Thales (600BC) is thegodfather of the Western philosopher by propoundingthe existence of plurality of worlds, from then onwards,many theoretical approaches have arisen and sunkenaccording to the signs of times.

In this current context of scientific explosionat all levels (although the exponential growth is not thesame in all scientific disciplines), we find the advent ofnew disciplines and subdisciplines that help us toclassify the areas of knowledge.Thus, to order this informative explosion, itwas convenient to establish a classification system forthe different areas of study. The UNESCO InternationalNomenclature for the fields of Science and Technologywas proposed in 1973 and 1974 by the Science andTechnology Policy Divisions of Science andTechnology of UNESCO and adopted by the Scientificand Technical Research Advisory Commission. It is aknowledge classification system widely used in themanagement of research projects and doctoral theses.And, as a sign that science always brings newhorizons to knowledge, new actors are alwaysappearing in this classification system.In the field that occupies us, however, we findourselves with a great absence. The "Astrobiology",does not appear in the listings of UNESCO. But yes, wefind in them the term "Exobiology" [2, 3]. This "partial"absence denotes the novelty that is still today toscientifically consider the study of life outside Earth.Indeed, until very recently and by manyscientists, it was considered "Exobiology" or"Astrobiology" (which we will consider synonyms), ascience without an area of study. This was especiallytrue until 1995, when Michel Mayor and Didier Quelozdiscovered the first extrasolar planet, 51 Pegasi b.Fortunately, today things are beginning to change andmore and more scientists believe that life will be aubiquitous phenomenon, which will occur anywhere inthe universe where the conditions are right for it.Life will then be an epiphenomenon, an eventthat has no choice but to occur, as soon as thecomplexity of the chemical organization of matterreaches the critical point of interaction between thetrace elements, the essential elements for life. At thebase of it we will find carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur.As life will be a ubiquitous phenomenon,finally today we already intuit that not even a planet isnecessary for life to prosper, and that life could bemaintained in interstellar space, without planetarysubstratum. But before continuing, it is convenient tofix some definitions.The debate on what is life? has occupied allgenerations of thinkers. It is a very difficult concept todefine. Currently there is consensus in affirming thatlife is a self-contained, autopoietic chemical system(self-sufficient exchanging energy with theenvironment in which it is located), capable ofreproducing itself and experiencing evolution [4]. It isa broad definition. In it the minerals could fit, and eventhe stars themselves, as we will see later.So, in view of the complexity of theknowledge that we are slowly acquiring about theuniverse, and given the challenges posed by thepossibility of assuming that life will be found virtuallyanywhere, it is convenient to establish a series of ethicalvalues that allow a positive integration in the culturalbaggage of society of the new limits of knowledge thatscience gives us.For this reason, a "Philosophy of Science" -code UNESCO 7205.01- was established, under whichsince the 80s we can find the "Philosophy of Biology".Before delving into the Philosophy ofAstrobiology, we will give its definition, based on theconcepts of "Philosophy" and "Astrobiology".

To cite an example, the Australian aboriginesexplain with legends that their origin is extraterrestrial.They say that their cave paintings known as"wandjinas" are actually self-portraits made by thesewandjinas, gods or spirits associated with clouds andrain (inhabitants of sky, therefore). In the WesternAustralia region of Kimberley these rock art works areabundant, which have usually been dated to some 4000years old. But aboriginal tradition tells that it was thegods themselves who painted themselves in rockyshelters and who commissioned human artists (see Fig.2) to regularly repaint these manifestations of divinity

Obviating without detracting the Greekclassics, we will quote as an example ChristiaanHuygens, astronomer, physicist, mathematician andDutch inventor. Among other achievements, heexplained the true nature of Saturn's rings anddiscovered Titan, Saturn's largest moon. In the field ofAstrobiology, in 1698 he wrote "Cosmotheoros",affirming "what a marvellous and splendid picture ofthe magnificent vastness of the universe we haveachieved! Such amount of suns, such amount of earths,each and every one of them provided with plants, treesand animals, and adorned with seas and mountains!And how much increases our admiration andamazement if we stop to analyse the prodigiousdistance and the multitude of stars!""Cosmotheoros" (the observer of the stars), isthe first treaty that conjectures extraterrestrial life froma scientific point of view based on the theories of otherthinkers like Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno,Kepler, Tycho Brahe or Descartes.In "Cosmotheoros", Huygens describes morethan twenty possible forms of extraterrestrial life [6]

