Anthropology

The debate about the wisdom of sending interstellar transmissions is well-known to those involved in SETI, and frustrating for many. Its tendency towards intractability is a result of multiple factors, including: different models of the scientist’s role as citizenand/or leader; disparate ideas about society’s readiness to cope with frontier science;variable political substrates, particularly ideas concerning individual freedom and state control; competing ideologies of globalization; and the perceived relative risks and benefits of contact. (Variations in the latter, i.e. assessments of the risks and benefits of contact, derive partly from different thinking styles, including tolerance for risk, and partly from inferences based upon episodes of biological and cultural contact on Earth.) Unpacking the debate into its components may be of use to those debating policy about SETI transmissions, or at the very least, help keep in focus what, precisely, the perennial arguments are really about.

SETI's essential premises involve evolution in multiple domains: cosmology, biology, culture and technology. Comparatively little has been written about the last of these, technology, in relation to SETI's targets, but it is a crucial variable and well worth deep examination. In particular, ...

Ten thousand years ago, no-one on Earth was living a ‘civilized’ life. What has happened since is remarkable and impossible to fully comprehend; yet, everyone has ideas about civilization, and how the world came to be as it is. Such understandings of civilizations on Earth inevitably influence speculation about extraterrestrial civilizations, in two ways. First, sometimes a specific Earth civilization or historical experience is explicitly used as a basis for inferences about extraterrestrial civilizations. Second, more general assumptions about the development and functioning of Earth’s societies shape conjectures about alien societies. This paper focuses on the latter, general assumptions, with the aim of considering how we can use multidisciplinary approaches, and our knowledge of Earth’s civilizations, to our best advantage in SETI.

Although astrobiological or SETI detections are possible, actual invasions of sentient extra-terrestrials or plagues of escaped alien microbes are unlikely. Therefore, an anthropological perspective on the question suggests that in the event of a detection, the vast majority of humanity will be dealing not with extra-terrestrial life itself (whether intelligent or not, local or distant), but with human perceptions and representations of that alien life. These will, inevitably, derive from the powerful influences of culture and individual psychology, as well as from science. It may even be argued that in most detection scenarios, the scientific data (and debates about their interpretation) will be nigh-irrelevant to the unfolding of international public reaction. ‘Extra-terrestrial life’ will, in short, go wild. From this premise, some key questions emerge, including: what can scientists reasonably do to prepare, and what should their responsibilities be, particularly with respect to information dissemination and public discussions about policy? Then,moving beyond the level of immediate practicalities, we might also ask some more anthropological questions: what are the cultural substrates underneath the inquiries of Western science into extra-terrestrial life? In particular, what are the stories we have been told about discovery of rare life, and about contact with other beings, and do these stories really mean what we think they do? Might a closer look at those narratives help us gain perspective on the quest to find extra-terrestrial life, and on our quest to prepare for the consequences of detection?

The Drake factor L (average lifetime of a communicative civilization) has such a strong effect on estimates of N (number of communicative civilizations in our galaxy) that frequent reassessment of our understanding of civilizations' lifespans is warranted.

The impact of European contact on Native American health and demography is now perhaps a more popular subject than ever before_ An examination of the recent compilation, Disease and Demography in the Americas, reveals some of the shortcomings of research in this field, including ineffective bonowing of methodology and data. In the study of Native American health and depopulation, an excessive emphasis on being scientific -in particular on quantification and narrowly defined research problems -is reflected in a disregard for the larger sociopolitical and historical contexts of the phenomena under consideration, and of the research itself. This disregard both compromises and impoverishes the study of contact in the Americas.

