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EU Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt came under fire this week for suggesting former prime minister Sir Winston Churchill would have voted to remain in the European Union. Speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, he quoted the behemoth of history as naming the UK “a member of the European family”. The expected outrage and tussling over ownership of a national hero has ensued. But ultimately, Churchill’s comments were simply an expression of a logical, practical mind.
So, when you see headlines this week pronouncing Winston Churchill was a UFO spotter, keep calm and carry on. Because Churchill was foremost, a logical and practical man. He was the first British prime minister to appoint a scientific adviser. He pushed for investment in the sciences that led to a series of vital wartime and post-war finds - in molecular genetics, radio astronomy, nuclear power, codebreaking and robotics. When the team at Bletchley Park went over civil servants’ heads to implore Churchill directly for more resources,he immediately wrote to General Hastings Lionel Ismay: “Action this day make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this had been done.” Read more: Where are all the aliens? WIRED explains the Fermi Paradox
Which brings us back to UFOs. An incredible insight into the man behind the decisions to make Britain a state founded in scientific reasoning has been uncovered. Donated to the archives of the US National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri in the 1980s and promptly forgotten about until now, was an article entitled: ‘Are We Alone in the Universe?’ - an 11-page, typed essay in which Churchill relays, in concise fashion, what might be needed for life in the Universe to exist and where we might find it.
“It was a great surprise last year when the director Timothy Riley thrust a typewritten essay by Churchill into my hands,” recalls Mario Livio, an astrophysicist who spent more than two decades working at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble Space Telescope.
Writing a comment piece in Nature, he continues: “At a time when a number of today’s politicians shun science, I find it moving to recall a leader who engaged with it so profoundly.”
Elaborating on that sentiment, Livio told WIRED: “As someone who has really seen the fruits of science and the importance of science in war and peacetime, [Churchill] certainly would have been shocked to hear that there are some high ranking officials who shun science today.
“He had come out of World War 2 where he knew how important scientists were to that effort, and the amazing thing to me was, at the same time, he really was somewhat concerned about scientists operating in this moral vacuum. He thought everything should be put in the context of human values, not just science. He wrote: ‘We need scientists in the world but not a world of scientists.’ So yeah, he understood the importance, especially the atomic bomb and all that. He wanted science to be bound by ethical and moral behaviour and in the context of humanistic values.”
In the essay, Churchill also observes man’s place in the Universe, with “that added humour of his”. After swiftly dealing with the question of what life is, what is needed for it, and where in the Universe we should look for it, he writes: “I, for one, am not so immensely impressed by the success we are making of our civilisation here that I am prepared to think we are the only spot in this immense Universe which contains living, thinking creatures, or that we are the highest type of mental and physical development which has ever appeared in the vast compass of space and time.” Churchill was clearly humbled. But again, it's simply a statement founded in sheer logic, made public at a time when a culture of freedom in innovation, and admiration for the sciences among the political elite, was at its peak.
Today in the US, where Livio lives and works, the atmosphere could not be more different. At a time when Environmental Protection Agency officials have to go rogue to tweet scientific facts about climate change (the president has famously called climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese), and Donald Trump's pick for the next EPA administrator is backed by donors that face hundreds of EPA actions for breaking pollution rules and laws, there seems to be a cloud of tangible threat hanging over scientists in North America.
A recent example of that concern saw 800 Earth science and energy experts write an open letter to president Trump, imploring him to address climate change concerns to protect “America’s economy, national security, and public health and safety”.
It’s an argument Churchill would understand well: it’s logical and practical, and in the best interest of the country. But Churchill, like any good scientist, also had a naturally curious mind. Hence, the essay began with the grandest question of all - are we alone in the Universe? He takes the reader through a reasoned argument that suggests a starting point (life needs liquid water), leading to exactly where we should look for life (he relays a description of a planet that should be neither too hot nor too cold, now known as the habitable or Goldilocks zone).
“He progresses on this topic just like I would today,” Livio tells WIRED. “You’re interested in a question 'are we alone?' then you define life. Once you define life, you ask what are the necessary conditions for life to emerge - liquid water. That is the same thing that guides our searches today.”
Of course, penned in the 1930s and updated in the 1950s, Churchill’s assessment was not accurate throughout. His suggestion of how extrasolar planets are made, for example Livio says, does not reflect our understanding today. But he also did not presume to trust that humans have the authority to answer any of these questions definitely. A fact that won Livio over.
Writing in Nature, Livio adds: “Now Churchill shines. With the healthy scepticism of a scientist, he writes: ‘But this speculation depends upon the hypothesis that planets were formed in this way. Perhaps they were not. We know there are millions of double stars, and if they could be formed, why not planetary systems?.” And later, Churchill writes: “I am not sufficiently conceited to think that my Sun is the only one with a family of planets.”
“He shines because he is using the wrong theory but he concludes that maybe this is the wrong thing. It’s very, very impressive for him to even say that,” Livio tells WIRED, clearly enamoured with a man and a time that showed science the reverence Livio, his peers, and anyone who lives in a world founded in reasoning and facts - not ‘alternative facts’ - believe it deserves. “That is what I found most incredible in this article.”
Livio, who was not aware of Churchill’s interest in the sciences prior to this, admits that finding the essay “generated some sort of nostalgia” for him. “You have somebody who is arguably the greatest politician of the 20th century, and here he is musing about topics that not only are scientific but...It’s one thing for him to be interested in science when it helped the war effort, it was absolutely necessary, it’s another to be interested in topics that clearly have no immediate applications. They are just driven by pure curiosity.”
It’s impossible to discuss Churchill and his reverence for science, without returning to the 21st-century phenomena that is Trump, a president whose stance on science, the judiciary, press freedoms and conflicts of interest, has been seemingly founded outside of the bounds of logic and reason. Livio, like the 800 scientists who penned an open letter to Trump, is clearly concerned.
“The current leadership here did not appoint a science advisor yet, I hope that will change,” Livio tells WIRED. “There are places where it goes without saying - Angela Merkel is a scientist herself, so I have no doubt she knows about science, and so on. So it changes from country to country. People who determine policies should certainly be aware of everything that science has to offer and everything that science warns against.
“Topics like climate change clearly require scientific input. Topics related to diseases, problems like food resources - I’m saying all of this before even mentioning the fact there are still so many purely scientific questions we are curious about. For instance in the life sciences, ‘how does consciousness work?’, or ‘what is the origin of life, or indeed, ‘are we alone in the universe? In addition to very basic scientific research still open to us, there are a huge number of questions.”
Mario Livio is an astrophysicist and author of upcoming book 'Why? What Makes Us Curious'(Simon & Schuster)
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
