Rating: 
Summary: An excellent read
Review: I agree wholeheartedly with the other positive reviews on this book. A quick read, the book makes for a satisfying week-long diversion (if you can put it down!). As a side note: Mr. Carlberg, you may be interested to note that SETI's all time highest funding level was in 1992, when the program had 144 employees and a $12 million budget. It was, however, shut down by Congress the next year. I certainly felt the impact that such savings had on our national budget. Anyone else? Currently, SETI is entirely privately funded. Unfortunately, I think you overestimate the amount of money we spend or have spent on ETI searches. I'm sure that many scientific institutions would find the $120,000 price tag you suggest to be a bargain to make a human-to-animal communication breakthrough.
Rating: 
Summary: Raising ultimate questions
Review: I found this book extremely thought- provoking. I do not have a strong scientific background and so tend to let some of the more technical arguments go by me. But I did follow the overall thrust of Davies argument and he does make a good case for the idea that the discovery of extraterrestial life is an essence a positive phenomenom. In the concluding paragraph of his fifth chapter , on 'Consciousness'he writes," If this view is correct if consciousness is a basic phenomenon that is part of the natural outworking of the laws of the universe, then we can expect it to have emerged elsewhere.The search for alien beings can therefore be seen as a test of the world view that we live in a universe that is progressive, not only in the way that life and consciousness emerge from primeval chaos, but also in the way that mind plays a fundamental role. In my opinion, the most important upshot of the discovery of extraterrestial life would be to restore to human beings something of the dignity of which science has robbed them. Far from exposing Homo sapiens as an inferior creature in the vast cosmos, the certain existence of alien beings would give us cause to believe that we, in our humble way, are part of a larger, majestic process of cosmic self- knowledge."
Davies also in the course of the book makes arguments for the idea that human venturing into the cosmos, true space travel of any great significance is impossible. ie that physically we are not about to conquer the cosmos. He too suggests that the whole cosmic process of creation might be seen as one of evolution toward greater and greater complexity. In this again Humanity's meeting another kind of higher intelligence would seem to him to fit into this scenario of an overall Cosmic Process in which the development is toward a kind of total Consciousness.
I strongly recommend this work not simply for the ideas it raises but for its clarity in argument and presentation.
I would just add that a ' meeting with other minds more advanced than us' has always seemed to me a troubling possibility as I in my childlike way assumed it must mean that this compromises God's special relationship with humanity. I now am perhaps less troubled by this than by the possibility that we human beings are not going to wait to meet the ' higher consciousnesses without' but rather invent them from within. And this too raises the question of the ultimate meaning and mission of mankind .Here I turn in my thought to the Jewish idea of Mankind working with God to help complete Creation to do the Tikkun Olam which is the fixing of the world. But how this is to work out exactly and what this would mean should we truly meet minds of another civilization I would not now even begin to speculate about.
This book helps raise questions of ultimate significance, and in this sense I believe it an extremely worthwhile one.
Rating: 
Summary: Simple answers to the Big Questions
Review: In this little tome Paul Davies raises the Big Questions : "What is life? Where did it come from? Why is it here? How likely is it to be elsewhere?" Not an in-depth academic study, the book is the print version of a lecture series. Converting brief lectures into print, however, limits the scope of his answers. Reviewing his efforts in this format means curtailing criticism as well. By taking a "philosophical" approach, Davies is able to dodge the questions of physical reality. He seems to assume his audience is more at home with philosophy and history than with biology and geology. That may have been the case for the lecture series, but is ill-suited to a discerning reading public. Life isn't a philosophical question, it's a physical one. Davies touches on that reality at times, but edges away cautiously. He defines his topic in the Preface as "one of the oldest problems in philosophy." While this would seem to preclude firm scientific issues, the Preface also contends he'll examine "the assumptions [of extraterrestrial life] made by the SETI enthusiasts . . . [because they] strike at the very heart of neo-Darwinism [read "Richard Dawkins"]." This is hard science, indeed, but an area where Davies qualifications are limited. Still, he makes a valiant effort within a limited format. Surveying historical thinking on extraterrestrial life, he concludes with the creation of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence [SETI] project. He presents the famous Urey-Miller demonstration of how easy it is for life to get a leg up in the proper environment. SETI was established on the premise that if life could happen here, it was likely to emerge elsewhere. If so, life was likely to evolve into something intelligent and communicative. The spontaneous generation of amino acids in Harold Urey's lab flask was a major boost to the SETI concept, but based on inadequate knowledge of Earth's early conditions. Davies goes on to state that "the origin of life remains a deep mystery." This is typical Davies, subtly dangling an enigma before us as we progress through the lectures. Who best to resolve that Big Question but the winner of the Templeton Prize? The lectures are clearly designed to allow Davies to provide the solution to the Great Mystery at their end. In arriving there, we must flounder through his review of philosophic thought on Man's Place in the Universe. From Copernicus through Christian dogma to the struggle to understand how the human mind works, his focus, as always, is Euro-centric. His "universal" human qualities include nothing from beyond the Mediterranean. Davies