Life: Its Abundance and Scarcity
Main Article Content
Abstract
Since from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective, life -- particularly life like ours -- is exceedingly rare in the universe, it has a prima facie preciousness. Ontology of life questions cannot be pursued in isolation from the immediacy of this preciousness.
Downloads
Article Details
References
NASA Exoplanet Exploration: Planets Beyond our Solar System, last modified November 16, 2023. https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/. Accessed November 18, 2023.
Tony Saunder, “How Many Galaxies Are in the Universe? A Lot More Than You Think,” PBC Science Focus, July 25, 2023 at 2:35 am. https://www.sciencefocus.com/blog/space/how-many-galaxies-are-in-the-universe. Accessed October 14, 2023.
“How Many Stars Are In The Universe?” Little Passports. https://www.littlepassports.com/blog/space/how-many-stars-are-in-the-universe/#:~:text=If%20you%20were%20to%20look,stars%20in%20our%20observable%20universe. Accessed October 14, 2023. The number may be much higher: perhaps 1022 and 1024. See Alisa Harvey and Elizabeth Howell, “How Many Stars are in the Universe? See Website: Space.com, Alisa Harvey and Elizabeth Howell, “How Many Stars are in the Universe?” February 11, 2022. https://www.space.com/26078-how-many-stars-are-there.html. Accessed October 22, 2023.
Wikipedia, “Life,” last modified November 6, 2023, 8:53 am. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life. Accessed November 8, 2023.
Elizabeth Howell, “Drake Equation: Estimating the Odds of Finding ET,” Space.com, last updated October 27, 2020. https://www.space.com/25219-drake-equation.html. Accessed November 4, 2023.
SETI Institute, “The Fermi Paradox” at https://www.seti.org/fermi-paradox-0. Accessed November 3, 2023.
Howard A. Smith, “Alone in the Universe,” American Scientist, https://www.americanscientist.org/article/alone-in-the-universe. Accessed November 10, 2023.
“Runaway Universe,” Universe Timeline, last modified November 2000. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/universe/historysans.html. Accessed November 3, 2023.
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).