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The ancient covenant is in pieces: man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he has emerged only by chance. wee — sonnet An intrinsically improbable single event may become highly probable if the number of events is very great. ween 19402 Is contact likely enough to hope for, or worry about? That depends on how probable we think other technological civilizations may be—and on what we think they might do. Since their beginnings, arguments supporting the existence of extrater- restrial intelligence have rested on two kinds of logic: probability and analogy. Probability has been employed to determine how frequent and widespread extraterrestrial intelligence may be and, by derivation, how likely contact may be. Many believe that the argument from probability is sufficient to justify exploration. However, we cannot prove the existence of extraterrestrials this way.* The case for alien intelligence also uses the analogy of our own presence; if we exist, intelligent beings may appear elsewhere as well. Yet we cannot prove the existence of alien minds by analogy any more than we can by probability. While our own existence shows that the development of life and intelligence is possible, Davies explained, we cannot use that fact to argue that the formation of intelligent life is probable (emphasis added).* No law, theory, or worldview can be proven from a sample of one. Yet, although it may be risky to generalize from a single example, our analogies may not always be wrong. 54 Probabilities —Biologist Jacques Monod, 1971! —Astronomer Otto Struve, 1960? Probability and Analogy