Is the sky open to us?

Abstract

In 1960, three years after the launch of the first sputnik by the Soviets and one year before Yuri Gagarin’s flight, the German Walter Pons published a work entitled: Steht uns der Himmel offen? (Is the sky open to us?).¹ This work is probably one of the first philosophical studies conducted on the astronautics venture, once this actually became reality. To the question which forms the title of this book, its author replies: “We cannot really know the world if we do not firstly know ourselves”. This answer is suggestive of Socrates as the famous Greek philosopher transformed the motto engraved on the front of the temple at Delphi “Know Thyself and leave the World to the Gods”, into: “Know thyself and you will know the Universe and the Gods”. In this second version, Hegel identified a major turning point for humankind: in effect, Socrates was proposing to make the inner conscience the authority of truth and therefore of decision. It was no longer necessary, or even an option, to leave things to be sorted out by a superior and unattainable divine order, that could only be revealed by the oracle, by divination and mysticism. It was henceforth up to man to take his destiny in his own hands.