Abstract
The consequences of receipt of a dial tone or information flow from an extraterrestrial civilization are considered in light of historical analogues. It is argued that the history of science offers deeper insights than political history or anthropology, since the contact would be intellectual and not physical. Specific cases of the transmission of knowledge across terrestrial cultures, and of the reception of scientific worldviews, are offered as analogues to receipt of an extraterrestrial intelligent signal. Particularly apt analogues are the transmission of Greek science to the Latin West via the Arabs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and reception of the Copernican and Darwinian worldviews. A rich literature awaits those wishing to study the impact of success in SETI based on such analogues.
First published in Progress in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life , Seth Shostak, ed. (Proceedings of Santa Cruz meeting on SETI, August, 1993; ASP Conference series: San Francisco, 1995), 521–532.
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Acknowledgments
As a member of the CASETI workshops, the author acknowledges the stimulating discussions with the CASETI history group, including John Heilbron, Jill Conway, Kent Cullers, Ben Finney, Karl S. Guthke, and Ken Keniston, as well as cross-fertilization with the other groups of the workshop.
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Dick, S.J. (2020). Consequences of Success in SETI: Lessons from the History of Science. In: Space, Time, and Aliens. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41614-0_9
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