It seemed to me that another picture of the Earth, this one taken from a hundred thousand times farther away, might help in the continuing process of revealing to ourselves our true circumstance and condition. It had been well understood...
Source: Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
And yet there is no sign of humans in this picture, not our reworking of the Earth's surface, not our machines, not ourselves: We are too small and our statecraft is too feeble to be seen by a spacecraft between...
Source: Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
But the actual tendency of the geocentric system was, for the medieval mind, precisely the opposite. For the centre of the world was not a position of honor; it was rather the place farthest removed from the Empyrean, the bottom...
Source: The Great Chain of Being by Arthur Oncken Lovejoy
Moon voyages became popular in the 1630s, their underlying inspiration Galileo’s telescope and the curiosity it piqued about the planet; but the way of reaching the new world on the moon was more important than the substance of an ideal...
Source: Utopian Thought in the Western World by Frank E. Manuel
It is not so much that certain educated men had not already theorized that Earth was round, but that with the return of the first ship Victoria the expedition’s wealthy financial backers had visual evidence that ships could circumnavigate the...
Source: JFK by L. Fletcher Prouty
Being a sphere, it therefore had to be a finite object, with a finite—that is, limited—surface area. With this awakening the ideas of world trade and related colonial proprietary rights were born.
Source: JFK by L. Fletcher Prouty
The overview effect is a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from outer space. It is the experience of seeing first-hand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately...
Thus, we can begin to think of the immense universe in which our green mantled earth is but a tiny speck whirling around our sun, one of the many stars that range throughout space-time.
Source: Nature and Human Nature by Lawrence K. Frank
I stand on the horizon - I want to step across it with you, but when the sun's this low, everything's cold on the line of the horizon
All we are is dust in the wind
Last time I talked to you, you were lonely and out of place - You were looking down on me, lost out in space
The horizon has been defeated by the pirates of the new age
I saw the world spin beneath you
If I could fly, then I would know, what life looks like from up above and down below
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
From a distance the world looks blue and green
From a birds eye view, I can see it has a well-rounded personality
With the birds I'll share this lonely view
