EVOLUTION ELSEWHERE: A SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION

LEE LOEVINGER

Based on the known evolutionary record of life on earth, speculations are presented about the likelihood of finding life elsewhere in the cosmos.

When the Cosmos Club was first organized in 1878 even the members, then regarded as “Washington’s scientific elite,”¹ undoubtedly thought that the Milky Way, comprising the visible stars, was the entire universe.² It was not until half a century later that Edwin Hubble expanded the then accepted view of the universe far beyond the Milky Way, which is our “local” galaxy, by showing that there are uncountable other galaxies, all of which are moving away from us at great speed.³

THE COSMOS

In the 120 years since the Cosmos Club was founded, its membership has grown from 60 Founding Members to a total of somewhat more than 3,000 members, of all categories. However, the physical cosmos, or, more properly, the observable universe, has expanded by orders of magnitude. The most significant, and impressive, aspect of the universe is its inconceivable vastness. The astronomical distances involved in cosmology are so great that in 1888 scientists devised a new unit of measurement to express them, based on the speed of light and termed a “light year.”

The speed of light in a vacuum has been measured at 186,282 miles (or 299,792 kilometers [km]) per second, which, according to relativity theory, is a limiting speed in that nothing can exceed it. At this speed light can travel more than seven times around the earth at the equator in less than one second. A light year is the distance that light can travel in one sidereal year, which is 5.879 trillion miles (9.461 trillion km), frequently rounded off as 6 trillion miles.

The Milky Way galaxy, which our nineteenth century predecessors regarded as the cosmos, is a disk that is a mere 100,000 (10⁵ ) light years in diameter. The most recent astronomical operations have extended our range of observation beyond 12 billion (1.2 x 10¹⁰ ) light years, and have disclosed a cosmic ocean beyond the Milky Way with billions more galaxies.

For many centuries our ancient ancestors conceived of the cosmos as a system of stars and planets centered on planet Earth. But, as we now know, our solar system is a very small part of one galaxy in a universe composed of a hundred billion or more galaxies,⁴ many consisting of a billion or more stars. Furthermore, recent astronomical observations lead to the startling conclusion that planet formation is not a rare dent but a natural concomitant of star formation, although the first actual evidence of a planet orbiting an ordinary star was not obtained until 1995. ⁵ Only a small proportion of planets have conditions that would support life, at least of a terrestrial kind, but planetary systems are so common that such planets must be numbered in the millions.

Distances between stars and planetary systems even within our galaxy are so great that observation of extrasolar planets will be difficult and indirect in the foreseeable future. Only planets the size of Jupiter or larger are observable, while earth–sized planets are difficult or impossible to detect and will not be directly observed.

The closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star that is part of a three–star cluster known as Alpha Centauri, which is 4.3 light years from us and which does not appear to have any orbiting planets. The magnitude of this distance is suggested by astronomer Ken Croswell who writes that if the universe were shrunk in size so that the distance from earth to the Sun (actually about 93 million miles) were only one inch, then the distance from the Sun to Alpha Centauri would be 4.3 miles.⁶ So far as exploring other stars than the Sun is concerned, the Voyager spacecraft, launched from earth in 1977, will take 80,000 years to reach the present distance of Alpha Centauri.⁷

The closest galaxy to our own is the Andromeda Galaxy, which is 2.3 million light years distant. Thus, although we can explore other planets within the solar system with spacecraft, even if we develop technology to detect characteristics of stars and galaxies elsewhere in the cosmos with the same accuracy as we can within the solar system, we can never make observations of current conditions, but only of matters that existed years in the past—as many as 2.3 million years ago in the Andromeda Galaxy, for example.

Nevertheless, now that we know there are billions of other suns (i.e. stars) and at least millions of other planets in the universe it is reasonable to speculate that some form of life has existed, does exist, or will exist, on more than a few other planets. It is also reasonable to hypothesize that the range of possible life forms and evolutionary development on other planets is at least as great as actually observed on earth. Indeed, the variety of life and evolutionary developments on earth suggest it is difficult to imagine anything much beyond that range. So a cursory survey of terrestrial life and evolution is a good foundation for speculation about evolution elsewhere.

