“Touch” the Sun and “Touch” the Cosmic Space to Learn How to Touch the Earth: Space Sustainability as an Ethical Guide for Relations: Mystery and Humility

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1). The Author, in my opinion, should declare practically from the outset that theologically speaking his perspective is the Christian one; this would explain clearly why references to God appear in the text.

2). The meaning and the context of the term “relationship” should be clarified. Is this a relationship between man and man? Between man and God? Sometimes written with a lower case “r” (43) and sometimes with a capital “R” (602). Greater clarity in this regard would help to follow better this very important thematic strand of the article.

3). Line: 8-9 - instead of “metaphysical and transcendent” I would rather write about “philosophical”.

4). Line 194 – instead of “onotologists”, I would suggest “philosophers”.

5). Lines 194-203 list various types of boundaries. It may be useful to include references to physical boundaries (as initial conditions for an equation) and the boundary between ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ in Martin Buber’s sense. The latter, I think, appears to be important for ‘building meaningful relationships’, a topic discussed by the Author in lines 255-259.

6). Line 337 - instead of ‘Niel’ it should be ‘Neil’.

7). Line 408: I do not understand why a matrix like the following has ‘2 by 5’ dimensions. Shouldn’t it rather be ‘2 by 1’? It looks like a vector to me. Sure, vectors are also matrices. But with specific dimensions.

8). The same applies to line 415, when one reads ‘3 by 5’; it looks like ‘3 by 1’ to me. Besides, in my opinion, the reference to ‘Spiritual Senses’, added right in the middle, is not convincingly introduced; seems to be ad hoc. I suggest explaining a little better the need for that component, which has a very deep theological tradition.

9). Lines 525-536. Here, the Author uses the term “epistemological links”. From what is written it seems to me rather that it is something like "a current frontier of scientific knowledge", i.e. the point where the science has arrived now. Instead, the author turns ‘epistemological links’ into ‘epistemological surface’, and finally into ‘epistemological sense’. I admit, these passages are not clear to me. Perhaps that should be made clearer.

10). I propose to remove “spatial metaphysical resources” and “transcendence” from Keywords, as, in my opinion, neither of these terms are sufficiently unambiguous.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper contains a lot of interesting ideas and is novel as far as I know. However, at this point, the paper is too unclear and vague at some points. The paper would be more readable is some of the concepts are btter explained (perhaps by using analogies or examples) and if some points are elaborated on.

The connection to theology feels a bit stretched at this points. The paper now reads a bit like a theological recuperation of the sense of wonder and astonishment gained by spce exploration. Some elaboration on the connection to theological concepts can solve this.

specific comments:

- The introduction section introduces some concepts like 'touching' and 'boundary', but remains quite vague. Some more details could make the section better.

- The use of the word 'touching' in the communication around the space mission sounds a lot like marketing. IT could be enlightening to ntoe this and argue that it yet has some deeper metaphysical meaning.

- It is not clear how the discussion on the first Sovjet space missions helps towards making your claim. Please make this more clear. Perhaps something like 'Touching the sun was preceded by other events with similar metaphysical meanings'.

- The discussion on Locke is too short and is missing a reference to Locke's work.

- The disucssion on the absolute in 254 vv is short and vague. Some elaboration on what is meant by the absolute could help.

- 289 vv. Idem for multi-level meanings.

- 310 vv. Better to indent longer quotations.

- 424: elaborate on the 'cognitive ladder'.

- The paper might benefit from a look at literature on spiritual senses in religion. (e.g.: https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Senses-Perceiving-Western-Christianity/dp/110768594X)

- 540: add reference to Gödel.

- The connection to human rights and Christ as the logos feels a bit artificial and strained. The section also covers too much in too little words. This section should either be a lot longer, highlighting how the discussion above fits in the theological background or be left out.

- The concept of ethics which is affirmed in 668 is not standard. The author should mtivate why he or she opts for this concept of ethics. This can be done in a footnote.

- 712: is this a subtitle?

Ok but some awkward formulations. A thorough proof check is needed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

The text was completely revised from an English language point of view, as requested.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf