Course is on Astro Biology and its  realtion to philosophy.

Astrobiology, formerly known as exobiology, is an interdisciplinary scientific field concerned with the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Astrobiology considers the question of whether extraterrestrial life exists, and if it does, how humans can detect it. Perhaps, wonders the philosopher in Bernard de Fontenelles Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686), there are astronomers on Jupiter; and perhaps we cause them to engage in scientific quarrels, so that some Jovian philosophers must defend themselves when they put forward the ludicrous opinion that we exist.

Their telescopes are directed towards us, as ours are towards them, “that mutual curiosity, with which the inhabitants of these Planets consider each other, and demand the one of the other, What world is that? What people inhabit it?” (Fontenelle, 1701, p. 93; 1767, p. 207) Human beings have wondered about the stars above since the dawn of the species. Does life exist out there? Are we alone? Questions of life in the Universe can be traced back to antiquity: to philosophers like Epicurus of Samos and authors like Lucian of Samosata. Since then, astrobiological questions have fascinated scientists and philosophers and have been discussed by religious thinkers and utopian authors. These questions have progressed from things of which we could only speculate upon into objects of practical study. When the cosmos was revealed during the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the super lunar world: the Universe beyond the Moon: was no longer closed and unchanging but vast and evolving. When Copernicus put forward his heliocentric model in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543), Earth was reduced to a planet like other planets. In 1609 Galileo trained his telescope on the Moon and, like the Earth, found it to be rugged and uneven, perhaps even having similar mountains and oceans (Galileo, 1610).

Then scientists and philosophers wondered if these celestial bodies could also harbour life. Earth was no longer unique. On 11 November 1572 when the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1573) saw an extremely bright new star in the constellation Cassiopeia, the sidereal heavens no longer seemed unchanging and eternal, as Aristotelian cosmology had taught. His observation made it possible to think about creation and change not only with respect to the Earth, but also to the Universe. In 1575, as a gift in fief from the Danish king, Tycho received the island of Ven in the strait of Öresund. There he constructed the biggest, most advanced observatory in the world: Stjärneborg (Stellæburgum). With its help, he looked to the sky with his naked eye to search for distant stars and other worlds.