Philosophy of Astrobiology

For many astronomers, the progressive development of life has been seen as a natural occurrence given proper environmental conditions on a planet: even though such beings would not be identical to humans, there would be significant parallels. A striking contrast is seen in writings of nonphysical scientists, who have held more widely differing views. But within this diversity, reasons for differences become more apparent when we see how views about extraterrestrials can be related to the differential emphasis placed on modern evolutionary theory by scientists of various disciplines. One clue to understanding the differences between the biologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists who speculated on extraterrestrials is suggested by noting who wrote on the subject. Given the relatively small number of commentators on the topic, it seems more than coincidental that four of the major contributors to the evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s are among them. Upon closer examination it is evident that the exobiological arguments of Theodosius Dobzhansky and George Gaylord Simpson and, less directly, of H. J. Muller and Ernst Mayr are all related to their earlier work in formulating synthetic evolution. By examining the variety of views held by nonphysical scientists, we can see that there were significant disagreements between them about evolution into the 1960s. By the mid-1980s, many believed that “higher” life, particularly intelligent life, probably occurs quite infrequently in the universe; nevertheless, some held out the possibility that convergence of intelligence could occur across worlds. Regardless of the final conclusions these scientists reached about the likely prevalence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the use of evolutionary arguments to support their positions became increasingly common.

Although existing international instruments such as the Outer Space Treaty and Moon Agreement generally express sentiments for minimizing missions' extraterrestrial environmental impacts, they tend to be limited in scope, vague and generally unenforceable. There is no formal structure for assessing how and to what extent we affect those environments, no opportunity for public participation, no uniform protocol for documenting and registering the effects of our actions and no requirement to mitigate adverse impacts or take them into consideration in the decision-making process. Except for precautions limiting forward biological contamination and issues related to Earth satellites, environmental impact analysis, when done at all, remains focused on how missions affect the Earth and near-Earth environments , not how our actions affect the Moon, Mars, Europa, comets and other potential destinations. Extraterrestrial environmental impacts are potentially counterproductive to future space exploration, exploitation and scientific investigations. Clear, consistent and effective international protocols guiding a process for assessing such impacts are warranted. While instruments such as the US National Environmental Policy Act provide legally tested and efficient regulatory models that can guide impact assessment here on Earth, statutory legal frameworks may not work as well in the international environment of outer space. A proposal for industry-driven standards and an environmental code of conduct based, in part, on best management practices are offered for consideration.

This article compares how the ethical systems of Kant, Mill, and Aristotle might react towards and treat extraterrestrial non-life, extraterrestrial non-intelligent life, and extraterrestrial intelligent life. It concludes that even in the absence of extraterrestrial life, the thought experiment still leads to insights for how these systems operate, and that further investigation of ethical systems as applied to space may well lead to more insights.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) typically presupposes contact with extraterrestrial civilizations much longer lived than humanity. Many have argued that given humanity’s ‘‘youth,’’ the burden of transmitting should be placed on the extraterrestrial civilizations, which presumably possess more advanced technologies. These assumptions have contributed to the current emphasis on Passive SETI. Complementing this existing stress on Passive SETI with an additional commitment to Active SETI, in which humankind transmits messages to other civilizations, would have several advantages, including (1) addressing the reality that regardless of whether older civilizations should be transmitting, they may not be transmitting; (2) placing the burden of decoding and interpreting messages on advanced extraterrestrials, which may facilitate mutual comprehension; and (3) signaling a move toward an intergenerational model of science with a long-term vision for benefiting other civilizations as well as future generations of humans. Technological requirements for Active SETI are considered, and a case is made for Active SETI as a means for experimentally testing variants of the Zoo Hypothesis. Recommendations are provided for sustaining Passive and Active SETI and the communities that conduct these searches.

