MBL-Dibner Seminar in the History of Biology
Co-Sponsored by the NASA History Office

2005 Topic: Cosmic Evolution and Astrobiology

May 15-22, 2005
Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

This is an intensive, one-week seminar with annually varying topics. It is
designed for advanced graduate students, younger scholars, and also more
established researchers in biology and the history and philosophy of biology.
The course is limited to approximately 20 participants, including discussion
leaders.

The topic for 2005 is “Cosmic Evolution and Astrobiology.” In the 1960s, fueled
by the Space Age and NASA patronage, the new discipline of exobiology began to
emerge. It was created from a combination of at least four very different areas
of scientific research: planetary science, planetary systems science, the Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and origins and evolution of life. The new
discipline was driven especially by the search for life on Mars, culminating
with the Viking missions in 1976. In the post-Viking era, funding for exobiology
supported far-reaching research, including Margulis’s work on cell symbiosis,
Woese’s work on the third domain of organisms now known as Archaea, Barghoorn
and Schopf’s work on Earth’s earliest fossils, Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, and
Alvarez, Raup and Sepkoski’s work on mass extinctions. In the mid-1990s,
exobiology was revived under the name astrobiology, fed by the intense
excitement surrounding the discovery of planetary systems, the controversy over
the Martian meteorite, the possibility of an ocean on Europa, research on life
in extreme environments, developments in molecular evolutionary biology and
molecular phylogenetics, and progress in origins of life research, along with
other developments, like the biotech revolution culminating in the Human Genome
Project. This led to the formation of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, a virtual
institute consisting of 16 "teams"—including the MBL's Astrobiology
Program—engaged in a wide variety of work on “the living universe."

The course will take an historical approach to exploring how the
interdisciplinary field of astrobiology emerged, how astrobiology has affected
origins of life research, and how astrobiology fits into the larger conceptual
scheme of cosmic evolution. How does the emergence of astrobiology compare to
the emergence of other subdisciplines in biology? Are there historical lessons
astrobiologists can learn in their quest for a universal biology? Discussions
will be led by invited biologists, historians and philosophers. Readings and
questions-to-ponder will be circulated in advance.

The MBL-Dibner Seminar in the History of Biology has been supported since 1989
by the Dibner Fund and the Dibner Institute. Additional funding has been
provided for this year's topic by NASA.

For more information about the seminar in general, past topics, updates
concerning this year's topic, and the application form, please visit the course
website at:

http://dibinst.mit.edu/DIBNER/DIBNER/DIConferences/WoodsHole/WoodsHoleHome.htm

For further inquiries, contact Rita Dempsey at dempseyr@mit.edu or 617-253-8721.

Course Directors:
John Beatty, University of British Columbia, john.beatty@ubc.ca
James Collins, Arizona State University, jcollins@asu.edu 
Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University, maienschein@asu.edu

Organizers for 2005:
Steven Dick, NASA
James Strick, Franklin and Marshall College.

 

Back to ISHPSSB Listserv on the Web