Author: Paula Bourges-Waldegg

Despite the lack of evidence to support the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, many people firmly believe in it. If you are skeptical on this matter you are likely to be accused of being arrogant, anthropocentric or even a religious fanatic. However, to consider the possibility that we might be alone in the universe doesn’t necessarily make you any of those things. You can believe both that humans are rare or unique and at the same time that they are a purposeless arrangement of matter or a curious accident in space-time.

In 1961 the astronomer Frank Drake announced that the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy that might contact us could be calculated with the following equation:

N = R fp ne fl fi fc L

Where N is the number of communicative civilizations, R is the rate of formation of suitable stars, fp is the fraction of those stars with planets, ne is the number of Earth-like planets per solar system, fl is the fraction of planets with life, fi is the fraction of planets with intelligent life, fc is the fraction of planets with communicating technology and L is the lifetime of communicating civilizations.

Many people think that this equation actually proves the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence and some even believe that a close encounter of the third kind could be just around the corner. However, the truth of the matter is that there is no scientific evidence to support that intelligent life exists anywhere beyond Earth and the only factor that can be calculated with some certainty in this equation is R the rate of stellar formation (1). Numbers for the other components are the product of the creative speculations of astronomers, SETI researchers and Star Trek fans.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong about speculation (or about being a Star Trek fan). After all, if speculation is based on concrete facts and is not just a wild guess, it’s part of science. However, when it comes to evolution the facts are frequently misunderstood. People, including some scientists, tend to regard it as a linear process instead of as a tree of increasing complexity. Many assume evolution works towards achieving a certain goal, like intelligence. For instance, Lemarchand says “The principle of mediocrity suggests a logical progression: the emergence of life will lead to the emergence of intelligence, which will give rise to interstellar communications technology” (2). In the case of Drake’s equation these misconceptions can lead to fi and fc being hugely overestimated. Carl Sagan, for example, considered a guesstimate of one million possible civilizations in the galaxy “to be conservative” (2).

It is true that wherever life emerges in the universe it’s likely to evolve according to the same rules. However, as Alan Turing explained, incredibly complex and diverse patterns can come into being by following very simple rules. In the same way that there cannot be two identical trees in a forest with the same foliage or number of branches, there cannot be two identical evolutionary histories (unless they exist in some kind of bizarre parallel universe).

Similarly, although there are billions of us, all built from the same DNA instructions, we’re all unique (even identical twins). Just as we can say that you wouldn’t be yourself if a series of interrelated factors and fortunate events (or unfortunate depending on your self-esteem) have not taken place -for instance, your father meeting your mother, your father’s condom breaking, you being born a boy with green eyes, surviving meningitis, developing a twisted sense of humor, deciding to study philosophy, etc.- we may say that intelligence may have never appeared if a sequence of events and a series of factors had never occurred and interacted in the way they did. A single event, like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, can conspire against or in favor of entire species and permanently modify the structure of evolution’s tree. We don’t know, but the number of events that lead to intelligence could be larger than the number of stars in the universe and the interaction of factors necessary for it to evolve more complex than your girlfriend’s moods. Hence, we can say that timing, luck and the interplay of biological and environmental factors are critical aspects in evolution.

Even though it can be argued that intelligence, as the ability to get process and act on information is such a useful and common trait (apparent even in slime molds) that it’s likely to evolve elsewhere, the kind of ability that you need to build civilizations, technology and be aware of it is, in fact, rare. Among the billions of species that have evolved in the planet, perhaps as many as 50, we are the only one that has developed that kind of ability. Furthermore, as Jared Diamond has pointed out, compared to other more successful species like rats and beetles this feature doesn’t seem to be the best way to take over the world.

So, if the same sequence of events is unlikely to play equally elsewhere, if the kind of intelligence you need to build civilizations and technology is rare even in our own planet and if there’s no actual evidence to support the existence of ET intelligence, there might be enough reasons to be a bit skeptical about having an interstellar chat with any space being in the near future.

The problem is that skeptics are often accused of being led by illegitimate motivations such as arrogance, anthropocentrism or religious beliefs. Of course, in some cases that can be true. However, what’s also true is that there are several moral stands and mistaken assumptions behind the “we are not alone” argument and behind these accusations.

On the one hand, there’s a kind of “IQ relativism” based on the notion that “there are many forms of intelligence, all different but equally good, valid and/or complex”. The idea of intellectual diversity is used to sustain that there’s nothing special about us, that intelligence is a standard outcome of evolution and therefore species like ours are likely to evolve elsewhere (yes, this may be the herald of intergalactic political correctness, we should perhaps start calling aliens “intellectually-diverse beings” so that they don’t get mad in case they’re listening).

IQ relativists assume that if you think extraterrestrial intelligence is unlikely, is because you somehow believe humans are superior and, of course, that’s arrogant. However, one thing doesn’t necessarily entail the other. Rarity or uniqueness is not equal to superiority. You can believe that cephalopods are also fascinatingly unique and that doesn’t mean you think they are superior. Moreover, it can be argued that viewing intelligence as an inevitable outcome of evolution is what’s indeed arrogant.