We present an empirical study of the long-term evolution of several social indicators (e.g. human population growth, statistics of deadly quarrels, diffusion of democratic systems, etc.). We assume that the human species emerge, develop and become extinct with similar evolutionary patterns that other terrestrial species. We propose that the long-term indicators are showing some sort of macro-transition in their long-term behavior that we defined as “Technological Adolescent Age.” We present an estimation of this period. Assuming the “Principle of Mediocrity” and using the Drake Equation we calculate a lower threshold for the number of technological civilizations in the galaxy.

One chapter of the 2015 Lutheran University Press Festschrift for Ted Peters, this chapter looks at Ted Peters work on theology and ethics as it relates to astrobiology. It first considers possibilities for convergences and divergences between humans and other intelligent creatures (including ETIs), then considers some scenarios for possible contact with ETIs (including transhumanism, moral imperialism, and extinction), then considers the significance of these ideas for theology and ethics.

All technological civilizations that already have
passed through their technological adolescence, and
have avoided their self-destruction (by misuse of
advanced technologies or by environmental degradation
of their home planet), must have developed ethical
rules to extend their societal life expectancy. In
doing so, they must have learned how to respect the
natural evolutionary times of other beings in the universe.
To build this scenario, we will introduce the
concept of Lex Galactica, based in Kantian ethical
principles, as hypothetical guidelines for advanced
civilizations in how to contact emerging societies. If
the advanced galactic civilizations are unable to
check the level of technical and ethical evolution of
the possible recipients of their signals, they will be
unable to send high-information-content messages
due to the Lex Galactica. Using these alternative
boundary conditions, we will discuss different contact
scenarios and their possible message characteristics.
We will consider the possibility that the first
message from an advanced technological society
would include some extraterrestrial artistic manifestation.

Conferencia: "Filosofía de la Astrobiología: el estado de la cuestión" (28/03/2015). II Seminario de Astrobiología en el Perú, Ciclo de Conferencias,  Auditorios del Museo de Historia Natural del Perú y de la Universidad de las Américas, Lima, 27 y 28 de marzo.

In the 21st century the majority of humans including most of the scientists are convinced that there is extraterrestrial life somewhere in the Universe. But recent findings in astronomy, astrobiology, geology and chemistry have progressively melted down the probability of biological life beyond Earth’s ecospheres. Contrary to the Copernican humiliation Earth appears more and more to be a unique place in the Universe for it was only here where the emergence of life took place. Furthermore, the primary abiogenesis only occurred once in the lifetime of our planet. This process is neither understood nor accessible to simulation or recreation. What are the philosophical, religious and political consequences if we adopt the Uniqueness Hypothesis – the only one conclusive with modern epistemology and today’s scientific knowledge?

V Congreso Internacional de Astrobiología (Barranquilla, Colombia, 11-14/11/2020). Organizado por el Instituto de Astrobiología de Colombia (IAC) y la Universidad del Atlántico, con el apoyo del Ministerio de Medio Ambiente. Conferencia Magistral (13/11/2020).
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxKetcsxbRQ

"Congreso Internacional Reflexiones desde la Tierra: Repensando el papel del individuo ante la exploración espacial". Organizado por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y la Universidad de Alcalá (Madrid, España, 28-29/10/2021).
Abstract: El objetivo de la ponencia fue mostrar que la astrobiología como ciencia encuentra su condición cultural de posibilidad en lo que el autor denomina “mirada astrobiológica al universo”: un constructo contemporáneo de carácter colectivo fundamentado en el progreso y convergencia de los conocimientos científicos sobre la materia, la vida y el universo conquistados a lo largo de 2.600 años, junto con la contribución del viaje y la exploración espaciales. A la astrobiología como disciplina científica compete probar la verdad de la mirada que la hace posible, lo que eventualmente resultaría “acontecimiento histórico” por sus implicaciones para la cultura, al modo como en su momento sucedió con el heliocentrismo o el darwinismo

