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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, February 14, 2011 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Stephen Pyne

"Voyager: Grand Gesture for a Third Great Age of Discovery"

ABSTRACT -- The history of Western exploration over the past 600 years shows three large waves. Each had a distinctive geographic realm, bonded with the prevailing cultural syndrome, was powered by geopolitical rivalries, and featured a grand gesture where place, act, and ambition converged. The classic voyages of discovery targeted primarily the world sea, valenced with the Renaissance, and pointed to Magellan's circumnavigation as a supreme expression. A second wave begins in the middle of the 18th century, bonds to the Enlightenment (particularly modern science), is catalyzed initially by the competition between Britain and France, and took as its gesture the traverse of a continent. A third age, effectively announced by the International Geophysical Year, includes Antarctica, the deep oceans, and space. It has uncertain bonds with Modernism, was powered by the cold war, and may take as its expression the Voyager mission, launched in 1977 and still in operation. Voyager demonstrates both the continuities and discontinuities in this long saga of geographic discovery.

SPEAKER -- Stephen J. Pyne is a historian in the Human Dimensions faculty, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University. He is the author of over 20 books, most of them dealing with the history of fire, but others with the history of scientific exploration, including Grove Karl Gilbert, The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica, How the Canyon Became Grand, and most recently Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery.



Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov