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

摘要

Historian Kendrick Oliver's book on the American space program and art historian Elizabeth Kessler's book on the images of the Hubble Space Telescope, although quite different in their specific objects of study and methodological 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 groundbreaking 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.