Astrobiology

With nonhuman species, on Earth and elsewhere, how far should we extend our ethical codes?

In agreement with Edward Osborne Wilson in Consilience (1998), the origin of ethics is not a religious debate between believers and non-believers, but rather between “transcendentalists,” those of us who believe that ethical precepts (such as justice and human rights) are independent of human experience, and “empiricists,” who believe that ethical principles are human inventions. In what follows we shall understand how, for astrobioethics, both sides of this debate are fruitfully complementary.

Even though we have already underlined that independent of any theological consideration, the main debate on ethics is between transcendentalists and empiricists, nevertheless we must not exclude, but instead we should pay special attention to some religious aspects both of morality and public policy. Independent of any ethical system, our Judeo-Christian traditions contain writings that are remarkable from an ethical point of view, as they address fundamental questions. An outstanding example is Jesus’ The Sermon on the Mount (Mathew, 5,1-14, written c. 85 AD), which is inserted in a long biblical tradition (Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17,7).

On the other hand, as astrobiologists we are mainly concerned with an empirical approach to ethics. Its insertion in science goes back to Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man (1875). This work offers a rationalization of the origin of ethics. Since the second half of the last century, the application of Darwinian theory to social behavior—sociobiology—has taught us how ethical behavior, as well as astrobioethics, can be given solid scientific bases. Consequently, under empiricism, progress in the search for life in the universe is bound to induce us to abandon the idea that ethics is uniquely human.

However, we should keep in mind the other major approach to ethics. In philosophy, from Socrates to Singer, there is a long history of transcendentalism. The following short selection of outstanding contributions clearly illustrates this remark: John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689), David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Immanuel Kant’s The Categorical Imperative (1785), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s The Philosophy of Right (1831), George Edward Moore’s Principia Ethica (1903), and John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971).

With these major philosophical contributions, we are once again in the satisfactory position that has characterized progress: When empirical bases have been identified, rationalism arises as its inevitable complement. In science, from Democritus to Darwin, the concert between empiricism and rationalism has been the general rule. For example, in classical mechanics, early empirical observations of Galileo were later rationalized by Newton’s theory of gravitation. Exceptionally, in the astrobiological context, empiricism arose long after rationalization had preceded it in the form of transcendentalism. Fortunately, both sides of the current debate on ethics, and a fortiori on astrobioethics, provide solid bases for a consensus. We are ready to face astrobiology’s most pressing objective due to the programs on exploration of the Solar System: our eventual interaction with life beyond our own horizons.

Julian Chela-FloresThe Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy May 2021

Science is awesome. Well, actually, it’s not the science that’s awesome. It’s the natural world that science helps uncover, expose, reveal. My friend and Nobel Prize winning physicist, the late Charles Townes, once averred to some students visiting in our home, “science is a form of revelation.”

In this sense, astrobiology is awesome. Among the revelations over the last quarter century are exoplanets, more than 4,000 confirmed with thousands more waiting in line for confirmation. Our space spectroscopists are watching and our SETI scientists are listening for biosignatures that could reveal extraterrestrial intelligence. Meanwhile, our solar system spelunkers energetically mine the subsurface of Titan and the atmosphere of Venus, looking for possible microbial neighbors closer to home. Astrobiology offers video game adventure for grown-ups.

Astrobiology provides one component to the more comprehensive matrix of science and technology that comprise space research. Just standing in awe at the numinosity of the cosmos is only part of the picture. Funding launch and orbital technology in the midst of geopolitical competition and tension occupy private entrepreneurs and governmental leaders alike. A competition has arisen between stockholders investing in off-Earth mining, on the one hand, and scientists wishing to maintain pristine off-Earth laboratories for their research, on the other hand.

This competition provides honest work for philosophers who then ask: would critters living in an off-Earth biosphere have intrinsic value? And, if so, would the imputation of intrinsic value protect them from terrestrial profiteering? Regardless of how we respond to these ethical quandaries, the answers should rise to the level of public policy formulation to guide the next generation of space explorers.

We need a book. We need a book that looks at Astrobiology: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy . You are now reading this book. Yet, as we delve into the details of reading this book with our eyes focused on the pages, we dare not forget the awesome beauty of the cosmos that can be glimpsed only when we turn to look in the direction of the stars.

Let me alert you to some subtleties of vocabulary. With the term, astrobiology , we work with standard definitions summarized as: Astrobiology is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of life on Earth and beyond Earth that draws upon a host of disciplines such as astronomy, physics, planetary science, geology, chemistry, biology.

What about ethics? In general, the term, ethics , refers to the theoretical work undergirding standards of value and moral responsibility. Be alert to overlaps and distinctions in various chapters. The panoptic terms, astroethics and space ethics , are inclusive. They include reflection on the broad scope of ethical concerns arising from concrete procedures in space exploration as well as speculations regarding extraterrestrial life. A more focused term is astrobioethics , which concentrates on matters having to do specifically with bios , life. Astrobioethics, you will read in Octavio Chon-Torres’ chapter, is a branch of philosophy and astrobiology that studies the moral implications of the search for life in space.

The construction of future public policy can be built on a solid foundation laid already in 1958 and 1967. As Jacques Arnould at France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) reminds us, the United Nations Committee on Space Research was established in 1958 on the occasion of the International Geophysical Year. The result is a perduring UN mandate to develop recommendations that form the basis of what is now known as planetary protection.

To this foundational principle of planetary protection was added some superstructure in the 1967 UN Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. This prescient document stipulated:

Ҥ 1. The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.