Astrosociology and the Capacity of Major World Religions to Contextualize the Possibility of Life Beyond Earth

Given the steady advance of astrobiology in the last several decades, from the discovery of  extremophiles here on Earth, the likelihood of water in Mar’s past, to the discovery of hundreds of  exoplanets, the stage is set for a shifting worldview toward life as an emergent property in the universe. Like all great paradigm shifts, the absorption of this new understanding, should the evidence continue to accumulate, will take time, patience, and religious accommodation. As humanity’s quest for meaning, purpose, and place in the universe promises to begin anew, religion has the potential to mediate and broker this important discourse between abstract science and daily existence. People are likely to have very individualized reactions to astrobiology  and the evidence it produces; therefore any analysis of a given religious tradition to be viewed only as a starting point for scientific dissemination and public engagement.

 Based on analysis of the nineteen largest religions in the world, groups of religions can be arranged into the following categories:

1) Strong Anthropocentric Teleology (Conservative Christianity, Conservative Islam, Conservative Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Primal-Indigenous, and African Traditional and Diasporic Religions);  
2) Weak Anthropocentric Teleology (Liberal Christianity, Liberal Islam, Liberal Judaism, and Sikhism);  
3) Weak Teleological Detachment from Humans (Spiritism, Baha’i, Cao Dai, and Tenrikyo);  
4) Strong Teleological Detachment from Humans  (Chinese Traditional Religions, Shinto, Jainism, 
Rastafarianism, Unitarianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Secular/Non-Religious Traditions).    

 The model presented in this paper posits that the more anthropocentric a religious teleology is (i.e. placing humanity at the core purpose of the universe) the more potential  there will be for religious resistance to astrobiological evidence and the possibility of life beyond Earth. The reasoning behind this analytical framework is that religious detachment of human beings from the ultimate end purpose of the universe will provide more elbow-room when adherents are asked to share the cosmic stage with the possibility of life, past or present, elsewhere in the universe.


While a Western perspective has dominated the literature on religious interaction with astrobiology, what analyses that have been done concerning non-Western world religion lend credence to the theory of correlation between anthropocentric teleology and resistance to astrobiology. In a Workshop Report on the Philosophical, Ethical, and Theological Implications of Astrobiology, Dr. Francisca Cho compared Eastern and Western thought on the topic of astrobiology in a paper entitled, “An Asian Religious Perspective on Exploring the Origin, Extent and Future of Life.” While the paper focused primarily on the (E.M. McAdamis /Physics Procedia 20 (2011) 338–352 351) Buddhist and Daoist perspectives, the methodology of the paper asserted that these perspectives were representative of some central differences between Eastern and Western religious thought, namely how Eastern religious thought on “the nature and creation of the universe often avoids or neutralizes the tensions that characterize science and religion in the West” ([14], p. 208). For example, the existence of the world, and all operation of things in the world, is taken for granted by Indian and Chinese philosophy, and thus are not in need of a creating and intervening god ([14], p. 209).

 Perhaps most germane to this study, Dr. Cho explains that in Eastern thought “heaven represents a conscious and moral agent, though never an anthropomorphic deity or a creator god” ([14], p. 210). For example, in the Buddhist tradition the “world is a monistic, continuous cosmos in which human activity and life is not significantly different from other existing things … [which Dr. Cho found to be in contrast with] the Western privileging of human life, particularly of human reason and intelligence” ([14], p. 210). “According to Cho, Buddhism would ask that we be skeptical of the distinctions we make between sentient and insentient life” ([14], p. 211).    

 In contrast, the body of literature working in the other direction addressing more Western, more anthropocentric religions identifies anthropocentric doctrines and raises concerns over their potential discord with the astrobiological endeavor. Addressing the potential for anthropocentric religious disharmony, Ernan McMullin summarizes the issue as follows: “… such a discovery [of life elsewhere] would challenge the belief that the origin of life on Earth required a miraculous intervention on God’s part. It would do so for two reasons. First, as we have seen, the discovery would strengthen the case for an evolutionary origin of the first life as a consequence of the ordinary processes of nature. Second, those Christians who believe that the first terrestrial life must have had a miraculous origin would be likely to link that life to the economy of earth, to human well-being” ([15], p. 157; see also, [16]).