In recent times, decade of the 40s of thetwentieth century, another of the pioneers ofAstrobiology was the Soviet astronomer GavriilAdrianovich Tikhov, who laid the foundations of anincipient "Astrobotany".Tikhov studied the albedo formations of Mars,speculating that the origin of chromatic and brightnesschanges on the Martian surface were caused byseasonal cycles of falling leaves in forests populated bydeciduous trees [7], (see Fig. 1).Figure 1. Albedo formations of Mars during the greatopposition of Mars in 2003. (Source: Rafael BalaguerRosa, Astrogirona, Astronomical Society of Girona).3. Astrobiology in ancestral societies.But these conceptions are very modern.Perhaps the idea that life thrives in the entire universe,and that maybe the inhabitants of Earth are sons of anextraterrestrial life, are rooted in our deepest psychefrom the very beginning of our species, Homo sapiens,(and maybe other human species, too), more than200,000 years ago.This idea is based on the fact that manyancestral cultures, different and located throughout theplanet, have interpreted that our human origins, and thevery origin of life on Earth, is actually of extraterrestrialorigin. This certainty is born of the shamanicexperience of the altered states of consciousness, wherethe subjective experiences (and then shared andcollective) suggest the real existence of spiritual orhigher beings, who descend from the sky, from space.

Its relation to their celestial origin is alsoevident in the Maasai culture. In 2005 the Maasai ofSynia, Tanzania, explained to Rafael Balaguer Rosatheir legends, star lore and their astronomicalknowledge, very basic, but that also related their originwith the sky, with space, in charge of their unique godNgai.Ngai travels from heaven to Earth descendingthe Milky Way. They call the Milky Way “nkurrei”,which means “way” too, great example of culturalconvergence; and to the Magellanic Clouds

Figure 4. According to transhumanism merginghumans and technologies might change ourphysical status (Source: Ray Kurzweil's “TheSingularity is Near”, 2005).The figure shows how biological, cultural andtechnological evolution is progressing towards a certainincrease in complexity through different stages ofdevelopment, taking advantage of the capacities thatappear in each one of them, and taking advantage ofthese capabilities in a cumulative way, to take the leapto a higher evolutionary state, as we saw at thebeginning with the growth of science. The mostinteresting thing is that this scheme can be applied notonly to life, to humans and our culture, but to the entireUniverse, since the Universe is the set of everythingthat has existed, everything that exists, everything whatwill exist... and the information it contains. This lastpart, that of the information, is the one that interests usespecially

Presumably, life does not necessarily have tobe constituted by atoms and molecules, it could beassembled from any set of building blocks with therequired complexity. In fact, we already know that lifeis an epiphenomenon, an event that has no other choicebut to happen as soon as matter acquires a certaincritical degree of complexity. If so, perhaps anadvanced civilization could then transcribe itself and itsentire physical realm into new forms of life and matter.In fact, perhaps maybe our universe is one of the newways in which some other civilization transcribed itsworld... Perhaps this would be the new frontier ofAstrobiology

By storing their essential data in photons, lifecould be equipped with a distributed and delocalisedsystem of vital self-support, and their consciousnesswould no longer be local. And it could go further,manipulating new photons emitted by stars to dictatehow they interact with matter, and we have already seenthat stars could be conscious beings. The fronts ofelectromagnetic radiation could be arriving through thecosmos to set in motion chains of interstellar orplanetary chemistry, generating energies of excitationin atoms and molecules. This is a way in which lifecould disappear from ordinary physics, and embeditself in exotic matter, to live forever... In other words,part of the fabric of the universe could be a product ofintelligence or maybe even of the life itself.