There Is No Other Adam in the Neighborhood

It’s sad, but can be verified every day: the fact that the same assertion is made by many and for a long time does not prove its validity. For how many centuries did schools teach that worms come from rotted flesh? For how many centuries did doctors maintain that malaria is caused by foul air, and that bloodletting cures all diseases?

In the same way, the antiquity of the belief in “inhabited stars” does not prove anything about its truth. Both this opinion and its opposite—that life exists only on Earth—have been maintained for millennia with great vigor but with weak arguments. Possibly no other philosophical dilemma has given rise to a dispute of longer duration and hazier substance. The dispute continues still, and will for a long time, because it consists of the repetition of just two opposing arguments, which can be summarized as follows:

i)The Earth alone is inhabited, because the Earth is the center of the universe. We have reluctantly given up the belief that it is such physically—we have conceded that it orbits around the Sun, that the Sun is not the center of the Galaxy, that it does not make sense to speak of a geometrical center of the universe, yet we continue to believe that the Earth is a privileged place, since it is where we human beings live, and we are privileged because we know good and evil and are the recipients of divine revelation. Indeed, there are no sure signs of extraterrestrial life. It is evident that life does not exist: all the more reason that intelligent life does not exist.

ii)For reasons of symmetry and economy, other inhabited planets have to exist. Life alone, and in particular conscious life, can be the purpose of creation, and creation cannot be without purpose. A boundless universe in which only tiny Earth harbors life and consciousness would be illogical and wasted. For now, there are no signs of extraterrestrial life, but precursors have been found, if only on our neighbors in the solar system. All the more reason that they will be discovered in the stars, if and when we are able to explore them. Maybe the stars are not innumerable, but certainly they are so numerous that a billion planets could provide a favorable environment for life to take root in, and the progression of life is inexplicable and meaningless if it does not flow into consciousness. Thus it is evident that other forms of intelligence besides ours exist in the cosmos.

As a matter of fact, in this dispute only one thing is evident—and that is prejudice. Reduced to their true essence, the two arguments could be set forth as follows: “I, man, do not wish to have competitors in creation,” and “I, man, fear solitude and long for a companion and guide.” These viewpoints are subjective and therefore indisputable: they are wishes in the form of beliefs. Now, the leap forward in astronautics in recent years has led to breathtaking results; formulating metaphysical hypotheses on what is at last within reach of our instruments has become a vaguely irritating exercise. Man has stepped on the Moon, analyzed the soil of Mars and the hellish atmosphere of Venus, photographed the volcanoes of Io and the hydrocarbon rain on Titan. The sky has more imagination than we expected, but there are no signs of life either present or past. There is no other Adam, at least in our neighborhood, and not even his most rudimentary ancestor; there are only moderately complex carbon compounds—that is, the clay with which to make him.

We do not know what things are like farther away, in the stars close and distant, nor do we know whether we will ever know. For now we can say only that extraterrestrial life is possible, and variously probable and desirable according to the emotional and theological prejudices that all of us unconsciously harbor, but it is less evident to us than to our scientist and positivist forefathers.

Tuttolibri, January 3, 1981 (published on the occasion of
the launch into orbit of the satellites Pioneer 10 and 11, which
carried information on the environment and the nature of man)