Extraterrestrials, Science and Alien Intelligence

by Ed Regis

With current interest in extraterrestrials at a peak, this book is a collection of original and reprinted articles advancing the latest scientific ideas as to the possible existence and nature of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Usually this subject is treated only in popular media, such as science fiction novels, movies, and television. Recently, however, scientists and researchers have begun to consider in earnest whether extraterrestrials really exist, whether they have evolved from simpler forms of life, whether they have evolved intelligence, and if so whether their modes of understanding the world are comparable to and congruent with our own. The contributors to this volume cover these topics, and also consider how we might communicate with aliens, and whether we would be able to understand the alien messages we might receive. Finally the authors, who include distinguished scientists, speculate whether the aliens might have a moral code, and what might be our moral obligations in the event any extraterrestrials were ever discovered.

Genres: Science

Hardcover

First published August 22, 1985

About the author

Ed Regis holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from New York University and taught for many years at Howard University. He is now a full-time science writer, contributing to Scientific American, Harper's Magazine, Wired, Discover, and The New York Times, among other periodicals.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it was a solid collection of essays covering the main topics in the ET debate. It seems like the editor favors the arguments against the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy and against our being able to communicate with them if they do. I say this not because there are not counter arguments in the book, he does a good job of showing both sides of the debates, but because he places the negative articles in the front of each section which to me shows some bias. The articles themselves are all thought provoking and worth the time although a few of them are long winded and somewhat redundant. Definitely got me more interested in the topics though and provided a long list of sources which I can now look into in more depth. Overall a pretty quick read and well worth it.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (hereafter SETI) involves many complex questions that somehow end up getting condensed and conflated with each other. The question of “Do alien intelligences exist” somehow gets mixed up and mistaken with the collateral question, “Is communication with alien intelligences even possible?”
Say there are aliens in a nearby galaxy at least as advanced as us, maybe moreso. If they were to send a message on photons to us, would we get it before our civilizations collapsed and our species disappeared? The roughly 300,000 kilometers per second that light travels sounds pretty impressive, until you begin to ponder the genuine scope of the universe. Then you realize how easy it would be for us to either receive a message from a dead civilization or for us all to be long gone before we got the message. Whether we died from some ignoble plague or in a self-induced nuclear holocaust hardly matters. The point is that the chance of two advanced civilizations peaking around the same time and trying to contact each other around the same time are pretty low.
For those who want an actual figure, you can look up “the Drake Equation,” or better yet, read the book-length treatment of the subject by astrophysicist Frank Drake.
Or let’s say an intelligent, arguably even sentient species similar to dolphins exists on some other planet, and they exist much closer to us. As close as say, Alpha Centauri (roughly four and a half lightyears away.) They might very well want to communicate with us, but the lack of opposable thumbs would inhibit their ability to ever try. They might even receive signals from Earth—HAM radio signals leaked through our ionosphere, over time—but would never be able respond, since their echolocating clicks would likely not penetrate their own world.
Quickly, you see how difficult, perhaps even impossible communication between disparate interstellar civilizations can be, even if you accept their existence as a given.
“Extraterrestrials” features a series of papers that consider the issue from a variety of perspectives, and in depth. Everything from epistemology to cryptography is brought into the conversation. Scientists use the pages of the book to continue longstanding academic debates, going so far as to title their speeches so they rebut the talks of colleagues. The sequencing of the essays only seems to encourage the contentiousness. An editor doesn’t accidentally put an essay with a title like “SETI Debunked” right before an essay by SETI’s biggest proponent.
Still, despite contributions from some heavyweights in various fields, the affair ends up feeling mostly bloodless rather than lively and stimulating. It’s sort of like a conference in which, after an hour or so, you begin shifting uneasily in your seat, sneaking occasional looks at your watch. Academic writing can be lively, and a handful of the essays herein do contain their fair share of life. The problem is that the longer essays are the duller ones, while those by the more gifted and illuminating writers on the more fascinating subjects are shorter. And the short story at the end—written by a philosopher—is a reminder that brilliance and erudition are not sufficient in and of themselves to make one an able storyteller.
That said, there is enough food-for-thought here for me to give this one a qualified recommendation to those already familiar to the subject. It helps, also, to have some familiarity with the dry style of an academic conference. Why the authors in question strained themselves to maintain such decorum, I cannot say. The kind of academic likely to appreciate their approach will never grant them the imprimatur of respectability in the first place simply owing to the subject matter in question. Honestly, there’s a chance that even if Kodos and Kang were to land on the White House lawn and give a speech, those same academics would remain skeptical.
Maybe, one day Kodos and Kang (or hopefully some less hostile aliens) will give us all a reason to do something besides debate the existence of extraterrestrials.