Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man
Life Beyond Earth & The Mind of Man
Edited by Richard Berendzen
A symposium held at Boston University on November 20, 1972
(C) 1973 NASA Scientific and Technical Information Office * Washington DC
NASA SP-328
Stock Number 033-000-00518-1
Catalog Number NAS 1.21:328
Library of Congress Catalog No. 73-600150
[Note: The following are selected excerpts from the above publication]
BERENDZEN
Welcome to the symposium on "Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man." Our topic will be the search for life in the universe and the ramifications of its possible discovery. Although there have been a handful of scientific meetings on this topic, to the best of my knowledge this it the first time there has ever been a meeting where a distinguished panel from diverse fields will discuss the topic in an open forum.
A generation ago almost all scientists would have argued, often "ex cathedra," that there probably is no other life in the universe beside what we know here on Earth. But as Martin Rees, the cosmologist, has succinctly put it, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Beyond that, in the last decade or so the evidence, albeit circumstantial, has become large indeed, so large, in fact, that today many scientists, probably the majority, are convinced that extraterrestrial life surely must exist and possibly in enormous abundance. The question now is no longer so much of IF as of WHERE, and with regard to the search, it has also become WHEN, for ultimate contact seems to many serious thinkers to be virtually inevitable. A short passage from the recent report of the Astronomy Survey Committee of the august National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the Nation's most distinguished scientific body, gives an example of the modern scientific attitude:
"Each passing year has seen our estimates of the probability of life in space increase, along with our capabilities for detecting it. More and more scientists feel that contact with other civilizations is no longer something beyond our dreams but a natural event in the history of mankind that will perhaps occur within the lifetime of many of us. The promise is now too great, either to turn away from it or to wait much longer before devoting major resources to a search for other intelligent beings... In the long run this may be one of science's most important and most profound contributions to mankind and to our civilization."
I believe it fair to say, therefore, that this momentous topic deserves careful, thorough discussion, and that is what I hope we shall give it today.
ADDITIONAL MEMBERS OF THE PANEL
ASHLEY MONTAGU: renowned anthropologist and social biologist. For many years he was chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers. He is the author of scores of books and research papers on a variety of topics in the social sciences, including the social and cultural development of mankind.
KRISTER STENDAHL: an outstanding churchman and theologican, who is the Dean of Harvard School of Divinity. Dr. Stendahl is considered to be one of the Nation's most scholarly theologians.
CARL SAGAN: astronomer and exobiologist at Cornell University, and one of the five or six leading researchers on this question of extraterrestrial life. He is the coauthor with the Soviet astronomer I.S. Shklovskii of the book Intelligent Life in the Universe.
PHILIP MORRISON: a professor of physics at MIT during this time, 13 years prior to this symposium coauthored what was perhaps the first scientifically valid and reasoned paper ever published on possible modes of communications with etraterrestrial life. Dr. Morrison is considered in scholarly circles as one of the most broadly knowledgeable scientists in the Nation.
GEORGE WALD: a professor of biology at Harvard. In 1967 he received the Nobel Prize. Dr. Walk has published extensively in all branches of biology, including the biological and chemical evolution of terrestrial life.
WALD
The chance of breaking out of the solar system and establishing physical contact - or the chance of any creature in outer space establishing physical contact with us, coming to us from some other solar system -- seems to me so remote as to be almost nil. In order to do that, one would have to travel at the speed of light and it is rather hard to travel at the speed of light and not be light. So I rather doubt that physical contact is possible.
But we now are discussing another kind of contact, and that is communication. May I say, so that we can have a somewhat warmer and livelier conversation as this meeting goes on, that I can conceive of no nightmare as terrifying as establishing such communication with a so-called superior (or if you wish, advanced) technology in outer space. You see, I see no escape from the thought that more advanced technologies exist, very likely in a number of places within our own galaxy. That though in itself is a little terrifying to me, I must say, because of my view of and identification with the human enterprise.
