Eternal return

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return 

Friedrich Nietzsche by Edvard Munch

Eternal return (also known as eternal recurrence) is a theory that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space.

The theory is found in Indian philosophy and in ancient Egypt as well as Judaic wisdom literature (Ecclesiastes) and was subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics. With the decline of antiquity and the spread of Christianity, the theory largely fell into disuse in the Western world, with the exception of 19th Century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who connected the thought to many of his other concepts, including amor fati. Eternal return relates to the philosophy of predeterminism in that people are predestined to continue repeating the same events over and over again.

Premise

The basic premise proceeds from the assumption that the probability of a world coming into existence exactly like our own is nonzero. If space and time are infinite, then it follows logically that our existence must recur an infinite number of times.

In 1871 Louis Auguste Blanqui, assuming a Newtonian cosmology where time and space are infinite, claimed to have demonstrated eternal recurrence as a mathematical certainty.

Classical antiquity

Scarab on a fresco.

In ancient Egypt, the scarab (dung beetle) was viewed as a sign of eternal renewal and reemergence of life, a reminder of the life to come.

The Mayans and Aztecs also took a cyclical view of time.

The book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible states: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." (New International Version). 

In ancient Greece, the concept of eternal return was connected with Empedocles, Zeno of Citium, and most notably in Stoicism.

The idea is also suggested in Virgil's Aeneid. In Book 6 of the poem (lines 724–51), the hero, Aeneas, descends into the Underworld and learns from Anchises—his deceased father whose soul lives on in Elysium—that a system of metempsychosis secures the continuation of the human race: after death, each human soul undergoes a period of expurgation, cleansing themselves of the impurity accrued during their embodied life on earth. Most souls, however, are condemned to return to an embodied existence on earth (rather than move on to Elysium, like Anchises). And yet, before they return to that life, they are summoned by "god" to the River Lethe, where they drink the water and come to forget what they have experienced—viz., all the suffering and punishment for their "sins", and the struggles and toil that went along with their previous embodied existence. In other words, right as they enter into their new embodied existences, they are made ignorant, both of what they did in their previous existence that incurred all the penalties in the afterlife, and indeed of the penalties themselves. They are, then, forced into a position where they are more or less doomed to repeat their wrongdoings, all the while remaining unaware of the cost that those wrongdoings will bring upon them. One scholar, David Quint, has argued that this moment in Virgil's poem is illustrative of the therapeutic effects of oblivion—of the way that the act of forgetting secures the continuation of life. That is one interpretation, but the point seems to strike a more tragic note about the way humans are condemned to act out the same errors time and again because of enforced ignorance. The Aeneid is, more generally, accepted as having a thoroughly tragic outlook on human existence (a landmark study on this is W. R. Johnson's Darkness Visible(1976); see also P. R. Hardie, "Virgil and Tragedy" in the volume The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, edited by C. Martindale (Cambridge University Press: 1997)).

Indian religions

Life circle in Vajrayana

The concept of cyclical patterns is prominent in Indian religions, such as Jainism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism among others. The important distinction is that events don't repeat endlessly but souls take birth until they attain salvation. The wheel of life represents an endless cycle of birth, life, and death from which one seeks liberation. In Tantric Buddhism, a wheel of time concept known as the Kalachakra expresses the idea of an endless cycle of existence and knowledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The concept of "eternal recurrence", the idea that with infinite time and a finite number of events, will recur again and again infinitely, is central to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. As Heidegger points out in his lectures on Nietzsche, Nietzsche's first mention of eternal recurrence, in aphorism 341 of The Gay Science (cited below), presents this concept as a hypothetical question rather than postulating it as a fact. According to Heidegger, it is the burden imposed by the question of eternal recurrence—whether or not such a thing could possibly be true—that is so significant in modern thought: "The way Nietzsche here patterns the first communication of the thought of the 'greatest burden' [of eternal recurrence] makes it clear that this 'thought of thoughts' is at the same time 'the most burdensome thought.' "

The thought of eternal recurrence appears in a few of his works, in particular §285 and §341 of The Gay Science and then in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The most complete treatment of the subject appears in the work entitled Notes on the Eternal Recurrence, a work which was published in 2007 alongside Søren Kierkegaard's own version of eternal return, which he calls 'repetition'. Nietzsche sums up his thought most succinctly when he addresses the reader with: "Everything has returned. Sirius, and the spider, and thy thoughts at this moment, and this last thought of thine that all things will return". However, he also expresses his thought at greater length when he says to his reader:

"Whoever thou mayest be, beloved stranger, whom I meet here for the first time, avail thyself of this happy hour and of the stillness around us, and above us, and let me tell thee something of the thought which has suddenly risen before me like a star which would fain shed down its rays upon thee and every one, as befits the nature of light. – Fellow man! Your whole life, like a sandglass, will always be reversed and will ever run out again, – a long minute of time will elapse until all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life. This ring in which you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever. And in every one of these cycles of human life there will be one hour where, for the first time one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal recurrence of all things:– and for mankind this is always the hour of Noon".

This thought is indeed also noted in a posthumous fragment. The origin of this thought is dated by Nietzsche himself, via posthumous fragments, to August 1881, at Sils-Maria. In Ecce Homo (1888), he wrote that he thought of the eternal return as the "fundamental conception" of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Scene of Nietzsche's inspiration: "by a massive, pyramidally piled up block not far from Surlei".

Several authors have pointed out other occurrences of this hypothesis in contemporary thought. Rudolf Steiner, who revised the first catalogue of Nietzsche's personal library in January 1896, pointed out that Nietzsche would have read something similar in Eugen Dühring's Courses on philosophy (1875), which Nietzsche readily criticized. Lou Andreas-Salomé pointed out that Nietzsche referred to ancient cyclical conceptions of time, in particular by the Pythagoreans, in the Untimely Meditations. Henri Lichtenberger and Charles Andler have pinpointed three works contemporary to Nietzsche which carried on the same hypothesis: J.G. Vogt, Die Kraft. Eine real-monistische Weltanschauung (1878), Auguste Blanqui, L'éternité par les astres (1872) and Gustave Le Bon, L'homme et les sociétés (1881). Walter Benjamin juxtaposes Blanqui and Nietzsche's discussion of eternal recurrence in his unfinished, monumental work The Arcades Project. However, Gustave Le Bon is not quoted anywhere in Nietzsche's manuscripts; and Auguste Blanqui was named only in 1883. Vogt's work, on the other hand, was read by Nietzsche during this summer of 1881 in Sils-Maria. Blanqui is mentioned by Albert Lange in his Geschichte des Materialismus (History of Materialism), a book closely read by Nietzsche. The eternal recurrence is also mentioned in passing by the Devil in Part Four, Book XI, Chapter 9 of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, which is another possible source that Nietzsche may have been drawing upon.