At the beginning of exobiology and SETI as research programs circa 1960, it was reasonable and responsible for scientists and others to consider the potential effects of a detection of other life, or contact with it, upon humanity. It is no coincidence that this was a time of reckoning with the power of science and technology. The Cold War was settling in, space programs were beginning, and the technologies of war and those of discovery were then, as now, intertwined, in a way that made Carl Sagan, Philip Morrison, Joshua Lederberg, and others, concerned for humanity's future, and the future of life. Those concerns are as well-founded as ever. However, 50 years on, after half a century of predictions and untested hypotheses , we still only know that a detection of extraterrestrial life could come tomorrow , in the next century, or never. Many potential scenarios have been identified and explored, planetary protection protocols have been implemented for astrobiology, policy concerning SETI detections has been created and debated, and some valuable empirical work has been done concerning potential cultural reactions. We might now reasonably ask: what are our real goals here? And do they match what we are actually accomplishing? Are these exercises still beneficial, or are they reaching the point of diminishing returns? Might there be undesirable effects of prognostica-tions about detection and contact? Elsewhere, I have discussed at some length what I think can sensibly be done to prepare for a detection. This leaves me with a further argument to make here: first, that the use of historical analogies of intercultural contact on Earth to predict or explore the potential consequences of contact with ETI may now be essentially useless or perhaps worse than useless; second, that the long-standing practice of prediction about contact now also invites scrutiny in terms of its utility; and third, that turning our attention to pressing topics at the intersection of astrobiology, SETI, and society, could be worthwhile for scholars of humanity.

Human  beings  have  long  been  interested  in  the  potential  discovery  of  extraterrestrial  life  – but astrobiology  is  much  m
ore  than  this.  Astrobiology  addresses  the  definition,  emergence,  evolution,  and  future  of  life  on  Earth  and  in the universe, and intersects with the human exploration and exploitation of our solar system, our own deliberate evolution, and our relationship with our planet.

Astrobiology is challenging our views of, and engagements with, life itself, as well as humanity’s position in the  universe.  The  science  presents  issues  that  crosscut  SBES  disciplines  at  a  fundamental  level.  All  legal, ethical,  theological,  and  cultural  systems  are  based  on  `life  as  we  know  it’,  and  astrobiology  has  begun  to  challenge those fundamental assumptions, as well as our anthropocentrism, and our terracentrism. A truly interdisciplinary  approach  is  needed  to  understand  the  broad  implications  within  human  and  social 
contexts –now, and in the future.
We therefore ask, How will advances in astrobiology research and exploration affect humanity? , and argue that  it  is  necessary  to  foster  an  interdisciplinary  community  of  SBES  researchers  who  can  address  the human questions that astrobiology is presenting to us.

During  several  years  of  researching  prehistory’s  importance  to  people  in  Britain,  and  the  many  forms  which  its  interpretation  takes,  multiple  lines  of  connection  between  archaeology and  folklore  quickly  became  evident  to  me.    There  are,  for  example,  frequent  links  between  archaeological  sites  and  local  traditions  or  legends  in  Britain,  as  well  as  the  strong  tendency  for  avocational  researchers  there  to  be  interested  in  both,  rather  than  either  subject  in  isolation.  This  is  intriguing  territory  indeed.  But  if  one  adopts  a  broader  definition  of  folklore,  moving  outwards  from  “the  traditional  beliefs  and  stories  of  a  people”  (Concise  Oxford  Dictionary)  to  include  all  stories,  including  religious  narratives,  which  play  an  important  role  in  societies  today,  there  emerge  many  more  lines  of  connection  with  archaeology.  One  example  is  that  of  Western  apocalyptic  writings,  both  secular  and  religious,  for  these  versions  of  history  can easily be seen in parallel to modern archaeologically based narratives. Followed far enough, these lines intertwine in surprising ways, and put fairly ordinary observations about the popularity of archaeology, or the  importance  of  history,  into  larger  contexts  –  contexts  which  archaeologists  may  find  worthwhile  to  consider  as  they  read  and  write  upon  their  subject,  for  the  archaeologist’s  role  in  modern  society  can  be  more substantial than is sometimes assumed.
Archaeology is important socio-politically, and not only in explosive situations like India’s Ayodhya (Ascherson 1998), but also in the way that archaeologically based narratives are woven, just as folklore is, into the very fabric of our lives. This has increasingly been the subject of study for scholars, especially those concerned with national and ethnic identities and their representation and construction through archaeological material (e.g. Ronayne 1997; Piccini 1997; Kohl and Fawcett 1995).  But there is another dimension in which archaeology is socially consequential, which is becoming ever more obvious now, in a time when idle conversation often turns to the fast-approaching year 2000 AD. Archaeology is also important because of the role it plays in generating narratives about the way our world will end.  These narratives in turn are important socially (not just to academics and ideologues) because human beings understand and describe their world through stories, and more than that, because stories help us to situate ourselves, as individuals and as groups, in time. More significantly still, stories – whether born of history, religion, science, or myth – tell us how to live. And sometimes, they tell us how to die.
Denning, Kathryn.  1999. “Apocalypse past/future: Archaeology and folklore, writ large.”  Chapter in Archaeology and Folklore, A. Gazin-
Schwartz and C. Holtorf, eds. London: Routledge. pp 90-105.

