This Special Science issue of the Journal of Space Philosophy is a catalyst for us to reflect on the five years we have been editing the Journal for you readers.

It was a surprise in 2012 that the global Space community had not created a journal of philosophy when most of the hard and soft sciences had done so long in the past. The Journal has given us in the Kepler Space Institute (KSI) a tangible academic product while we planned for the future. We did that planning without external funding, which meant that KSI Board and other members were funding their own participation in Space Conferences and our operations.

We decided to publish our KSI agreed Space philosophy in the first issue, Fall 2012. Its fundamentals are:

• veneration for life;
• within ethical civilizations;
• implemented by the Policy Sciences

Over the past five years, we have found no reason to change those fundamentals. Many of the articles published since 2012 provide the details of that philosophy.

The research area we take great pride supporting is the ongoing discoveries and analysis of the Recursive Distinctioning (RD) natural intelligence feature discovered in 1964 by Dr. Joel Isaacson. Louis H. Kauffman, PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago, presented the latest scientific findings on RD at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference in Puerto Rico, May 18-22, 2016 (ISDC- 2016), using the feature paper in this issue, “Recursive Distinctioning,” by Joel D. Isaacson and Louis H. Kauffman, as a basis for his remarks.
Recursive Distinctioning is fundamental to all perception, and, by extension, to cognition and intelligence. That finding is advanced as a law of nature, perhaps on a par with gravity. (Joel Isaacson, e-mail to Bob Krone, April 20, 2011)
This Special Science Issue is devoted exclusively to enhancing global awareness of Recursive Distinctioning and its implications for the future of humanity on Earth and in Space.

The original cover for this Special Science RD Issue was designed by Naté Sushereba and Joe Sobodowski, both members of the Kepler Space Institute Board of Directors.

Bob Krone, PhD, Editor-in-Chief
Gordon Arthur, PhD, Associate Editor