The Story of Evolution / The Evolution of Stories - Spring, 2004
Paul Grobstein
Is There Life on Mars?
A Story About ...
A Contemporary Chapter of a Story in Progress
Early chapters
Pluralism (atomism, Leucippus, Democritus (470-400 B.C.), Epicurus, Lucretius):
Principles of Mediocrity, of Uniformity, of Plenitude
- Plenitude: whatever can be will be
Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) .... "there are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours ... we must believe that in all worlds there are living creatures and plans and other things we see in this world"
Metrodorus of Chios (fourth century B.C.)
"To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow."
Lucretius (c 99-55 B.C.) ... "Granted, then, that empty space extends without limit in every direction and that seeds innumerable are rushing on countless courses through an unfathomable universe ... It is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky is the only one to have been created ... So we must realize that there are other worlds in other parts of the universe, with races of different men and different animals"
- Uniformity: laws of nature are same here as elsewhere
- Mediocrity: what we know is typical rather than exceptional
Anti-Pluralism
- Plato (428-348 B.C.)
"There is and ever will be one only-begotten and created heaven" (a unique Creator implies a unique creation)
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"The world must be unique. There cannot be several worlds" (need a unique "prime mover" to account for order)
- Stories start in experience
- Stories can be about about things one doesn't know, haven't experienced
- Different stories about same thing
- Stories relate to/influenced by other stories
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Middle chapters
Begins with Aristotle but ... Geocentric to heliocentric world view reflecting in part new kinds of experiences
- Copernicus (1473-1543)
- Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)
"Innumerable suns exist; innumerable Earths revolve about these suns . . . Living beings inhabit these worlds."
- Galileo (1564-1642)
- Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
"If you had discovered any planets revolving around one of the fixed stars, there would now be waiting for me chains and a prison among Bruno's innumerabilities. I should say, exile to his infinite space."
- William
Whewel (1794-1866), On the Plurality of Worlds: An Essay
". . . God has interposed in the history of mankind in a special and personal
manner; . . . that one, having a special relation to God, came from God to
men in the form of a man . . . [Consequently] what are we to suppose concerning
the other worlds which science discloses to us? Is there a like scheme of
salvation provided for all of them? Our view of the saviour of man will not
allow us to suppose that there can be more than one saviour. And the saviour
coming as a man to men is so essential a part of the scheme . . . that to
endeavour to transfer it to other worlds and to imagine there something analogous
as existing, is more repugnant to our feeling than to imagine those other
worlds not to be provided with any divine scheme of salvation . . ."
- The ability to make new kinds of observations may (or may not)
lead to entirely new stories.
- New kinds of observations at a minimum require new versions of
older stories ... and make predictions that may become testable
by new observations.
- There is some "inertia" to story types.
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Contemporary and In Progress Chapters
- New ways of making observations
beyond earth
- New understandings of the universe
- Evolving conceptions of "life",
"humanness", "intelligence"
- Stories can motivate new ways of observing that make the previously
unobservable observable
- New observations suggest new stories
- Story telling is a never-ending process?
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Mars: The Story in Microcosm
Mariner 4,6,7,9 (1965-1971) orbiters
- From craters to landscapes - life?
Viking 1,2 (1976) orbiters and landers
Global
Surveyor (1996)
Pathfinder (1997) lander and rover
Mars Exploration
Rover (2004, current and 24 January, 9 pm)
- "Smaller" stories are influenced by and influence "bigger stories"
- Stories always derive from observations as well as from other stories,
and contain elements of the as yet to be observed?
- Stories both influence and are constrained by observations?
- Stories both influence and are constrained by other stories?
- There are always multiple possible stories?
- Stories evolve?
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Life on Mars ... elsewhere in the universe ... does it matter?
- "Do there exist many worlds, or is there but a single world? This is one
of the most noble and exalted questions in the study of Nature". ---St.
Albertus Magnus (circa 1260 AD)
- What
are the possible societal effects of a SETI success?, from the SETI
Institute
- Life
in the Universe: Social Implications, from the European Space Agency
- Imagining himself engulfed between infinity and nothingness, the great
French scientist and theologian Blaise Pascal expressed the terror of the
interstellar spaces. Yet other writers enjoyed their contemplation of the
infinite plurality of worlds within us and around us. The possibility of
traveling there, at least in imagination, could liberate the mind from its
dull rounds, from custom and authority; science could be as exciting as
science fiction. To Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle, the multiplication
of worlds was second nature Ñ not least because women as well as men could
imagine worlds that were better suited to what they desired.", from The
Plurality of Worlds: Overview
For Further Exploring/Story-Telling
William Sheehan, The
Planet Mars: A History of Observation and Discovery, University of Arizona
Press, 1996
Steven J. Dick, Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial
Life Debate from Democritus to Kant. Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900: The Idea of
a Plurality of Worlds from Kant to Lowell. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Steven J. Dick, The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial
Life Debate and the Limits of Science. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Michael J. Crowe, "A History of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate." Zygon
1997, 32: 147-162
The
Plurality of Worlds, from the Norton Anthology of English Literature
SETI's Serendip
Mars: Life Pinned on
Viking Horns?, from Astrobiology Magazine
Mars,
from NASA
Mars
Links, from Oklahoma Baptist University
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