You see, when I ask myself as a lifelong scientist, "What's science about?" the answer is not to increase the catalog of facts, it is to achieve understanding. It means a great deal that one of the greatest human enterprises is understnaind. It is something that men have sweated out, to the greater dignity and worth of man. The thought that we might attach, as by an umbilical cord, to some more advanced civilization, with its more advanced science and technology, in outer space does not thrill me, but just the opposite. You see, I think it might thrill and fill with elation the people who did it; but that is true of almost any enterprise one could name, however horrifying, however destructive to the rest of mankind. You cannot think of anything so horrifying that some person would not have a feeling of personal accomplishment at carrying it out; and I would say that the rest of us had better restrain him.
MONTAGU
These two facts render it likely, to judge from our immediate past performance [*note: 10,000 years of humanity as opposed to longer civilization maintenance by an extraterretestrial society], that upon encountering them, our Government will immediately convene a committee in order to determine whether these creatures constitute a threat to democracy. Since their physical appearance will be markedly different and since difference is usually equated in our culture with inferiority, no matter what the intellectual status of these creatures may be, and regardless of the healthy ways of life that characterize them, we shall, of course, know exactly where we belong in the nature of things.
In short, we would have rather a problem on out hands, but we would not want, I suppose, the American way of life to be contaminated. With the record we have of treatment of the American Indians, the blacks, the Chicanos, and other minority groups, and our record in such places as Mexico, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, and wherever else we have attempted to make the world safe for democracy, you can foresee what is likely to happen.
I hope you will understand that the assignment I was given was worded in the form, "How might human beings react to the discovery of life beyond Earth?" and I have interpreted the word "might" to mean "how may we probably react" and "how should we react." We are coming to the "should."
I do not think we should wait until the encounter occurs; we should do all in our power to prepare ourselves for it. The manner in which we first meet may determine the character of all our subsequent relations. Let us never forget the fatal impact we have had upon innumerable peoples on this Earth -- peoples of our own species who trusted us, befriended us, and whom we destroyed by our thoughtlessness and insensitivity to their needs and vulnerabilities.
The simple truth is that before we can communicate with others successfully, we must first learn to communicate with ourselves successfully, and we are a long way from having achieved that. Perhaps that is where we ought to begin -- with ourselves. Learning to communicate with ourselves, with all the different peoples and nations of the Earth. We go on behaving as if we believe there is very little wrong, if anything, with ourselves. We refuse to face the fact that we have already virtually destroyed ourselves as humane beings, and if we recognize any destruction at all, it is that of our environment. We must recognize that we are suffering from a sickness even though it has been repeatedly denied; nevertheless it is, from my point of view as a student of human nature, a fact that most people are no longer humane beings, but sick persons - a sickness induced by the worship of false values which have corrupted the spirit of man and made him the most dangerous creature on this Earth. Unless he cures himself of this sickness, can one reasonably expect such a creature to behave in a healthy manner? What one can expect him to do is to behave destructively, and a good deal of the time to be unaware of the fact that he is doing so.
Hence, to the question, "How might human beings react to the discovery of life beyond Earth?" I would answer: "Don't wait until that life is discovered, but prepare yourselves for the discovery by becoming what you ought to be, by realizing your evolutionary destiny, which is to live as to live and love were one." And what is love? It is the ability to confer survival benefits in a creatively enlarging manner upon the other. And what is health? It is the ability to love, to work, and to play. If we will begin on such a a program of rehabilitation, we may be able to respond to the discovery of life beyond Earth in an enhancing manner.
We have landed on the Moon. It might not be such a bad idea if we tried landing on Earth. When asked by a European inquirer what he thought of Western civilization, Gandhi paused awhile, and wrly smiling, replied, "I don't think it would be such a bad idea."
