Physical History and Economics

& Fast Entropy Research Site

Essays

Cosmic Social Science, the Missing Link Between Astrobiology and SETI

Copyright 2009 by Mark Ciotola, ciotola@sfsu.edu

We are at an exciting time of convergence of the physical and social sciences. It is now possible to view life, intelligence and civilization as consequences of cosmological processes such as anisotropy (clumping) in the face of an expanding universe (decreasing entropy density. We can already identify those processes and analyze how they drive intelligence and civilization anywhere in the universe.

Astrobiology views life from an objective, philosophically “outer” perspective, literally through a microscope. In contrast, SETI and astrosociology typically view intelligent life from a human, philosophically inner perspective, such as how humans can communicate with ETIs, or what are the societal implications of humans traveling into space. What is missing is the study of intelligence and civilization from an outer physical view. This is beginning to happen as we speak.

There are both physical and social scientists that feel that astrobiology and astrosociology should not be bridged. Physical scientists understandably enjoy that their subject matter is uncontaminated by the social issues that comprise so much of the misery of society. Social scientists likewise do not wish their disciplines to become subject to what they perceive as the unfeeling, uncaring mechanistic determinism of the physical sciences that steamrollers over free will, dignity and the human spirit.

Yet whether one detests something and whether it should exist are two different matters. Fortunately, the space community shares an important attribute: the courage and willingness to face novel challenges.

Cosmic social science views intelligent societies from the outer perspective of a scientist looking into a microscope; it a physical science of society. The laws of physics are understood to be invariant across the universe. Since intelligence and civilizations can be viewed as manifestations of thermodynamic potentials, intelligence and civilizations can be modeled and described by the same physical tendencies and constraints anywhere.

A prominent example is Kardashev’s view of prospective alien civilizations from a perspective of their energy consumption. Hubbert and others have studied human society in terms of energy and limited resources since the1920s. This author’s own work has created a physical framework for analyzing and modeling both human and extra-terrestrial societies in the same manner. One can then use cosmic social science to identify necessary physical commonalities between human and extraterrestrial civilizations, that can in turn be utilized to develop focused ETI search strategies and targeted messages.

Such a cosmic approach to social science can be viewed as an “outer” branch of Astrosociology. The cosmic approach certainly is not a replacement for the more dominant “inner” approach. Both inner and outer views are necessary to obtain a more complete understanding.