It’s 2013, but what time is it?  Does apocalypse lie before us, or behind us? ... I wonder whether some of us are finally entering a
postapocalyptic era —  not by having survived an actual world-ending
cataclysm or eschaton but rather, by getting over our obsession
with apocalyptic prophecies. We have worked through The End so
many times in art and the imagination, that some of our worst
nightmares have been attenuated, or neutralized. For example, the
dead rise all the time –  in photos, virtual reality, museum exhibitions
and zombie walks. But perhaps this domestication of darkness
comes at a cost: Does it blind us to the pain of those who actually
have survived the unimaginable? Do zombies fascinate us because
we have not seen, and have not been, the walking dead? Perhaps we can only now begin to ask: if the end is both always and never here, and if there is no judgement day but only a string of moments in which we must do the best we can, then how shall we live in time?

Human musings about Others in faraway lands, from distant times, and on other worlds predate academic disciplines by thousands of years. The loca-tions may be different, but the questions at the heart of the matter—What do Others know of their worlds? What do They do there? How can We learn about Them?—are the same. It is not surprising, therefore, that anthropology, archaeology, and SETI share certain core issues. It is also not surprising that anthropologists/archaeologists and SETI scientists understand and address these core issues differently, given their divergent disciplinary orientations.These convergences and divergences provide a space for some very interesting interdisciplinary discussions.
My primary focus in this paper is on just one of many intersections of anthropology, archaeology, and SETI: interstellar messages. I aim to highlight some assumptions about message decipherability and decipherment that appear in the SETI literature and that tend to be contradicted by anthropology and archaeology. These contradictions
stem from differences in the use of Earth analogues, in frameworks regarding linguistic meaning, and in epistemological orientations. I argue that by drawing from different disciplinary traditions, we can strengthen the conceptual groundwork for interstellar message decipherment.

The Ad Hoc Committee on SETI Nomenclature was convened at the suggestion of Frank Drake after the Decoding Alien Intelligence Workshop at the SETI Institute in March 2018. The purpose of the committee was to recommend standardized definitions for terms, especially those that are used inconsistently in the literature and the scientific community. The committee sought to recommend definitions and terms that are a compromise among several desirable but occasionally inconsistent properties for such terms: 1) Consistency with the historical literature and common use in the field; 2) Consistency with the present literature and common use in the field; 3) Precision of meaning; 4) Consistency with the natural (i.e. everyday, non-jargon) meanings of terms; 5) Compatibility with non-English terms and definitions. The definitions in this report are restricted to technical, SETI contexts, where they may have jargon senses different from their everyday senses. In many cases we include terms only...

If we recall that our history’s end has not yet been written, and that we ourselves are its coauthors, then perhaps we will come to see that no ending is inevitable, and that the saving bliss of catastrophe is a luxury we can ill afford. (O’Leary 1994:228) During several years of researching prehistory’s importance to people in Britain, and the many forms which its interpretation takes, multiple lines of connection between archaeology and folklore quickly became evident to me. There are, for example, frequent links between archaeological sites and local traditions or legends in Britain, as well as the strong tendency for avocational researchers there to be interested in both, rather than either subject in isolation. This is intriguing territory indeed. But if one adopts a broader definition of folklore, moving outwards from “the traditional beliefs and stories of a people ” (Concise Oxford Dictionary) to include all stories, including religious narratives, which play an important ro...

The search for life in the universe is a major theme of astronomy and astrophysics for the next decade. Searches for technosignatures are complementary to searches for biosignatures, in that they offer an alternative path to discovery, and address the question of whether complex (i.e. technological) life exists elsewhere in the Galaxy. This approach has been endorsed in prior Decadal Reviews and National Academies reports, and yet the field still receives almost no federal support in the US. Because of this lack of support, searches for technosignatures, precisely the part of the search of greatest public interest, suffers from a very small pool of trained practitioners. A major source of this issue is institutional inertia at NASA, which avoids the topic as a result of decades-past political grandstanding, conflation of the effort with non-scientific topics such as UFOs, and confusion regarding the scope of the term "SETI." The Astro2020 Decadal should address this issue ...