Becoming our own intelligent designers? A consideration of our possible cosmic development

As usual, it takes me a while to get back to topics I'd previously mentioned I might post on. Other commitments are always to blame. It was still quite a year for the Acheron team. We realized a dream of seeing Laurie Anderson performing live at the Sydney Opera House. We also took in China Mieville giving a live reading of selections from his latest book, Kraken. Fascinating as each was in their own right, for me it is always best when things can be brought together, rather than be treated as discrete episodes to be judged on their own respective merits.

Mieville mentioned how he uses Samuel Delany in his creative writing class at Warwick University. Derridata in turn leaked this information to one of Delany's confidants, and "Chip" himself was eventually tipped off! Great as that was, I was particularly interested in how Mieville briefly situated himself in relation to Lovecraft. He mentioned spending more time of late in Providence to get a "feel" for the place, so no doubt we'll soon see what dividends that yields for his upcoming "weird fictions". More forgivingly than was generally Lovecraft's want, Mieville also professed his atheism, while at the same time distancing himself from the "celebrity atheism" of Dawkins et al-- conceding that faith can play a positive role in some people's lives. In contrast, Lovecraft only begrudgingly allowed that Catholicism could inform aesthetics in a worthwhile sense.

Given Mieville's involvement in an upcoming academic conference called Spaces of Alterity, I'm wondering whether he or the other participants will be willing to build upon the aforesaid comments by considering how "the sacred" could inform conceptions of "counter-hegemonic space". I'm thinking here of those who have considered how our planet can be rethought by grounding "the possibility for a Global Ethic that will provide hospitality to all aliens, near and far". The relationship between "the sacred" and "astrobiology" appears set to become an ongoing concern. If you check out the website, you can see that Laurie Anderson was involved too. I mention this fact in part because it is suggestive of a certain consistency to the cultural tastes and interests of the Acheron team as well.

I would describe Anderson as a progressive artist, but whenever I find myself becoming more pessimistic about our prospects for venturing very far, I feel closer to Lovecraft. Afterall, his stories were predicated on panspermia bringing the human race into contact with higher civilizations that were indifferent to us. At no time did he suggest that we could ourselves learn to direct the process to progressive ends. In contrast, Meot-Ner and Matloff in effect follow Carl Sagan and Francis Crick by suggesting that panspermia could be used to create a "Noah's Ark" to save species threatened by changes to Earth's ecosystem, or even changes to the solar system, such as the death of the sun.

Once you start following these debates, you soon realize that any receptiveness to such notions is dependent on how you interpret "the sacred":

Should this "sacred" quality slow or stop all our attempts to control, modify or manipulate life, or to use it for cosmic development? These questions strike me as judicious, but are also associated with the notion of transgression as presented by the French philosopher Roger Caillois (Caillois, 1939); in this sense, the human being is prompted and encouraged to become fully aware of the act he commits, so as to choose not to act.

I find it ironic then (during my more optimistic, or rather, "utopian" moodswings) that even the proponents of the "selfish gene" theory will attempt to appear responsible by urging us to adhere to the cautionary principle: i.e. notwithstanding natural selection, we are not just driven by our genes, insofar as we are also cultural beings that must be held accountable for our choices and acts. But if the end result is merely a deferential attitude to the order of Nature, how desirable is it really? Surely the greater challenge is to think of how directed panspermia could forge cosmic development as a counter-hegemonic practice; a space irreducible to privatisation, commodification, homogenisation etc? I anticipate that the "Spaces of Alterity" conference will reference Nick Dyer Witheford's Games of Empire, which envisions gaming environments as an example of such spaces. That is fine, as far as it goes. But it stops well short of the ambitious economy of scale Kim Stanley Robinson has in mind when he presents terraforming as a utopian project. To my mind, this distinction makes Robinson the most important science fiction author working today.

For some, building on an impetus for terraforming/directed panspermia will mean hitching the Intelligent Design wagon to Fred Hoyle's The Intelligent Universe. I understand the basic reasoning, which would aim to show the continuity between us taking control of cosmic development and the will of God. In a comparable vein, the conjoining of Islam and science fiction is notable. Others, such as Robinson, are likely to be more muted so far as any specific privileging of religion per se is concerned.

Be this as it may, this group would probably, at least in principle, broadly assent to us collectively becoming our own "intelligent designers". This is light years away from the central message of Lovecraft (and arguably much of "weird fiction" as well) or what is for many the classic sci fi movie of all time-- 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just watch the Flash animation in Part IV and you'll see what I mean.

