Even if there were life on some far-away planet system, it would still be pretty rare, right? It wouldn't kill biocentrism. Doubly so for the other -centrisms. The article is trying to combat collective narcissism, which is a worthy goal. Rather than rationalizing how we might not be alone based on skimpy information to the contrary, I prefer this approach: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.in/2013/09/the-next-ten-b...
Of course. When I say "biocentrism" I'm specifically referring to the idea that of all the planets in the universe, abiogenesis only occurred on Earth. So if we did find another island of life, biocentrism would be dead. We would know that Earth wasn't not "uniquely unique" in that respect. I guess the goal of the article was to assert that because the idea of "centrism" has proven so consistently wrong over historical time, that the current intellectually tenable "centrism's" are likely to also be proven false, at least IMO. To what degree life and intelligence emerges in the universe, I don't know, but I'm quite confident this isn't the only region of space-time where it has occurred.Even if there were life on some far-away planet system, it would still be pretty rare, right?
Could you point me at where this is called biocentrism? I was confused because neither sense of the term at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocentrism seems to require uniqueness.When I say "biocentrism" I'm specifically referring to the idea that of all the planets in the universe, abiogenesis only occurred on Earth.
It is a term introduced here (page 204): I believe the point of introducing this term is for philosophical discussion on the current state of astrobiology. I think it is a useful and necessary term when discussing life in the universe. I can understand if some think the term is unnecessary.Biocentrism continues to hold in the sense that, even if most scientists subjectively believe the existence of extraterrestrial life is highly probable, we still haven't proved it yet.