The Overview Effect

Metanexus links to an interesting 19-minute video featuring reflections from philosophers and astronauts on the ‘overview effect’.

‘Astronauts who have seen the Earth from space have often described the “overview effect” as an experience that has transformed their perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it, and enabled them to perceive it as our shared home, without boundaries between nations or species.’

One of those interviewed in the short film notes his realisation from his viewing perspective looking back at Earth that space isn’t ‘out there’ somewhere, but that we are already ‘in space’. It sparked me to think how Scripture likewise effectively reframes the perspective from which we look and how we see things, providing us with something akin to an ‘overview effect’.