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Charles S. Cockell argues that beyond Earth, space is especially tyranny-prone. Yet rather than consign humanity to a dim future of extraterrestrial despotisms, he suggests that the construction of free societies is possible using uniquely blended and reformulated classical liberal ideas for the space frontier.
List of contents
- Preface
- 1: Liberty on the space frontier
- 2: The causes of extraterrestrial tyranny
- 3: Building free societies in the cosmos
- 4: Dissent and welfare
- 5: The development of science and liberty
- 6: Engineering liberty
- 7: Art and liberty
- 8: Educating the free citizen
- 9: Justice and criminality in the free society
- 10: A free cosmos
About the author
Charles S. Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His scientific research includes the study of life in extreme environments, the habitability of extraterrestrial environments, and human space exploration. He has worked for NASA and the British Antarctic Survey and spent many seasons in Antarctica and the High Arctic. He received his doctorate in molecular biophysics from the University of Oxford and his BSc from the University of Bristol. As well as over 300 scientific papers and numerous popular science books, including Space on Earth, which made the case for the indivisible links between space exploration and environmentalism, he has written a number of papers and edited books on the subject of extraterrestrial liberty.
Summary
On the Moon or Mars, where even the oxygen you breathe is made in a manufacturing process controlled by someone else, can you be free?
In Interplanetary Liberty: Building Free Societies in the Cosmos, Charles S. Cockell argues that beyond Earth, space is especially tyranny-prone. Yet rather than consign humanity to a dim future of extraterrestrial despotisms, he suggests that the construction of free societies is possible using uniquely blended and reformulated classical liberal ideas for the space frontier.
Considering politics, science, engineering, art, education, prisons, and other facets of society, this book lays out the general ethos and culture around which settlements might be constructed to secure the establishment and flourishing of freedom in the cosmos.
Additional text
Interplanetary Liberty offers an engaging exploration of liberal political thought applied to human space expansion, and in so doing provides a much-needed examination of the scope and fitness of democratic principles of governance for prospective space societies.
