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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Bruce Charlton
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Up to the mid-1960s, science and technology (including medicine) were generally regarded as exciting, beautiful and spiritually enthralling; and the space odyssey seemed a symbol of the optimistic future of humankind. The early seventies saw a growing disillusionment with space travel as part of a mood of cultural pessimism and anti-modernization - and this combined with a resurgence of therapeutic nihilism in medicine. But recent discussions of renewed space exploration and a Mars mission may be evidence of a changing zeitgeist, with Western culture moving towards a bolder and more optimistic attitude. The adventure of space travel, exploration and colonization could be seen as both a barometer of cultural optimism, and an enterprise which would feed-back into cultural optimism for many decades to come. Medical science could also be a beneficiary; since greater boldness and optimism would be likely to renew the goals of medicine to do positive good - as contrasted with the necessary, but relatively uninspiring, requirement to minimize risk and harm. In a modernizing society humankind needs to look outward as well as inward: we need a frontier, and we need to grow. A resurgent space odyssey may be the best way that this can be enacted. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Author(s): Charlton BG
Publication type: Editorial
Publication status: Published
Journal: Medical Hypotheses
Year: 2006
Volume: 66
Issue: 4
Pages: 687-688
ISSN (print): 0306-9877
ISSN (electronic): 1532-2777
Publisher: Churchill Livingstone
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2006.01.001
DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2006.01.001
PubMed id: 16423469
