Cosmism

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Not to be confused with Cosmicism, a literary philosophy by H. P. Lovecraft.
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Cosmism is a philosophical and cultural movement that appeared in Russia at the turn of the 19th century, and again, at the beginning of the 20th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a burst of scientific investigation into interplanetary travel, largely driven by fiction writers such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells as well as philosophical movements like the Russian cosmism.

Theory

The Culture of Health is the basic science about Spiritual Humanity. It studies the perspectives of harmonious development of Spiritual man and Spiritual ethnos as a conscious creator of the State of Light into the territory of the Solar System

 Victor Skumin[1][2]

Cosmism entailed a broad theory of natural philosophy, combining elements of religion and ethics with a history and philosophy of the origin, evolution, and future existence of the cosmos and humankind. It combined elements from both Eastern and Western philosophic traditions as well as from the Russian Orthodox Church.[3]

Cosmism was one of the influences on Proletkult, and after the October Revolution, the term came to be applied to "...the poetry of such writers as Mikhail Gerasimov and Vladimir Kirillov...: emotional paeans to physical labor, machines, and the collective of industrial workers ... organized around the image of the universal 'Proletarian', who strides forth from the earth to conquer planets and stars."[4] This form of cosmism, along with the writings of Nikolai Fyodorov, was a strong influence on Andrei Platonov.[1]

Many ideas of the Russian cosmists were later developed by those in the transhumanist movement.[1] Victor Skumin argues that the Culture of Health will play an important role in the creation of a human spiritual society into the Solar System.[5][6]

The term was also used to describe a moral philosophy that were laid out in a book entitled The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines by Hugo de Garis. In the book, it favours building or growing strong artificial intelligence and ultimately leaving Earth to the Terrans, who oppose this path for humanity. The first half of the book describes technologies which he believes will make it possible for computers to be billions or trillions of times more intelligent than humans. He predicts that as artificial intelligence improves and becomes progressively more human-like, differing views will begin to emerge regarding how far such research should be allowed to proceed. Cosmists will foresee the massive, truly astronomical potential of substrate-independent cognition, and will therefore advocate unlimited growth in the designated fields, in the hopes that "super intelligent" machines might one day colonise the universe. It is this "cosmic" view of history, in which the fate of one single species, on one single planet, is seen as insignificant next to the fate of the known universe, that gives the Cosmists their name. Hugo identifies with that group and noted that it "would be a cosmic tragedy if humanity freezes evolution at the puny human level".[7]

Representatives

A view of the Milky Way
An illustration to Tsiolkovsky's educational science fiction story On the Moon (1893)

Among the major representatives of cosmism was Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov (1828–1903), an advocate of radical life extension by means of scientific methods, human immortality, and resurrection of dead people.[8]

In 1881, Russian revolutionary and rocket pioneer Nikolai Kibalchich proposed an idea of pulsed rocket propulsion by combustion of explosives, which was an early precursor for Project Orion.[citation needed]

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) was among the pioneers of theoretical space exploration and cosmonautics. In 1903, Tsiolkovsky published the first serious scientific work on space travel. His work was essentially unknown outside the Russian Empire, but inside the country it inspired further research, experimentation and the formation of the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Spaceflight.[9] Tsiolkovsky wrote a book called "The Will of the Universe; Unknown Intelligent Forces" in which he propounded a philosophy of panpsychism. He believed humans would eventually colonize the Milky Way. His thought preceded the Space Age by several decades, and some of what he foresaw in his imagination has come into being since his death. Tsiolkovsky did not believe in traditional religious cosmology, but instead he believed in a cosmic being that governed humans.[10]

Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) was a Russian and later Soviet physician, philosopher, science fiction writer, and Bolshevik revolutionary. His wide scientific and medical interests ranged from the universal systems theory to the possibility of human rejuvenation through blood transfusion. He saw heterochronic blood transfusions as a alliance of solidarity between the generations, where the old benefited from the rejuvenating effects of the young blood, while the young received immunities from the elders blood. Ironically, he died as a result of a hemolytic transfusion reaction. His successors put Russia in the forefront of the development of centralized national blood transfusion services.[11]

