Abstract
The well-known argument against the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) due to George Gaylord Simpson is re-analyzed almost half a century later, in the light of our improved understanding of preconditions for the emergence of life and intelligence brought about by the ongoing “astrobiological revolution”. Simpson’s argument has been enormously influential, in particular in biological circles, and it arguably fueled the most serious opposition to SETI programmes and their funding. I argue that both proponents and opponents of Simpson’s argument have occasionally mispresented its core content. Proponents often oversimplify it as just another consequence of biological contingency, thus leaving their position open to general arguments limiting the scope of contingency in evolution (such as the recent argument of Geerat Vermeij based on selection effects in the fossil record). They also tend to neglect that the argument has been presented as essentially atemporal, while referring to entities and processes that are likely to change over time; this has become even less justifiable as our astrobiological knowledge increased in recent years. Opponents have failed to see that the weaknesses in Simpson’s position could be removed by restructuring of the argument; I suggest one way of such restructuring, envisioned long ago in the fictional context by Stanislaw Lem. While no firm consensus has emerged on the validity of Simpson’s argument so far, I suggest that, contrary to the original motivation, today it is less an anti-SETI argument, and more an astrobiological research programme. In this research programme, SETI could be generalized into a platform for testing some of the deepest assumptions about evolutionary continuity and the relative role of contingency versus convergence on unprecedented spatial and temporal scales.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Wallace (1903, p 306).
Simpson (1964, p 771).
E.g., “A humanoid is something that has an appearance resembling a human being.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanoid).
Simpson (1964, p 771).
Gould (1989, pp 309–311).
Ibid., p. 774.
While I accept this premise in the following discussion, it is important to understand its limitations. (1) To what extent is intelligence a trait that can be discretely assigned to humans and not, for instance, to great apes, or marine mammals, or even some cephalopods? (2) Do our near relatives, like Neanderthals or Homo floresiensis, constitute separate species? Finally (3), how certain can we be that intelligence has not evolved previously in the course of Earth's history and was wiped out by a catastrophic mass extinction erasing all traces of its activity? (cf. McKay 1996) While this may seem overly pedantic, it is important to be open to the most general forms of any argument pretending to pertain to the level of generality required by the astrobiological context.
Gould (1987).
Conway Morris (2003, p 136).
Simpson (1964, p 774).
Lem (1987, pp 91–92).
Simpson (1964, p 775).
References
Annis J (1999) Placing a limit on star-fed Kardashev type III civilisations. J British Interplanet Soc 52:33–36
Arnold LFA (2005) Transit light-curve signatures of artificial objects. Astrophys J 627:534–539
Basalla G (2006) Intelligent life in the universe. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Beckwith SVW (2008) Detecting life-bearing extrasolar planets with space telescopes. Astrophys J 684:1404–1415
Belkora L (2002) Minding the heavens: the story of our discovery of the Milky Way. Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol
Benton MJ (2003) When life nearly died: the greatest mass extinction of all time. Thames and Hudson, London
Bostrom N, Ćirković MM (eds) (2008) Global catastrophic risks. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Bracewell RN (1975) The galactic club: intelligent life in outer space. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco
Bradbury RJ, Ćirković MM, Dvorsky G (2011) Dysonian approach to SETI: a fruitful middle ground? J British Interplanet Soc 64:156–165
Chela-Flores J (2003) Testing evolutionary convergence on Europa. Int J Astrobiol 2:307–312
Chyba CF, Hand K (2005) Astrobiology: the study of the living universe. Annu Rev Astron Astrophys 43:31–74
