Re: Fw: [NOVA] "Origins"

[tholtz@geol.umd.edu]

>> Next on NOVA:  "Origins"
>>
>> http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins
>>
> [sNIP]
>> Are We Alone?
>> Paleontologist Peter Ward says that as intelligent creatures,  we
>> humans are probably not alone in the universe,  just very lonely.
>>
>     That sounds almost like a plug for Conway Morris's "Life's
> Solution" book. I wonder if they tried getting him to appear ...
>

Actually, Ward and Conway Morris are pretty much diamterically opposed in
their views on the evolution of intelligent life in the Universe. Compare
the above mentioned book (which argues that intelligence, and indeed
humanoid intelligence, is almost a predestined product of evolution) vs.
Ward's "Rare Earths" (which argues that life is extremly contingent on so
many random factors, biotic and abiotic, that the chances of other planets
evolving animal grade organisms, much less intelligent ones, are
extraordinarily small).