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8 - The quest for habitable worlds and life beyond the solar system

from Part II - Extent of life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2010

By
Carl B. Pilcher  and
Jack J. Lissauer
Edited by
Constance M. Bertka
Constance M. Bertka
Affiliation:
AAAS, Washington
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Summary

There are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours … We must believe that in all worlds there are living creatures and plants and other things we see in this world.

Epicurus (c. 300 bce)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

One of the most basic questions that has been pondered by Natural Philosophers for (at least) the past few millennia concerns humanity's place in the universe: are we alone? This question has been approached from a wide variety of viewpoints, and similar reasoning has led to widely diverse answers. Aristotle believed that earth, the densest of the four elements, fell towards the center of the universe, so no other worlds could possibly exist. In contrast, Epicurus and other early atomists surmised that the ubiquity of physical laws implied that innumerable Earth-like planets must exist in the heavens.

Many aspects of the question of human uniqueness remain ill-constrained, but others have yielded to scientific investigation. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton convincingly demonstrated that the Earth is not the center of the universe, and that other worlds qualitatively similar to Earth orbit the Sun. Telescopic observations, and more recently interplanetary spacecraft, have told us a great deal about these neighboring worlds.

Type
Chapter
Information
Exploring the Origin, Extent, and Future of Life
Philosophical, Ethical and Theological Perspectives
 , pp. 143 - 166
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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