The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate and its Relation to the Scientific Revolution

The strong claims made in the seventeenth century for the existence of extraterrestrial life, the equally vociferous denials of this claim, and the ensuing controversy which continues unabated to the present day are of historical interest for many reasons. Not only does the debate involve a determination of the nature of the planets and their conditions for life-a planetary physics whose history has heretofore largely been ignored-it also clearly reflects and illuminates contemporary religious and metaphysical themes, many of which still echo in present-day discussions of the subject. Moreover, it raises questions of method and of the cognitive status of an idea at the fringes of science. In this study we examine the corpus of knowledge brought to bear on the question by seventeenth-century natural philosophers, the relative role of physical and metaphysical reasoning, and the importance of the debate in the context of the scientific revolution. Role of the Copernican Theory.-There is historical logic in the fact that the controversy over the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life began in earnest only at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Although a few had earlier discussed and even professed a belief in the reality of such living beings,1 it was not until that time that the Copernican theory began to gain acceptance and to provide a physical framework within which the existence of other earth-like worlds became possible. The heliocentric theory as set forth in De revolutionibus of 1543 was crucial in setting the stage for the discussion of other worlds in two interrelated ways. The first, the necessity for a new theory of motion of falling bodies based on a mobile earth, was destructive of the major Aristotelian argument which had been used to deny the possibility of other worlds for almost 2000 years; the second, the abandonment of the Aristotelian precept of a qualitative dichotomy between earth and heavens, opened

Astrobiology · Epistemology · Extraterrestrial life · Physics · Relation (database) · Scientific revolution · Computer Science · Historical Astronomy and Related Studies · History · Philosophy · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life

• Diagrams and alien ways of thinking

  Open Access•Marc Champagne•Studies in History and Philosophy…•2019

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