On the other hand, there are the Galileans who react against anthropocentrism assuming that if you are skeptical about the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations you automatically believe humans are the center of the universe. Thus, you may be some kind of religious fanatic or creationist freak who claims that we are God’s favorite creatures or the supreme objective of “Intelligent Design”.

However, there’s a difference between thinking that human-like intelligence could be exceptional and thinking that the heart of the universe is in Alabama or that we are the preferred children of some supernatural being. Again, “unique” doesn’t mean “central”, or “most important”. Exceptions are also part of nature. And, although homo-sapiens could be unique in the universe, so does cephalopods and that doesn’t make them God’s master pieces. What’s more, it could be said that:

• Thinking extraterrestrial intelligence is in some way human-like i.e., having civilizations and technology, is in fact what’s anthropocentric. (By the way, if they are really like us, are they also arrogant and think they are the center of the universe? Maybe that’s why they haven’t bothered to call and that will explain Fermi’s paradox.)
• Believing in extraterrestrial intelligence is as superstitious as believing in God because there’s no evidence of their existence.

In short, to consider the possibility that we might be alone in the universe doesn’t necessarily mean you are arrogant, anthropocentric or irrational. You can believe that humans are both, unique or rare and at the same time a purposeless arrangement of matter, a curious accident in space-time.

References

(1) Shermer, M., 2002, ‘Skeptic: Why ET Hasn’t Called’; Scientific American Magazine; August 2002; www.sciamdigital.com

(2) Lemarchand G., 1998, ‘Is There Intelligent Life Out There?’; Scientific American Presents; Exploring Intelligence; www.sciamdigital.com

(3) Darling, D. The Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight; www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/mediocrity.html

(4) Darling, D. The Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight; Fermi’s paradox

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

George Orwell, 1984

If there were a poll assessing the least favorite subject taught in high school, I would have to put my money on history or its more au courant euphemistic title, “social studies”. If history is not the clear cut winner, it would certainly be among the top three – my choice, mathematics, I suppose, would also be a strong contender.

The chronic complaint against history as a subject, you will hear from most Americans, is that it is “old news”. In our up-to-the-minute media saturated culture this is an undeniable fact. “That was soooo last year,” is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but hardly far from describing the willful amnesia of most young people today. More concerned with the staggering demands of the present tense, is it any wonder students find knowing that the Battle of Antietam took place on September 17, 1862 is of little or no material use in their lives? In fairness, I can think of no occasion where my knowing the date of the bloodiest day in U.S. history has put food on my table or helped to pay the electric bill. The meticulous chronology of momentous dates, more often than not, takes on the appearance of a sadistic ritual perpetrated by underpaid civil servants bent on making their charges suffer for the mistake in their career choice. While mathematics might be equally hated, it at least redeems its existence in the popular consciousness if for no other reason than it is reckoned to be necessary for the development of new and faster video games.

So what if Johnny and Susie, as the song says, “don’t know much about history”, is it really such a big deal? This is a common response from parents and by extension, school boards – who, in all probability, “don’t know much about history” themselves. (After all, only 49 percent of American adults could identify the Soviet Union as an ally in World War II.) Perhaps not, but it is a peculiar response indeed from a nation that, according to pollsters, places such a high emphasis on what is obliquely referred to as “traditional values”.

Or, to refer to my earlier supposition, would it not be within the purview of traditional values to know what exactly led 3,600 Americans to their deaths on the killing fields of Maryland in the autumn of 1862? Perhaps knowing the details of a battle that took place 143 years ago might give a sense of proportion to more recent events, most notably the horror of 9/11. Wouldn’t our children benefit from the knowledge that there have been other periods in our history when our future looked frightening. Had there been a clear cut victory for the Confederacy in a northern state, the British were prepared to intervene on their side and we might have had an entirely different country today. Most of the heavy casualties (over 23,000 both north and south) were sustained in a four hour period, nine times that of Omaha Beach in the second World War (of “Saving Private Ryan” fame, to give the obligatory pop culture citation). Regretably, few of our children know this, in fact, the majority of them are hardpressed to name what century the greatest danger our nation ever faced, the Civil War, took place.

In his 1998 essay, “Goodbye to all that: why Americans are not taught history”, Christopher Hitchens found some ghastly statistics:

According to the last ‘National Assessment of Educational Progress in U.S. History,’ which was undertaken in 1994, we can no longer call upon the traditional schoolmarm concept of history as a pageant, or even as one damn thing after another. In order to argue against this caricature, you would need to know at least the official reason why Pilgrims and Puritans first voyaged to America, which 59 percent of fourth graders were unable to do. You would certainly need to be able to name one of the original thirteen colonies, which was beyond the capacity of 68 percent of that grade. By the eighth grade, matters have got worse, as they are bound to do. Ninety percent of eighth graders could recount nothing of the debates at the Constitutional Convention. Even when prompted by mentions of Yalta, Lend-Lease, and Hiroshima, 59 percent of the eighth grade were unprepared to say which conflict these references brought to mind. In the twelfth grade, 53 percent looked blank when invited to specify “the goal that was most important in shaping United States foreign policy between 1945 and 1990.