Walter Kaufmann suggests that Nietzsche may have encountered this idea in the works of Heinrich Heine, who once wrote:

[T]ime is infinite, but the things in time, the concrete bodies, are finite. They may indeed disperse into the smallest particles; but these particles, the atoms, have their determinate numbers, and the numbers of the configurations which, all of themselves, are formed out of them is also determinate. Now, however long a time may pass, according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of repetition, all configurations which have previously existed on this earth must yet meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again...

Nietzsche calls the idea "horrifying and paralyzing", referring to it as a burden of the "heaviest weight" ("das schwerste Gewicht") imaginable. He professes that the wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' [The Gay Science, §341]

To comprehend eternal recurrence in his thought, and to not merely come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires amor fati, "love of fate":

My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness before the necessary—but to love it.

In Carl Jung's seminar on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Jung claims that the dwarf states the idea of the eternal return before Zarathustra finishes his argument of the eternal return when the dwarf says, "'Everything straight lies,' murmured the dwarf disdainfully. 'All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle.'" However, Zarathustra rebuffs the dwarf in the following paragraph, warning him against over-simplifications.

Gilles Deleuze interpreted Nietzsche's Eternal Return as not simply a directive for our ethical behavior, but as a radical understanding of the nature of time. This is not a 'flat circle' or cyclical understanding of time, but a description of the empty form of future time. It is the ever-generated new time that allows us to continually act in new ways, that allows the creation of novelty.

Albert Camus

The philosopher and writer Albert Camus explores the notion of "eternal return" in his essay on "The Myth of Sisyphus", in which the repetitive nature of existence comes to represent life's absurdity, something the hero seeks to withstand through manifesting what Paul Tillich called "The Courage to Be". Though the task of rolling the stone repeatedly up the hill without end is inherently meaningless, the challenge faced by Sisyphus is to refrain from despair. Hence Camus famously concludes that, "one must imagine Sisyphus happy."

Opposing argument

Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann has described an argument originally put forward by Georg Simmel, which rebuts the claim that a finite number of states must repeat within an infinite amount of time:

Even if there were exceedingly few things in a finite space in an infinite time, they would not have to repeat in the same configurations. Suppose there were three wheels of equal size, rotating on the same axis, one point marked on the circumference of each wheel, and these three points lined up in one straight line. If the second wheel rotated twice as fast as the first, and if the speed of the third wheel was 1/π of the speed of the first, the initial line-up would never recur.

Thus a system could have an infinite number of distinct physical configurations that never recur. However the example presupposes the possibility of perfect continuity: for instance, if the universe proves to have a quantum foam nature, then the exact quantity of an irrational number cannot be expressed by any physical object.

Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra 

Title page of the first edition
Author	Friedrich Nietzsche
Original title	Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen
Country	Germany
Language	German
Publisher	Ernst Schmeitzner
Publication date	1883–1885
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Preceded by	The Gay Science
Followed by	Beyond Good and Evil

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, also translated as Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts written and published between 1883 and 1885. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science. Nietzsche himself considered Zarathustra to be his magnum opus.

Origins

Nietzsche wrote in Ecce Homo that the central idea of Zarathustra occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana.

 

Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived while Nietzsche was writing The Gay Science; he made a small note, reading "6,000 feet beyond man and time", as evidence of this. More specifically, this note related to the concept of the eternal recurrence, which is, by Nietzsche's admission, the central idea of Zarathustra; this idea occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine, a high alpine region whose valley floor is at 6,000 feet (1,800 m). Nietzsche planned to write the book in three parts over several years. He wrote that the ideas for Zarathustra first came to him while walking on two roads surrounding Rapallo, according to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in the introduction of Thomas Common's early translation of the book. 

Although Part Three was originally planned to be the end of the book, and ends with a strong climax, Nietzsche subsequently decided to write an additional three parts; ultimately, however, he composed only the fourth part, which is viewed to constitute an intermezzo. 

Nietzsche commented in Ecce Homo that for the completion of each part: "Ten days sufficed; in no case, neither for the first nor for the third and last, did I require more" (trans. Kaufmann). The first three parts were first published separately, and were subsequently published in a single volume in 1887. The fourth part remained private after Nietzsche wrote it in 1885; a scant forty copies were all that were printed, apart from seven others that were distributed to Nietzsche's close friends. In March 1892, the four parts were finally reprinted as a single volume. Since then, the version most commonly produced has included all four parts.

The original text contains a great deal of word-play. An example of this is the use of words beginning über ("over" or "above") and unter ("down" or "below"), often paired to emphasise the contrast, which is not always possible to bring out in translation, except by coinages. An example is Untergang, literally "down-going" but used in German to mean "setting" (as of the sun) but also "sinking", "demise", "downfall" or "doom"; which Nietzsche pairs with its opposite Übergang (meaning "transition", literally "over-going"). Another example is Übermensch (overman or superman), discussed later in this article.

Synopsis

The book chronicles the fictitious travels and speeches of Zarathustra. Zarathustra's namesake was the founder of Zoroastrianism, usually known in English as Zoroaster (Avestan: 𐬰𐬀𐬭𐬀𐬚𐬎𐬱𐬙𐬭𐬀‎, Zaraθuštra). Nietzsche is clearly portraying a "new" or "different" Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on its head. He goes on to characterize "what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist":

For what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that Persian is just the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. [...] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. [...] His doctrine, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the "idealist” who flees from reality [...]—Am I understood?—The self-overcoming of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite—into me—that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth.

— Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am a Destiny", §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann

Zarathustra has a simple characterisation and plot, narrated sporadically throughout the text. It possesses a unique experimental style, one that is, for instance, evident in newly invented "dithyrambs" narrated or sung by Zarathustra. Likewise, the separate Dionysian-Dithyrambs was written in autumn 1888, and printed with the full volume in 1892, as the corollaries of Zarathustra's "abundance". 

