “The Re-Vision of Planet Earth: Space Flight and Environmentalism in Postmodern America,” Over Here: An European Journal of American Culture 36:2 (Fall 1995): 43–63; and Bron Taylor, Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

Poole, Earthrise (note 10), 191.

See Thore Bjørnvig, “Outer Space Religion and the Ambiguous Nature of Avatar's Pandora,” in Bron Taylor, ed., Avatar and Nature Spirituality, Environmental Humanities Series (Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, forthcoming 2013).

Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Poole, Earthrise (note 10).

Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture (note 50) and White, Decision: Earth (note 4).

Bjørnvig, “Outer Space Religion” (note 49); see also Thore Bjørnvig, “Outer Space Religion,” blog post, 2 April 2012, http://sciencenordic.com/ (accessed January 2013). The idea that religion, technology, and outer space are connected is not new. It has been treated extensively in the case of “UFO religion,” but in areas such as spaceflight, space exploration, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the field is still under development. A few important titles are David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (New York: Penguin Books, 1999); Mary Midgley, Science and Salvation: A Modern Myth and its Meaning (London: Routledge, 1992); and Mette Brylde and Nina Lykke, Cosmodolphins: Feminist Cultural Studies of Technology, Animals and the Sacred (London: Zed Books, 2000). I have written about outer space religion and the pro-space movement in connection with the works of Arthur C. Clarke in “Transcendence of Gravity: Arthur C. Clarke and the Apocalypse of Weightlessness” in Alexander C. T. Geppert, ed., Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 127–146. Outer space religion is closely related to astrofuturism and forms part of the field of astroculture; see Kilgore, Astrofuturism (note 46), and Alexander C. T. Geppert, “European Astrofuturism, Cosmic Provincialism: Historicizing the Space Age” in Alexander C. T. Geppert, ed., Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 3–24.

Peter Russell, The Global Brain: Speculations of the Evolutionary Leap to Planetary Consciousness (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1983).

Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1972); and Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (Glasgow: Collins/Fount Paperbacks, 1980, first published by Editions du Seuil under the title Le Phenomène Humain, 1955).

According to Nick Bostrom, transhuman thought has a long history, some of which has unfolded in science fiction and thinking about space exploration. See Nick Bostrom, “A History of Transhumanist Thought,” Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14 (April 2005), http://jetpress.org/volume14/bostrom.html (accessed November 2012). One example of this is Olaf Stapledon; Teilhard de Chardin, however, belongs to an “eschatological version,” which may “appeal to those who fancy a marriage between mysticism and science,” yet have “not caught on either among transhumanists or the larger scientific community,” Ibid. For an alternative view of Chardin's significance for the transhumanist movement, see Eric Steinhart, “Teilhard de Chardin and Transhumanism,” Journal of Evolution and Technology 20:1 (December 2008): 1–22, http://jetpress.org/v20/steinhart.htm (accessed November 2012). White himself has recently begun to see the many things his vision of human evolution in space has in common with transhumanism; cf. David Livingston, “Broadcast #284 with Guest Frank White,” The Space Show (5 December 2004), http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=284 (accessed January 2013); Also, see Frank White, Decision: Earth – Book One: Alone or All One? (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Kindle version, 2003); and Frank White, “The Overview Effect, the Cosma Hypothesis, and Living in Space,” in Sherry Bell and Langdon Morris, Living in Space: Cultural and Social Dynamics, Opportunities, and Challenges in Permanent Space Habitats, Aerospace Technology Working Group Book (Milton Keynes, UK: Lightning Source UK Ltd., 2009), 3–10.

See http://www.peterrussell.com/pete.php (accessed November 2012).

See Russell T. McCutcheon, “Myth,” in Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon, Guide to the Study of Religion (London: Cassell, 2000), 190–208; and William E. Paden, Religious Worlds: The Comparative Study of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).

White, The Overview Effect (note 5), 14.

Ibid., 25–26.

Ibid., 52–54.

Ibid., 37.

Ibid., 21.

Ibid., 24.

Ibid., 26.

Ibid., 52, 55.

Ibid., 52.

Ibid., 52–53.

Peter Moore, “Mysticism [Further Considerations],” in Lindsay Jones, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., Vol. 9 (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2005), 6355–6359, 6355.

White's overview effect system may fall outside other definitions of mysticism. For example, Robert K. C. Forman excludes “visionary experience” from mysticism in order to focus on introverted “pure consciousness events” in which normal, discursive, constructing consciousness seems to be halted; cf. Robert K. C. Forman, “Introduction: Mysticism, Constructivism, and Forgetting,” in Robert K. C. Forman, ed., The Problem of Pure Consciousness Mysticism and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 3–49. However, whether mystical elements are present in the overview effect experience is not as important as the question of contextualization, which has informed the debate about mysticism in history of religion circles for many years now, and how this relates to the overview effect.

