UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, APRIL 2013“It takes one to know one”—this schoolyard retort has thus far guided the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and the belief is reinforced by countless science-fiction portrayals of aliens as humanoids. Is it possible that cosmic evolution has converged on bipedal, big-headed forms looking somewhat like us and having their run of a bevy of Earth-like planets? If so, where are they? Why haven’t they, like us, broadcast their presence across the electromagnetic spectrum, contacting their brothers across the stars and mitigating our cosmic loneliness?
I ponder these questions and more in my new book, Cosmic Apprentice: Dispatches from the Edges of Science.
SETI is complicated by the fact that intelligence is multiple and the possibility that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a replacement for religion in a secular age. Instead of believing in a god who made us in his image, we are on the lookout for aliens who have evolved an advanced technical civilization on the human model.
Even great scientists fall prey to this anthropocentric and zoocentric tendency to imagine extraterrestrial intelligence as a reflection of ourselves in a cosmic distorting mirror. Stephen Hawking warns not only that aliens probably exist but also that we must be careful of broadcasting our presence because, if they find ...
