Mehr-als-irdische Geographien und die zweite Kopernikanische Wende des planetarischen Denkens. Eine metaphorologische Kritik

The article examines the terms earth, globe and world as central ciphers of geographical thinking and places them in a genealogy of the history of ideas and science. The focus is on the current boom in planetary thinking, which is fanned out into two currents: on the one hand in (earth) system-theoretical totality, on the other hand in post-humanist perspectives on co-existence. In both discourses, a new Copernican turn is claimed, whose metaphorological content, however, points to a continuation of post-Copernican ambivalence. Based on Hans Blumenberg's metaphorology, it is shown how planetary semantics oscillates between epistemic upheaval and anthropocentric self-assertion (Selbstbehauptung). The article is intended as a plea for a stronger reception of humanities thinking styles in geography. Here, metaphorology proves to be an approach to the critical reflection of disciplinary world and self-relations under the sign of planetarism. The euphoric welcome of planetary thinking in geography and the pleas for a new Copernican turn are evidence of the unbroken discursive power of this metaphor.