Steven Katz, “Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism,” in Steven Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 22–74, 56–57.

Ibid., 24–26.

Ibid., 27–32. Katz' viewpoint has been contested and it is somewhat limited. However, the point here is its relevance to the present study of The Overview Effect.

White, The Overview Effect (note 5), 13, 40.

Two earlier accounts of the astronauts' life-changing and religious experiences in space are James Gorman, “Righteous Stuff,” Omni (May 1984): 46–48, 98–102; and Stanley G. Rosen, “Space Consciousness: The Astronauts' Testimony,” Michigan Quarterly Review 18:2 (Spring 1979): 279–299.

Other Apollo astronauts had religious experiences in space as well. For example, there is James Irwin, who felt that God had wanted him to go to the Moon so he could come back to Earth with the realization that he had to change his life. See Carolyn Mersch, The Apostles of Apollo (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, Inc., 2011), 261–262.

White, The Overview Effect (note 5), 272.

Ibid., 273–74.

Cf. also Frank White, “Visionaries of the Open Frontier,” http://space-frontier.org/HighFrontier/history.html (accessed June 2006), in which he lists Konstantin Tsiolkovski, Nikolai Fyodorov, Wernher von Braun, John F. Kennedy, and Gerard K. O'Neill as pivotal space frontier figures whose ideas will ultimately lead to the future projected in The Overview Effect.

Cf. the Overview Institute homepages and David Beaver, The Overview Effect Will Change the World, http://www.overviewinstitute.org/featured-articles [undated] (accessed January 2013).

For an argument along these lines, see Poole (note 10).

Poole (note 10), 116.

Denis Cosgrove, Apollo's Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); see especially ix, 256–257; see also, for instance, Poole (note 10): 159.

Henry Holly, Virginia Woolf and the Discourse of Science: The Aesthetics of Astronomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 74–75.

Ibid., 110.

Ibid., 138. See also Harlow Shapley, “Stars Are International,” The Science News-Letter 43:11 (13 March 1943): 165–167. Cf. also McCurdy (note 13), 43.

Cosgrove (note 83), 255.

See Mutschler (note 9), which deals specifically with The Overview Effect; cf. Joseph J. Corn, The Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation, 1900-1950, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); and Noble (note 41). As for space science's rapprochement with philosophy, see Walter Peeters, “Space Science as a Cradle for Philosophers,” Astropolitics 10:1 (2012): 27–38. Though Peeters only writes about “philosophy,” the article clearly deals with religion as well.

See Frank White, “Space Tourism: Enlightenment from the Final Frontier” (1 February 2012), blog post, http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2012/02/01/space-tourism-enlightenment-final-frontier (accessed September 2012); and Claire L. Evans, “Universe Q&A: Frank White” (13 September 2011), blog post, http://scienceblogs.com/universe/2011/09/13/universe-qa-frank-white/ (accessed November 2012). Note that White has observed that other people have wanted to make space exploration into a religion, which implies that White does not see his own work as doing precisely this. See Frank White, “The Overview Effect, the Cosma Hypothesis, and Living in Space,” in Sherry Bell and Langdon Morris, eds., Living in Space: Cultural and Social Dynamics, Opportunities, and Challenges in Permanent Space Habitats, Aerospace Technology Working Group Book (Milton Keynes, UK: Lightning Source UK Ltd., 2009), 3–10, 4–5.

Ibid., 9; David Livingston, “Broadcast #117 with Guest Frank White,” The Space Show (8 May 2003), http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=117 (accessed January 2013).

White, The SETI Factor (note 4), 10–11.

Ibid., 29.

Ibid., 44–45.

David Livingston, “Broadcast #953 with Guests David Beaver, Keith Ferrell, Jeff Krukin, Dr. Burton H. Lee, Sarah Pickens, and Frank White,” The Space Show (1 June 2008), http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=953 (accessed January 2013).

White, The Overview Effect (note 5), 24–27.

Mary N. MacDonald, “Spirituality,” in Lindsay Jones, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2005), 8718–8721.

For a similar point, see Brian J. Zinnbauer, Kenneth I. Pargament, Brenda Cole, Mark S. Rye, Eric M. Butter, Timothy G. Belavich, Kathleen M. Hipp, Allie B. Scott, and Jill L. Kadar, “Religion and Spirituality: Unfuzzying the Fuzzy,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36:4 (December, 1997): 549–564.

See McCurdy (note 13); Michael A. G. Michaud, Reaching for the High Frontier: The American Pro-Space Movement, 1972–84 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1986).