Some speculate that Nietzsche intended to write about final acts of creation and destruction brought about by Zarathustra. However, the book lacks a finale to match that description; its actual ending focuses more on Zarathustra recognizing that his legacy is beginning to perpetuate, and consequently choosing to leave the higher men to their own devices in carrying his legacy forth. 

Zarathustra also contains the famous dictum "God is dead", which had appeared earlier in The Gay Science. In his autobiographical work Ecce Homo, Nietzsche states that the book's underlying concept is discussed within "the penultimate section of the fourth book" of 'The Gay Science' (Ecce Homo, Kaufmann). It is the eternal recurrence of the same events.

This concept first occurred to Nietzsche while he was walking in Switzerland through the woods along the lake of Silvaplana (close to Surlej); he was inspired by the sight of a gigantic, towering, pyramidal rock. Before Zarathustra, Nietzsche had mentioned the concept in the fourth book of The Gay Science (e.g., sect. 341); this was the first public proclamation of the notion by him. Apart from its salient presence in Zarathustra, it is also echoed throughout Nietzsche's work. At any rate, it is by Zarathustra's transfiguration that he embraces eternity, that he at last ascertains "the supreme will to power". This inspiration finds its expression with Zarathustra's roundelay, featured twice in the book, once near the story's close:

O man, take care!
What does the deep midnight declare?
"I was asleep—
From a deep dream I woke and swear:—
The world is deep,
Deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe—
Joy—deeper yet than agony:
Woe implores: Go!
But all joy wants eternity—
Wants deep, wants deep eternity."

Another singular feature of Zarathustra, first presented in the prologue, is the designation of human beings as a transition between apes and the "Übermensch" (in English, either the "overman" or "superman"; or, superhuman or overhuman. English translators Thomas Common and R. J. Hollingdale use superman, while Kaufmann uses overman, and Parkes uses overhuman. Martin has opted to leave the nearly universally understood term as Übermensch in his new translation). The Übermensch is one of the many interconnecting, interdependent themes of the story, and is represented through several different metaphors. Examples include: the lightning that is portended by the silence and raindrops of a travelling storm cloud; or the sun's rise and culmination at its midday zenith; or a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Übermensch. 

The symbol of the Übermensch also alludes to Nietzsche's notions of "self-mastery", "self-cultivation", "self-direction", and "self-overcoming". Expounding these concepts, Zarathustra declares:

"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?"

"All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape."

"Whoever is the wisest among you is also a mere conflict and cross between plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants?"


"Behold, I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!"

— Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann

The book embodies a number of innovative poetical and rhetorical methods of expression. It serves as a parallel and supplement to the various philosophical ideas present in Nietzsche's body of work. He has, however, said that "among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself" (Ecce Homo, Preface, sec. 4, Kaufmann). Emphasizing its centrality and its status as his magnum opus, Nietzsche stated that:

With [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] I have given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book, with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the highest book there is, the book that is truly characterized by the air of the heights—the whole fact of man lies beneath it at a tremendous distance—it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled with gold and goodness.

— Ecce Homo, Preface, §4, trans. Walter Kaufmann

Since many of the book's ideas are also present in his other works, Zarathustra is seen to have served as a precursor to his later philosophical thought. With the book, Nietzsche embraced a distinct aesthetic assiduity. He later reformulated many of his ideas in Beyond Good and Evil and various other writings that he composed thereafter. He continued to emphasize his philosophical concerns; generally, his intention was to show an alternative to repressive moral codes and to avert "nihilism" in all of its varied forms.

Other aspects of Thus Spoke Zarathustra relate to Nietzsche's proposed "Transvaluation of All Values". This incomplete project began with The Antichrist.

Themes

While Nietzsche injects myriad ideas into the book, a few recurring themes stand out. The overman (Übermensch), a self-mastered individual who has achieved his full power, is an almost omnipresent idea in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Man as a race is merely a bridge between animals and the overman.

The eternal recurrence, found elsewhere in Nietzsche's writing, is also mentioned. "Eternal recurrence" is the possibility that all events in one's life will happen again and again, infinitely. The embrace of all of life's horrors and pleasures alike shows a deference and acceptance of fate, or Amor Fati. The love and acceptance of one's path in life is a defining characteristic of the overman. Faced with the knowledge that he would repeat every action that he has taken, an overman would be elated as he has no regrets and loves life. Opting to change any decision or event in one's life would indicate the presence of resentment or fear; contradistinctly the overman is characterized by courage and a Dionysian spirit.

The will to power is the fundamental component of the human identity. Everything we do is an expression of self-realization that can sometimes take a form of a will to power. The will to power is a psychological analysis of all human action and is accentuated by self-overcoming and self-enhancement. Contrasted with living for procreation, pleasure, or happiness, the will to power is the summary of all man's struggle against his surrounding environment as well as his reason for living in 

Many criticisms of Christianity can be found in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in particular Christian values of good and evil and its belief in an afterlife. The basis for his critique of Christianity lies in the perceived squandering of our earthly lives in pursuit of a perfect afterlife, of which there is no evidence. This empiricist view (denial of afterlife) is not fully examined in a rational argument in the text, but taken as a simple fact in Nietzsche's aphoristic writing style. Judeo-Christian values are more thoroughly examined in On the Genealogy of Morals as a product of what he calls "slave morality".

Style

Noteworthy for its format, the book comprises a philosophical work of fiction whose style often lightheartedly imitates that of the New Testament and of the Platonic dialogues, at times resembling pre-Socratic works in tone and in its use of natural phenomena as rhetorical and explanatory devices. It also features frequent references to the Western literary and philosophical traditions, implicitly offering an interpretation of these traditions and of their problems. Nietzsche achieves all of this through the character of Zarathustra (referring to the traditional prophet of Zoroastrianism), who makes speeches on philosophic topics as he moves along a loose plotline marking his development and the reception of his ideas. This characteristic (following the genre of the Bildungsroman) can be seen as an inline commentary on Zarathustra's (and Nietzsche's) philosophy. All this, along with the book's ambiguity and paradoxical nature, has helped its eventual enthusiastic reception by the reading public, but has frustrated academic attempts at analysis (as Nietzsche may have intended). Thus Spoke Zarathustra remained unpopular as a topic for scholars (especially those in the Anglo-American analytic tradition) until the second half of the twentieth century brought widespread interest in Nietzsche and his unconventional style that does not distinguish between philosophy and literature. It offers formulations of eternal recurrence, and Nietzsche for the first time speaks of the Übermensch: themes that would dominate his books from this point onwards.

