A Cautionary Tale: Our Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe

Science is a curious human enterprise.

Opening up the human condition to new vistas of possibility, enchantment and enlightenment, science has become man’s loyal shadow. Today man lives with the understanding and confidence that our shadow will surprise us at any given moment.

For a very long time, dating back to the ancient Greeks, we have had the profound hope that mankind would one day possess itself in the absolute glare and fullness of self-understanding – as a species. No different than a newborn babe glancing around its newly discovered environment and finding itself awed by the sight of its hands, man, too, gropes his own existence in the anticipation of closing our field of knowledge.

Of course, the expectation was that this holistic knowledge would take place after the initial discovery of some of the principles that govern physical existence. The bio-chemical principles that govern human life, we now realize, are a predictable staple of human knowledge, offering us indispensible certainty in some areas.

[link to hplusmagazine.com]