TERRESTRIAL LIFE

It is now established that life on earth began with a single cell which arose spontaneously by natural processes.⁸ Christian de Duve, a Nobel laureate biologist, writes that evidence is overwhelming that all living organisms are descended from this common ancestor, which originated through spontaneous interaction of small organic molecules widely distributed in the universe through processes that were inevitable under conditions existing on prebiotic earth.^8a This original cell was a prokaryote, which means it lacked a nucleus, and belonged to the domain, or kingdom in taxonomic terms, of bacteria. These are distinguished from eukaryotes, or eukaryea, more complex living cells with a nucleus.

Although the earliest microfossils date from about 3.5 billion years ago, evidence of earlier bacterial activity indicates that bacterial life existed on earth as long as 3.85 billion years ago.⁹ While bacteria were long thought to constitute a single kingdom, in 1977 Carl Woese, a scientist at the University of Illinois, announced the discovery of bacteria that differed genetically from those previously known. He called the new bacteria archaebacteria, or archae.

Most species of archae flourished in conditions that would kill other organisms, and thus came to be termed “extremophiles.”¹⁰ Some are known to thrive in environments hotter than 100° C (212° F) and up to 113° C and to stop growing at temperatures below 90° C. Other archae populate Antarctic sea ice that remains frozen for much of the year. Others prefer highly acidic or basic conditions, or grow in intensely saline environments. These data suggest that the first organisms on earth may have been archae, which might have been born in marginal environments, such as boiling, sulfurous pools or hot, mineral–laden, deep sea volcanic vents, rather than developing in a mild soup of organic molecules as first suggested by Darwin. Scientists have also speculated that archae might have lived as early as 4.3 billion years ago, only a few hundred million years after formation of the earth.

What is quite clear is that bacteria are not only the first form of life on earth but also, by any measure, are the most prevalent, the most numerous, and the dominant form of life throughout every period up to the present time.¹¹ Bacteria inhabit every conceivable niche—and some inconceivable niches—of the earth. Billions of bacteria live on each human being. Each square centimeter of human skin is estimated to contain an average of 100,000 microbial organisms. Washing may remove many, but bacteria reproduce so quickly that their number may double every twenty minutes and so their population is quickly restored. About 10% of total body weight, and 50% of the contents of the human colon, are made up of bacteria, largely the species known as Escherichia coli.

Altogether, more than 4,000 species of bacteria have been described and named, but new ones are discovered so rapidly, and bacteria mutate so frequently, that scientists estimate the number of unknown species may be in the millions. Bacteria live not only on the surface of the earth and of other organisms, but throughout many strata of soil and rock beneath the surface. ¹² Researchers have found microbes living in rock more than two miles below the surface of the earth, and there is evidence that microbes have remained trapped in subterranean rock for as long as 80 million years, and possibly twice that long.¹³ Bacteria also live in the deep sea and have been found living more than 1600 feet (500 meters) below the ocean floor.¹⁴ So many bacteria live underground that their total weight has been estimated at 100 trillion tons. If spread over the earth’s land surface these would make a layer five feet thick. The earth contains more bacterial organisms than all other organisms combined. Furthermore, bacteria live in more different environments and have a greater variety of metabolisms than any other organism. In short, bacteria alone constituted the entire first half of the history of life on this planet; and the total bacteria biomass probably exceeds the biomass of all other life combined, even including the giant forest trees.

Since life probably started in the seas, it is not surprising that some of the most strange forms have been found there. Diving nearly a mile and a half in a submersible observatory, scientists have seen giant tube worms that grow to lengths of nine or ten feet in the vicinity of thermal vents. These organisms are reported to “have no eyes, no mouths, and no obvious means of locomotion or ingestion, living in symbiosis with bacteria that metabolize compounds in the water, particularly hydrogen sulfide.”¹⁵ Despite this, tube worms appear to be the fastest growing of all marine invertebrates.

But these are not the most strange of marine life forms. In 1963 a creature washed up on the beach near Malibu, California, which appeared to correspond to the legendary sea serpent of folklore tales. This was a thin, eighteen–foot–long creature, with a long red fin rising like a mane at the top of its head and a red ridge extending down the middle of its back for its entire length, with thin red fins along its side that seemed to be used in propelling it through the water. It was identified as an oarfish, one of the rarest and most spectacular fish in the sea. It is now known to attain lengths of 55 feet and weights of more than 650 pounds; although fewer than 25 sightings have been made, and details are known from strandings, such as that at Malibu.¹⁶

