Love as a Mode of Non-Appropriative Presence in Extreme Environments: A Philosophical Analysis of the First Lunar Landing

This paper analyzes the first human landing on the Moon as an epistemological case study in the philosophy of science and space exploration. It argues that traditional models of scientific action, grounded in control, prediction, and manipulation (cf. Hacking 1983; Cartwright 1999), are insufficient for describing human engagement with radically non-terrestrial environments. The paper introduces the concept of non-appropriative presence as a relational mode of cognition in which the agent does not seek total conceptual or material assimilation of the environment. Within this framework, “love” is redefined not as an affective state, but as a structural constraint on epistemic and practical appropriation. The analysis situates the Apollo 11 landing as an early instantiation of such a cognitive shift in human-environment relations. Author portal: https://sites.google.com/view/yermakov-orcid