into those, we will update our understanding and our credence in hypotheses derived from the continuity thesis. It is quite similar to Copernicanism—it was in the beginning a purely philosophical assumption, which gradually obtained support as we gained knowledge about the stellar, galactic, and, in recent years, planetary populations of our universe. Our improved astronomical insights have corroborated the Copernican thesis (with full understanding that it can never be strictly proved). Needless to say, the extended continuity thesis has been implicitly accepted in most SETI studies to date, since any expectation of detecting a radio signal or any other technosignature is based upon the assumption that noogenesis both occurs in naturalistic manner and with a reasonable, non-infinitesimal probability. (In fact, the traditional SETI uses even stronger assumptions, dealing with convergence in cultural evolution; cf. [3.45, 3.65].)
Why is, then, the continuity thesis so often controversial and rejected (the best astrobiological example is, of course, [3.66]), both in the origin of life studies, but also way beyond? Some of the sources of resistance to the continuity thesis and its extensions are rather obvious: creationism, anthropocentrism, and other narcissistic expressions of “specialness” humans are prone to ascribe to themselves. There is a significant literature on the subject, as well as the dire consequences such attitude has in areas such as environmental protection or animal rights (e.g., [3.35, 3.51]). In the rapidly advancing AI (artificial intelligence) field, we may safely assume that at least a part of the downplaying the risk of misused or malevolent AI is exactly due to the same anthropocentric attitude [3.11].
However, there are other sources of recalcitrance and resistance to the continuity thesis which are somewhat subtler and at least as pervasive. One of them is “chronocentrism” or a belief—explicit or implicit—that one’s own epoch is of particular importance among all possible, real, or imaginable epochs. Chronocentrism is formulated and criticized, e.g., by Fowles [3.26] as the belief “that one’s own times are paramount”. Clearly, it presents a problem for futures studies, which need to integrate understanding of natural processes from physical science with the human perspective which frames all our actions. It ranges from relatively innocuous lack of worry for the fate of Earth billions of years hence, when Sun enters the post-Main Sequence phase of its evolution, to much more malignant forms of ecological and climate neglect for problems facing our children and grandchildren in the context of climate change/ocean pollution/loss of biodiversity. In both cases, there is a contrast between clear predictions of physical science (“our Sun has finite Main Sequence lifetime, after which it will enter the red giant/asymptotic giant phases” or “the continuous pumping CO2 into the atmosphere leads to increased greenhouse effect, hence climate change”) and our explicit or implicit failure to observe any effects—or any obvious effects—at present. If we were not enthralled by chronocentrism, we would have immediately noticed that there is not a trace of doubt that anthropogenic climate change is real and incredibly threatening. The debate on the relevant timescales would lose much of its rhetorical strength if we accept that for humanity as such (and even terrestrial biosphere itself) it is hardly relevant whether drastic consequences will occur in 50, 75, or 150 years from now. Of course, it does matter from the standpoint of an individual lifetime—which also increases rather quickly in historical terms—but not from the standpoint of the species or the biosphere. Only the narcissistic underpinnings of chronocentrism make us discount things farther in the future than our own lifetime (and perhaps, for the equally selfish and narcissistic reasons, lifetimes of our biological children). The example of climate change is the most important and momentous, but there are other examples which demonstrate that chronocentrism is quite a dangerous belief.4
Of course, one should not blithely accept chronocentrism’s opposite— what one can call temporal Copernicanism—either. It is almost a tautology that all epochs are not equally important, interesting, or relevant. The classical steady-state cosmological theory has tried to implement the idea of temporal Copernicanism most widely and literally, under the name of the “Perfect Cosmological Principle” ([3.10, 3.6]). The Perfect Cosmological Principle simply states that the universe is uniform in 4-D spacetime. The implication is, clearly, that all epochs are, on the average, the same. Although the steady-state theory has been a powerful alternative to the standard relativistic cosmology in the central formative period of the “Great Cosmological Controversy” (1948–1965), it was eventually refuted by empirical data [3.36]. There are other, much subtler modern versions of temporal Copernicanism which, as argued by Ćirković and Balbi [3.16], need to be resisted as well. These include reasoning in astrobiology and SETI studies which explicitly or implicitly assume that our epoch is typical for epochs containing living beings and intelligent observers (e.g., [3.50]). A partially confounding factor here is that we cannot take an agnostic position regarding cosmological pre-conditions for life and intelligence, since in the last quarter century or so we have learnt a great deal about those. So to what extent we take into account this, in philosophical parlance, admissible evidence, will influence our evaluation of the heuristics. Without entering this complex topic in epistemology, it is important to emphasize that the undermining of temporal Copernicanism as that of [3.16] does not mean any endorsement of chronocentrism. The truth has to be somewhere in the middle; we shall return to this point in the concluding section.
Chronocentrism has much to do with our general short-sightedness and failure to perceive and understand deeper long-term trends. It also has much to do with our rejection of large-scale, far-reaching visions of the cosmic future of humanity, such as those of the Russian cosmists, Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke, R. Buckminster Fuller, or Gerard O’Neill. This is the clear reason why we need to emancipate ourselves from chronocentrism, as a vestige of our parochial, narrowly localized past.
Still, this does not mean that we should not draw useful lessons from the parochial past. In Book 3 of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle cogently argued that: “What we deliberate about is practical measures that lie in our power… The effects about which we deliberate are those which are produced by our agency but not always in the same way.”5 Consider the implication: the proper objects for deliberation are things which are within our power—that is, which are neither predetermined nor chaotic—which have uncertain outcomes. Human intentional actions, either personal or collective, belong to this category, which is why ethics makes sense in judging them. Consider, for instance, the idea of terraforming Mars: it will neither happen randomly nor can we reasonably state that it has been foreordained since the beginning of time. This is exactly the reason why we can meaningfully debate morality of terraforming Mars and create scenarios depending on, e.g., whether there is an extant Martian biosphere or a fossil one, etc. [3.8].
There is no reason to limit ourselves to specifically human actions here. The quote of Aristotle works perfectly well for any intelligent observer anywhere in the universe. It is reasonable to suppose that extraterrestrial intelligent observers also have specific capacities and that among those capacities is the capacity to deliberate upon the consequences and meanings of their own actions.6 There is a deep sense in which Copernicanism is built into this attitude, which is exactly what we need in order to conceive of a truly global astrobiological landscape on the Milky Way level.
3.3 Cultural Evolution and Directed Panspermia
While the continuity thesis arose in connection to abiogenesis, there is no reason for it to remain constrained there; the same reasoning applies to noogenesis or any similar key transition. Again, this is of key importance when using the continuity thesis as heuristics. If some empirical data or well-motivated theoretical model appears which would indicate discontinuity, we would be justified in rejecting the continuity thesis, of course. However, as long as such empirical or theoretical insights are lacking, we should be free to use it and investigate its consequences, even if some of them are extremely speculative and far-fetched.7
While the continuity