Other cosmists included Vladimir Vernadsky (1863–1945), who developed the notion of noosphere and the question of noosphere's evolution from biosphere, and Alexander Chizhevsky (1897–1964), pioneer of "heliobiology" (study of the sun's effect on biology).[12][13][14] A minor planet, 3113 Chizhevskij, discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1978, is named after him.[15] The outstanding Russian palaeontologist and sci-fi writer Ivan Yefremov developed the ideas of cosmism and has concluded that the communism is a necessary structure of the future society, which wants to survive in space. The successor of the traditions of Ivan Yefremov was a geologist and sci-fi writer Alexander Shalimov. The astrophysicist Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kozyrev was the discoverer of Lunar tectonic activity (1959) and author of Causal Mechanics/Theory of Time.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk reportedly drew inspiration from the philosophy, according to an El Pais article.[16] Furthermore, according to a Truthdig article, the cosmism philosophy has entered the effective accelerationist (e/acc) movement while Giulio Prisco, a cosmist, had published an article which concluded that “extropy, futurism and cosmism are strongly related in spirit, and I guess e/acc is a new instance of that common spirit.”[17]

Gallery of cosmists

See also

Citations

  1. ^ a b c Art works by Russian cosmism painter XX – XXI ct. Catalogue of exhibition 2013. Roerich museum. 2013. Archived from the original on 3 February 2020.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  2. ^ Kovaleva E. A. (2009). "Педагогический совет. Культура здоровья учащихся как фактор здоровьесберегающей среды школы. Слайд 7" [Pedagogical Council. Slide 7 of the presentation "culture of health" to the lessons of physical education on the theme the "Health"]. 900igr.net. Archived from the original on 3 November 2021. Retrieved 27 December 2021.
  3. ^ Berdyaev, Nikolai. "The religion of resuscitative resurrection The "Philosophy of the Common Task" of N. F. Fedorov". berdyaev.com. Archived from the original on 14 October 2018.
  4. ^ Thomas Seifrid, A Companion To Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit (Academic Studies Press, 2009: ISBN 1-934843-57-1), pp. 69-70.
  5. ^ Skumin, V. A. (1995). Культура здоровья — фундаментальная наука о человеке. [A Culture of Health as a fundamental human science.] (in Russian). ISBN 5-88167-003-5. Archived from the original on 23 June 2021.
  6. ^ "Концепция Учения" [The Concept Of Doctrine]. kult-zdor.ru. Archived from the original on 27 June 2021.
  7. ^ Hugo de Garis (2002). "First shot in Artilect war fired". Archived from the original on 17 October 2007.
  8. ^ Young, George M. (2012). The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers. Oxford University Press. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-19-989294-5.
  9. ^ Van Riper, A. Bowdoin (29 October 2007). Rockets and Missiles: The Life Story of a Technology. JHU Press. pp. 26–28. ISBN 978-0-8018-8792-5. Retrieved 13 October 2018.
  10. ^ Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich (1928). The Will of the Universe; Unknown Intelligent Forces (in Russian). Kaluga. p. 23. Archived from the original on 19 October 2018.
  11. ^ Huestis, Douglas. (2007). Alexander Bogdanov: The Forgotten Pioneer of Blood Transfusion. Transfusion medicine reviews. 21. 337-40. 10.1016/j.tmrv.2007.05.008.
  12. ^ L. V. Golovanov, Alexander Chizhevsky entry in the Great Russian Encyclopedia, Moscow, 2001 edition. See Google.Translate version of the article from the Russian version of the Encyclopedia.
  13. ^ Soiuz Pisatelei, Soviet literature, Issues 1-6, p 188, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1982.
  14. ^ James T. Andrews, “Red cosmos: K.E. Tsiolkovskii, grandfather of Soviet rocketry”, Issue 18 Centennial of Flight Series, p 114, Texas A&M University Press, 2009, ISBN 1-60344-168-9, ISBN 978-1-60344-168-1
  15. ^ "3111 Misuzu 1977 - Google Search". www.google.com.
  16. ^ Fanjul, Sergio C. (3 August 2023). "Russian cosmism: inspiring Putin and Musk with ideas of immortality and space colonization". EL PAÍS English. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  17. ^ Torres, Émile P. (14 December 2023). "'Effective Accelerationism' and the Pursuit of Cosmic Utopia". Truthdig. Retrieved 19 February 2024.

Further reading

External links

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