ABSTRACT

From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, scientists and engineers in the U.S. chartered a new field, exobiology: the search for organic life beyond Earth. Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, led exobiologists in framing a powerful sociotechnical imaginary for the emergent discipline, one that envisioned planets as islands. That vision followed long traditions in natural science, literature, and geography in which islands had been posited along dueling edges: fragile, bounded sites that required preservation, but ones that also been staged as bountiful, inviting exploration, even exploitation. From Lederberg's archive, other historical sources, and astronautical accounts of seeing Earth from above in the Space Age, the conceptual duality of islands – as enclosed and expansive – transferred to how exobiologists considered their solar system. Planets, including Earth, came to be imagined as biospheres to be preserved, but simultaneously as sites that could possibly underwrite humans' future colonization. Such speculation was supported by a rich visual culture of technologically animated perception, from Apollo 8's Earthrise photograph (1968) to Mariner 9's (1970) televisual images. Scaling the gaze of planetary science from Earth to extraterrestrial sites, exobiologists' planets-as-islands imaginary forecasted a cosmic archipelago of interconnected life in the post-World War II era.

摘要

从 1950 年代末到 1970 年代初，美国的科学家和工程师开辟了一个新领域，即外生生物学：寻找地球以外的有机生命。获得诺贝尔奖的科学家约书亚·莱德伯格 (Joshua Lederberg) 带领外星生物学家为新兴学科构建了一个强大的社会技术想象，将行星视为岛屿。这一愿景遵循了自然科学、文学和地理学的悠久传统，在这些传统中，岛屿被置于决斗边缘：脆弱、有界的遗址需要保护，但也被安排为丰富、诱人的探索，甚至开发。从莱德伯格的档案、其他历史资料和太空时代从高空看地球的航天记录中，岛屿的概念二元性——封闭的和广阔的——转移到外星生物学家如何看待他们的太阳系。行星，包括地球，开始被想象为需要保护的生物圈，但同时也是可能为人类未来殖民提供担保的地点。这种推测得到了丰富的技术动画感知视觉文化的支持，从阿波罗 8 号的地出照片（1968 年）到水手 9 号（1970 年）的电视图像。将行星科学的目光从地球扩展到外星地点，外星生物学家想象中的行星作为岛屿预测了二战后时代相互关联的宇宙群岛。