Ćirković MM (2012) The astrobiological landscape: philosophical foundations of the study of cosmic life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Ćirković MM, Bradbury RJ (2006) Galactic gradients, postbiological evolution and the apparent failure of SETI. New Astron 11:628–639
Conway Morris S (2003) Life’s solution: inevitable humans in a lonely universe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Crowe MJ (1986) The extraterrestrial life debate 1750–1900. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Davies PCW (1995) Are we alone? Philosophical implications of the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Basic Books, New York
Davies PCW (2011) Searching for a shadow biosphere on Earth as a test of the ‘cosmic imperative’. Philos Trans R Soc A 369:624–632
Dick SJ (1996) The biological universe: the twentieth-century extraterrestrial life debate and the limits of science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Dick SJ (2006) NASA and the search for life in the universe. Endeavor 30:71–75
Dick SJ (2012) Critical issues in the history, philosophy, and sociology of astrobiology. Astrobiology 12:906–927
Dyson FJ (1960) Search for artificial stellar sources of infrared radiation. Science 131:1667–1668
Erwin DH (1993) The Great Paleozoic crisis: life and death in the permian. Columbia University Press, New York
Erwin DH (2006) Extinction: how life on earth nearly ended 250 million years ago. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
Freitas RA Jr (1985) Observable characteristics of extraterrestrial technological civilizations. J British Interplanet Soc 38:106–112
Fry I (2000) The emergence of life on earth: a historical and scientific overview. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ
Gale J (2009) Astrobiology of earth: the emergence, evolution, and future of life on a planet in turmoil. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Garber SJ (1999) Searching for good science: the cancellation of NASA’s SETI program. J British Interplanet Soc 52:3–12
Gould SJ (1987) The Flamingo’s smile: reflections in natural history. W. W. Norton & Company, New York
Gould SJ (1989) Wonderful life: the burgess shale and the nature of history. W. W. Norton, New York
Gould SJ (2002) The structure of evolutionary theory. Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA
Harada K, Yoshida E, Yokoi K (2010) Motion planning for humanoid robots. Springer, New York
Harris MJ (1986) On the detectability of antimatter propulsion space-craft. Astrophys Space Sci 123:297–303
Harris MJ (2002) Limits from CGRO/EGRET data on the use of antimatter as a power source by extraterrestrial civilizations. J British Interplanet Soc 55:383–393
Heffernan WC (1978) The singularity of our inhabited world: William Whewell and A. R. Wallace in dissent. J Hist Ideas 39:81–100
Hofman MA (1982) Encephalization in mammals in relation to the size of the cerebral cortex. Brain Behav Evol 20:84–96
Ingrosso G, Novati SC, de Paolis F, Jetzer P, Nucita AA, Zakharov AF (2009) Pixel lensing as a way to detect extrasolar planets in M31. Mon Not R Astron Soc 399:219–228
Ingrosso G, Novati SC, de Paolis F, Jetzer P, Nucita A, Zakharov A (2011) Search for exoplanets in M31 with pixel-lensing and the PA-99-N2 event revisited. Gen Relativ Gravit 43:1047–1060
Kaltenegger L, Sasselov D (2010) Detecting planetary geochemical cycles on exoplanets: atmospheric signatures and the case of SO2. Astrophys J 708:1162–1167
Ledford H (2012) The biological Higgs. Nature 483:528–530
Lem S (1974, 1977) Summa Technologiae Nolit, Belgrade, in Serbian
Lem S (1987) Fiasco. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Orlando, FL
Lineweaver CH (2001) An estimate of the age distribution of terrestrial planets in the universe: quantifying metallicity as a selection effect. Icarus 151:307–313
Lineweaver CH, Grether D (2003) What fraction of Sun-like stars have planets? Astrophys J 598:1350–1360
Lineweaver CH, Fenner Y, Gibson BK (2004) The Galactic Habitable Zone and the age distribution of complex life in the Milky Way. Science 303:59–62
MacGowan RA, Ordway FI (1966) Intelligence in the universe. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Mason JW (ed) (2008) Exoplanets: detection, formation, properties, habitability. Springer Praxis, Chichester
