Join us on Saturday, April 6 at 5pm for The Occult Roots of Soviet Space Travel: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s “Cosmic Philosophy,” a chat by historian Michael Hagemeister.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), an eccentric, half-deaf instructor of physics and arithmetic within the provincial city of Kaluga, is taken into account the “grandfather of Soviet space travel.” At the daybreak of the area age, Soviet propaganda turned him right into a cult determine, censoring his publications and stylizing his biography. 

Little is it recognized that Tsiolkovsky developed a “cosmic philosophy,” and that the cosmonautical calculations and sketches that made him well-known (and laid the foundations for the Soviet area program) grew out of this philosophy. Tsiolkovsky’s “cosmic philosophy,” which he himself thought of to be his best achievement, was a peculiar synthesis of vitalism, panpsychism, and monadology with Gnostic, theosophical, and spiritualist thought. It offers with extremely developed rational beings inhabiting the universe, with eternally “living and happy atoms,” with the sensibility of matter and the acutely aware vitality inherent in all matter, striving for additional improvement, perfection, and everlasting happiness. Ultimately, area journey was merely a method to this finish. 

This presentation will define Tsiolkovsky’s “cosmic philosophy” and establish its roots in occult thought, the “secret doctrines” of the theosophists printed in Kaluga within the early twentieth century, Ernst Haeckel’s pan-psychist principle of evolution, and the cosmic-spiritualist philosophical works of Camille Flammarion and Carl du Prel, which supply a synthesis of Darwinism and occultism. Finally, Tsiolkovsky will probably be mentioned within the context of so-referred to as “Russian Cosmism,” a hybrid ideological assemble developed within the Nineteen Seventies to supply the Soviet area program with an indigenous philosophical foundation.

For extra info, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility 
–Two flights of stairs lead as much as the constructing’s entrance entrance at 172 Classon Avenue. 
–For elevator entry, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The constructing has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux workplace area. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a storage door). We have a ramp for the steps throughout the area. 
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant toilet. There aren’t any steps between the occasion area and this toilet.