As scholars involved with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have contemplated how we might portray humankind in any messages sent to civilizations beyond Earth, one of the challenges they face is adequately representing the diversity of human cultures. For example, in a 2003 workshop in Paris sponsored by the SETI Institute, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) SETI Permanent Study Group, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST), and the John Templeton Foundation, a varied group of artists, scientists, and scholars from the humanities considered how to encode notions of altruism in interstellar messages http://publish.seti.org/art_science/2003. Though the group represented 10 countries, most were from Europe and North America, leading to the group's recommendation that subsequent discussions on the topic should include more globally representative perspectives. As a result, the IAA Study Group on Interstellar Message Construction and the SETI Institute sponsored a follow-up workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA in February 2005. The Santa Fe workshop brought together scholars from a range of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, chemistry, communication science, philosophy, and psychology. Participants included scholars familiar with interstellar message design as well as specialists in cross-cultural research who had participated in the Symposium on Altruism in Cross-cultural Perspective, held just prior to the workshop during the annual conference of the Society for Cross-cultural Research www.seti.org/altruism. The workshop included discussion of how cultural understandings of altruism can complement and critique the more biologically based models of altruism proposed for interstellar messages at the 2003 Paris workshop. This paper, written by the chair of both the Paris and Santa Fe workshops, will explore the challenges of communicating concepts of altruism that draw on both biological and cultural models.

The question of the origin of life is a tenacious question that challenges many branches of science but is also extremely multifaceted. While prebiotic chemistry and micropaleontology reformulate the question as that of explaining the appearance of life on Earth in the deep past, systems chemistry and synthetic biology typically understand the question as that of demonstrating the synthesis of novel living matter from nonliving matter independently of historical constraints. The objective of this contribution is to disentangle the different readings of the origin-of-life question found in science. We identify three main dimensions along which the question can be differently constrained depending on context: historical adequacy, natural spontaneity, and similarity to lifeas-we-know-it. We argue that the epistemic status of what needs to be explained-the explanandum-varies from approximately true when the origin-of-life question is the most constrained to entirely speculative when the constraints are the most relaxed. This difference in epistemic status triggers a shift in the nature of the origin-of-life question from an explanation-seeking question in the most constrained case to a fact-establishing question in the lesser-constrained ones. We furthermore explore how answers to some interpretations of the origin-of-life questions matter for other interpretations.

Some characteristics of terrestrial music may be meaningful to extraterrestrial civilizations by virtue of the connection between acoustics and mathematics—both of which might be known by technologically advanced extraterrestrial intelligence. For example, a fundamental characteristic of terrestrial polyphonic music is found the number of tones used various scales, insofar as the number of tones represents a compromise between competing musical demands; the number of tones in a scale, however, also reflects some of the perceptual characteristics of the species developing that music. Thus, in the process of communicating something about the structure of terrestrial music through interstellar messages, additional information about human perceptual and cognitive processes can also be conveyed. This paper also discusses methods for sending signals that bear information through the form of the very frequencies in which the signals are transmitted. If the challenges of creating intelligible messages are greater than often thought, the advantage of reduced conventionality of encoding the message by using an iconic format of this sort may be of significant value. Such an approach would allow the incremental introduction of musical concepts, somewhat akin to the step-by-step tutorials in mathematics and logic that form the basis of Freudenthal’s Lincos.

The project “A Plurality of Lives” was funded and hosted by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies at Lund University, Sweden. The aim of the project was to better understand how a second origin of life, either in the form of a discovery of extraterrestrial life, life developed in a laboratory, or machines equipped with abilities previously only ascribed to living beings, will change how we understand and relate to life. Because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the project aim, the project took an interdisciplinary approach with a research group made up of 12 senior researchers representing 12 different disciplines. The project resulted in a joint volume, an international symposium, several new projects, and a network of researchers in the field, all continuing to communicate about and advance the aim of the project.

