Abstract
In 1948 the astronomer Fred Hoyle speculated what the Earth would look like from space, and predicted: “once a photograph of the Earth, taken from out side, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension … once let the sheer isolation of the Earth become plain to every man whatever his nationality or creed, and a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.”1 In 1970 he found himself in a position to reflect upon his prophecy.
Well, now we have such a photograph, and I’ve been wondering how this old prediction stands up. Has any new idea in fact been let loose? It certainly has. You will have noticed how quite suddenly everybody has become seriously concerned to protect the natural environment. Where has this idea come from? You could say from biologists, conservationists and ecologists. But they have been saying the same things now as they have been saying for many years. Previously they never got on base. Something new has happened to create a world-wide awareness of our planet as a unique and precious place. It seems to me more than a coincidence that this awareness should have happened at exactly the moment man took his first step into space.2
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Notes
Fred Hoyle, The Nature of the Universe (Oxford, 1950), on pp. iii, 9–10. Hoyle’s comments were first aired in a radio broadcast in 1948:
Robert Poole, Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 37–9.
From Hoyle’s after-dinner speech at the Apollo 11 lunar science conference, 6 January 1970, quoted in Donald D. Clayton, The Dark Night Sky (New York: Quadrangle, 1975).
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Poole, R. (2014). What Was Whole about the Whole Earth? Cold War and Scientific Revolution. In: Turchetti, S., Roberts, P. (eds) The Surveillance Imperative. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438744_11
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