describes Forces in the universe in support of his conclusion. These include elemental atomic forces, the likelihood of "spontaneous generation of DNA" and the issue of "complexity." "Complexity," of course, is what brings it all together. And that means us. The human species is, after all, the only one known asking the Big Questions. "Complexity" in humans expresses his thesis that "consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe" resulting from ubiquitous cosmic forces. It's a very human idea, although Davies resolutely avoids the anthropocentric principal that the universe exists because we are in it. He thus merges the scientific quest for ET with the religious pursuit of a universal spirit. He leaves this spirit unnamed, but its universality within his Euro-centric framework leaves few options to consider. If Davies had pursued his research into this topic with more depth, he would have discovered a book with the same title addressing the same subject. Twenty years ago James Trefil and Robert Rood published Are We Alone?: a keen scrutiny of what was then known of life's origins and how likely it would produce intelligence. They closely examined such parameters as available water, the moon's presence to create tidal effects and other factors. Their work has been updated in a new assessment, Rare Earth by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. Superbly crafted and presented, Rare Earth makes a fine antidote to Davies' nameless metaphysical "forces". Read Davies for the questions and Rare Earth for the viable answers. The philosophical questions have no meaning if the physical environment isn't clearly understood. In contrast, Davies' book seems to preach to the converted, offering no serious scientific contribution to the questions of life's beginnings and the evolutionary process.
Rating:
Summary: Simple answers to the Big Questions
Review: In this little tome Paul Davies raises the Big Questions : "What is life? Where did it come from? Why is it here? How likely is it to be elsewhere?" Not an in-depth academic study, the book is the print version of a lecture series. Converting brief lectures into print, however, limits the scope of his answers. Reviewing his efforts in this format means curtailing criticism as well. By taking a "philosophical" approach, Davies is able to dodge the questions of physical reality. He seems to assume his audience is more at home with philosophy and history than with biology and geology. That may have been the case for the lecture series, but is ill-suited to a discerning reading public. Life isn't a philosophical question, it's a physical one. Davies touches on that reality at times, but edges away cautiously. He defines his topic in the Preface as "one of the oldest problems in philosophy." While this would seem to preclude firm scientific issues, the Preface also contends he'll examine "the assumptions [of extraterrestrial life] made by the SETI enthusiasts . . . [because they] strike at the very heart of neo-Darwinism [read "Richard Dawkins"]." This is hard science, indeed, but an area where Davies qualifications are limited. Still, he makes a valiant effort within a limited format. Surveying historical thinking on extraterrestrial life, he concludes with the creation of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence [SETI] project. He presents the famous Urey-Miller demonstration of how easy it is for life to get a leg up in the proper environment. SETI was established on the premise that if life could happen here, it was likely to emerge elsewhere. If so, life was likely to evolve into something intelligent and communicative. The spontaneous generation of amino acids in Harold Urey's lab flask was a major boost to the SETI concept, but based on inadequate knowledge of Earth's early conditions. Davies goes on to state that "the origin of life remains a deep mystery." This is typical Davies, subtly dangling an enigma before us as we progress through the lectures. Who best to resolve that Big Question but the winner of the Templeton Prize? The lectures are clearly designed to allow Davies to provide the solution to the Great Mystery at their end. In arriving there, we must flounder through his review of philosophic thought on Man's Place in the Universe. From Copernicus through Christian dogma to the struggle to understand how the human mind works, his focus, as always, is Euro-centric. His "universal" human qualities include nothing from beyond the Mediterranean. Davies describes Forces in the universe in support of his conclusion. These include elemental atomic forces, the likelihood of "spontaneous generation of DNA" and the issue of "complexity." "Complexity," of course, is what brings it all together. And that means us. The human species is, after all, the only one known asking the Big Questions. "Complexity" in humans expresses his thesis that "consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe" resulting from ubiquitous cosmic forces. It's a very human idea, although Davies resolutely avoids the anthropocentric principal that the universe exists because we are in it. He thus merges the scientific quest for ET with the religious pursuit of a universal spirit. He leaves this spirit unnamed, but its universality within his Euro-centric framework leaves few options to consider. If Davies had pursued his research into this topic with more depth, he would have discovered a book with the same title addressing the same subject. Twenty years ago James Trefil and Robert Rood published Are We Alone?: a keen scrutiny of what was then known of life's origins and how likely it would produce intelligence. They closely examined such parameters as available water, the moon's presence to create tidal effects and other factors. Their work has been updated in a new assessment, Rare Earth by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. Superbly crafted and presented, Rare Earth makes a fine antidote to Davies' nameless metaphysical "forces". Read Davies for the questions and Rare Earth for the viable answers. The philosophical questions have no meaning if the physical environment isn't clearly understood. In contrast, Davies' book seems to preach to the converted, offering no serious scientific contribution to the questions of life's beginnings and the evolutionary process.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing questions.