Mayr E (1993) The search for intelligence. Science 259:1522–1523
McKay CP (1996) Time for intelligence on other planets. In: Doyle (LR) Circumstellar habitable zones, proceedings of the first international conference. Travis House Publications, Menlo Park, pp 405–419
Michaud MAG (2007) Contact with alien civilizations: our hopes and fears about encountering extraterrestrials. Copernicus Books, New York
Morange M (2007) What history tells us X. Fifty years ago: the beginnings of exobiology. J Biosci 32:1083–1087
Penny A (2011) SETI: peering into the future. Astron Geophys 52:1.21–1.24
Rospars J-P (2011) Terrestrial biological evolution and its implication for SETI. Acta Astronaut 67:1361–1365
Russell DA (1983) Exponential evolution: implications for extraterrestrial intelligent life. Adv Space Res 3:95–103
Russell DA (1995) Biodiversity and time scales for the evolution of extraterrestrial intelligence. In: Seth Shostak G (ed) Progress in the search for extraterrestrial life. ASP conference series, vol 74, San Francisco, pp 143–151
Sagan C, Walker RG (1966) The infrared detectability of Dyson civilizations. Astrophys J 144:1216–1218
Seager S, Deming D (2010) Exoplanet atmospheres. Ann Rev Astron Astrophys 48:631–672
Simpson GG (1944) Tempo and mode in evolution. Columbia University Press, New York
Simpson GG (1964) The nonprevalence of humanoids. Science 143:769–775
Strick JE (2004) Creating a cosmic discipline: the crystallization and consolidation of exobiology, 1957–1973. J Hist Biol 37:131–180
Tarter J (2001) The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Annu Rev Astron Astrophys 39:511–548
Tilgner CN, Heinrichsen I (1998) A program to search for Dyson spheres with the infrared space observatory. Acta Astronaut 42:607–612
Turnbull MC, Traub WA, Jucks KW, Woolf NJ, Meyer MR, Gorlova N, Skrutskie MF, Wilson JC (2006) Spectrum of a habitable world: earthshine in the near-infrared. Astrophys J 644:551–559
Ulvestad E (2002) Biosemiotic knowledge—a prerequisite for valid explorations of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Sign Syst Studies 30:283–292
Valencia D, O’Connell RJ, Sasselov DD (2007) Inevitability of plate tectonics on super-Earths. Astrophys J 670:L45–L48
Vermeij GJ (2006) Historical contingency and the purported uniqueness of evolutionary innovations. PNAS 103:1804-1809
Wallace AR (1903) Man’s place in the universe: a study of the results of scientific research in relation to the unity or plurality of worlds. Chapman & Hall Ltd, London
Ward PD, Brownlee D (2000) Rare earth: why complex life is uncommon in the universe. Springer, New York
Wolfe AJ (2002) Germs in space. Joshua Lederberg, exobiology, and the public imagination, 1958–1964. Isis Int Rev Devoted Hist Sci Cult Influ 93:183–205
Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to thank the editor, Kim Sterelny, for his kind help, encouragement, and dilligent work in improving previous versions of this manuscript. Two anonymous referees are acknowledged for important suggestions and criticisms. Detailed comments of Biljana Stojković, Ivan Almár, and Daniel Kostić have been extremely helpful in sharpening the focus of the paper and clarifying key controversial points. I wish to thank Anders Sandberg, Branislav Vukotić, Nick Bostrom, Slobodan Popović, Nikola Tucić, Slobodan Perović, Ivana Kojadinović, Katarina Atanacković, Karl Schroeder, Aleksandar Obradović, Jelena Andrejić, Dušica Božović, Momčilo Jovanović, Goran Milovanović, Eva Kamerer, Dušan Indjić, Zona Kostić, George Dvorsky, Zoran Knežević, Jacob Haqq-Misra, the late Robert Bradbury, and the late Branislav Šimpraga for many pleasant and useful discussions on the topics related to the subject matter of this study. This is an opportunity to thank KoBSON Consortium of Serbian libraries, which enabled at least partial overcoming of the gap in obtaining the scientific literature during the tragic 1990s. This research has been supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia through the project ON176021.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ćirković, M.M. Evolutionary contingency and SETI revisited. Biol Philos 29, 539–557 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9397-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9397-8