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
QUESTION:
Communications between ourselves and other civilizations can be considered in general in two basic categories. One is a sort of passive communication in which we receive information from other beings; we must sit there and compile it and perhaps eventually sort it out. And the other is an active communication, in which we ourselves can try sending signals. And as far as the active part is concerned, the first step outght to be to construct some sort of signal that would be identifiable as to the fact that we were intelligent beings. But beyond that, as Carl Sagan said, these people are a lot more intelligent than we are. The next step would be to send out one piece of information that would characterize our society. Since they are probably more intelligent or advanced than we, deep consideration should be given to just precisely what piece of information should be sent out, because the wrong characterization of our society, or the wrong interpretation of it, could be quite damaging in the long run.
SAGAN:
I do not think it is quite as urgent to send as to receive, which may be a paraphrase of a Biblical passage. Also, I again would want to stress that, willy-nilly, we have been sending, so your remarks are most properly directed to the FCC. The image of our society, which is garnered at some place 30 light years out, is the image you get by turning on the lat-night tube. So if you are worried about sending out the wrong message, you have every reason to be worried.
BERENDZEN:
Let me mention something that I would hate to pass without adequate discussion. Is it possible that if we detected a signal from space, it would have the dramatic, beneficial effect on mankind to bringing us together?
SAGAN:
Well, I alluded to that before. I think chances of that happening are very great, because as soon as it is clear that there is somebody else out there and they are smarter than us and they are different from us, then the differences between the various slight subsets of mankind which people are spending a lot of time worrying about -- those differences I think tend to...
MONTAGU:
Look, we have had someone out there for an awfully long time, whom Dr. Stendahl calls "God." I take it he is referring to the Christian God. As an anthropologist I am acquainted with several hundred gods. And this God is supposed to be all wise and all-loving, etc. We seem to have learned very little from Him. Why should our communication with extraterrestrial beings have a more cohesive effect that the concepts of the Catholic Church, for example?
SAGAN:
It is a good question. There are many possible long answers, but maybe the fastest answer I can give is that there may be some room for doubt about the reality of the several hundred gods you were talking about, but once the message is received, I think there will be very little room for doubt about the reality of the message.
MONTAGU:
But I do not doubt the existence of any of these hundreds of Gods! I believe anything you believe to be real is as real as it could possibly be, even though it's unreal.
SAGAN:
That's why you have such an exemplary moral character!
QUESTION:
I would like to direct a question to Carl Sagan. Professor Wald has raised the issue of the control of technology. Now the conference that took place in Soviet Armenia was a mutual conference between two great powers. Professor Morrison has raised the possibility that a tremendous corpus of knowledge can come wafting down from outer space. Suppose that this comes into an American facility in Puerto Rico, technology that would enable us to dominate this world. Suppose it comes into a Soviet facility in Armenia. What exactly would be the international body that would monitor these signals from outer space, assuming that this civilization that we would be communicating with is more advanced and would be giving us tremendous technological knowledge? What is to guarantee that one of the existing nation-states does not monitor it and use it as we have used our technology in the past?
SAGAN:
Very good question. Fortunately, I think it has a quick answer. The answer has to do with time scale and beamwidth. As Phil Morrison stressed, and he *must* be right, the time scale to learn a new technology from such a message must be long - decades perhaps. No one is going to say, "Put tab A into slot B." You want to think a little before you do that. You do not say, "Oh, yess, sir; right in." You want to understand what is happening first. So things will move slowly if there is a new technology involved. That is the first part of the answer.
The second part is that the Earth is tiny compared to the size of the beam. Therefore, all of the Earth -- not just Armenia and Puerto Rico -- but also the Netherlands and Australia and Ghana and all the other countries are going to be able to pick up the same message. Therefore it makes no sense at all for one nation to classify the message. It is like classifying the Sun. It makes no sense., You can do it if you want, but it does not help.
QUESTION:
The assumption is that these messages are now passing through other solar system. We have to assume that we are just not receiving them now. If you know that if you are the first country to discover this body of knowledge, you'll have a major advantage, then might not...