It is impossible to determine, much less describe or catalogue, the variety of marine species, estimated at more than 10 million, of which only about 275,000 have been identified and described.¹⁷ It is not surprising that the deep seas contain a host of strange and unknown creatures—probably far more than land—since oceans cover more than 71% of earth’s surface. Furthermore, seas are habitable to a depth of more than two miles, whereas there is no life on land, other than bacteria, below about 100 feet. To quantify planetary habitats, land is calculated to make up only about one–half of one percent of earth’s biosphere, while shallow seas and continental shelves provide 21 percent and the deep seas constitute 78.5 percent of the total volume.¹⁸ It is impossible to determine precisely how much of the seabed has been explored to date, but oceanographers estimate it is no more than 1/1000th to 1/10,000th.¹⁹

In light of these data it is not surprising that both legend and fact have populated the deep seas with a variety of monsters. One legendary beast that has turned into scientific fact is the giant squid, the largest invertebrate known. Like smaller squid, it has eight arms and two thinner but very long tentacles ending in sucker pads. This monster can grow to lengths of at least 60 feet. The arms and tentacles carry prey to its mouth, and it seeks some of the largest sea creatures as victims, marks of its sucker pads being found on sperm whales. Giant squid have eyes as complicated as the human eye and as large as the human head; and have relatively large brains, suggesting possible intelligence.

As we know now, continents have drifted over eons changing terrestrial environments, constituents of the atmosphere have changed, and earth has been subject to the impact of asteroids and other objects from outer space. These events have had less influence on the marine environment, and, as a result, there are species in the seas that have changed less during evolution than those on land. A widely publicized example is the coelacanth, a five–foot–long steel blue fish with stubby fins that resemble limbs and appear adapted to creeping through muck on the sea bottom. Coelacanth is a member of a class of fish long thought to have become extinct at least 70 million years ago; but a living specimen was caught off South Africa in 1938, and others have been caught since then.²⁰

Life in the seas produces some of the largest specimens and some of the smallest, nanobacteria about 0.2 micrometers wide that grow in marine pico–plankton.²¹ In contrast, fungi are multicellular and may grow to gigantic size. In April 1992, it was reported that a single fungus growing in northern Michigan was possibly the “world’s biggest, oldest organism.”²² It was calculated to be more than 1,500 years old, to cover more than 30 acres of land, and to weigh about 100 tons. It was compared to giant sequoia trees, the largest and possibly oldest plants on earth,²³ which grow to 300 feet tall with a diameter of 30 feet, and some of which show 3,400 annual rings, but the major mass of which is composed of non–living wood accumulated during thousands of years growth. It is not at all clear that there is any limit to longevity of plant life, and there have been reports of plants that have lived for 13,000 years and for more than 43,000 years.²⁴

Among animals, largest are whales, which grow to 100 feet long and weigh as much as 150 tons.²⁵ This great size is possible only because whales live in water, which supports their weight. Whales belong to the order Cetacea, mammals that evolved from a marine environment to land creatures and back to ocean dwellers, and that includes smaller dolphins and porpoises.

Plants and animals are two of the major divisions, or “kingdoms,” of living organisms, but the distinction between these categories is not clear and sharp among unicellular organisms. Most members of the animal kingdom can be distinguished from those of the plant kingdom by their greater mobility, by possession of at least a rudimentary neuromuscular system, by internal rather than external placement of organs, and by the nature of tissue cells enclosed in delicate membranes rather than rigid walls of cellulose.

Plants encompass a great variety of organisms, including those that have roots in the soil, others that live on or within animals or other plants, some that float on or swim about in water, and some that are carried on dust particles in air. There is great variation in both form and size of plants, which range from microscopic unicells to giant sequoia trees. More than 300,000 species are known and discoveries add hundreds of new species each year.

Animals live on complex organic materials derived directly or indirectly from plants, which are metabolized, or chemically altered, to provide energy for the animal functions as well as material for growth. But there are forms intermediate between plants and animals in many features, so the division into taxonomic kingdoms is not uniform among biologists. For most purposes the category of species is the most important taxa, as its definition has real biological meaning. There is no breeding between species, which is defined as a self–perpetuating natural population that is permanently distinct and distinguishable from other populations. More than one million animal species have been identified,²⁶ and hundreds of new species are discovered each year.

