David Whitehouse - The Alien Perspective: A New View of Humanity and the Cosmos

F or me, the question of whether there is intelligent life in space is, alongside that about the existence of God, the most important question I know. After a lifetime of thinking about the subject, I was hesitant to write a book about it and initially prepared proposals for a book that skirted around the issue. It was my publishers, Icon Books, and my literary agent, Laura Susijn, who asked me questions and homed in on the essence of what I was stumbling towards. The question of whether there is intelligent life in space is a big one indeed.

During its writing, the project acquired several titles. One was What If?, which was very early on written on a folder containing my notes. There were so many questions, but I worried about a book that asked too many. I soon changed my mind because when it comes to looking for life, especially intelligent life in space, all we have are questions, and in asking them we illuminate the problems, our prejudices and our ignorance. At other times I joked that the book should be called Everything We Know About Aliens and should consist of 252 pages, all of them blank!

At one time I had in mind the forthcoming 50th anniversary of Carl Sagans book, The Cosmic Connection, thinking that it was time to assess our cosmic perspective once more, as many others have successfully done, but the alien kept reappearing, and I thought more and more about the search for intelligent life in space and the gap left in the subject by Carl Sagans absence. xiv

I thought of demotions, of humanity not being the centre of creation, of the Earth not being the centre of the universe. I thought that finding intelligent aliens would be another in a long line of demotions of humankind, but as you will see I changed my mind, thinking that whatever or whoever is out there, if at all, we should not feel any the lesser for their existence.

And I worried about the contrast between the public interest in life in space and the relatively small number of people who have shaped the philosophy of looking for intelligent aliens, and I thought it was time for new voices, new ways of thinking and perhaps fewer bad jokes and brush-offs that cover up legitimate concerns.

Are we alone? There couldnt be a shorter yet more profound question, let alone one that strikes to the very core of what we are. What hubris, I thought, attempting to write a book about such questions.

Yet the question is there behind every corner on Earth, behind every ecosystem and living creature, behind every tenet of philosophy, every religious impulse, inside us all. Are there others? Is this wondering common in the cosmos? How much is parochial, how much universal?

Science is not driven by logic. It is driven by desire, a desire to find out, to experience something wonderful, bigger than ourselves and, in the case of aliens, beyond ourselves. It is strange that we should feel so passionate about beings we have never met. Or is it?

And so, a few thoughts and a few ideas about aliens and the place and prospects for life in the cosmos. If we ever encounter xv them, perhaps the thing we will have most in common are the questions.

I would like to thank Nick Booth for his help and insightful comments throughout this project, and Rebecca Charbonneau for showing me her doctoral thesis on the history of searching for intelligent life in space, which I thoroughly recommend. Thanks also to Carol Oliver of Macquarie University in Australia. I also thank Michael Rappenglck for discussions some time ago about caves and the cosmos.

I would like to thank Duncan Heath and James Lilford of Icon Books, my amazing literary agent Laura Susijn for all her support and of course my children Christopher, Lucy and Emily. My wife, Jill, has given me unwavering support and so many ideas. I cannot thank her enough.

David Whitehouse
Hampshire
2022 xvi