former chief historian. astrobiology is a search for life in the universe. the search for origin of life here and elsewhere, the future of life, the implications if we find life. it is a very interim interdisciplinary subject. that is what brought you to the kluge center? we look particularly at the humanistic aspect of astrobiology, which is brought in itself. i looking at the impact on society if we find life. on how is your thinking human beings would respond to discovering intelligent life in the universe? the first thing you have to ask when you approach the subject is how you approach it at all. it is a far out subject. trying to figure out
feats that are now a comic symbols of new york city. this event was hosted by the new york public library, and last about 90 minutes. thank you, lois. i want to thank the library for organizing this event. can you guys hear me in the back? can you hear me now? no? yes? i will speak loudly. it is great to be in the city, lecturing on the city that he wrote about. in the very place in the city that you wrote about midtown manhattan. a couple of preliminaries before we roll into this illustrated talk. i like that better than powerpoint, as a term. i m not good at powerpoint. luddite, i m i m a just a technological idiot. not the book i originally set out to right. the original idea was to do the whole city. all five boroughs, and stretch it out from world war i to world war ii. cute, itrying to be too took to bigger bite out of the apple. i discovered, as i was doing my research, that i was really drawn to a really compelling story within the larger story i had intended to t
programming, include varying points of view, and be submitted by january 2015. grab a camera and get started today. traveledan history tv to the library of congress kluger center in washington, in. which was established 2000. the center welcomes over 100 scholars every year to pursue research interests at one of the worlds largest libraries. next, we speak with one of their 2014 fellows. joining us on american history tv is stephen dick, a former nasa chief historian. tell us what astrobiology is. astrobiology is a search for life in the universe. that involves the search for origin of life here and elsewhere. the nature of life, the future of life, the implications if we find life. it is a very interdisciplinary subject. that is what brought you to the kluge center? we have this chair in astrobiology to look particularly at the humanistic aspect of astrobiology, which is broad in itself. i looking at the impact on am society if we find life. what is your thinking o
the first thing you have to ask when you approach the subject is how you approach it at all. it is a far out subject. trying to figure out what the reactions would be would be even more difficult. we have come up with three approaches. history. there are times in the past that we thought we discovered life. you can see what the reaction was. also, the nature of the discovery, and thirdly, a culture contact in various analogies that can help illuminate what the discovery would be like. history, discovery, and analogy are my three approaches. can we go to those one by one? tell us about history and what there is to learn from our own history about what our possible responses might be to discovery of life. a great deal, although you have to be careful to say you cannot predict the future. it is an analogy itself. if you use history, you can record in detail what happened, but there is projection as to how it might affect the future. let me take three cases in past history.
and then the book on warren harding, published in 2009. we also have karen who is an archivist, who prepared the harding papers for reader use on july 29. she graduated from brown. excellent historian and a first-rate person. we have dr. richard harding, the grand-nephew of president harding. he was the president of the american psychiatric association. i shouldn t make that mistake. i don t need to apologize for that. very brief description of the harding papers, which is probably unnecessary, given the publicity they have received. but there are about 1,000 the papers. they are approximately 1,000 pages of correspondence between warren harding and carrie phillips who was the wife of one of harding s good friends in marion, ohio. there was a love affair between the two from 1905 to 1920. the collection, however, only has letters between 1910 and 1920. most of the vast majority of the letters all of them probably i don t know if there are any carrie letters in there.