Introduction: Being in Outer Space

Abstract

This work represents a transdisciplinary theological project. It is committed to fostering mutual understanding that stretches transversally across disciplinary boundaries by thinking through how tenets of astrobiology intersect with various reflections on human ways of being in the world and belonging to the world. The structure of the book is broadly inductive. The chapters provide a series of specific examples drawn from astrobiology, doctrinal reflection on the imago Dei, and reflections on the Anthropocene, to suggest an alternative approach to framing how human beings meaningfully are in the world and belong to it. Braiding together these diverse traditions, I suggest the Earth is not only a living planet but an artful one. To be an artful planet requires we take seriously geological history and the significance of the geological agency of homo sapiens. It also requires that we, as members of a species, own our responsibility for inducing new technobiogeochemical cycles into our planetary history.