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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2008 59(1):73-88; doi:10.1093/bjps/axn001
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The One World, One Science Argument

André Kukla

Department of Life Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, Toronto Ontario M1C 1A4, Canada

kukla.andre{at}gmail.com


  Abstract

The one world, one science argument (so named by Rescher) is advanced by Carl Sagan and others to support the thesis that we will be able to learn to converse with intelligent extraterrestrials if and when we encounter them. The prima facie obstacle to extraterrestrial communication is that the aliens’ culture and geography are bound to be so different from ours that we would find it extremely difficult, if not practically impossible, to find a common topic on which we can both converse. Sagan's rebuttal is that we will share mathematics and the laws of physics, these being the same for all intelligent beings regardless of local cultural and geographical variations. I show that this argument fails even if its contentious assumptions about science and the world are granted—that is to say, it fails on uncontentious grounds.

1 OWOS
2 OWOS and Social Constructivism
3 OWOS and Conceptual Relativism
4 OWOS and the Selection Problem
5 The Fundamental Laws Solution
6 The Mathematics Solution
7 The Radio Solution
8 The Common Conditions Solution
9 The Intractability of the Selection Problem
10 The Superfluity of OWOS


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