I won't speculate any further then about what I'd like to see featuring in the "Spaces of Alterity" conference. So I'll just reiterate that I enjoyed China Mieville's talk. Kraken inspired me to create an image of Cthulhu laying waste to Sydney. I'm also posting a few pics of China giving his reading.

Stephen Hawking's Aliens

I'm not usually one to blow my own trumpet, but it seems there are some scientific grounds to support what I had to say before about generation starships and bioships. Looking through a recent issue of the Journal of Cosmology, I was particularly interested in Blair Csuti's response to physicist Stephen Hawking's comments about the probability of alien life forms being hostile toward us. For those in need of some more context, you can catch up here:

In his contribution, entitled "Darwinism and Hawking's Aliens", Csuti makes much play of the fact that natural selection would compel alien species to place their own interests above those of the indigenous population of Earth. This programmatic assertion means less to me though than his argument that:

"...racing to Earth at near-light speed, it would take our would-be exploiters tens of millions more years to turn up on our doorstep. Unless they have very long life-spans, that would require a generational space ship with little prospect of returning to their home planet with whatever booty they had considered valuable enough to undertake a long and expensive expedition".

So I was right to suggest the meeting could only take place on an exoplanet. Therefore I'd like to add another twist to my Alien scenario, by suggesting that the Space Jockeys and their xenomorph cargo were the products of the evolution of the "astrochickens" originally dispatched by humans to explore the exoplanets (Freeman Dyson style). However, their evolution is so advanced that it takes considerable time and effort for a human to understand. I think back on the ending of the original Planet of the Apes movie, and there are some similarities to what I am proposing here for the Alien prequel. I just think my idea is a bit less obvious and therefore not as open to parody. You might recall, for instance, The Simpsons' musical version of Planet of the Apes, in which the sole surviving human astronaut breaks into song after at last discovering the shocking truth that the planet is not so alien afterall, but merely a future Earth where evolution has gone haywire: "You see I was wrong/it was Earth all along/they finally made a monkey out of me".

I won't comment here on Quatermass and the Pit either.

The added kick is that my version plays up to the importance of the Precautionary Principle that is supposed to regulate science, which is now generally regarded as "post-normal" because of the potential dangers it poses. It is this aspect that the evangelical presentation of Dyson ignores. Dyson goes out of his way to "blind" the audience with the wondrous nature of science, suspiciously resembling a telepreacher shaking down the true believers for the donations that will fund scientific research and shore up the expertise of scientists. So I hope Science Studies can make something of the latest instalments of the Alien franchise (remember, Social Epistemology once ran a piece on Kim Stanly Robinson, so sci fi can be useful in reinforcing critical attitudes).

Incidentally, the respective contributors to the issue in question of the Journal of Cosmology, provide more than a series of reading strategies to apply to the Alien prequel. They might also serve as useful templates for sci fi authors and readers interested more generally in how to characterise our potential relationships with alien lifeforms.

They sure make for more compelling reading than the works of Erich Von Daniken, which are not only racist in their assumption that the non-European peoples did not develop any science of their own (arguing instead that it was bestowed upon them by alien races), but also a direct ripoff of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. As this article proves, Von Daniken was an opportunist who noticed the warm reception of the mythos among French sci fi fans, which he in turn exploited to his own ends.

I hope my reimagining of the Alien universe is more compelling too than the "ancient astronauts". For me, it is not necessarily any conscious alien intervention in the evolution of the "astrochickens" used for exploration and/or terraforming, shifting the focus to our own inability to understand the contingent nature of the processes we've set in train. All of this was missing from Alien, where the emphasis was on the company's deliberate acquisition of the lifeform for military purposes. Sure, the plan was sinister, but there was a rationale behind it one could at least understand. I am suggesting, drawing on Hawking, a failure prior to this series of events to even recognise something as a form of life. The latter might gradually coevolve in more dramatic ways with our space exploration; thereby affording us a monstrous glimpse of the next stage of our development as a species.

To uncover this truth results in madness.....will the prequel capture this Lovecraftian sense of "cosmic horror"? To do so, it would have to effectively dispose of the character who learns the truth, otherwise the "unique" hybrid status of Ripley in Resurrection would appear more implausible. Only time will tell.

