Abstract
More than thirty years ago the French historian of science Alexandre Koyré (1957) wrote his classic volume, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, in which he argued that a fundamental shift in world view had taken place in 17th century cosmology. Between Nicholas of Cusa in the fifteenth century and Newton and Leibniz in the seventeenth, he found that the very terms in which humans thought about their universe had changed. These changes he characterized broadly as the destruction of the closed finite cosmos and the geometrization of space. The occasion of the Third International Bioastronomy Symposium in France is an especially appropriate time to argue that the SETI endeavor represents a test for a similar fundamental shift in cosmological world view, from the physical world to the biological universe. I define the “biological universe,” equivalent to what I have called before the “biophysical cosmology” (Dick, 1989), as the scientific world view which holds that life is widespread throughout the universe. In this case the biological universe does not necessarily supersede the physical universe, but a universe filled with life would certainly fundamentally alter our attitude toward the universe, and our place in it. Although Koyré mentioned life beyond the Earth as an adjunct to the revolution from the closed world to the infinite universe, only in the 1980s has the history of science begun to give full treatment to the subject. What follows is meant to be a contribution to that ongoing endeavor to understand where the extraterrestrial life debate fits in the history of science.
The modern era in the extraterrestrial life debate is normally dated from Cocconi and Morrison's paper in 1959, and though one can always find precursors, this in my view is a valid perception. Cocconi and Morrison gave definite form to SETI, Frank Drake independently first carried out the experiment, a network of interested scientists began to form and met in Green Bank in November 1961, and the most distinctive part of the modern era of the extraterrestrial life debate - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by means of radio telescopes — was off and running. In this paper, after briefly reviewing some of the long-term steps toward the biological universe, I would like to examine the immediate precursors to this modern era in the 1940s and 1950s.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Brush, Stephen: 1978, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 9, 1–41, 77–104.
Brush, Stephen: 1981, Space Science Comes of Age, ed. Paul Hanle and Von del Chamberlain, Smithsonian Press: Washington, D.C.
Brush, Stephen: 1990, Reviews of Modem Physics, 62, 43–112.
Calvin, Melvin: 1959, Proceedings of the Lunar and Planetary Exploration Colloquium, April 25, 1959, 1, no. 6, 8–18.
Campbell, W. W.: 1920, Science, 52 (December 10, 1920), 550.
Chalmers, Thomas: 1817, A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, crewed in Connexion with Modern Astronomy, Edinburgh.
Cocconi, Giuseppe and Philip Morrison: 1959, Nature, 184, 844.
Crowe, Michael: 1986, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750–1900. The Idea of a Plurality of Worlds from Kant to Lowell, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Dick, Steven J.: 1980, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1–27.
Dick, Steven J.: 1982, Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Dick, Steven J.: 1989, The Planetary Report, March–April, 13–17.
Dick, Steven J.: forthcoming, The Twentieth Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate: A Study of Science at its Limits, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Drake, Frank D.: 1960, Sky and Telescope, 19, 140–43.
Drake, Frank D.: 1961: Physics Today, 14, 40.
Hale, George Ellery: 1907, The Study of Stellar Evolution, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2.
Hoyle, Fred: 1950, The Nature of the Universe., 26, 101.
Hoyle, Fred: 1955, Frontiers of Astronomy., 83, 104–05.
Hoyle, Fred: 1960, The Nature of the Universe, 2d ed., 32, 81, 90.
Huang, Su-Shu: 1957, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 69, 427.
Huang, Su-Shu: 1959, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 71, 421.
Jaki, Stanley L.: 1978, Planets and Planetarians.: A History of Theories of the Origin of Planetary Systems, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh.
Jeans, James: 1919, Problems of Cosmogony and Stellar Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 290.
Jeans, James: 1923, The Nebular Hypothesis and Modern Cosmogony, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 30.
Jeans, James: 1942a (written 1941), Science, 95, 589.
Jeans, James: 1942b, Nature, 149, 695.
Koyré, Alexandre: 1957, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Kuiper, Gerard P.: 1949, in Atmospheres of the Earth and Planets, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Kuiper, Gerard P.: 1951, ch. 8 in Astrophysics, (McGraw Hill, New York) ed. J. A. Hynek, 416–417.
Lowell, Percival: 1909, The Evolution of Worlds. (New York).
Miller, Stanley L.: 1953, Science, 117, 528–29.
Morrison, Philip, John Billingham and John Wolfe, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (NASA, 1977).
Page, Thornton: Physics Today (October, 1948), 12–24.
Paine, Thomas: 1793, Age of Reason.
Reuyl, Dirk and Erik Holmberg: 1943, Astrophysical Journal, 97, 41–45.
Russell, Henry Norris: 1935, The Solar System and Its Origin.
Russell, Henry Noms: 1943, Scientific American (July, 1943), 18–19.
Russell, Henry Norris, R. S. Dugan and J. Q. Stewart: 1926, Astronomy, vol. 1, 468.
Shapley, Harlow: 1923, Harper's Monthly Magazine, 146, 716–22.
Shapley, Harlow: 1958, Of Stars and Men, Beacon Press, Boston, 104–114.
Sinton, William: 1957, Astrophysical Journal, 126, 231–39.
Sinton, William: 1959, Science (6 November, 1959), 1234.
Strand, Kaj: 1943, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 55, 29–32.
Struve, Otto: 1930, Astrophysical Journal, 72, 1.
Struve, Otto: 1950, Stellar Evolution, 150-51, 231–39.
Struve, Otto: 1952, Observatory, 72, 199–200.
Struve, Otto: 1955, Sky and Telescope, 14, 137–140, 146.
Struve, Otto: 1961, The Universe, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 157–59.
Swift, David: 1990, SETI Pioneers, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 54–85; 130, 141–44.
Tipler, Frank: 1987, Physics Today, December, 1987, 92.
Tipler, Frank: 1988, Physics Today, September, 1988, 14–15 and 142–44.
von Weizsäcker, C. F.: 1944, Zeitschrift fr Astrophysik, 22, 319–55.
von Weizsäcker, C. F.: 1951, Astrophysical Journal, 114, 165–86.
Whewell, William: 1853, Of the Plurality of Worlds: An Essay, London.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1991 Springer-Verlag
About this paper
Cite this paper
Dick, S.J. (1991). From the physical world to the biological universe: Historical developments underlying SETI. In: Heidmann, J., Klein, M.J. (eds) Bioastronomy. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 390. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54752-5_248
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54752-5_248
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-54752-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46447-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive