#james hester

Thanks again to Paul Gilster who has posted this new essay of mine, “The Scientific Imperative of Human Spaceflight,” on his Centauri Dreams blog.

Since I sent this to Centauri Dreams I wrote a couple of posts about experimental archaeology in the future, Experimental Archaeology of the Future and Portraying the Future: “Historical Pre-Enactment” (the latter a comment upon James Hester‘s post Portraying the Future: 'Historical Pre-Enactment'), and I have thus realized that the experimental archaeology that places the archaeologist in an authentic context (whether an authentic context of the past or future) is another perfect example of the sciences that use technology to place a human observer (as a whole person) in a position where it is possible to make novel observations -- something that this essay discusses in some detail.

Also, a few weeks ago in “Adventure Science Enters the Space Age,” along with Jacob Shively I argued for the importance of “adventure science” in contradistinction to “big science.” Adventure science, too, is another example of science undertaken by human beings on a human scale.

The overview effect, experimental archaeology, and adventure science all represent science undertaken by the whole person, in which the embodied mind encounters the world through the mediation of the human body, and this mediation can be a significant constituent of the experience.

After posting Experimental Archaeology of the Future I heard from several individuals -- James Hester and Vinay Gupta, inter alia -- who have already been pursuing this line of thought. The above-linked article by James Hester gives a sketch of the idea. I was interested to note that Mr. Hester has been involved in historical re-enactment (and I should mention that “historical pre-enactment” is a great term to cover the symmetrical extrapolation of this into the future), which I previously wrote about in Falling in Love with Medieval Armed Combat.

Both experimental archaeology of the past and experimental archaeology of the future are perfect examples of how human beings are sometimes impacted to a greater degree by learning experiences that involve the whole person. We’re all familiar, of course, with intemperate condemnations of mere “book learning,” but, being myself an enthusiast of books and book learning, I in no way wish to disparage this approach to knowledge. However, this is not the only approach to knowledge, and in some cases it is not the most effective approach to knowledge.

I have an upcoming blog post in which I discuss this extensively in a theoretical context, and I will provide a link here when the post is up; when I was writing this soon-to-appear post, experimental archaeology had not occurred to me as an example of my thesis, so I would like to connect to two ex post facto.