The critic Harold Bloom criticized Thus Spoke Zarathustra in The Western Canon (1994), calling the book "a gorgeous disaster" and "unreadable". Other commentators have suggested that Nietzsche's style is intentionally ironic for much of the book. This irony relates to an internal conflict of Nietzsche's: he hated religious leaders but perceived himself as at least somewhat akin to one.

Translations

• Alexander Tille, 1896
• Thomas Common, 1909
• Walter Kaufmann, 1954
• R. J. Hollingdale, 1961
• Thomas Wayne, 2003
• Clancy Martin, 2005
• Graham Parkes, 2005
• Adrian Del Caro, edited by Robert Pippin, 2006

The book Thus Spoke Zarathustra with pictures by Lena Hades in German and Russian

 

The first English translation of Zarathustra was published in 1896 by Alexander Tille.

Thomas Common published a translation in 1909 which was based on Alexander Tille's earlier attempt. Common wrote in the style of Shakespeare or the King James Version of the Bible. Common's poetic interpretation of the text, which renders the title Thus Spake Zarathustra, received wide acclaim for its lambent portrayal. Common reasoned that because the original German was written in a pseudo-Luther-Biblical style, a pseudo-King-James-Biblical style would be fitting in the English translation.

The Common translation remained widely accepted until more critical translations, titled Thus Spoke Zarathustra, were published by Walter Kaufmann in 1954, and R.J. Hollingdale in 1961, which are considered to convey more accurately the German text than the Common version. Kaufmann's introduction to his own translation included a blistering critique of Common's version; he notes that in one instance, Common has taken the German "most evil" and rendered it "baddest", a particularly unfortunate error not merely for his having coined the term "baddest", but also because Nietzsche dedicated a third of The Genealogy of Morals to the difference between "bad" and "evil". This and other errors led Kaufmann to wonder whether Common "had little German and less English". The translations of Kaufmann and Hollingdale render the text in a far more familiar, less archaic, style of language, than that of Common.

Thomas Wayne, an English Professor at Edison State College in Fort Myers, Florida, published a translation in 2003. The introduction by Roger W. Phillips, Ph.D., says "Wayne's close reading of the original text has exposed the deficiencies of earlier translations, preeminent among them that of the highly esteemed Walter Kaufmann", and gives several reasons.

Clancy Martin's 2005 translation opens with criticism and praise for these three seminal translators, Common, Kaufmann and Hollingdale. He notes that the German text available to Common was considerably flawed, and that the German text from which Hollingdale and Kaufmann worked was itself untrue to Nietzsche's own work in some ways. Martin criticizes Kaufmann for changing punctuation, altering literal and philosophical meanings, and dampening some of Nietzsche's more controversial metaphors.^[12] Kaufmann's version, which has become the most widely available, features a translator's note suggesting that Nietzsche's text would have benefited from an editor; Martin suggests that Kaufmann "took it upon himself to become his [Nietzsche's] editor".

Graham Parkes describes his own 2005 translation as trying "above all to convey the musicality of the text".

In 2006, Cambridge University Press published a translation by Adrian Del Caro, edited by Robert Pippin.

Musical and literary adaptations

The book inspired Richard Strauss to compose the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra, which he designated "freely based on Friedrich Nietzsche".

Zarathustra's Roundelay is set as part of Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony (1895–6), originally under the title What Man Tells Me, or alternatively What the Night Tells Me (Of Man).

Frederick Delius based his major choral-orchestral work A Mass of Life (1904–5) on texts from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The work ends with a setting of Zarathustra's roundelay which Delius had composed earlier, in 1898, as a separate work. Another setting of the roundelay is one of the songs of Lukas Foss's Time Cycle for soprano and orchestra (1959–60).

Carl Orff also composed a three-movement setting of part of Nietzsche's text as a teenager, but this work remains unpublished.

The short score of the third symphony by Arnold Bax originally began with a quotation from Thus Spoke Zarathustra: ‘My wisdom became pregnant on lonely mountains; upon barren stones she brought forth her young’. 

Latin American writer Giannina Braschi wrote the philosophical novel United States of Banana based on Thus Spoke Zarathustra; in it, Zarathustra and Hamlet philosophize about the liberty of modern man in a capitalist society and seek to liberate Puerto Rico from the United States. United States of Banana was adapted to a theater play by Juan Pablo Felix (2015) and into comic book by Swedish Cartoonist Joakim Lindengren (2017); both adaptions prominently featured Zarathustra.

Italian progressive rock band Museo Rosenbach released in 1973 the album Zarathustra, with lyrics referring to the book.

Also Sprach Zarathustra is referenced in the Xenosaga video game series, even making it into the title of Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra. The plot covers similar topics that Friedrich Nietzsche covers in his writings. 

The English translation of part 2 chapter 7 "Tarantulas" have been narrated by Jordan Peterson and musically toned by artist Akira the Don.

The title of graphic novel "Silent was Zarathustra" by Nicolas Wild is a reference to Nietzsche's work.

There is also a film of parts I - III of the Kaufmann translation of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Ronald Gerard Smith, 1993, distributed by Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 2012 - 2019.

