Astrobiology, History, and Society

Part I. The Early Extraterrestrial Life Debate

1. The Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Antiquity to 1900
Michael J. Crowe, Matthew F. Dowd

2. Early Modern ET, Reflexive Telescopics, and Their Relevance Today
Dennis Danielson

3. Extraterrestrial Life as the Great Analogy, Two Centuries Ago and in Modern Astrobiology
Woodruff T. Sullivan

4. Hegel, Analogy, and Extraterrestrial Life
Joseph T. Ross

5. The Relationship Between the Origins of Life on Earth and the Possibility of Life on Other Planets: A Nineteenth-Century Perspective
Stéphane Tirard

6. Pioneering Concepts of Planetary Habitability
Florence Raulin Cerceau

Part II. The Modern Extraterrestrial Life Debate

7. The Twentieth Century History of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate: Major Themes and Lessons Learned
Steven J. Dick

8. The Creator of Astrobotany, Gavriil Adrianovich Tikhov
Danielle Briot

9. Life Beyond Earth and the Evolutionary Synthesis
Douglas A. Vakoch

10. The First Thousand Exoplanets: Twenty Years of Excitement and Discovery
Chris Impey

11. Extraterrestrial Life in the Microbial Age
Aaron L. Gronstal

Part III. Societal Impact of Discovering Extraterrestrial Life

12. The Societal Impact of Extraterrestrial Life: The Relevance of History and the Social Sciences
Steven J. Dick

13. Cultural Resources and Cognitive Frames: Keys to an Anthropological Approach to Prediction
Ian Lowrie

14. The Detection of Extraterrestrial Life: Are We Ready?
Klara Anna Capova

15. Impact of Extraterrestrial Life Discovery for Third World Societies: Anthropological and Public Health Considerations
M. Margaret Weigel, Kathryn Coe

16. Impossible Predictions of the Unprecedented: Analogy, History, and the Work of Prognostication
Kathryn Denning

17. Mainstream Media and Social Media Reactions to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life
Morris Jones

18. Christianity’s Response to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life: Insights from Science and Religion and the Sociology of Religion
Constance M. Bertka

19. Would the Discovery of ETI Provoke a Religious Crisis?
Ted Peters

Keywords: Physics, Astrobiology, Life Sciences, general, History of Science, Cross Cultural Psychology, Religious Studies, Sociology, general