Paul Patton opens the third part of the report by saying: “If extraterrestrial civilizations exist, the nearest is probably at least hundreds or thousands of light years away. Still, the greatest gulf that we will have to bridge to communicate with extraterrestrials is not such distances, but the gulf between human and alien minds. In mid-November, the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California sponsored an academic conference on interstellar communication, “Communicating across the Cosmos“. The conference drew 17 speakers from a variety of disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology, archeology, mathematics, cognitive science, radio astronomy, and art. In this installment we will explore some of the formidable difficulties that humans and extraterrestrials might face in constructing mutually comprehensible interstellar messages.”
To read full article go to Communicating Across the Cosmos, Part 3: Bridging the Vast Gulf.
Since it was founded in 1984, the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California, has been a principal American venue for scientific efforts to discover evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations.
Recent confirmation of observational data relating to earthlike extraterrestrial planets has resulted in the publication of numerous books commenting and speculating on the probabilities of the existence of other locales where intelligent life might reside. This raises many issues. Do scientists understand with what frequency self-replicating molecules arise? Does evolution tend to converge in such a way as to make intelligent life a frequent likely outcome when life forms? What might be the effect of the discovery of other intelligent life on humankind’s own social fabric, particularly organized religions? Few scientists have the broad expertise to comment on all of these questions. Publishing a collection of essays by specialists bypasses this difficulty. This book is a very well-balanced, detailed analysis of the subject. The individual essays maintain just the right level of uncertainty without descending into personal preferences disguised as good scientific judgment. The long introduction to the history of discussions of extraterrestrials treats both scientific and social views. Chapters relating to the possible social impacts of a successful discovery are especially interesting, raising questions about some of people’s own fundamental philosophic perspectives. This is one of the best books on the subject; it belongs in all college libraries.