Selected editions

• Thus Spake Zarathustra, translated by Alexander Tille, Macmillan, New York and London, 1896.
• Thus Spake Zarathustra, translated by Thomas Common, T.N. Foulis, Edinbugh and London, 1909.
• Also sprach Zarathustra, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (study edition of the standard German Nietzsche edition)
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House; reprinted in The Portable Nietzsche, New York: The Viking Press, 1954 and Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Graham Parkes, Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2005
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Adrian del Caro and edited by Robert Pippin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Clancy Martin, Barnes and Noble: Barnes and Noble Books, 2005
• Also sprach Zarathustra, edited by Institut of Philosophy of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 2004. Bilingual Edition (German and Russian) with 20 oil paintings of Lena Hades. ISBN 5-9540-0019-0

Commentaries

• Gustav Naumann 1899–1901 Zarathustra-Commentar, 4 volumes. Leipzig : Haessel; http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006124821.
• Higgins, Kathleen. 1987, rev. ed. 2010. Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• osho. 1987. "Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance". Discourse given at OSHO Commune international, Pune, India.
• Lampert, Laurence. 1989. Nietzsche's Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Rosen, Stanley. 1995. The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
• Seung, T. K. 2005. Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• Claus Zittel: Das ästhetische Kalkül von Friedrich Nietzsches 'Also sprach Zarathustra'. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-8260-4649-0

Introductions

• Rüdiger Schmidt Nietzsche für Anfänger: Also sprach Zarathustra – Eine Lese-Einführung (introduction in German to the work)

Essay collections

• Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise, edited by James Luchte, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008. ISBN 1-84706-221-0

God of the gaps

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps 

"God of the gaps" is a theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence. The term "gaps" was initially used by Christian theologians not to discredit theism but rather to point out the fallacy of relying on teleological arguments for God's existence.

Origins of the term

From the 1880s, Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part Two, "On Priests", said "... into every gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God."

The concept, although not the exact wording, goes back to Henry Drummond, a 19th-century evangelist lecturer, from his Lowell Lectures on The Ascent of Man. He chastises those Christians who point to the things that science cannot yet explain—"gaps which they will fill up with God"—and urges them to embrace all nature as God's, as the work of "an immanent God, which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology."

In 1933, Ernest Barnes, the Bishop of Birmingham, used the phrase in a discussion of general relativity's implication of a Big Bang:

Must we then postulate Divine intervention? Are we to bring in God to create the first current of Laplace's nebula or to let off the cosmic firework of Lemaître's imagination? I confess an unwillingness to bring God in this way upon the scene. The circumstances with thus seem to demand his presence are too remote and too obscure to afford me any true satisfaction. Men have thought to find God at the special creation of their own species, or active when mind or life first appeared on earth. They have made him God of the gaps in human knowledge. To me the God of the trigger is as little satisfying as the God of the gaps. It is because throughout the physical Universe I find thought and plan and power that behind it I see God as the creator.

During World War II the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed the concept in similar terms in letters he wrote while in a Nazi prison. Bonhoeffer wrote, for example:

how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know.

In his 1955 book Science and Christian Belief Charles Alfred Coulson (1910−1974) wrote:

There is no 'God of the gaps' to take over at those strategic places where science fails; and the reason is that gaps of this sort have the unpreventable habit of shrinking.

and

Either God is in the whole of Nature, with no gaps, or He's not there at all.

Coulson was a mathematics professor at Oxford University as well as a Methodist church leader, often appearing in the religious programs of British Broadcasting Corporation. His book got national attention, was reissued as a paperback, and was reprinted several times, most recently in 1971. It is claimed that the actual phrase 'God of the gaps' was invented by Coulson.

The term was then used in a 1971 book and a 1978 article, by Richard Bube. He articulated the concept in greater detail in Man come of Age: Bonhoeffer’s Response to the God-of-the-Gaps (1978). Bube attributed modern crises in religious faith in part to the inexorable shrinking of the God-of-the-gaps as scientific knowledge progressed. As humans progressively increased their understanding of nature, the previous "realm" of God seemed to many persons and religions to be getting smaller and smaller by comparison. Bube maintained that Darwin's Origin of Species was the "death knell" of the God-of-the-gaps. Bube also maintained that the God-of-the-gaps was not the same as the God of the Bible (that is, he was not making an argument against God per se, but rather asserting there was a fundamental problem with the perception of God as existing in the gaps of present-day knowledge).

General usage

The term "God of the gaps" is sometimes used in describing the incremental retreat of religious explanations of physical phenomena in the face of increasingly comprehensive scientific explanations for those phenomena. Dorothy Dinnerstein includes psychological explanations for a person believing in a deity, particularly a male deity.

R. Laird Harris writes of the physical science aspect of this:

The expression, "God of the Gaps," contains a real truth. It is erroneous if it is taken to mean that God is not immanent in natural law but is only to be observed in mysteries unexplained by law. No significant Christian group has believed this view. It is true, however, if it be taken to emphasize that God is not only immanent in natural law but also is active in the numerous phenomena associated with the supernatural and the spiritual. There are gaps in a physical-chemical explanation of this world, and there always will be. Because science has learned many marvelous secrets of nature, it cannot be concluded that it can explain all phenomena. Meaning, soul, spirits, and life are subjects incapable of physical-chemical explanation or formation.

Usage in referring to a type of argument

The term God-of-the-gaps fallacy can refer to a position that assumes an act of God as the explanation for an unknown phenomenon, which is a variant of an argument from ignorance fallacy. Such an argument is sometimes reduced to the following form:

• There is a gap in understanding of some aspect of the natural world.
• Therefore, the cause must be supernatural.

One example of such an argument, which uses God as an explanation of one of the current gaps in biological science, is as follows: "Because current science can't figure out exactly how life started, it must be God who caused life to start." Critics of intelligent design creationism, for example, have accused proponents of using this basic type of argument.

God-of-the-gaps arguments have been discouraged by some theologians who assert that such arguments tend to relegate God to the leftovers of science: as scientific knowledge increases, the dominion of God decreases.

Criticism

The term was invented as a criticism of people who perceive that God only acts in the gaps, and who restrict God's activity to such "gaps". It has also been argued that the God-of-the-gaps view is predicated on the assumption that any event which can be explained by science automatically excludes God; that if God did not do something via direct action, that he had no role in it at all.

The "God of the gaps" argument, as traditionally advanced by scholarly Christians, was intended as a criticism against weak or tenuous faith, not as a statement against theism or belief in God.

According to John Habgood in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, the phrase is generally derogatory, and is inherently a direct criticism of a tendency to postulate acts of God to explain phenomena for which science has yet to give a satisfactory account. Habgood also states:

It is theologically more satisfactory to look for evidence of God's actions within natural processes rather than apart from them, in much the same way that the meaning of a book transcends, but is not independent of, the paper and ink of which it is comprised.

