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Point well taken.
Thanks for the interesting references; they will make good reading. The
scientific method indeed is our best means of accumulating reliable information
about the world and worlds around us. However, I believe, we are driven to
seek such information by the whims, hopes and dreams within us. Are we not
all hoping to find whales swimming in the oceans of Europa?
One reason scientists are cautious is in taking the lesson from
Percival Lowell and the planet Mars from a century ago.
Poorly
seen natural marking on the Red Planet were turned into giant
canals for an ancient, dying civilization by the Boston Brahmin.
This is one reason that planetary science and astrobiology were
put down by the mainstream astronomical community for decades
afterwards.
Larry
----- Original Message -----
From:
Michael Turner
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 10:28
PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: No life detected in
Atacama Desert in Chile
John Ingrassia:
> ... As a non-scientist watching
eagerly from the sidelines, I wonder why
we even start
> with the
proposition that 'life' would have to be physical in nature at
all,
rather than some
> form of energy, or other as yet undiscovered
component of our universe. I
realize that
> the physical,
organic, carbon based beings may be easiest for us to
discover, but
surely
> we don't think that that's everything, do we?
Surely
we don't *know* whether or not that's everything. Science
proceeds
largely by disproving falsifiable hypotheses, and by allowing
some weight of
evidence to accumulate for any other hypotheses still
standing. If you want
to
dispense with this methodology, you can
always join Eckankar, and fly to
other
worlds in your dreams, enjoying
a universe chock full of interesting
extraterrestrials.
And you'll
have lots of company in your belief that the universe not
only
has
extraterrestrial life, but civilizations as well. You
just won't have any
proof.
If you hew to scientific methodology,
however, you have to admit that a
search
for life must, at least,
start from what's known, and be based on
what's
physically
verifiable. This can be rather boring, and it
can lead to a lot of
argumentation and
hard, frustrating work, at the
end of which one might only have a pile of
disproved
hypotheses and
not much else. As a scientist of my acquaintance put it
last
week,
one of the big disappointments of his early career was the
realization that
life is
not a Tom Clancy novel. Crash programs
are mainly a great way to waste a
lot of
money. Realism slows
things down, and makes you very cautious. And you
require
that
evidence be "physical in nature" because all other paths lead
to
angelology
and demonology. You test, and eliminate,
hypotheses in the most economical
manner possible.
In this view,
the recent inability to discover life on Earth (in regions
where
is
most resembles Mars, using observatories) is, in fact, a useful
discovery in
itself. Perfecting instruments for a search using a
more conventional
picture of
life doesn't mean that the search will be
called off if life isn't found
that way -- it just
means that the
search will have to shift to other hypotheses. They are
just
working from the most likely hypotheses at the moment. Nothing
wrong with
that. It doesn't make them closed-minded. Just
practical.
Christopher England wrote:
> If there's anything
certain, it is that any
> life we find off the Earth will be
different, likely extremely
> different.
Different?
Yes. Even if the life turns out to be terrestrial
in origin, it
will have adapted. But that's true even of life
that has stayed on
this planet. "Likely extremely different"?
That's not clear at
all. It may well be that, for one reason
or another, it all comes
down to conventional organic chemistry.
We just don't know
yet.
-michael turner
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> -----Original
Message-----
> From: Christopher England
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 8:03
PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: BioAstro
> Subject: Re: No
life detected in Atacama Desert in Chile
>
>
>
>
It's knowing where to look, and for what to look. I don't think we
(we
> Earthfolk) are there yet. If there's anything certain, it
is that any
> life we find off the Earth will be different, likely
extremely
> different.
>
> Chris
> ==
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