TERRESTRIAL EVOLUTION

Articles about evolution are commonly illustrated by diagrams showing a progression from simple forms of life existing in earlier geological periods through a series of animals constituting part of the “family tree” of humans, each taxa or species branching off from the main line, or trunk of the tree, with homo sapiens finally emerging, in the Holocene epoch, on the pinnacle, like the shining star on top of a Christmas tree. But it is not proper to infer from such representation that evolution is purposive or linear in any realistic sense.²⁷

Understanding evolution requires some knowledge of the time scale involved. The earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old, but there is no geological record of the first 700 million years.²⁸ Life originated on earth as a single simple cell by about 3.8 to 3.7 billion years ago.²⁹ This earliest life was the only form of life on earth for the next two billion years. After that, some cells with greater organization and complexity developed a nucleus, and after another billion years these developed into multicellular organisms and eventually into differentiated plants, fungi, and animals, including humans. During the remaining 700 million years from the development of multicellular organisms to the present, evolution produced the proliferation of organisms we now observe.

Scientific study of this process began in the nineteenth century and is commonly dated from 1859 when Charles Darwin published his great work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.³⁰ Innumerable volumes have been published on this subject since Darwin, and some of the most recent and lucid are by Oxford University zoologist Richard Dawkins.³¹ Darwin’s theory is that natural selection, or the operation of natural forces, operating on every variation in the reproduction of every plant and animal species eliminates those that are not fit for survival, so only the “fittest” survive. But, as John Maddox, former editor of Nature, points out, since the fittest are identified as those that do survive, “survival of the fittest” is not an explanation or description but merely a tautology stating that the survivors have survived.³² Nevertheless, as Dawkins and others have amply demonstrated, the basic premise of natural selection is now established by overwhelming evidence as the mechanism by which early primitive forms of life evolved into the species existing on earth today.

But modern research and data subsequent to Darwin have also established that extinction and survival are sometimes the result of adventitious events. Phylogeny may be determined by good or bad luck as well as by good or bad genes. It is well known that dinosaurs were the dominant land animal during the Mesozoic era from 245 to about 66.4 million years ago, and that they were exterminated at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago, together with numerous other species. While the cause of extermination is not known with certainty, the best hypothesis is that there was an astronomical catastrophe such as the impact of an asteroid that generated a dust cloud, which caused a period of darkness, making photosynthesis virtually impossible, thus disrupting the food chain that had previously sustained life. Some scientists have suggested that extinction of the mighty dinosaurs permitted the development of mammals, and thus eventual emergence of the human species. Although such events had a marked effect on the course of evolution, the changes are not explicable in purely Darwinian terms.

Regardless of the specific course of evolution, one fact is clear: all living organisms have had a common ancestor at some time in the remote past. Although people sometimes speak of an “old family” (usually meaning one that has had much money for several generations), in scientific terms this is obvious nonsense. Not only are all families equally old, but all species, ancestries are equally old. Simple creatures like earthworms, complex creatures like sharks, and articulate creatures like humans are all descended from common ancestors. What Darwinian evolutionary theory, buttressed by modern research, shows is that at various times in the course of evolution specialized adaptations to particular environmental conditions have resulted in speciation, or the development of a specialized line of animals or plants that has continued to reproduce organisms with characteristics that enable them to continue surviving and reproducing with their own specialized characteristics.

The direction of evolution appears to run in the opposite direction from that prescribed by the second law of thermodynamics, which describes a general tendency of physical systems to evolve toward greater entropy, or from greater organization toward disorganization. The direction of evolution has continuously been from relative simplicity toward greater complexity, or more integrated organization. Organic life defies the rules of physics by ingesting food from which it extracts energy that enables living organisms to grow as organized structures and to function as extremely complex entities as long as life endures.

As in all other transactions, this involves a cost. For animals, the price is ultimate death. In all animals, including humans, the smallest unit, the “atom” of the organism is the cell. Life began with single, simple cells, which became more complex and developed a nucleus, then clumped together to form multicellular animals, which themselves slowly evolved into larger and more complex animals that continued to be composed of cells. The average adult human is composed of more than a hundred trillion (10¹⁴) individual cells, each with a life of its own.³³

But there is nothing in the nature of a single cell that compels it to die. Bacteria as individual living cells will continue to live and reproduce by division as long as nutrients are replenished. Biologist William Clark writes, “Obligatory death as a result of senescence, natural aging, may not have come into existence for more than a billion years after life first appeared. This form of programmed death seems to have arisen at about the same time that cells began experimenting with sex in connection with reproduction.”³⁴

The difference between human cells and bacteria is apparent after cells have been maintained in culture for a few weeks. While bacteria’s cell division rate never changes, human cells eventually begin to slow down and finally stop dividing and will not start up again. After a final round of cell division, human cells curl up and die. The number of divisions that human cells will go through depends to some extent on the source of the cells. Human cells from a fetus will go through an average of fifty rounds of cell division outside the body before finally stopping. We die because our cells die, a sequence that did not exist in cells for the first few billion years of life on earth. The death of our cells is not an a priori requirement of life but is an evolutionary consequence of human reproduction, multicellularity and complexity.

