What planetologist David Grinspoon is working on in this book is similar to the consilience that biologist Edward O. Wilson talked about in his book of that name and what C.P. Snow dreamed about in his discussions of the two academic cultures half a century ago. But what Grinspoon is reconciling is the informed and creative speculation of the human mind with the rigorous requirements of scientific orthodoxy. He uses the almost forgotten term "natural philosophy" as a means to the end of reconciling the dreamer in his soul with the scientist in his head.
Grinspoon represents a new breed of scientist not afraid to speculate aloud and in public about matters that cannot be proven, to joke about them, to relate to them personally and passionately, and to say that it shouldn't be career-threatening for a scientist to venture into the realm of the unknown.
He realizes how complex and wondrous is all that we know and especially all that we don't know, and that in a world of uncertainty one can still make decisions and speculate while recognizing that there is a place where science ends and natural philosophy begins. In this regard is a nice quote from Bertrand Russell:
"When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others." (p. 374)
This is perhaps Grinspoon's major point. He seeks to separate not just pseudoscience from science, but the likely from the unlikely, and to allow the unproven to remain the unproven but without prejudice. He admits his biases and he gives his reasons for them. At the same time he allows that he could be wrong and hopes that in some cases he is. "Aliens on the White House lawn?--Not yet, but it could happen," might be a fair way to summarize Grinspoon's position.
This book is about why we think about alien life (which is in some sense just a metaphor for the unknown) and how our emphasis and focus have changed over time, and what we know and what we don't know, and what the prospects are for finding answers. Grinspoon is clearly on the side of the angels in spirit, but with the Skeptical Inquirer in cognition.
Grinspoon knows that the new science, like the new music, always sounds discordant to the establishment. But because he comes from a personal culture steeped in the ideas of Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, etc., not to mention Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, Bob Dylan and Jerry Steinfeld and, yes, even Madonna, he doesn't care. Let the establishment cope with the new sciences of complexity, astrobiology, chaos, and let them grapple with the inadequate definitions of "life" and "consciousness." Let them rankle at Gaia and squirm at group selection. Grinspoon wants to go beyond that. He wants us to become one of the "immortals"--civilizations so advanced and in tune with the cosmos that they will never die until the universe grows cold, and maybe not even then.
Here are some examples of Grinspoon's thought and expression in this wonderfully expressive and exciting book:
"[O]ther planets must be inhabited because natural selection would fashion living beings to take advantage of local conditions..." (p. 36)
Recalling Percival Lowell's Martian canals: Gaps in the "sketchy data at the limits of current abilities...may be filled by our desires, [and] by the power of suggestion..." (p. 39)
Asserting that "the planets were where we thought they'd be and...we reached them...has got to be the most solid confirmation of the scientific and technological revolutions of the past four centuries," Grinspoon adds in a characteristic footnote: "Stuff that in your socially constructed pipe and smoke it!" (p. 62)
"We don't really know what life is. We may as well try and catch the wind as pin life down with a tidy definition." (p. 98) --By the way, this incorporation of song lyric and scientific thought is something that Grinspoon does very well throughout the book. ("We really don't know life at all." --Joni Mitchell)
How did single-celled organics beget multi-celled organisms? "This, not some shadowy ape-man, is the real 'missing link' in evolution." (p. 113)
"We are the life of the sun." (p. 123) --One of my favorite ideas that is not scientific because it begs the question of the definition of life. It is an idea--typical of what Grinspoon is getting at--that needs contemplation.
"Thank Gaia..." (p. 134)
"The classical concept of the habitable zone starts to seem like a bourgeois notion invented by self-centered, Sun-worshiping surface dwellers." (p. 199)
"Who are we to say that the universe couldn't make some kind of complex, self-organizing, evolving structures using its gravitational or nuclear forces, forming living structures that are too large or small for us to notice?" (p. 265)
Our consciousness "is most likely just some vague foreshadowing of what would be called true consciousness..." (p. 396)
Grinspoon employs a self-effacing, disarming literary style that uses the idioms of popular culture to make his points. Don't be fooled! Grinspoon is an expert in several disciplines including evolutionary biology, astronomy and cosmology. Although he makes no such claim I can tell by some of what he writes that he is also an expert on world religions. (See especially pages 383-385.) It is refreshing to read a scientist who understands religion since few people do, including the so-called religious. Grinspoon rejects monotheism. He doesn't say why or for what, but I suspect he sees God as beyond any of the attributes that we can dream up for God. Perhaps Grinspoon is enamored of the God of the Vedas about which nothing can be said, a God without an attribute that we could name. Certainly he rejects "scientism" and any personal god. My guess is he is saving these ideas for a future opus. I will be reading that book. I highly recommend that you read this one.