It is obvious that modern astrobiology, being essentially concerned with life, consciousness and intelligence as cosmic phenomena, implies new philosophical and theological ideas. We can even say that astrobiology will trigger new opinions concerning the whole world. These ideas can produce a profound revolution in people's outlook on the whole universe. The authorities of variouschurches are aware of the problem and are beginning to make their theologies more cosmically informed.

Tomando como fundamento la historia y literatura astrobiológicas, exploramos la posibilidad y necesidad de una Filosofía de la Astrobiología, proponemos una definición de Filosofía de la Astrobiología y su consideración como subdisciplina de la Filosofía de la Ciencia, distinta de la Filosofía de la Biología. Incluimos una bibliografía para una Filosofía de la Astrobiología.
Palabras clave: astrobiología, exobiología, biología, filosofía, filosofía de la astrobiología, filosofía de la biología, ética, teología, ciencia, tecnología, sociedad, sentido, comunicación, realidad, definición, disciplina, subdisciplina, vida, inteligencia, extraterrestre, universo, evolución, convergencia, azar, necesidad, imperativo cósmico.
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Based on the history of astrobiology and astrobiological literature, we explore the possibility and necessity of a Philosophy of Astrobiology, and propose a tentative definition of Philosophy of Astrobiology for being considered as a possible sub-discipline of Philosophy of Science, different from Philosophy of Biology. We include a Bibliography for a Philosophy of Astrobiology.
Keywords: astrobiology, exobiology, biology, philosophy, philosophy of astrobiology, philosophy of biology, ethics, theology, science, technology, society, sense, communication, reality, definition, discipline, sub-discipline, life, intelligence, extraterrestrial, universe, evolution, convergence, chance, necessity, cosmic imperative.

En este trabajo mostramos algunos aspectos de la astrobiología que hacen de ella una ciencia revolucionaria, así como algunas de sus implicaciones culturales, con la intención de contribuir a suscitar en nuestro país el interés de la filosofía, y del humanismo en general, por esta ciencia y de propiciar el encuentro entre estos campos del saber; un encuentro que también los astrobiólogos demandan.

Astrobiología, una visión transdisciplinaria de la vida en el universo introduce al lector en esta reciente disciplina que hace uso de diversas ciencias, como la astronomía, biología, química, ecología, geología e incluso la filosofía. A lo largo de la obra se da un marco teórico de sus principales temas de estudio: la vida, las características esenciales de un planeta para albergar vida, las particulares condiciones de la Tierra que le permitieron albergar vida, las zonas habitables en el universo y la composición química de éste. (Tomado de: https://www.fondodeculturaeconomica.com/Ficha/9786071674500/F)

If space explorers discover a biosphere supporting life on an off-Earth body, should they treat that life as possessing intrinsic value? This is an ethical quandary leading to a further question: how do we ground a universal moral norm to which the astroethicist can appeal? This article closely analyzes various forms of responsibility ethics and finds them weak because they commit the naturalistic fallacy--that is, they ask nature to define the good. The good, however, is self-defining and not derivable from nature. Even so, a revised responsibility ethic could ground its universal norms on the fact that life and only life can experience and appreciate the good. Conclusion: living creatures posses intrinsic value both on Earth and elsewhere in the universe.

El 5 de junio de 2008, el astrónomo estadounidense Frank Drake, pionero del programa de búsqueda científica de inteligencia extraterrestre Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), fundador y presidente del SETI Institute, visitó Barcelona para conferenciar sobre este popular programa de exploración astrobiológica mediante radiotelescopios. SETI es un programa astrobiológico complementario diseñado para la radiodetección de señales artificiales de origen no terrestre, sostenido por el SETI Institute e integrado como equipo de trabajo (team work) en el NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI). Radio Nacional de España (RNE) se hizo eco del evento, dedicando a SETI y a la figura de su mentor un breve monográfico.

El espacio incluyó algunas de las declaraciones que ese mismo día, y para la ocasión, tuvo a bien solicitarme Manuel Seara Valero (RNE) interesándose ex profeso por los aspectos filosóficos del tema.

