Life on Other Worlds: The 20th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate

by Steven J. Dick

Are we alone in the Universe? From the furor over Percival Lowell's claim of canals on Mars at the beginning of the century to the more recent controversial rock from Mars and the sophisticated Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the prospect of otherworldly life has often titillated and occasionally consumed science and the public. The search for planetary systems, the quest to explain UFOs, and inquiries into the origin of life have fueled an abundance of popular and scientific literature. They have also provided Hollywood with fodder for some of the most popular films of our time, including ET, Aliens, Independence Day, and Contact. Lucid and accessible, Life on Other Worlds chronicles the history of the twentieth-century extraterrestrial debate. Putting the latest findings and heated controversies into a broader historical context, Steven Dick documents how the concept of extraterrestrial intelligence is a world view of its own--a "biophysical cosmology" that seeks confirmation no less than physical views of the Universe. The debate rests at the very limits of science, and attempts at confirmation only illuminate the nature of science itself. Dick shows that appreciating the history of the debate enables a better understanding of the nature of science, and is central to any forward-looking view of religion and philosophy. For anyone interested in a look over the edge of scientific discovery, Life on Other Worlds provides the exciting tale behind the greatest debate in the twentieth century. Dr. Steven J. Dick is an astronomer and historian of science at the U.S. Naval Observatory. He is the author of Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (Cambridge, 1982) and Biological Universe (Cambridge, 1996).

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Steven J. Dick is an American astronomer, author, and historian of science most noted for his work in the field of astrobiology. He served as the NASA Chief Historian and Director of the NASA History Office from 2003 to 2009 and, prior to that, as an astronomer and historian of science at the U.S. Naval Observatory for more than two decades.

Reviews

[Alexander Theofanidis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Συμπαθές -αν και κουραστικό συχνά- χρονικό της διαμάχης περί εξωγήινης ζωής.
Ευτυχώς, το πρίσμα δεν είναι Λιακοπούλειο, αλλά καλώς ή κακώς το θέμα είναι τέτοιο που κάθε περίεργης καρυδιάς καρύδι έχει πει την άποψή του επί του θέματος.
Αν μη τι άλλο, ο Dick κρατάει μια πολύ ισορροπημένη στάση εξιστόρησης και παράθεσης γεγονότων και απόψεων. Το πιο ενδιαφέρον ίσως κεφάλαιο είναι η παρείσφρηση της εξωγήινης προέλευσης ζωής στην τέχνη (και κυρίως τη Λογοτεχνία), όπου αν μη τι άλλο θα μπορούσε να αναφέρει και τους εξωγήινους στην γραφή του Simak (όπου λειτουργούν ως καθρέφτες του ανθρώπου, δείχνονας συνήθως τον συμπεριφορικό ιδεότυπο που δε θα φτάσουμε ποτέ, αλλά λάμπει σαν φάρος καλώντας μας να τον προσεγγίσουμε).
Επίσης, δε λείπουν ενδιαφέροντα επιστημονικά στοιχεία, ανακαλύψεις, ντοκουμέντα, διαγράμματα και πίνακες (καθώς και μερικές μάλλον κακοτυπωμένες φωτογραφίες των πιονέρων της αναζήτησης εξωγήινης ζωής).
Ένα πολύ ενοχλητικό σημείο (και δεν ευθύνεται ο συγγραφέας γι' αυτό) είναι η στάση της θρησκείας στην αναζήτηση αυτή, καθώς και η συνολική στάση της οργανωμένης θρησκείας απέναντι στην επιστήμη τα τελευταία 500 χρόνια. Εν έτει 2022, είναι το λιγότερο ενοχλητικό να θυμάται κανείς ότι ο Τζορντάνο Μπρούνο κάηκε στην πυρά το 1600 επειδή υποστήριζε ότι τα άστρα είναι άλλοι ήλιοι και το γεγονός ότι ακόμη παίρνουμε στα σοβαρά μωρολογίες της εποχής του χαλκού, ενώ κάθε φορά που ένας τράγος (βλ. επίσημος εκπρόσωπος αναγνωρισμένης θρησκείας) τοποθετείται επί επιστημονικού θέματος, οι επιστήμονες περπατάνε πάνω σε τσόφλια αυγών (walking on eggshells) για να μην τσούξει το ποπουλίνι του. Είδαμε πρόσφατα πόσο έγκυρες είναι οι επιστημονικές θέσεις των θρησκειών με τη στάση των εκπροσώπων τους σε καιρό πανδημίας (αντίθετοι σε μέσα προφύλαξης -μάσκες, διάγνωσης -σελφ τεστ, και πρόληψης -εμβόλιο). Και όλα αυτά, ενώ έχουν περάσει αιώνες από το διαφωτισμό.
Συγγνώμη, παρεκτρέπομαι.
Αν βαριέστε, το βιβλίο έχει μια περιεκτικότατη περίληψη (μετά συμπερασμάτων) στο τέλος, αλλά θα χάσετε όλη τη φάση με τον Ρονί Ενέ, τον Βερν, τον Γουελς και τον Κάμπελ, ενώ ποτέ δε θα ηχήσει στα αυτιά σας η παραπλανητική φωνή του Σκιαπαρέλι (σκεφτείτε με ιταλική προφορά): Μάμα μία, έχει κανάλια στον Άρη, τα βλέπω, τα βλέπω! Μα τι; Δεν βλέπετε εσείς; Α φανκούλο, δεν κοιτάτε καλά! Α, κε κάτσο, πόσα κανάλιαααα!. Ο άνθρωπος πρέπει να ήταν το πρώτο τρολ με διαπλανητικές ανησυχίες...