Some more thoughts on "carbon chauvinism" & related issues

It feels like time is conspiring against me. I doubt I'll have time to post some stuff I had planned before I take off on Feb 11th; not least clarification of my misgivings about actor network theory (and whether it was possible to draw any inferences from that in regard to speculative realism). All I had time for yesterday was some minor tweaking of the "carbon chauvinism" post. Let's just say for now that the crux of the matter is speculative realism's questioning of the equation: ontology = politics. I am not saying that philosophers such as Harman respond in the same way as actor network theory, but anyone wanting to learn more about ANT's incoherent treatment of these relationships, is advised to read Andrew Feenberg's incisive critique. What I would like to know though, which will require reading his book on Latour, is why Harman was so attracted in the first place to Latour when his shortcomings are so readily apparent? What allowance can be made for these shortcomings without succumbing to the dreaded sin of philosophical cherry picking?

There are a few other things which bother me too. Robert Fine's point in "What's Eating Actor Network Theory?" is well taken (sadly the freely available version has disappeared from the web) when he argues that ANT tends to fluctuate between minute descriptions of the particular and rather abstract generalizations about all networks. So I'm wondering how readily speculative realism equates to the first part (since it in effect renounces networks for the sake of focusing on the "objects themselves") of this description. For example: dust mites, anyone? (if you recall the example used in the link to an article on speculative realism in my "carbon chauvinism" post).

I suppose one possible response to this line of questioning would be remind the sociologist that it is the absence of human mediation that defines the "alien" nature of the entitites falling under the rubric of speculative realism. To be sure, this blog has touched on "alien" modes of theorizing, in posts such as "Some Kind of Monster", which focused on the meeting of deconstruction and systems theory, and in a separate discussion of Kodwo Eshun's More Brilliant Than the Sun. Anyone who spends enough time poking around Harman's blog will soon discover in abundance various links to the likes of Steve Shaviro holding court on H.P. Lovecraft's fiction as providing a touchstone for understanding how the roots of horror can be traced to the "indifference" of "the Ancients" to human endeavours (I'm puzzled though as to why Shaviro would not construct an argument clarifying his position by engaging with other works that touch on comparable concerns, such as, for example, Noel Carroll's Philosophy of Horror). Fascinating to be sure, but how exactly do such fictional works explicate the "realism" of a host of other "objects" more likely to inspire indifference or accusations of triviality on the part of humans, once they garner some inkling of their existence? Once you start to think along these lines, it becomes harder to suppress the feeling that Lovecraft provides a dramatis personae for a field of inquiry where otherwise not a great deal appears to be going on. Moreover, to be logically consistent, no great "discovery" could be permissible, or the philosophy would risk compromising its own "speculative" nature. Such dilemmas remind me of the performative contradiction Adorno was ensnared by when he yearned for the "lost immediacy" of Nature (as chronicled so brilliantly by Steven Vogel in Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory).

Of course, appearances can be deceptive, and my questions are intended to be more exploratory than critical [at this stage]. As per the "carbon chauvinism" post, colonists need have no awareness of xenobiology, from which it would follow that anything they don't already know about, will probably not be considered worthy of space probing and exploration (i.e. it will be treated as trivial, so they will remain indifferent to it). Under such conditions, objects may be able to retain a modicum of autonomy from human intervention. But I was also hinting at how speculative realism could [inadvertently] serve as a sensitising device by which such colonists could develop an awareness of things that may otherwise have escaped their attention. At that point the respective parties would feel obliged to bite the bullet, by making a binding decision about which direction they wanted to go (I regard Robinson's Mars Trilogy as providing a credible template for their available options).

There is a sense therefore in which it seems philosophers could feel justified in accusing me of doing theoretical violence to their work. At best, I might be viewed as arguing at cross purposes with them. Or so it would seem. By contextualising speculative realism via astrosociology, I am actually more interested in reinforcing the social epistemological imperative of epistemic justice. The basic reasoning here is that everyone needs to be held accountable to a higher standard than the intended consequences of their actions/works. I referred to Steve Fuller on previous occasions as his work demonstrates a scepticism about the manner in which the interpretive community of continental philosophers conduct their business in the form of an internal conversation. The implication is that there is something self serving, or at best naive, about the following kinds of statements. Consider then how Alphonso Lingis expounds on the rationales behind philosophical reflection:

"Did not Nietzsche say that philosophy is the most spiritual form of the will to power? ...Philosophy is abstract and universal speech. It is speech that is not clothed, armed, invested with the authority of a particular god, ancestor, or institution, speech that does not program operations and produce results, speech barren and destitute. ...Then what is distinctive about philosophy is not a certain vocabulary and grammar of dead metaphors and empirically unverifiable generalizations. One's own words become philosophy, and not the operative paradigms of a culture of which one is a practitioner, in the measure that the voices of those silenced by one's culture and its practices are heard in them" (Abuses, p. ix, 1994).

