Under The Microscope

ARE WE ALONE? by Paul Davies; Penguin, 1995; 109pp; $21.95

Reviewed by Dr Susan Blackmore

I like short books. In just 100 pages Paul Davies gives a concise history of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and his own speculations on the significance of EI if ever we found it.

The "I" stands for intelligence, reasonable enough since we are only likely to know about a species intelligent enough to send out messages. However, according to Davies, it is consciousness that we are really looking for. The problem is that he seems quite unclear about what he means by consciousness. For example, he claims that an ant colony is intelligent but not conscious, while a mouse may be conscious without much intelligence -- surely a contentious, not to say untestable, claim.

Nevertheless his main argument is most interesting. We live in a self organising universe, in which life seems to have appeared on Earth as soon as it possibly could and has possibly evolved many times over elsewhere in the universe. It seems to be an inevitable consequence of the working out of the laws of physics and therefore it is extremely likely that there are aliens out there.

And are they visiting and abducting us? Surely not, but people have always loved the likes of von Daniken and Velikovsky, and sightings of aliens are just a part of that desire. Indeed Davies suggests that the modern search for aliens is really part of an ancient religious quest.

Although I was not convinced by Davies's ideas about consciousness, I am glad that a few humans, at least, are looking out into space in case there iswell, whatever it is, out there.

Dr Susan Blackmore lectures in the psychology of consciousness at the University of West England in Bristol.