Human evolution has not been a simple linear phenomenon. For the first 4.25 billion years of life on earth evolution operated according to Darwinian principles, interrupted and redirected occasionally by adventitious intrusions such as asteroid impacts or volcanic eruptions. But with the advent of homo sapiens, about 100,000 to 250,000 years ago, another process began to operate that has become increasingly powerful and pervasive. This is evolution in the realm of culture and, its component, technology. Man is the only creature that has experienced cultural as well as organic evolution. Culture, in this sense, is a broad concept involving conscious learning based on intelligence and achieved through the technology of language, speech, writing, and the methodology of inquiry we call science.

While culture, in this sense, has not eliminated death, it has dramatically postponed it for most humans. Among early humans life expectancy at birth was about 20 to 30 years.³⁵ At the end of the twentieth century, life expectancy at birth is about 80 years in some countries and is rising generally, as the result of numerous aspects of cultural learning and action.³⁶ Cultural evolution has affected many other aspects of human life. Jared Diamond, an evolutionary biologist, surveys cultural evolution during the last 13,000 years, observing, “Peoples of Eurasian origin . . . plus those transplanted to North America, dominate the modern world in wealth and power. Other peoples, including most Africans, have thrown off European colonial domination but remain far behind in wealth and power. Still other peoples, such as the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, the Americas, and southernmost Africa, are no longer even masters of their own lands but have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonists.”³⁷ The proximate explanations for such developments are said to be that some peoples developed guns, germs (i.e. infectious diseases), and steel before others, and that history was influenced more by environmental than biological differences.

The relation of culture to evolution is recognized by Dawkins, expositor of the view that natural selection is a process for perpetuation of genes of a species.³⁸ Dawkins writes that man is uniquely dominated by culture, defined as intellectual content transmitted by the mental counterpart of genes, which he calls “memes.” ³⁹ Basically memes are ideas. Random examples are tunes, catch–phrases, clothes, fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches, or any kind of mental content that can be passed from one mind to another. Memes are the new replicators, the transmission units of human culture.

After death we leave behind some of our genes, and some of our memes. But our genes, although they may live in our children, are a diminishing inheritance which ultimately is doomed to become insignificant with the passage through generations. Memes, on the other hand, may maintain or even gain importance with the passage of time and generations. Memes are also subject to change by evolution. The relative importance and evolution over time of genes and memes can be observed by thinking of the descendants, if any, of such figures as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Hubble, and many others, and the growth and influence of their ideas. Genes are essential and determinative for humans and all other animals. But for cultural evolution, which distinguishes humans from all other animals, memes are the indispensable element of transmission, replication, and evolution— which we usually call progress.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL COMMUNICATION

Formerly NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) funded research on exobiology, or the study of potential life on other planets, and supported a small unit for SETI (Search for Extra–Terrestrial Intelligence) by systematically seeking radio signals from outer space. This was ended by Congress in 1993; but, on the basis of more recent research, NASA established an Astrobiology Institute in 1998 to study how life might arise on other planets or moons.⁴⁰ This is a new version of SETI, which is really a search for life on planets beyond the solar system, as we know enough about the other eight planets of the solar system to be quite sure none has life sufficiently like ours to warrant that self–bestowed encomium “intelligent.”

A favorite theme of science fiction writers has been the possibility of contact with intelligent beings from an extrasolar planet that is thousands of years older than earth and where inhabitants have developed technologies far more advanced than those of earth. This implies that our search for extra–terrestrial life and intelligence is really a search for technology rather than for only life and intelligence. Any extrasolar contact will necessarily be by radio (electromagnetic transmission). But we have had many ancestors who were intelligent but quite incapable of receiving or sending messages by radio. Similarly, there may be many civilizations in the vastness of the universe which have intelligent members who have not developed, or may not care to employ, the technology of astronomical radio transmission.