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A CONDENSATION AND UPDATING OF ‘THE BIOLOGICAL UNIVERSE’

Steven J. Dick is an American astronomer, author, and historian of science who served as the Chief Historian for NASA from 2003 to 2009, and as the Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology from 2013 to 2014; prior to that, he was an astronomer and historian of science at the United States Naval Observatory from 1979 to 2003.

He wrote in the Introduction to the 1998 book, “The year 1996 was a turning point in other areas related to the extraterrestrial life debate… the significance of the Martian meteorite was being pondered, the Galileo spacecraft returned high-resolution pictures of … Europa, showing a surface likely to be cracked ice… 1996 also saw … the discovery of … 8 (and possibly 10) planets orbiting other Sun-like stars… life was increasingly found flourishing on Earth in extreme environments… All of these events were only the most recent manifestation of a debate that stretches back through millennia of history. My own interest in these discoveries was sharpened because my history of the extraterrestrial life debate [‘The Biological Universe’] … had been published only a few months before… I have with this volume abridged ‘The Biological Universe’ in an attempt to reach a wider audience and … to integrate the new discoveries into the story.”

He continues, “Meanwhile, the influence of extraterrestrial life on popular culture, already a major theme of the 20th century, shows no signs of flagging. The movie ‘Independence Day’ … was by far the most popular movie of 1996, even as ‘Men in Black’ and the movie version of Carl Sagan’s ‘Contact’ were among the most popular movies of 1997…. The Pathfinder landing on Mars on July 4, 1997, was juxtaposed with media coverage of the thousands who gathered in Roswell, New Mexico, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the supposed crash of an alien spaceship… [UFO] reports were once again on the rise, and major polls showed that most people believe them to be spaceships piloted by extraterrestrials… in this volume the reader will find background for the whole range of issues in the extraterrestrial debate, up to and including the search for intelligence and concepts of aliens in fact and fiction.” (Pg. 3-4)

He notes, “As with the canals of Mars, the search for Martian vegetation demonstrated differences in approach and worldview among scientists, with one extreme group much more likely to go out on a limb and to extrapolate than the other. Some astronomers probing the physical conditions on Mars presented their data and left them at that. Others used their data… in the service of the question of extraterrestrial life. Still others rendered no opinion at all.” (Pg. 51-52)

After Viking I landed on Mars, “it is fair to say that [most scientists] were much less optimistic about life on Mars in the aftermath of Viking. The Viking results were impressive enough that most scientists shifted the focus of their biological Martian interests to either past Martian history or different Martian environments such as rocks, polar caps, subsurface soil, or volcanic regions.” (Pg. 64)

He observes, “It is a remarkable fact of history that only in the last third of the 19th century did extraterrestrials enter the realm of literature… Why should this be when the concept of extraterrestrials is so old? It is the thesis of this section that the birth of the alien in literature is closely tied to late 19th century science, especially evolutionary theory, astronomy, and the plurality-of-worlds tradition.” (Pg. 107)

He says of the Condon Report, “Lost in a sea of paranormal claims that brought it into disrepute among scientists, the extraterrestrial hypothesis after Condon swung back toward the pre-1965 media excesses, becoming virtually the exclusive property of authors with mixed motives and unscientific credentials… the UFO phenomenon clearly fell from the province of scientific discourse. The hopes of those who wished to expand the scope of science were largely destroyed by the absurd claims of those whose motives were closer to profit than truth… By the end of the century the question was not whether extraterrestrials were visiting Earth, but whether there was anything at all to the UFO phenomenon that science could productively illuminate. Neither normal scientific method nor the norms of interaction among scientists held out much hope.” (Pg. 166-167)

