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…Whether intelligence is rare or abundant, whether extraterrestrial life is of a lower order or a higher order than Homo sapiens, human destiny is intimately connected with cosmic evolution. Driven by the astronomical, biological, and cultur…
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