This book addresses important current and historical topics in astrobiology and the search for life beyond Earth, including the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I The Early Extraterrestrial Life Debate
• 1 The Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Antiquity to 1900 - Michael J. Crowe and 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 III
• 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
• 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
• 9.4 The Evolutionary Synthesis and Extraterrestrial Life
• 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
• Appendix I. List of Films
• 15 Impact of Extraterrestrial Life Discovery for Third World Societies: Anthropological and Public Health Considerations - M. Margaret Weigel and 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
• About the Authors