Cosmic Dust and Panspermia: Progress towards unravelling our cosmic ancestry

Conference at Cardiff University, Cardiff UK from 5-8 September 2006

http://www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk/conference.html

Against Consensus: Chandra Wickramasinghe, Fred Hoyle and the rise of
NEO-Catastrophism

Benny Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University, Faculty of Science, Liverpool L3
2ET

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the theories of geological gradualism
and natural selection were universally regarded as the sole acceptable physical
explanations for the world's large-scale mass extinction events. Any researcher
who dared to question this scientific consensus was either ignored or scorned.

During the last few decades, it has become manifest that a number of mass
extinctions were almost certainly triggered by global natural disasters rather
than the gradual processes of natural selection. Since the 1970s, Chandra
Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle were part of a small group of British astronomers
who advanced a dissenting view of evolution in which asteroidal and cometary
impacts played the crucial role in catastrophic mass extinctions.

In this paper, I review their contribution to the rise and final acceptance of
NEO-catastrophism. At the same time, I ponder the role of consensus as well as
the role of the dissident researcher in the workings and politics of modern
science.

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