Although the question of extraterrestrial life is very old, the concept of a full-blown cosmic evolution—the connected evolution of planets, stars, galaxies, and life on Earth and beyond—is much younger. As historian Michael Crowe has shown…5. Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 224–225, 274–277, 464–465. Simon Schaffer has shown the place of the nebular hypothesis in a general “science of progress” i…
Bernard Lightman
historian · 2 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Bernard Lightman appears primarily as a passing reference in the course materials, cited alongside historians of science like Michael Crowe and Simon Schaffer who map the intellectual history of cosmology and extraterrestrial speculation. His work contextualizes how Victorian scientific thought—including nebular hypothesis and cosmic evolution—functioned within broader narratives of progress and technological modernity. For a seminar on AI and cybernetics, Lightman's historiography helps establish how earlier generations theorized systems, networks, and life itself at scales that prefigure contemporary computational thinking about networks and emergence.
Mentioned in 1 reading
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