EMISIONES en RNE del citado monográfico sobre SETI y Frank Drake:

      - RADIO 1: 05/06/2008. Programa "24 Horas" (programa informativo de RNE, Radio 1, dirigido y presentado por Raúl Heitzmann de lunes a viernes, de 21:00 a 23:00 h.).
* Versión íntegra del monográfico (4 min.): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6GtUd2i3LaWVXBDQ1BqYXFqNDA/view?resourcekey=0-JNHDkMdM2mh7eQVvqpqHbQ
* Transcripción de las declaraciones: ver documento adjunto o pinchar en: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6GtUd2i3LaWb2tBWmRhbzRoMjQ/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-zn_3WEx_N663svE7cAmerQ

    - RADIO 5: 06/06/2008. Programa "A Hombros De Gigantes" (programa de divulgación científica en RNE, Radio 5, dirigido y presentado por Manuel Seara Valero, que se emite los viernes de 23:00 a 24:00 h. simultáneamente en Radio 5 Todo Noticias y Radio Exterior de España). Versión reducida (1 min.) incluída en la sección "Resumen de las noticias científicas más destacadas de la semana". Disponible en el podcast de "A Hombros De Gigantes" correspondiente al programa nº 39  (06/06/2008) o pinchar aquí y seleccionar minuto 23: http://www.rtve.es/files/72-84385-AUDIO/20080606_AHOMBROSDEGIGANTES.mp3

LA ENTREVISTA, de unos 20 minutos de duración (programa nº 45 de "A Hombros De Gigantes", de fecha 18/07/2008), se desarrolló en torno a las siguientes cuestiones:
Introducción al tema y presentación.
Definición y bases científicas de la astrobiología.
La cuestión de la pluralidad de mundos y la vida extraterrestre en la tradición del pensamiento occidental.
El problema de la evolución de la vida hacia la inteligencia en el universo.
Implicaciones filosóficas de la búsqueda científica de vida extraterrestre (astrobiología).
Aplicaciones prácticas de la investigación astrobiológica.
Programa SETI: ¿qué pasaría si nunca llegaramos a contactar?
El recelo que la astrobiología suscita en algunos ámbitos científicos e intelectuales.

Podcast en RTVE: http://www.rtve.es/files/72-88184-AUDIO/20080718_AHOMBROSDEGIGANTES.mp3

This book describes the state of astrobiology in Europe today and its relation to the European society at large. With contributions from authors in more than 20 countries and over 30 scientific institutions worldwide, the document illustrates the societal implications of astrobiology and the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to European society. The book has two main objectives: 1. It recommends the establishment of a European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) as an answer to a series of challenges relating to astrobiology but also European research, education, and society at large. 2. It also acknowledges the societal implications of astrobiology, and thus the role of the social sciences and humanities in optimizing the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to the lives of the people of Europe and the challenges they face. Astrobiology enjoys a great deal of interest among the public, probably more than most of the other fields of research. It also has implicat...

In my presentation I will suggest how philosophy, in particular ethical theory but also philosophy of science, can be used to identify and possibly provide constructive advice regarding how to handle potential value conflicts in connection with planetary protection.
Planetary Protection, the way the term is used today, is mainly a technical term for measures taken in order to avoid contamination either of extra-terrestrial bodies (i.e. planets/moons/asteroids/etc.) (forward contamination) or of our own earth (back or backward contamination). I will here concentrate on the former. The motivation behind present guidelines for planetary protection takes the form of a desire among astrobiologists to study a pristine environment. One want to make sure that any extra-terrestrial life will not be strongly influence, or even destroyed, by any invasive earth life before one manages to study it properly. This means the guidelines for planetary protection aim to keep the body in question free from contamination by earth organisms for the duration of the study. This aim can be questioned from different vantage points. If extra-terrestrial life has moral status in their own right or value other than as study objects, the guidelines might have to be stronger. If not just science but also commercial initiatives have an interest in the body in question, it might be argued that the need to protect the indigenous life needs to be balanced against the potential commercial value of the body. Taken together, the intersection of science goals, commercial interests and societal concerns regarding planetary protection provide some philosophically very interesting examples of ethical problems concerning the relation between science and other interests.