Review: Paul Davies tries to answer some essential questions: is there extraterrestrial life (ET)? What would happen if we discover it? What would be the character of that life? Would it be conscious?
His answer is: the most plausible outcome of conservative (!) assumptions implies that there are an infinite number (not more than that) of identical creatures in the universe. An important consequence of the discovery of ET could be the undermining of the Neo-Darwinist theory that life and consciousness are totally arbitrary emerging phenomena. It could indicate that there is a progressive evolutionary trend in the universe.
In fact, Paul Davies sees it already on our planet and calls it the law of increasing complexity. This increasing complexity creates the brain and consciousness. For consciousness, for him, is a basic characteristic of the universe. But why or how does consciousness emerge? As with other authors who tackled this question, Paul Davies gives no answer. This book is one long supposition. As long as we don't discover or get in contact with ET, all his questions will stay unanswered. This book reads like a thriller. Not be missed.
Rating:
Summary: Broad Scope
Review: Paul Davies' book Are We Alone? is deceptively simple. While its purported topic is the possibility of alien life, it also covers and covers more extensively the various theories of sentience, what it is, why it is, and how common it might be. It also explains the anthropic principle, which uses the fact that we exist to explain why the universe is as it is. The volume is a little too short to cover the topics well, but it is definitely very lucid. It also contains a very nice bibliography, a veritable who's who of cosmology and the extraterrestrial question, including Barrow and Tipler (The Anthropic Cosmological Principle), Crick (Life Itself), Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker), Drake (Is Anyone Out There?), Gould (Wonderful Life), Hoyle (The Intelligent Universe), and Sagan (The Cosmic Connection). This book definitely makes a fine start to understanding the topic of intelligent life and the possibility of its existence elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: A very interesting and enjoyable book.
Review: Since this is beyond my reading level and because I stink at science (this book uses a lot of scientific terms), this was a bit difficult for me. But if you're older than I am (15 + up), then you'd probably get through this book more quickly and possibly with more enjoyment. Anyone who's interested in all aspects of the question of alien life should read this book. It gives you the facts, the philosophy, and gives you something to contemplate. No opinionated views. No alien abduction stories. Just the cold, hard facts explained well, and vague predictions of what might come to be if extraterrestrial life was discovered. Actually, I found a bit of it kind of a downer because he said how unlikely it would be to find another race in our own time, in the right stage of technology and close enough to contact us. So it's a little depressing for all of us hopefuls who read science fiction and who would just love to find other alien races. Still, an interesting read.
Rating:
Summary: A very interesting and enjoyable book.
