Elements of Anthropocosmism

ABSTRACT Various writings of mixed genres, drifting between scientific treatises, mystical epiphanies, and prose fiction related to the school of “cosmism,” have been explored for more than fifty years, and the interpretations range from (religious) utopia to theories of sustainable development. The author discusses the question of whether “cosmism” is exclusively “Russian,” compares its general postulates with the techno-Cosmist approaches of the last ten years (including those involving fiction, such as by Eugene Thacker, and the more philosophical approaches, like that applied by Yuk Hui), and proposes clarifying how the Cosmists literally viewed the structure of the world and how they conceptualized its elements as contrasted with the interest of contemporary theorists in openness to planetary and cosmic horizons. The latter, often oriented to nuclear physics and fragmenting “reality” into stochastic agencies whose temporary couplings are formed by cutting and assembling procedures, can be reformulated from the “cosmist” perspective as gleaned in this case from the works of Valerian Murav’ev and Vladimir Vernadsky, with the aid of the categories of expansion and accomplishment.