SAGAN:
The you have to imagine a scenario in which there is a large, secret radio telescope that is working for a century on a given problem and word never leaks out. I myself find that difficult to believe, especially since the total number of radio astronomers in the world is extremely small, and all of them know each other. Also, I believe that the community of scientists on this issue is such that it is impossible for such a discovery to be made without it being known on an international scale.
WALD:
Once again, all the nations will be listening in equally, provided they have equally big radio telescopes. So we will have a radio-telescope race, and God help the nation that has a somewhat smaller radio telescope that the others. As for the community of world science, this is the first time I have heard that it covers weapons technology.
SAGAN:
We are not talking about weapons technology.
WALD:
But this can be converted into weapons technology.
SAGAN:
Sure, but it starts out by saying, "A,B,C,D...." Do you say, "Let's classify the alphabet and maybe the next thing that comes in will be how to build a better weapon"? I just cannot see it.
WALD:
But that is the way nuclear energy appeared. One did not know what to do with it or how to handle it, so a few nations with the technical facilities and the wealth got themselves atom bombs.
QUESTION:
The assumption has been up to now that any message received will be via some electromagnetic wavelength. It would seem to me that this is a very naive assumption to make in view of the fact that the senders, as has been stated repeatedly, will be far more intelligent that us, and may have access to means of which we are completely unware.
BERENDZEN:
Excellent point. Phil, you have given much though to this. Would you respond?
MORRISON:
If the thousand-megacycle bands of radio are not the best ones, even though they are easily accessible, then there is no question about it, we will find nothing from this search. The only trouble with that kind of argument is that it could be put forward at any time, no matter what technology is presently available. You can always say there is something we do not know that 10 years from now will be much better understood. Therefore I think if you say this, your inaction is guaranteed; then you surely will never make the search.
And it can be the other way around. When it turns out after sober thought that you find yourself easily able to listen by some means that looks plausible, that will in fact carry the message, then try it. I believe there is a society of these groups, not just one. There are probably very many. If there were only one, we would likely have no hope of finding it. But there are probably thousands, maybe as many as million. They probably have already had much experience at finding new civilizations and bringing them into the network. If so, they will understand that they should not start with the most advanced device; if you want to make friends with some new group somewher, you do not set up color TV stations. You might wave a flag or beat a drum. You know you have access to those channels.
SAGAN:
I would look at it like this. Suppose that we were a tribe in some isolated valley in, say, New Guinea, where we communicate with our neighbours over in the next valley by runner and by drum. And we are asked to imagine an advanced civilization thousands of miles away. How would they communicate? I would say, "Oh, probably by very fast runners or enormous drums that beat very loud." In fact, there is a vast international radio and cable traffic going around such people, and over them, and through them, and they would not know about it. But that radio and cable traffic is not intended to talk to the inhabitants of that isolated valley. It is intended for conversation between technologically more sophisticated beings. If we wanted to talk to them, then we would need to use the technology of the local civilization.
And I would imagine that if an advanced civilization wanted to talk to us, they would say, "Those guys must be extremely backward. Let's go to some ancient museum and pull out ... what do you call it?... one of those radio telescopes, and beam it at them." But meanwhile they would use for their own purposes whatever it is they use -- gravity wavers, or neutrinos, or tachyons, or whatever is the fast, high-informational channel.
QUESTION:
Do you think it is more likely that the message we will intercept will be going back and forth between two members of a society or will it be an exploratory one, aimed just as us?
MORRISON:
If we get the message at all, it is not likely to be just a chance beam that crosses us -- that is very unlikely.
QUESTION:
But it will have a wide beamwidth, as was pointed out.
MORRISON:
If it is a wide beam, then the beam would be include probably just exactly these search channels we are talking about. If it is not that, it will be very hard to find a message that has not been designed to be easy to read. If it is just high-speed chatter on some frequency we cannot use, I do not know if we are ever going to find it.
SAGAN:
Wide beam compared to the size of the Earth but narrow beam compared to how many stars you are going to pick up.