Another consideration is that the universe itself is continuously evolving. Stars are like our sun, which is a massive sphere of luminous gas that generates light and heat by nuclear fusion of hydrogen and helium compressed by gravity in its core. These are consumed at the rate of five million tons per second, which is a tiny fraction of the sun’s total mass, but is not inexhaustible. ⁴¹ The sun will evolve into a red giant in about another 5 billion years, then expand to incinerate the earth, and then, after a few millennia of pulsation, ultimately evolve into a dark and dead black dwarf star.⁴² Other stars throughout the universe are also going through the same process of evolution as the sun; and in many galaxies new star formation is continuing as old stars mature.

The significance of all this for current residents of the earth is that in order to find or communicate with inhabitants of an extrasolar planet we must find a planet on which cultural evolution has produced scientists and technicians with at least the same degree of knowledge and sophistication as our own most advanced scientists and technicians. Difficulties of language, coding, or transmission techniques, which would surely occur in inter–planetary communication, could probably be overcome. But there is one essential condition for such communication that we can not control, cope with, nor influence. This is that there must be some other planet on which life not only exists but where cultural evolution has advanced to the state of high technology matching ours either a few years prior to or concurrently with our twentieth century.

This requires that life on the other planet have originated at the same time and evolved at the same rate as on earth, or that it preceded evolution on earth by a period permitting its technological age to extend to the latter part of our twentieth century. Making the overly generous assumption that we had the ability to communicate with an extrasolar technological society at any time during the last century, such ability has existed for less than 1/100,000th of 1% of the period life has existed on earth. If evolution on the extrasolar planet has taken about the same length of time to develop technology as we have, the possibility that we could communicate with it depends upon its brief period of technical communications ability coinciding precisely with the tiny sliver of time that our society has had such capacity.

As we do not know, even within an order of magnitude, how many extra solar planets there are in the universe, or what percentage of such planets provide conditions permitting the existence of life and evolution of a technological society, it is quite impossible even to guess what the probability may be of such interplanetary communication. We do know that of the nine planets of the solar system only one has provided conditions permitting evolution of a technological society. So whatever the total number of planets in the universe may be, the only reasonable assumption must be that a small minority of them has the technical capacity for interplanetary communication; and the existence of such capacity concurrently with our own present technology would be extremely fortuitous—and unlikely.

EVOLUTION ELSEWHERE

The fact that we may not be able to communicate with an extrasolar planet possessing technology to communicate with us does not indicate that there may not be many planets with life throughout the universe, including many with intelligent life. Although attempting to appraise such a possibility is entirely speculative, it offers a mirror for us to see a new view of our own world.

A few conclusions can be stated with some assurance on the basis of what we know of evolution on earth. The possibility that life might originate spontaneously anywhere in multicellular form appears so improbable that it must be considered virtually impossible. The only reasonable hypothesis is that where life exists on other planets it must have originated in unicellular form, as on earth, or was transported from another planet on a particle, spore, or asteroid. Over a period of time, probably eras of millions of years, extraterrestrial life will necessarily adapt to the conditions of its environment by the same process as on earth, which is evolution. Although the environmental conditions of another planet, and the biological responsive adaptations, will probably be different from those of earth, the general course of evolution will surely be from more simple to more complex organisms, for the same reasons that terrestrial evolution has taken that path.

Evolution is ubiquitous, continuous, and ceaseless. Yet there is no reason to believe that life on any other planet will inevitably evolve to produce a species similar to the human race. On any planet that has life, and remains habitable for a sufficiently long time, evolution will operate on mutations to produce a variety of species. The survival and growth, or extinction, of each species will depend on its adaptation to its local environment, and a virtual infinity of circumstances, including such calamitous events as asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions. Evolution has produced millions of different species, but there is nothing in the evolutionary process that will necessarily produce a hominid species. If hominids exist on any other planet, it is not inevitable but highly improbable that within a relatively short period individual variation will produce the equivalent of Thales, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Marconi, Edison, Einstein, and others of their ilk. Without such distinguished aberrants, culture on earth would not have advanced much beyond its status in the sixteenth century; and this is the most likely status of any other planet inhabited by humans.