Both many theologians and scientists believe that it is a logical fallacy to base belief in God on gaps in scientific knowledge. In this vein, Richard Dawkins, an atheist, dedicates a chapter of his book The God Delusion to criticism of the God-of-the-gaps fallacy. Other scientists holding religious beliefs, such as Francis Collins, reject a God-of-the-gaps while embracing the idea of a God who fine tuned the universe precisely so human life could exist.

Militarisation of space

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarisation_of_space 

 

A Ground-Based Interceptor, designed to destroy incoming Intercontinental ballistic missiles, is lowered into its silo at the missile defence complex at Fort Greely, Alaska, July 22, 2004.

 

The militarisation of space involves the placement and development of weaponry and military technology in outer space. The early exploration of space in the mid-20th century had, in part, a military motivation, as the United States and the Soviet Union used it as an opportunity to demonstrate ballistic-missile technology and other technologies having the potential for military application. Outer space has since been used as an operating location for military spacecraft such as imaging and communications satellites, and some ballistic missiles pass through outer space during their flight. As of 2019, known deployments of weapons stationed in space include only the Almaz space-station armament and pistols such as the TP-82 Cosmonaut survival pistol (for post-landing, pre-recovery use).

History

The Cold War

During the Cold War, the world's two great superpowers—the Soviet Union and the United States of America—spent large proportions of their GDP on developing military technologies. The drive to place objects in orbit stimulated space research and started the Space Race. In 1957, the USSR launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. 

By the end of the 1960s, both countries regularly deployed satellites. Reconnaissance satellites were used by militaries to take accurate pictures of their rivals' military installations. As time passed the resolution and accuracy of orbital reconnaissance alarmed both sides of the iron curtain. Both the United States and the Soviet Union began to develop anti-satellite weapons to blind or destroy each other's satellites. Directed-energy weapons, kamikaze-style satellites, as well as orbital nuclear explosives were researched with varying levels of success. Spy satellites were, and continue to be, used to monitor the dismantling of military assets in accordance with arms control treaties signed between the two superpowers. To use spy satellites in such a manner is often referred to in treaties as "national technical means of verification". 

The superpowers developed ballistic missiles to enable them to use nuclear weaponry across great distances. As rocket science developed, the range of missiles increased and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) were created, which could strike virtually any target on Earth in a timeframe measured in minutes rather than hours or days. To cover large distances ballistic missiles are usually launched into sub-orbital spaceflight.

Test of the LG-118A Peacekeeper missile, each one of which could carry 10 independently targeted nuclear warheads along trajectories outside of the Earth's atmosphere.

As soon as intercontinental missiles were developed, military planners began programmes and strategies to counter their effectiveness.

United States

Early American efforts included the Nike-Zeus Program, Project Defender, the Sentinel Program and the Safeguard Program. The late 1950s Nike-Zeus programme involved firing Nike nuclear missiles against oncoming ICBMs, thus exploding nuclear warheads over the North Pole. This idea was soon scrapped and work began on Project Defender in 1958. Project Defender attempted to destroy Soviet ICBMs at launch with satellite weapon systems, which orbited over Russia. This programme proved infeasible with the technology from that era. Work then began on the Sentinel Program which used anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) to shoot down incoming ICBMs.

In the late 1950s United States Air Force considered detonating an atomic bomb on the Moon to display U.S. superiority to the Soviet Union and the rest of the world (Project A119). In 1959, a feasibility study of a possible military base on the Moon (Project Horizon) was conducted. In 1958, a plan for a 21-airman underground Air Force base on the Moon by 1968 was developed (Lunex Project).

The Safeguard Program was deployed in the mid-1970s and was based on the Sentinel Program. Since the ABM treaty only allowed for construction of a single ABM facility to protect either the nation's capital city or an ICBM field, the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex was constructed near Nekoma, North Dakota to protect the Grand Forks ICBM facility. Though it was only operational as an ABM facility for less than a year, the Perimeter Acquisition Radar (PAR), one of Safeguard's components, was still operational as of 2005. One major problem with the Safeguard Program, and past ABM systems, was that the interceptor missiles, though state-of-the-art, required nuclear warheads to destroy incoming ICBMs. Future ABMs will likely be more accurate and use hit-to-kill or conventional warheads to knock down incoming warheads. The technology involved in such systems was shaky at best, and deployment was limited by the ABM treaty of 1972.

In 1983, American president Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a space-based system to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear missiles. The plan was ridiculed by some as unrealistic and expensive, and Dr Carol Rosin nicknamed the policy "Star Wars", after the popular science-fiction movie franchise. Astronomer Carl Sagan pointed out that in order to defeat SDI, the Soviet Union had only to build more missiles, allowing them to overcome the defence by sheer force of numbers. Proponents of SDI said the strategy of technology would hasten the Soviet Union's downfall. According to this doctrine, Communist leaders were forced to either shift large portions of their GDP to counter SDI, or else watch as their expensive nuclear stockpiles were rendered obsolete. 

United States Space Command (USSPACECOM), a unified command of the United States military, was created in 1985 to help institutionalise the use of outer space by the United States Armed Forces. The Commander in Chief of U.S. Space Command (CINCUSSPACECOM), with headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado was also the Commander in Chief of the bi-national U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (CINCNORAD), and for the majority of time during USSPACECOM's existence also the Commander of the U.S. Air Force major command Air Force Space Command. Military space operations coordinated by USSPACECOM proved to be very valuable for the U.S.-led coalition in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. 

The U.S. military has relied on communications, intelligence, navigation, missile warning and weather satellite systems in areas of conflict since the early 1990s, including the Balkans, Southwest Asia and Afghanistan. Space systems are considered indispensable providers of tactical information to U.S. war-fighters.

As part of the ongoing initiative to transform the U.S. military, on 26 June 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that U.S. Space Command would merge with USSTRATCOM. The UCP directed that Unified Combatant Commands be capped at ten, and with the formation of the new United States Northern Command, one would have to be deactivated in order to maintain that level. Thus the USSPACECOM merger into USSTRATCOM.

USSR

Polyus (1987).

The Soviet Union was also researching innovative ways of gaining space supremacy. Two of their most notable efforts were the R-36ORB Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) and Polyus orbital weapons system.

The R-36ORB was a Soviet ICBM in the 1960s that, once launched, would go into a low Earth orbit whereupon it would de-orbit for an attack. This system would approach North America over the South Pole, thereby striking targets from the opposite direction from that to which NORAD early warning systems are oriented. The missile was phased out in January 1983 in compliance with the SALT II treaty.

