LIT 167N: Ancient Astrobiology

University of California, Santa Cruz

People have suspected that there were critters out in space since the beginning of history. This course asks students to explore what various premodern people and cultures thought about life in space. That will mean looking closely at how we, and they, think about “life” and “space,” two ill-defined concepts at the heart of astrobiology. In this course, students practice premodern strategies for investigating life in space and learn to use premodern theories as a resource for coming up with solutions to difficult problems in modern astrobiology. Distribution requirement: Global, Pre-1750.