A seductive conceit, to be sure, but I remain unconvinced that it has quite succeeded in escaping the problematical aspects of the discipline Lingis mentions in passing (which I've placed in italics.) Adorno, for example, identifies the flip side of the same coin. In Negative Dialectics he is describing the sense in which there can be something fatuous, and even opportunistic, about the reading "method" adopted by those philosophers whose interests wax and wane as if they were a fashion statement:

"No theory escapes the market anymore: each one is offered as a possibility among competing opinions, all are made available, all snapped up. Thought need no more put blinders on itself, in the self-justifying conviction that one's own theory is exempt from this fate, which degenerates into narcissistic self-promotion, than dialectics need fall silent before such a reproach and the one linked to it, concerning its superfluity and randomness as a slapdash method. Its name says to begin with nothing more than that objects do not vanish into their concept, that these end up in contradiction with the received norm of the adaequatio."

These tendencies have only accelerated with the growing bifurcation between so-called Mode One and Mode Two knowledge. Hence the importance placed by Fuller on the university as a social technology for the distribution of knowledge as a public good. Consistent with his call for epistemic justice, Fuller is urging the protection and enhancement of the founding democratic characteristics of the university, which ensure that knowledge can be put to use outside of its institutional context by people [students] who had nothing to do with its original production. This is another salient reminder of why academics need to be mindful of epistemic justice. By extension, philosophy cannot remain a self legislating activity, in the manner prescribed by Lingis.

I would also point toward the theory of articulation: you have to start with where people are before you can move them somewhere else. This is politics as the art of the possible, implying a long march through the institutions. Sadly though, I followed enough of the links through Harman's blog to discover that the continental blogosphere is generally more entranced by theories of total opposition, hence placing great store by new social movements. But I don't see why a "post hegemonic" politics need be the exclusive option. This was reinforced when one man had done commenting on Shaviro's Lovecraft post, and then threw in, on his own blog, almost as a casual aside, that he had no time for consensus conferences!! But why marginalise a social democratic approach that has a proven track record in creating public awareness of "post normal" science? What's wrong with having those affected by a particular form of knowledge sitting on judgement as to its applicability, say, in the communities where they live? And why couldn't consensus conferences be a catalyst for other forms of activism, including social movements?

Suffice to add, it was the random nature of the blogosphere in these instances that led me to revisit Kim Stanley's vision, as this is closer to my preferred form of "speculative realism". For not only does it encompass the cluster of issues I've raised here, but it does them justice in terms of the breadth and depth brought to bear upon each.

It also reminds me of why I need to experiment with another forum in order to test some of these propositions in relation to astrosociology. I'll leave the door open, just in case any philosophers choose to reply as they see fit, but I learned early on, in my encounter on this blog with a philosopher of "ruins", the possible limitations of such exchanges. I also know not to expect too much when "transmitting warning signals from the outermost rim of the information grid." As it happens, I've got a whole bunch of other commitments about to land on me, so while there's time, I'll have to try to commence work on these other writings. I suspect my blogging will probably atrophy as a result. There is still so much other more compelling stuff to follow up on, including arguments about the "speculative" nature of either evolution or Intelligent Design. For here is a public debate with high stakes, a lot of passion, and complexity to burn.....

Carbon Chauvinism

Reading the various astrosociology manifestos yesterday, a few other conjunctions started to occur to me. What will happen when/if astrosociology starts becoming more attentive to astrobiological concerns? (to some extent this blog draws impetus from both sociological/biological concerns) Uncovering new astrobiological lifeforms would most likely be the precursor to later colonisation of alien worlds, followed by terraforming. This raises a whole swag of ethical questions.

