Pandaemonium Architecture 6.0

In this course

Lowell represents a cautionary case in the history of how observation, interpretation, and desire can collide in scientific reasoning—his confident claims about Martian canals became a touchstone for debates about extraterrestrial life and the limits of telescopic evidence. In the course readings, he functions as a foil to mid-twentieth-century scientific epistemology, where astronomers like W.W. Campbell explicitly reject his methods as a way of establishing stricter standards for what counts as evidence about cosmic life. His specter haunts the extraterrestrial intelligence discourse that runs through the seminar, marking the tension between imaginative speculation and verifiable detection that remains central to contemporary AI thinking about "others" (whether alien or artificial).

Background

Percival Lowell was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, and furthered theories of a ninth planet within the Solar System. He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death.

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Mentioned in 1 reading

Steven J. Dick

Cosmic Evolution, from Cosmos and Culture

5

But such a set of general ideas is a long way from a research program. In the first half century of the post-Darwinian world, cosmic evolution did not find fertile ground among astronomers who were hard-pressed to find evidence for it. Spec…Even in the first half of the 20th century, astronomers had to be content with the uniformity of nature argument confirmed by spectroscopy. In an article in Science in 1920, the American astronomer W. W. Campbell (a great opponent of Lowell…In short, both in our relationship with extraterrestrials and with God—however conceived—human destiny would be quite different in a universe full of biologicals or postbiologicals than if we were alone. If extraterrestrial intelligence is …

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