Review: Since this is beyond my reading level and because I stink at science (this book uses a lot of scientific terms), this was a bit difficult for me. But if you're older than I am (15 + up), then you'd probably get through this book more quickly and possibly with more enjoyment. Anyone who's interested in all aspects of the question of alien life should read this book. It gives you the facts, the philosophy, and gives you something to contemplate. No opinionated views. No alien abduction stories. Just the cold, hard facts explained well, and vague predictions of what might come to be if extraterrestrial life was discovered. Actually, I found a bit of it kind of a downer because he said how unlikely it would be to find another race in our own time, in the right stage of technology and close enough to contact us. So it's a little depressing for all of us hopefuls who read science fiction and who would just love to find other alien races. Still, an interesting read.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent , clear overview of astrobiology
Review: This book is a very good overview of current debate and discovery concerning various aspects of the nature and origin of life. One of the best things about this book is the level of detail, sourced from a variety of disciplines. Another strength is Paul Davies' impassioned, clear, reasoned and objective writing style. He discusses all the various arguments, subjects them to critical analysis, and formulates conclusions based on the available evidence. It is delightful to read an overview of scientific debate which doesn't jump to sides, but critically examines alternative arguments, regardless of source. In other words, biology, physics, mathematics, history, poetry, geology, chemistry, biochemistry, theology, philosophy, etc etc (in no particular order) all have something to say about this topic. Moreover, Paul Davies doesn't seem to need to sell or convince anybody of his ideas. His job isn't on the line, he doesn't need the money, and he has enough experience to realise just how complicated processes in the universe can be. He is delightfully distant, and objectively impassioned. He simply reasons, and allows the reader to agree, or disagree. His knowledge of the various arguments are also pretty sound. Paul Davies outlines the arguments both for and against intelligent life being common in the universe including Carter's Anthropic principle, Fermi's paradox, Darwinism, chaos theory, edge-of-chaos theory, Boolean algebra, and quantum indeterminism. There is an interesting discussion on Van Neumann Machines (intelligent space probes), and artificial intelligence. Keen advocates of these ideas, Mr Davies notes, are reminded that there may be more to the technology required in sending these intelligent machines off into space than we might think. Chaos and complexity theory might have something to say about the Von Neumann machine, as it did with several other bungled scientific endeavours. Panspermia-the spreading of micro-organisms between star systems- is also discussed. It is a growing idea. For example, it was only recently reported (too recent for this book, unfortunately) that scientists have re-created conditions in space in the early formation of the solar system, and came up with more complex organic molecules than those previously found from early "Earth-soup" experiments. Maybe, life originated in the turbulent conditions of space-in which case it should be relatively common in the universe, developing further on planets where conditions are favourable. Furthermore, it was recently reported that microbes from a 300 million-year-old gas bubble were released, and promptly started to reproduce. Put these inside a large asteroid and send it off into space, and you could theoretically seed planets on the other side of the galaxy. Mr Davies' thinks intelligent life is relatively common in the universe, based on the notion that it is the "natural outcome of the laws of physics"-but notes that perhaps the most compulsive argument against this is neo-Darwinism. (Although not all neo-Darwinists would agree). He is not a strict Darwinist, in the sense that he suspects something is incomplete-not wrong- about Darwinism. One recent notion for example to support intelligent being common, is that of the `edge of chaos', whereby some systems exist at a kind of boundary of `order', and are highly sensitive to very small changes-they can self-organise and/or rapidly jump in complexity, and/or revert to chaos rather easily. These systems have important implications to the nature and origin of life, in that they imply a directional component to the natural workings of the universe. Mr Davies does note however, that biologists are unhappy with any kind of `direction' in the `chaos' that is evolution, lest `Design' should slip in the back door. But the problem with this view is that `chaos' is not simple. The universe, Mr Davies suggests, tends towards complexity and organisation-it is fundamentally built-in to the physics of the universe. In which case, intelligence should arise as part of the normal processes of the laws of physics. These ideas are in stark contrast to the commonly held view that intelligence is so highly improbable even given abundant simple life, that it is unlikely to occur elsewhere. This book is a very good overview of current knowledge and theory, only slightly dated as at May, 2001. Rare Earth is another book for keen readers of this field, which argues that intelligent life is very uncommon in the universe. In my view this book is more 'true to life', so to speak, with more varied ideas, and a greater understanding of humanity and science.
Rating:
Summary: We're not.
Review: This is a great book, regardless of the fact that it is broad and simplified. After all, that's what the author intended to do (so stated in the introduction). It's not meant to prove existence of aliens to the reader, merely to open new doors and trains of thought. Brilliantly written, well done, I liked it. Some reviewers are too hard on this book because it doesn't offer a complex, scientifically-proven base of information with regards to the subject. Well, give the guy some credit, that proof just doesn't exist. He does a fantastic job writing with what he has, and I recommend this book to anyone who thinks about the unknown.
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