This suggests we should reflect on what aspects of cultural evolution we would expect, or hope, to find elsewhere. Complete candor compels the conclusion that much of what we observe on earth would be disappointing, and even shocking, to observe elsewhere. Early in the twentieth century, the countries that appeared to represent the greatest advances in cultural evolution divided into hostile groups and employed the then most advanced tools and instruments to slaughter the populations of their adversaries. Following this catastrophic period, one of the largest and most technologically developed countries declared large segments of its own population to be undesirable, and sponsored a holocaust to brutally destroy men, women, and children on the basis of their religion, race, or parentage. While that holocaust was still raging in Germany, another war between groups of the major industrialized countries began and continued for six years. Since the end of this second World War, there have been a series of more limited but equally brutal wars and massacres in areas such as Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of Eurasia, Africa, and Oceana. Meanwhile, the third largest and the most populous country in the world, residence of approximately one–fifth of the world’s population, came under control of a political group committed to rule by force and oppression.

Although it is not certain we are fully aware of all atrocities of past ages, a responsible judgement can be made that the twentieth century has been the bloodiest and most brutal in human history. This should dispel any illusion that cultural evolution inevitably yields improvement or progress. As we approach the end of the twentieth century, we are informed on a daily basis by television, radio, newspapers and the Internet, the products of our scientific and technological evolution, of the abuses, wars and atrocities occurring throughout the world. But the same cultural evolution that has produced these instruments of communication has also provided most of us with a level of physical comfort, public health, and material well–being greater than any previously existing on this planet—and possibly on others.

If we do eventually establish interplanetary communication with at least one extrasolar planet, there is no reason to assume we will encounter a culture superior to that we refer to as “Western,” meaning Eurasian–American. On earth there have been a multitude of cultural groups engaged in a variety of activities, recreations and philosophies. For example, in the United States and Europe there are millions of individuals, mostly males, who have neither the strength nor skill to play athletic games with anything like the skill and strength of a few highly paid athletes, but who are addicted to spending endless hours watching professional athletes play such games. Throughout the world there are many millions devoted to both spectator and participatory sports and games of all kinds. In contrast, there are a relatively few individuals who are driven by intellectual curiosity to a fascination with and addiction to research that probes the nature of physical reality and natural phenomena.

During all of history there have been multitudes of social groups that have been fully engaged in providing for their own and family needs for food and shelter and seeking to amuse themselves with one or another type of game. There have been only a few individuals, nearly all members of the western cultural group, who have devoted themselves, often at considerable personal peril or cost, to what we now call science. Yet the health, comfort, and material well–being we now enjoy is almost entirely the product of that small group. An authoritative review of the history of science lists the names of all notable scientists (called “natural philosophers” prior to the nineteenth century) starting with the Greek Thales of Miletus (circa 624–546 BC), usually regarded as the first scientist, and coming down to Einstein and Feynman. The list contains fewer than 2,000 names out of the billions of individuals who have lived and are living. That our scientific culture is the manifestation of a few extraordinary minds is made evident by observing that there are still tribes and other population groups in the world that lack scientists and remain relatively primitive by contemporary western standards.

To take a cosmic view, there is no basis for assuming that any planet capable of supporting life will produce a species of individuals that are not only intelligent but also more intelligent and motivated than those that have given the contemporary high level of scientific knowledge and technological achievement to this world. Indeed, speculating on the basis of statistical probabilities, without actual data as to the nature of other planetary inhabitants, one must conclude the probability is that earth has the highest level of cultural and scientific evolution existing within any possible range of observation in this universe. Everyone will surely agree that while cultural progress on earth has been substantial, we have not attained that hypothetical condition suggested by the euphoric phrase “the best of all possible worlds.” Whether such a concept is possible, or even meaningful, must be left to philosophers. It is significant that the English word most nearly expressing that idea is “utopia,” coined by Sir Thomas More in 1516 from Greek roots meaning “nowhere.” If that ideal is achieved it must be on a distant planet, orbiting a star in some remote region of the universe, probably in another galaxy. The most we can strive for or hope to attain is the best of all probable worlds. That is a practical and worthy goal, and is possible of achievement.

REFERENCES

Lee Loevinger (CC ‘84) is of counsel in the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, and was President of the Cosmos Club in 1990,
555 Thirteenth Street, NW;
Washington, DC 20004;
phone: (202) 637-6530; fax: (202) 637-5910

Return to COSMOS 1998 Table of Contents
Return to COSMOS Journals
Return to COSMOS Home Page