"...Although the term civilization is used freely in the debate about the probability of detecting extraterrestrial intelligence, there is no agreed defi nition of what it means in this context. Our opinions about being civilized are highly subjective. Yet, we think that we will know the signs of alien civilizations when we see them. In a sense, we have ducked the issue by defi ning a civilization in terms of technologies that we can detect. That defi nition may exclude most civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy. Historically our term civilization came from ancient Rome, where to be a citizen meant to belong to the civitas, the Roman civil community—a very specifi c context.1 In everyday usage, we think of civilization as a developed or advanced state of human society, or a particular stage or particular type of it. We often apply measures of societal complexity, economic, scientifi c, and technological development, religious or cultural distinctiveness, and standards of behavior. Many prehistoric societies did not become what are generally termed civilizations. However, civilizations did arise independently in many different parts of the world—Mesopotamia, the Indian subcontinent, China, Egypt, Mesoamerica, Peru. Some early civilizations developed in isolation, unaware of others. This was a very late event in human history. Yet, there clearly was a selective advantage for civilizations once they had arisen, because they continued to expand and to replace other ways of life—a process still going on."
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 18:44:02 +0000
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