Denna artikel är den andra i en serie om två artiklar som introducerar astrobiologins filosofi. Detta är ett förhållandevis nytt och i Sverige nästan okänt forskningsfält som dock befinner sig i snabb tillväxt internationellt. Ämnet presenteras här i form av exempel på några centrala frågeställningar inom området. I den här artikeln presenteras några frågeställningar hemmahörande i praktisk filosofi

Astrobiology and Humanism: Conversations on Science, Philosophy and Theology. Julian Chela-Flores, Newcastle upon Tyne (United Kingdom), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019, 166 pags. (XVI + 150), ISBN (10): 1-5275-3436-7, ISBN (13):
978-1-5275-3436-0.
Astrobiology and Humanism no es el primer texto del autor sobre las implicaciones culturales, filosóficas y teológicas, en particular-del estudio científico de la vida en el universo (astrobiología), pero sí el primero en el que reúne de manera temática sus ideas y reflexiones al respecto, fruto de su labor como científico e inquietudes humanistas. El profesor Chela-Flores (Caracas, 1942), es matemático y doctor en mecánica cuántica por la Universidad de Londres (1969). Entre sus múltiples ocupaciones, hay que destacar su labor en el Centro de la UNESCO Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP, Trieste, Italia), así como en la Cátedra UNESCO de Filosofía. Es miembro de diversas asociaciones y comités científicos, y asesor científico en misiones de exploración a cuerpos del sistema solar, entre ellas la proyectada para 2022 por la Agencia Espacial Europea a la luna helada joviana Europa (misión JUICE, anteriormente denominada LA-PLACE). De sus numerosos escritos sobre astrobiología, en los que siempre ha mostrado gran interés y sensibilidad hacia las co-implicaciones entre esta ciencia y las humanidades, deben señalarse A Second

Title: "Astrobiology as Scientific Exploration"
There are those who consider astrobiology as a discipline without an object of study and, therefore, that it is not a science at all. Certainly, if astrobiology is the study of extraterrestrial life – exobiology – then it lacks such an object, because the only type of life known so far in the universe is that of Earth.
In 2002 NASA defined astrobiology as "the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the Universe" (NASA Astrobiology Roadmap, 20/11/2002). By using the expression "life in the universe", the aim is to address the above criticism by shifting the weight of the definition towards the biological aspect to the detriment of the exobiological one, thus saving the scientificity of astrobiology.
In response to this strategy, critics argue that, since no other type of life is known except on Earth, the terms "life" and "life in the universe" are equivalent because they have one and the same referent: life on Earth. As a consequence, if astrobiology wants to be a science, it will necessarily have to study life on Earth, but in that case there are already other sciences that effectively fulfil that role, so astrobiology will have to justify its specificity or disappear as unnecessary.
The proper subject of astrobiology as exobiology is, for the time being, an objective, a rational expectation, a possibility based on plausible assumptions elaborated from scientific data and knowledge and capable of being tested, i.e. a scientific hypothesis. This makes astrobiology a paradoxical discipline consisting of a scientifically grounded activity of searching for its own subject of study, which, if found, would place it in its own right among the sciences under the name of exobiology. In other words: in its present phase, astrobiology is a scientific exploration.
I have discussed this issue whit more detail in: "Astrobiología: entre la ciencia y la exploración", en ARETXAGA, R. et al.; "Astrobiología y Filosofía (III)", Letras de Deusto (Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao), nº 118, Vol. 38 (2008), pp. 13-27.