By way of an instructive example, I've read Robinson's Mars Trilogy, and like ahuthnance, was appreciative of the representation of the indigenous Martians. The colonists are seemingly not aware of a lifeform so exotic that it escapes detection by their traditional methods of collecting specimens for the sake of arranging them into scientific taxonomies. Of course, there are "Green" colonists who favour terraforming with some qualification, and Robinson attempts to portray a viable "Blue" political compromise between "Red" and "Green" factions.

Looking then at Robinson's colonists, it is apparent that there were varying degrees of "carbon chauvinism" among the groups, insofar as there was divided opinion as to whether they could know where to search for xenobiological lifeforms; and by extension, whether it was still worth attempting to make some allowance for them in regard to space probe and mission planning. What kind of a philosophical conceptual vocabulary would be required then to do justice to the possible existence of such truly "alien" life forms? I'm wondering if so-called "speculative realism" presents as a suitable candidate, at least to the extent it may foreground the significance of, "non human worlds, by the interactions of dust mites in a carpet as much as by the dark sides of planets on which no human foot will ever tread". I regard it as equally important though to also consider the willingness of its adherents to nominate the appropriate circumstances under which "no human foot will ever tread" must become more prescriptive in tone .i.e. "no human foot should ever tread".

If this happened, what kind of a politics could be licensed? To my mind the possible answers sound a lot like the "astro" version of Deep Ecology, as portrayed by Robinson (as distinct from the positions held by many who would quite consciously identify themselves as astrobiologists, as distinct from xenobiologists, who are their Deep Ecology methodological relatives). Another concern is how a practitioner of "speculative realism" such as Graham Harman displays an elective affinity in his thought with actor network theory, some of the inherent problems of which (i.e. of ANT, not Harman specifically) have already been discussed elsewhere on this blog. Notwithstanding his stated differences from Latour et al (as referred to in the above piece on speculative realism), my principal concern in each case is the implicit downsizing of human agency. To what end should we be willing to adopt such a working assumption? So, if astrosociologists wish to ask such appropriately social scientific questions of these philosophers, it might be wise to follow some of the guidelines in my earlier post on Mark Bold.

In other words, I am attempting to foreground the significance of astrosociology as a sociology of anticipation: will we see a time in which it becomes necessary for astrosociologists, astrobiologists (along with xenobiologists), to sit down with "speculative realists" to discuss possibilities together? Harman refers to "the open" in his discussion of the future, and I am wondering if it may eventually be circumscribed by the kinds of scenarios described in Peter Dickens et al's book, The Cosmic Society (already anticipated to a certain extent by Robinson's fiction). Afterall, Harman appears to be ascribing a potentially contestatory power to "the open":

"neither Bhaskar nor DeLanda quite solve the problem with their colourful mist of catalysts and multiple causal factors. The complexity of such factors may lie beyond our own understanding, but not beyond that of a deity or a malevolent supercomputer. Some new approach is required to find openness amidst the turmoil of linear causes".

Until this approach materializes, I can at least amuse myself with this short adaptation of Terry Bisson's Nebula Award nominated story, They're Made Out of Meat. Although the story has inspired philosophical reflections on "carbon chauvinism" in its own right, (as some quick crossreferencing on Wikipedia will confirm), at present I have no knowledge of dialogues taking place with the recent school of "speculative realism", letalone earlier thinkers such as Carl Sagan (who laid some philosophical foundations for diagnosing "carbon chauvinism").

The Mars Underground

Fiction’s Most Realistic Vision of Our Astrobiological Future?

The above titled piece has just in from an authoritative source on astrobiology. It reminds me as well just how worthwhile it would be to trackdown Are We Alone? The Stanley Kubrick Extraterrestrial Intelligence Interviews (edited by Anthony Frewin):

"Kubrick’s bible was Sagan and Shklovskii’s Intelligent Life in the Universe. Kubrick had originally filmed interviews with twenty-one leading scientists about the possibility of alien life as a prologue to the film’s narrative. Interviewees included physicists Frank Drake and Freeman Dyson, anthropologist Margaret Mead, roboticist Marvin Minsky, and Alexander Oparin, the great Soviet authority on the origin of life, often described as the ‘Darwin of the twentieth century’. Kubrick’s intention was to lend astrobiology that special dignity it has only acquired since. Though the interviews were cut from the final version of the film, a book of the transcripts was published in 2005."