The SALT II treaty (1979) prohibited the deployment of FOBS systems:

Each Party undertakes not to develop, test, or deploy:

(...)

(c) systems for placing into Earth orbit nuclear weapons or any other kind of weapons of mass destruction, including fractional orbital missiles;

On May 15, 1987, an Energia rocket flew for the first time. The payload was a prototype orbital weapons platform Polyus (also known as Polus, Skif-DM or 17F19DM), the final version of which according to some reports could be armed with nuclear space mines and defensive cannon. The Polyus weapons platform was designed to defend itself against anti-satellite weapons with recoilless cannon. It was also equipped with a sensor blinding laser to confuse approaching weapons and could launch test targets to validate the fire control system. The attempt to place the satellite into orbit failed.

Post-Cold War

A Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile (LEAP), which attaches to a modified SM-2 Block IV missile used by the U.S. Navy

As the Cold War ended with the implosion of the Soviet Union the space race between the two superpowers ended. The United States of America was left as the only superpower on Earth with a large concentration of the world's wealth and technological advancement. Despite the United States' new status in the world, the monopoly of space militarisation is in no way certain. Countries such as China, Japan, and India have begun their own space programmes, while the European Union collectively works to create satellite systems to rival those of the United States.

The USSR Space Forces were established as the Ministry of Defense Space Units in 1982. In 1991 the Soviet Union disintegrated. The Russian Armed Forces were established on 7 May 1992, enabling the creation of Russian Space Forces later that year on 10 August. In July 1997 the Space Force was dissolved as a separate service arm and incorporated to the Strategic Rocket Forces along with the Space Missile Defense Forces, which previously were part of the Troops of Air Defense. The Russian Space Forces were officially reborn on June 1, 2001 as an independent section of the Russian military.

Post Cold War space militarisation seems to revolve around three types of applications. (The word "seems" is used because much of this subject matter is inconclusively verifiable, due to the high level of secrecy that exists among the great powers with regard to the details of space sensing systems.) The first application is the continuing development of "spy" or reconnaissance satellites which began in the Cold War era, but has progressed significantly since that time. Spy satellites perform a variety of missions such as high-resolution photography (IMINT) and communications eavesdropping (SIGINT). These tasks are performed on a regular basis both during peacetime and war operations. Satellites are also used by the nuclear states to provide early warning of missile launches, locate nuclear detonations, and detect preparations for otherwise clandestine or surprise nuclear tests (at least those tests or preparations carried out above-ground); this was the case when, in 1998, India and Pakistan both conducted a series of nuclear tests; in addition, a nuclear-detection satellite of the Vela type was also reported to have detected a nuclear detonation in the Indian Ocean in 1978 that was believed to be a South African nuclear test in what was famously called the Vela Incident. Early-warning satellites can also be used to detect tactical missile launches; this capability was used during Desert Storm, when America was able to provide advance warning to Israel of Iraqi SS-1 SCUD missile launches.

Military satellite

Launch of the first Skynet satellite

Types of Reconnaissance satellites

• United States
  • Lacrosse/Onyx
  • Misty/Sirconic
  • Samos
  • Quasar
  • Vela
• Soviet Union
  • Cosmos
  • Almaz (manned)
  • Yantar
  • Zenit
• United Kingdom
  • Sircon (project cancelled)
  • Skynet
• France
  • Helios 1B (destroyed)
  • Helios 2A
• Germany
  • SAR-Lupe 1–5
• Italy
  • COSMO-SkyMed
• Japan
  • Information Gathering Satellites
• People's Republic of China
  • Fanhui Shi Weixing
• India
  • RISAT-1
  • RISAT-2
  • CCI-Sat
• Israel
  • Ofeq series of photo reconnaissance and radar satellites
• Spain
  • Paz

Global Positioning System (GPS)

Artist's conception of a Global Positioning System satellite in Earth orbit.

 

The second application of space militarisation currently in use is GPS or Global Positioning System. This satellite navigation system is used for determining one's precise location and providing a highly accurate time reference almost anywhere on Earth or in Earth orbit. It uses an intermediate circular orbit (ICO) satellite constellation of at least 24 satellites. The GPS system was designed by and is controlled by the United States Department of Defense and can be used by anyone, free of charge. The cost of maintaining the system is approximately US$400 million per year, including the replacement of ageing satellites. The first of 24 satellites that form the current GPS constellation (Block II) was placed into orbit on February 14, 1989. The 52nd GPS satellite since the beginning in 1978 was launched November 6, 2004 aboard a Delta II rocket. The primary military purposes are to allow improved command and control of forces through improved location awareness, and to facilitate accurate targeting of smart bombs, cruise missiles, or other munitions. The satellites also carry nuclear detonation detectors, which form a major portion of the United States Nuclear Detonation Detection System. European concern about the level of control over the GPS network and commercial issues has resulted in the planned Galileo positioning system. Russia already operates an independent system called GLONASS (global navigation system); the system operates with 24 satellites that are deployed in 3 orbital planes as opposed to the 4 in which GPS is deployed. The Chinese "Beidou" system provides China a similar regional (not global) navigation capability.

Military communication systems

The third current application of militarisation of space can be demonstrated by the emerging military doctrine of network-centric warfare. Network-centric warfare relies heavily on the use of high-speed communications, which allows all soldiers and branches of the military to view the battlefield in real-time. Real-time technology improves the situational awareness of all of the military's assets and commanders in a given theatre. For example, a soldier in the battle zone can access satellite imagery of enemy positions two blocks away, and if necessary e-mail the coordinates to a bomber or weapon platform hovering overhead while the commander, hundreds of miles away, watches as the events unfold on a monitor. This high-speed communication is facilitated by a separate internet created by the military for the military. Communication satellites hold this system together by creating an informational grid over the given theatre of operations. The Department of Defense is currently working to establish a Global Information Grid to connect all military units and branches into a computerised network in order to share information and create a more efficient military.

Military spaceplanes

It was revealed that Soviet officials were concerned that the US Space Shuttle program had such military objectives such as to make a sudden dive into the atmosphere to drop bombs on Moscow  and these concerns were part of the motivation behind pursuing their own Buran programme.

