The Eerie Silence: Are we Alone in the Universe?

SETI has been in the news, with the recent conference held at the Royal Society. This book is a far examination of the whole field, beginning with the American astronomer Frank Drake 50 years ago. The first chapter sets out in Davies's own position, which includes a caution about anthropocentric interpretations and the scientific status of the discipline. His position on UFOs is pretty standard, namely that 90% can be explained by normal means and that the remaining 10% contained little of scientific value. He does refer to the security questions implied by the possible presence of aliens, but takes the view (also advanced in connection with 9/11) that the government would be too incompetent to stage a cover-up, as if that were not already a huge amount of evidence in the public domain. He admits that Rupert Sheldrake has come close to producing a scientific theory of telepathy, but says that it still lacks a credible physical basis and a proper mathematical model of the mechanism involved. This in turn assumes that telepathy is susceptible to this approach.

Having said this, the book does provide a very thorough coverage, and goes in for the thought experiment of the implications of a first recognised contact on science, philosophy, politics and religion. In conclusion, Davies gives three answers to the question of whether we are alone in the universe. As a scientist he thinks we are probably the only intelligent beings in the universe, as a philosopher he is uneasy that we might be the only intelligence in the universe, and as a human being he remains intrigued, since, in the final analysis, we do not know the answer. It is interesting how both extraterrestrial and post-mortem intelligence is taboo so far as physical science is concerned. This keeps our horizons narrower than they otherwise would be, and seals us off from asking some really interesting questions about the nature of life and consciousness.