He states, “the discovery of amino acids in carbonaceous meteorites, and of complex organic molecules in interstellar molecular clouds, comets, and interplanetary dust … forced biological interest in the extraterrestrial realm and sustained it even after the issues of planetary contamination and life detection were resolved (to the satisfaction of most) by the Viking landers.” (Pg. 172)

He acknowledges, “Great difficulties… remained even in understanding the origin of life on Earth. Despite the great promise of prebiotic synthesis beginning with the experiments of the 1950s, by the end of the century most of the steps to life had not been duplicated in the laboratory under conditions believed to exist on the primitive Earth… 25 years later, no Miller-Urey experiment had produced the much more complex proteins, nucleic acids, polysaccharides, or lipids that make up a cell, although some had been synthesized under non-Earth conditions. In fact, none of the nucleotides which compose the nucleic acids had been synthesized under such conditions. In this respect the program of chemical evolution was a disappointment.” (Pg. 177)

He explains, “in our own solar system, evidence had been accumulating of organics in some of the giant gaseous planets and their satellites… Saturn’s satellite Titan … [had] a rich assortment of at least nine simple organic molecules… Ironically, it turned out that more organics existed beyond Mars than on Mars, the planet on which a billion dollars had been spent to search for life…. [Yet] the existence of organics even at the level or amino acids had not been proved in outer space. In this sense, most interstellar chemistry… had not reached the level of the Miller-Urey experiment in 1953. And even if reports of detection of the amino acid glycine in molecular clouds at the center of the galaxy turned out to be true, it was a long way from life… Still, even former skeptics were among those claiming organics from interstellar dust particles and meteorites, and by the end of the century there was some consensus that the source of organic material for the beginning of life on Earth could have been outer space.” (Pg. 184-185)

He notes, “By 1971… the Drake Equation had become a common feature of the SETI movement, and had succeeded in persuading not only the public but also many astronomers of the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence... one measure of the seriousness with which some in the scientific community took the existence of extraterrestrials by the mid-1970s is evident in the reaction of the Nobel-Prize-winning astronomer Sir Martin Ryle. When in 1974 Drake and other astronomers… sent a message to some 300,000 stars… Ryle objected strenuously… he agitated for the International Astronomical Union to urge that no attempts be made to communicate with other civilizations because of possible hostile consequences. Although suggestions were made for the modification of the Drake Equation, it continued to be used in substantially unchanged form. Users realized its weaknesses, and critics were quick to point them out. The equation, [Ronald] Bracewell noted, boiled down to two factors---the rate of formation of intelligent communities and their longevity, about neither one of which anything was known.” (Pg. 216-217)

He laments, “Almost exactly a quarter-century after … [the original] NASA interest in SETI, it was unceremoniously excised from the U.S. government, not only cutting off the federal government’s financial and intellectual sponsorship … but also denying the support NASA had given to other projects. A significant number of the project’s personnel, however, joined the nonprofit SETI Institute, which had considerable success in raising private funding to carry on at least a scaled-back version of the original Targeted Search. [It was k]nown as Project Phoenix…Thus, although the demise of the NASA program was a severe blow to SETI advocates, and though the political hazards of government funding for SETI had been amply demonstrated, in the last decade of the century SETI remained well entrenched both as a topic for interdisciplinary scientific discussion and as an observational activity.” (Pg. 230-231)

He concludes, “the idea of extraterrestrials constituted for many people a worldview no less influential and appealing than the geocentric spheres and choirs of angels of the medieval worldview. The move from the physical world to the biological universe, was one of the most distinctive traits of the 20th century… the extraterrestrial debate causes us to reexamine the very foundations of our knowledge and belief in a wide variety of subjects… All take on a new meaning if life is abundant in the universe---and if it is not. Even if extraterrestrials are not discovered, and extraterrestrially motivated reexamination of the knowledge and belief that we all too often take for granted is a considerable legacy for one of the 20th century’s most persistent debates.” (Pg. 271-273)

This book (as well as ‘The Biological Universe’) is absolute “must reading” for anyone seriously studying the extraterrestrial hypotheses; it includes not only “historical” material, but even detailed summaries of fiction, and films, dealing with aliens.