The NASA uncrewed spaceplane project X-37 was transferred to the US Department of Defense in 2004. It is unclear what its military mission would be. The X-37 is akin to a space version of Unmanned aerial vehicle.

Weapons in space

Triple-barreled TP-82 Cosmonaut survival pistol in Saint-Petersburg Artillery museum

 

Space weapons are weapons used in space warfare. They include weapons that can attack space systems in orbit (i.e. anti-satellite weapons), attack targets on the earth from space or disable missiles travelling through space. In the course of the militarisation of space, such weapons were developed mainly by the contesting superpowers during the Cold War, and some remain under development today. Space weapons are also a central theme in military science fiction and sci-fi video games.

Terrestrial-type weapons in space

The Soviet space station Salyut 3 was fitted with a 23mm cannon, which was successfully test fired at target satellites, at ranges from 500 to 3,000 metres (1,600 to 9,800 ft).

As of 2008, it was reported that Russian cosmonauts have regularly carried the TP-82 Cosmonaut survival pistol on Soyuz spacecraft, as part of the emergency landing survival kit. The intent of the weapon is to protect cosmonauts from wild animals in the event of an off-course wilderness landing. The specially designed gun is capable of firing bullets, shotgun shells, or flares.

Space warfare

A USAF F-15 Eagle launching an ASM-135 ASAT anti-satellite missile.

 

Space warfare is combat that takes place in outer space, i.e. outside the atmosphere. Technically, as a distinct classification, it refers to battles where the targets themselves are in space. Space warfare therefore includes ground-to-space warfare, such as attacking satellites from the Earth, as well as space-to-space warfare, such as satellites attacking satellites.

It does not include the use of satellites for espionage, surveillance, or military communications, however useful those activities might be. It does not technically include space-to-ground warfare, where orbital objects attack ground, sea or air targets directly, but the public and media frequently use the term to include any conflict which includes space as a theatre of operations, regardless of the intended target. For example, a rapid delivery system in which troops are deployed from orbit might be described as "space warfare," even though the military uses the term as described above.

A film was produced by the U.S. Military in the early 1960s called Space and National Security which depicted space warfare.^[9] From 1985 to 2002 there was a United States Space Command, which in 2002 merged with the United States Strategic Command. There is a Russian Space Force, which was established on August 10, 1992, and which became an independent section of the Russian military on December 1, 2001.

Only a few incidents of space warfare have occurred in world history, and all were training missions, as opposed to actions against real opposing forces. In the mid-1980s a USAF pilot in an F-15 successfully shot down the P78-1, a communications satellite in a 345-mile (555 km) orbit. 

In 2007 the People's Republic of China used a missile system to destroy one of its obsolete satellites , in 2008 the United States similarly destroyed its malfunctioning satellite USA 193, and in 2019, India followed China and the U.S. by destroying a live satellite. To date, there have been no human casualties resulting from conflict in space, nor has any ground target been successfully neutralised from orbit. 

International treaties governing space limit or regulate conflicts in space and limit the installation of weapon systems, especially nuclear weapons.

Space treaties

Treaties are agreed to when all parties perceive a benefit from becoming a signatory participant in the treaty. As mutually assured destruction (MAD) became the deterrent strategy between the two superpowers in the Cold War, many countries worked together to avoid extending the threat of nuclear weapons to space based launchers.

Outer Space Treaty

The Outer Space Treaty was considered by the Legal Subcommittee in 1966. Later that year, agreement was reached in the United Nations General Assembly. The treaty included the following principles:

• the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind;
• outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;
• outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;
• States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner;
• the Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes;
• Astronauts shall be regarded as the envoys of mankind;
• States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental activities;
• States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects; and
• States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.

In summary, the treaty initiated the banning of signatories' placing of nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit of Earth, installing them on the moon or any other celestial body, or to otherwise station them in outer space. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union signed the treaty and it entered into effect on October 10, 1967. As of January 1, 2005, 98 States have ratified, and an additional 27 have signed the Outer Space Treaty.

Note that this treaty does not ban the placement of weapons in space in general, only nuclear weapons and WMD.

Moon Treaty

The Moon Treaty (not ratified by any space capable state, though signed by some) bans any military use of celestial bodies, including weapon testing, nuclear weapons in orbit, or military bases. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited. (Article 3.4)

Other drafts

In February 2008, China and Russia together submitted a draft to the UN known as the Treaty on Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space and of the Threat or Use of Force against Outer Space Objects (PPWT). The US opposed the draft treaty due to security concerns over its space assets despite the treaty explicitly affirming a State's inherent right of self-defence. On December 4, 2014, the General Assembly of the UN passed two resolutions on preventing an arms race in outer space.^[15]

 

The first resolution, Prevention of an arms race in outer space, "call[s] on all States, in particular those with major space capabilities, to contribute actively to the peaceful use of outer space, prevent an arms race there, and refrain from actions contrary to that objective." There were 178 countries that voted in favour to none against, with 2 abstentions (Israel, United States).

The second resolution, No first placement of weapons in outer space, emphasises the prevention of an arms race in space and states that "other measures could contribute to ensuring that weapons were not placed in outer space." 126 countries voted in favour to 4 against (Georgia, Israel, Ukraine, United States), with 46 abstentions (EU member States abstained on the resolution).

National Missile Defense (NMD)

The logo of the Missile Defense Agency

 

With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War defence spending was reduced and space research was chiefly focused on peaceful research. American military research is focused on a more modest goal of preventing the United States from being subject to nuclear blackmail or nuclear terrorism by a rogue state. 

On 16 December 2002, US President George W. Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive which outlined a plan to begin deployment of operational ballistic missile defence systems by 2004. The following day, the US formally requested from the UK and Denmark use of facilities in RAF Fylingdales, England and Thule, Greenland, respectively, as a part of the NMD Program. The administration continued to push the programme, despite highly publicised but not unexpected trial-and-error technical failures during development and over the objections of some scientists who opposed it. The projected cost of the programme for the years 2004 to 2009 was 53 billion US dollars, making it the largest single line in The Pentagon's budget.

Missile defence does not station weapons in space, but is designed to intercept incoming warheads at a very high altitude, which requires the interceptor to travel into space to achieve the intercept. These missiles are both land-based and sea-based.