There is little sign that things have improved. In fact, the national amnesia Hitchens writes about sheds light on a recent comment from Hodding Carter III:

These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous…Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation’s future.

The results that Carter, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, decries are the findings of the “Future of the First Amendment” research project conducted under the foundation’s auspices. The comprehensive study which surveyed over 112,000 students across the United States found some disturbing trends, exonerating Mr. Carter of the accusation that he was being chickenlittleish in his assessment. A few of these key findings include:

• High School Students express little appreciation for the First Amendment. Nearly three-fourths say either they don’t know how they feel about it or take it for granted.
• Students are less likely than adults to think that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions and only fifty-one percent think newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.
• Students lack knowledge and understanding about key aspects of the First Amendment. Seventy-five percent incorrectly think that flag burning is illegal. Nearly half erroneously believe the government can restrict indecent material on the internet.
• Administrators say student learning about the First Amendment is a priority, but not a high priority.

This leaves one wondering if our students are learning their civics lessons in 1984’s infamous Room 101. Suddenly, in this context, the garbled outpourings of Pop Tart Britney Spears on the Tucker Carlson show, “Honestly I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens” no longer seems like those of a superfluous bimbo but rather the spokesperson of her generation.

If, as Hitchens contends, “the measure of an education is that you acquire some idea of the extent of your ignorance”; why is there not more of an outcry about the dismal performance of U.S. students? Perhaps his next statement could be part of the answer, “…it seems at least thinkable that today’s history students don’t quite know what subject they are not being taught.” It does not help that according to the National Center for Education Standards, fewer than 19 percent of high school and middle school social studies teachers had majored (or minored) in history.

Diane Ravitch’s The Language Police perhaps gives a clearer picture of why schools do such a bad of job firing the imaginations of young scholars in pursuit of history. Compared to the periodic conflagrations that erupt with the regularity of a herpes infection in biology’s evolution/creationism debate or the shamefaced prudery of a faux pas in the sex education class, the trench warfare of history teaching is particularly grinding. Partisans of every stripe weigh in with strident campaigning for their particular “narrative”; Native Americans, conservatives, feminists, Afrocentrists, and environmentalists – to name but a few – lunge and parry, form strange alliances and undo any systematic attempt to develop a comprehensive, or for that matter, coherent plan for teaching history.

Meanwhile, textbook publishers, whose job it is to sell books, and school administrators, whose job it is to, well, administrate, have firmly staked out the no-man’s land amid the shifting battle lines. Fearing political retribution, the ever-dreaded lawsuit, or still worse, no sales, there is a silent conspiracy of self-censorship and an ardent striving for superficiality. The reasoning, I suppose, is: is history really worth all of this? The result is bland pablum as nutritious as the sugarcoated breakfast cereals their increasing overweight customers hurriedly consume before climbing onto the school bus.

Ravitch, in a chapter appropriately entitled “History: The Endless Battle”, concisely elucidates the minefield that ill-prepared teachers (remember, the majority of history teachers have never studied history) step onto in our results-oriented and multiculturally sensitive classroom:

The states that ignore content are very prescriptive about the skills that students must learn. They call on students to do research, use technology, evaluate information, discover relationships, solve problems, work in teams, communicate, and exercise minutely specified “critical thinking skills.” But they leave blank the historical knowledge to which these skills should be applied.

With that said, is it any wonder that Hitchens finds his own children “could not tell Thomas Jefferson from Thomas the Tank Engine”?

Ravitch rails against the “multicultural steering committees” of the left and the “family values” types of the right and their overweening concern for the feelings of their constituancies:

Historians, like writers of fiction, must be able to write what they know, based on evidence and scholarship, without fear of the censor and without deference to political, religious, ethnic, or gender sensitivities.

The late Neil Postman argued that history is a more an idea than a subject, or rather a meta-subject and the “single most important idea for our youth to take with them into the future.” Postman argues that all subjects have a history or histories; science and its attending branches, literature, music, etc. Without the overarching idea of history, it is difficult indeed to benchmark progress (or the lack thereof) and we are left with a vacuous temporality inhibiting real problem-solving skills. Hitchens found this in his own teaching experience:

Since you can’t teach the American literary canon (indeed, you can’t even teach people to deconstruct it) without some reference to historical context, I began every class with an abbreviated introduction about the period in which the author was writing. I still have my notes and papers sent me by my students, asking why they had to get all the way to college before anyone anyone bothered to fill in this nagging blank.

Yes, the nagging blank. As if the fictional “memory hole” of Orwell’s dystopia had come to pass without any perspective as to the when or where of its happening. The conservative philosopher, George Santayana, addressed the danger of the lack of retentiveness in response to what Leon Edel, Henry James’s biographer, refered to as “America’s cult of impermanence”:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stages of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.

If history is the “single most important idea for our youth to take with them into the future,” having only 51 percent of our young believing that newspapers have the right to publish stories without government approval, that future is looking increasingly bleak indeed.

©2005 Barney F. McClelland at As I Please