# Life Beyond Our Solar System Would Transform Humanity by J. Craig Venter > “I cannot imagine any single discovery that would have more impact on humanity than the discovery of life outside of our solar system. There is a human-centric, Earth-centric view of life that permeates most cultural and societal thinking.” > **— J. Craig Venter**, *2011 Edge Annual Question, response passage* ## Sources and Context - **Direct publication and locator:** [We Are Not Alone In The Universe — J. Craig Venter](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11905) — 2011 Annual Question response, contiguous sentence(s) within the representative extract. - **Exact original excerpt:** “I cannot imagine any single discovery that would have more impact on humanity than the discovery of life outside of our solar system. There is a human-centric, Earth-centric view of life that permeates most cultural and societal thinking. Finding that there are multiple, perhaps millions of origins of life and that life is ubiquitous throughout the universe will profoundly affect every human.” - **Context and editing:** The poster takes Venter’s first two sentences and retains his personal evaluation. His next sentence speculates about many possible origins of life; it is outside this selected proposition. No editorial words were inserted. - **Local Edge archive:** [[research/Edge 2011 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 2011 Full Quotation Curation]], response EDGE2011-026. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] - **Article:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Biosphere|Biosphere]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Biosphere|Biosphere]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “I cannot imagine any single discovery that would have more impact on humanity than the discovery of life outside of our solar system. There is a human-centric, Earth-centric view of life that permeates most cultural and societal thinking.” — J. Craig Venter, 2011 Edge Annual Question, response passage https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-craig-venter-life-beyond-solar-system-would-transform ```