LET US BE HUMBLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 85, 11 April 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

LET US BE HUMBLE.

Not content with trying to demonstrate that the universe is a sphere or cylinder expanding into an unexplained something which we are not even allowed to call space, some of our scientists are asking us to believe that our earth is the only spot in the universe in which life exists. , When we consider that man's only observatory is this little globe on which we live; that the globe is an insignificant part of the planetary system attached- to the sun; that the sun is an insignificant star in a galaxy of stars, the enormous extent of which is beyond comprehension by the human mind, we can only express astonishment that a scientist of the twentieth century should make such a representation to an unscientific reading public. There are about 2000 million people in our world, and we are to believe that these are the only people in the universe, and that this is the only planet which can maintain life as we know it in its many and varied forms. Thus we have modern science coming full circle and returning to that conception of the word as the sole repository of life, which was the ancient belief of mankind. To be fair to the theory that life does not exist elsewhere, let us remember that life on earth can only be lived within a narrow change of temperature. All life as we know it must perish at a temperature which exists a few miles below the surface of the earth. A few degrees more or less and we are cooked or frozen. It is a humiliating thought, but it is just as well to subject ourselves to a, little honest humiliation now and then. We count for not very much in space. But when allowance is made for the narrow limitations of the conditions of life, it seems irrational to argue that in all the multiplicity of the suns and stars there have not been evolved other solar systems giving to some of their planets those conditions of life. The view to which we refer would have it that life on the earth is not only an accident but a most unlikely one. We are asked to believe that it is so unlikely that it is in the nature of a miracle that it happened at all, and that it i« extremely improbable that the same miracle has happened in any other part of the universe. No other star but the sun, we are to think, has ever evolved a planetary system likely to have experienced such a cooling to temperatures akin to those in which we live that, like our earth, it has produced the conditions of life. We think it far more reasonable to hold that, in view of the extent of the unknown stellar universe, to say nothing of the possibilities that lie without it, it is exceedingly improbable that the conditions of life have evolved in one spot and one spot only. We think it extremely unlikely that our wise men know every thing. The fact is that .almost everything is yet to be learned. Our acquaintance with the universe is so fractional that it should at least make us modest in deny: ing possibilities. While our own small earth is so little undefstood we may well be suspicious of dogmatic assertion! about things quite unknown.