Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge/Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge.iso/UFO/BEYOND.001

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File Name: BEYOND.001
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Life Beyond Earth & The Mind of Man
Edited by Richard Berendzen
A symposium held at Boston University on November 20, 1972
(C) 1973 NASA Scientific and Technical Information Office * Washington DC
NASA SP-328
Stock Number 033-000-00518-1
Catalog Number NAS 1.21:328
Library of Congress Catalog No. 73-600150
[Note: The following are selected excerpts from the above publication]
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                            BERENDZEN

Welcome to the symposium on "Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man." Our
topic will be the search for life in the universe and the ramifications of
its possible discovery. Although there have been a handful of scientific
meetings on this topic, to the best of my knowledge this it the first time
there has ever been a meeting where a distinquished panel from diverse fields
will discuss the topic in an open forum.

A generation ago almost all scientists would have argued, often "ex
cathedra," that there probably is no other life in the universe beside what
we know here on Earth. But as Martin Rees, the cosmologist, has succinctly
put it, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Beyond that, in
the last decade or so the evidence, albeit circumstantial, has become large
indeed, so large, in fact, that today many scientists, probably the majority,
are convinced that extraterrestrial life surely must exist and possibly in
enormous abdundance. The question now is no longer so much of  IF as of
WHERE, and with regard to the search, it has also become WHEN, for ultimate
contact seems to many serious thinkers to be virtually inevitable. A short
passage from the recent report of the Astronomy Survey Committee of the
august National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the Nation's most
disnguished scientific body, gives an example of the modern scientific
attitude:

   "Each passing year has seen our estimates of the probability of life
    in space increase, along with our capabilities for detecting it. More
    and more scientists feel that contact with other civilizations is no
    longer something beyond our dreams but a natural event in the history
    of mankind that will perhaps occur within the lifetime of many of us.
    The promise is now too great, either to turn away from it or to wait
    much longer before devoting major resources to a search for other
    intelligent beings... In the long run this may be one of science's most
    important and most profound contributions to mankind and to our
    civilizatioin."

I believe it fair to say, therefore, that this momentous topic deserves
careful, thorough discussion, and that is what I hope we shall give it today.


                     ADDITIONAL MEMBERS OF THE PANEL

ASHLEY MONTAGU: renowned anthropologist and social biologist For many years
he was chariman of the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers He is the author
of scores of books and research papers on a variety of topics in the social
sciences, including the social and cultural development of mankind

KRISTER STENDAHL: an outstanding churchman and theologican, who is the Dean
of Harvard School of Divinity. Dr. Stendahl is considered to be one of the
Nation's most scholarly theologians.

CARL SAGAN: astronomer and exobiologist at Cornell University, and one of the
five or six leading researchers on this question of extraterrestrial life. He
is the coauthor with the Soviet astonomer I.S. Shklovskii of the book
Intelligent Life in the Universe.


PHILIP MORRISON: a professor of physics at MIT durring this time, 13
years prior to this symposium coauthored what was perhpas the first
scientifically valid and reasoned paper ever published on possible modes of
communications with etraterrestrial life. Dr. Morrison is considered in
scholarly circles as one of the most broadly knowledgeable scientists in the
Nation.

GEORGE WALD: a professor of biology at Harvard. In 1967 he received the
Nobel Prize. Dr. Walk has published extensively in all branches of biology,
including the biological and chemical evolution of terrestiral life.

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                              WALD

The chance of breaking out of the solar system and establishing physical
contact - or the chance of any creature in outer space establishing physical
contact with us, coming to us from some other solar system -- seems to me so
remote as to be almost nil. In order to do that, one would have to travel at
the speed of light and it is rather hard to travel at the speed of light and
not be light. SO I rather doubt that physical contact is possible.

But we now are discuuing another kind of contact, and that is communication.
May I say, so that we can have a somewhat warmer and2 livelier conversation as
this meeting goes on, that I can conceive of no nightmare as terrifying as
establishing such communication with a so-called superior (or if you wish,
advanced) technology in outer space. You see, I see no escape from the
thought that more advanced technologies exist, very likely in a number of
places within our own galaxy. That though in itself is a little terrifying to
me, I muyst say, because of my view of and identification with the human
enterprise.

You see, when I ask myself as a lifelong sicentist, "What's science about?"
the answer is not to increase the catalog of facts, it is to achieve
understanding. It means a great deal that one of the greatest human
enterprises is understnaind. It is something that men have sweated out, to
the greater dignity and worth of man. The thought that we might attach, as by
an umbilical cord, to some more advanced civilization, with its more advanced
science and technology, in outer space does not thrill me, but just the
opposite. You see, I think it might thrill and fill with elation the people
who did it; but that is true of almost any enterprise one could name, however
horrifying, however destructive to the rest of mankind. You cannot think of
anything so horrifying that some person would not have a feeling of personal
accomplishment at carrying it out; and I would say that the rest of us had
better restrain him.


                              MONTAGU


These two facts render it likely, to judge from our immediate past
performance [*note: 10,000 years of humanity as opposed to longer
civilization maintenance by an extraterretestrial society], that upon
encountering them, our Government will immediately convene a committee in
order to determine whether these creatures consitute a threat to democracy.
Since their physical appearance will be markedly different and since
difference is usually equated in our culture with inferiority, no matter what
the intellectual status of these creatures may be, and regardless of the
healthy ways of life that characterize them, we shall, of course, know
exactly where we belong in the nature of things.

In short, we would have rather a problem on out hands, but we would not want,
I suppose, the American way of life to be contaminated. With the record we
have of treatment of the American Indians, the blacks, the Chicanos, and
other minority groups, and our record in such places as Mexico, the
Philippines, China, Vietname, and wherever else we have attempted to make the
world safe for democracy, you can foresee what is likely to happen.

I hope you will understand that the assignment I was given was worded in the
form, "How might human beings react to the discovery of life beyond Earth?"
and I have interpreted the word "might" to mean "how may we probably react"
and "how should we react." We are coming to the "should."

I do not think we should wait until the encounter occurs; we should do all in
our power to prepare ourselves for it. The manner in which we first meet may
determine the character of all our subsequent relations. Let us never forget
the fatal impact we have had upon innume