The purpose of the Seminar on the Cultural Impact of Extraterrestrial Contact, sponsored by the Foundation For the Future, was the study of the long-term impact—for our terrestrial civilization—of a dialogue between humankind and a highly advanced extraterrestrial society. According to the organizers, humanity’s interaction with other galactic civilizations will likely have a greater positive impact than almost any other event in the Third Millennium. Over the last 40 years, several speculations about the characteristics, contents, and social impact of the discovery of an extraterrestrial message were made by scientists and scholars all over the world. Based on a hypothetical distribution of advanced technological civilizations in the galaxy, Sebastian von Hoerner (1961) estimated that the civilizations we will find will probably be much older than we are, and they will be more advanced. He considered that our chance of learning from them might be the most important incentive for ou...

What is covered in this report?
Policy related to autonomous machines and artificial intelligence.
Policy related to space exploration and microbial and other life potentially found there.

Why are these two covered in the same report?
The fundamental issues of technology, rights and life are intertwined in a way that sometimes a view from different perspectives will give you a greater understanding of the information. The aim is for you to be well-informed.

This book addresses important current and historical topics in astrobiology and the search for life beyond Earth, including the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The first section covers the plurality of worlds debate from antiquity through the nineteenth century, while section two covers the extraterrestrial life debate from the twentieth century to the present. The final section examines the societal impact of discovering life beyond Earth, including both cultural and religious dimensions. Throughout the book, authors draw links between their own chapters and those of other contributors, emphasizing the interconnections between the various strands of the history and societal impact of the search for extraterrestrial life.

This interdisciplinary book will benefit everybody trying to understand the meaning of astrobiology and SETI for our human society.

REVIEWS

Selected by Choice magazine as an "Outstanding Academic Title" for 2014

“This book is a very well-balanced, detailed analysis of the subject. … This is one of the best books on the subject; it belongs in all college libraries. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.” (K. L. Schick, Choice, Vol. 51 (7), March, 2014)

“Are we alone in the universe? If not, then what might that mean? This fascinating volume offers a history of what Western cultures have thought about these questions … . a useful source for scientists, historians, anthropologists, and many other disciplines that concern themselves with these two large questions. … This volume nicely reveals the numerous ways in which anthropological knowledge and methods can help us think about and plan for managing the cultural impact of an eventual first contact.” (James Strick, Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. 47 (1), 2016)

“In this book you can find out about the first philosophers, writers and scientists who were interested in the possibility of life on other planets and get to know the reasons why it was considered possible by them and what actually led to their depictions of life elsewhere in literature. … Overall this book makes for really interesting reading if you’re interested in extraterrestrial life and astrobiology.” (Kadri Tinn, AstroMadness.com, December, 2013)

Why should we spend resources on planetary protection, and how much resources should we spend on it? These questions are not in a strict sense scientific questions, but value questions. That is, they are axiological questions. They are, however, central to all decisions regarding planetary protection and need to be considered thoroughly, carefully and transparently. The answers to these questions also need to be thoroughly motivated in a way that makes sense also to the world outside of astrobiology.

A high standard of planetary protection is important for astrobiology, though the risk for contamination can never be zero. It is therefore important to find a balance. If extraterrestrial life has a moral standing in its own right, it will also affect what we have to do to protect it. The questions of how far we need to go to protect extraterrestrial life will be even more acute and complicated when the time comes to use habitable worlds for commercial purposes. There will also be conflicts between those who want to set a world aside for more research and those who want to give the green light for development. I believe it is important to be proactive in relation to these issues. The aim of my project is therefore to identify, elucidate, and if possible, suggest solutions to potential conflicts between astrobiology, planetary protection, and commercial use of space.

En este trabajo mostramos algunos aspectos de la astrobiología que hacen de ella una ciencia revolucionaria, así como algunas de sus implicaciones culturales, con la intención de contribuir a suscitar en nuestro país el interés de la filosofía, y del humanismo en general, por esta ciencia y de propiciar el encuentro entre estos campos del saber; un encuentro que también los astrobiólogos demandan.