Exobiology and Exoevolution

Exobiology

If life emerged from matter on the Earth, then is it not possible that organisms have appeared elsewhere in this universe? From ancient speculations to modern hypotheses, some of the greatest minds in the history of philosophy and science have grappled with the idea of exobiology (the existence of life-forms beyond this planet), for example, Cusa, Leibniz, and Kant.

In antiquity, Anaxagoras and Lucretius maintained that life does exist beyond the Earth. During the Italian Renaissance, the daring philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) argued for an eternal, infinite, endlessly changing, and inhabited universe. He even held that [Page 932]intelligent beings, superior to the human species, exist on planets elsewhere in dynamic reality. Of course, his iconoclastic framework challenged the earthbound and human-centered worldview entrenched in Western philosophy and theology. In fact,Bruno was burned alive at the stake in Rome (near the Vatican)because of his unorthodox worldview.

In the 20th century, although a silenced evolutionist, the geopaleontologist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin(1881–1955) failed to take seriously the probability of life-forms and intelligent beings existing on planets elsewhere. Instead, he focused on this Earth and the human species. Actually, his cosmology is merely a planetology. In his major work, The Phenomenon of Man (1955), Teilhard believed that the final goal of human evolution is a spiritual Omega Point at which time the united human species will merge with a personal God at the end of Earth history in terms of a converging and involuting collective consciousness. It is not surprising that his mystical vision satisfied neither religious creationists nor scientific evolutionists, although the courageous Teilhard is to be greatly admired for his serious introduction of the fact of evolution into modern

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