Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

This is really fascinating stuff. The odds that life exists outside the the planet earth seem to be improving with each new tentative step that our noosphere takes into that broader cosmos. The obsession early in the development of space exploration with sending humans out into space may have been a distraction , a snare and a delusion created by the Cold War. Both the Russians and the Americans had to highlight their/our technological abilities in a way that  could be portrayed as non-threatening, each side wanted to portray itself as the future. But our species gets to learn more about the world outside our immediate ken more effectively if life support issues are taken off the table, with the work either automated or remotely controlled. Thus: Philae, the European Space Agency's probe, has the honor of having discovered carbon-based, i.e. organic, molecules on a comet, one known alphanumerically as 67P. Here's a link: Click me! Among the organic molecules disc...

The supposed "gravitational waves" created by the Big Bang, a "cosmic signature" of that Bang, may have been something a good deal less dramatic. The Guardian . A mission of the European Space Agency has found that the findings attributed to the 'waves' could in fact be due to ... dust. There seems to be a collective will-to-believe in the Big Bang, to rush to give it a mantle of accepted scientific facts. This incident is part of a broader pattern. But since the notion of a "signature" of the Big Bang has come unraveled, maybe some hard core steady-staters are planning a comeback.