Título del libro: What Is Life? On Earth And Beyond
Título del capítulo: A skeptical afterword
ANTONIO EUSEBIO LAZCANO ARAUJO;
Autores externos:
Idioma:
Inglés
Año de publicación:
2017
Resumen:
The possibility of extraterrestrial life is a legitimate scientific and philosophical issue that has been addressed, sometimes in considerable detail, since Pre-Socratic times by naturalists and philosophers. At times in which the nature of stars was unknown and evolutionary biology had not yet been developed, these early speculations rested on the idea of a uniform Universe and had little or no empirical basis. Despite claims on the contrary, there is little or no epistemological continuity of these ideas with current attempts to study life in the Universe, nor did such early conjectures lead to major religious disputes. It is true that the German philosopher and astrologer Philipp Melanchthon, like a few other Renaissance thinkers, was troubled by theological issues related to the salvation of hypothetical extraterrestrial humanities. However, he was basically an isolated case. Contrary to popular belief, for instance, Melanchthon?s contemporary Giordano Bruno was sent to the stake not because he believed in the plurality of inhabited worlds, but rather because his heretical views questioned the divinity of Christ and included other radical proposals that threatened the basic tenets of the Catholic Church during the politically charged atmosphere of the Protestant Reformation. Religions are part of the socio-cultural framework that shapes the environment in which scientific ideas develop and, as shown by their comparative histories, have influenced one another. It is difficult to envision, for instance, the development of the nineteenth-century evolutionary perspective without the Judeo-Christian lineal vision of time, which played a key role in the development of historical narratives. By the same token, Darwin?s secular non-teleological arguments were conveniently interpreted by theists as a natural outcome of the law-abiding Universe created by the rational God they advocated. As stated at Darwin?s funeral by one of his pallbearers, the Reverend Frederic William Farrar, ?[t]his man, on whom for years bigotry and ignorance poured out their scorn, has been called a materialist. I do not see in all his writings one trace of materialism&I read in every line the healthy, noble, well-balanced wonder of a spirit profoundly reverent, kindled into deepest admiration for the works of God&" and added that ?[a]nd because these false antagonisms have been infinitely dangerous to faith, over Darwin?s grave let us once more assure the students of science that, for us, the spirit of mediaeval ecclesiasticism is dead? (Glick, 2010, p. 116). © Cambridge University Press 2017.
Entidades citadas de la UNAM:
ISBN:
9781316809648
Editorial:
Cambridge University Press
