2
Reading the Cosmos: What Our Science Tells Us About the Science of Another World

Carl L. DeVito*

Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A.

Abstract

Some years ago, the author and a colleague constructed, as a thought experiment, a language based on the fundamental facts of science. It has been suggested that this language might be suitable for interstellar communication. We briefly discuss this language and then examine how the science of another world might differ from our own. Our strong reliance on the sense of sight and our evolutionary history, as both predator and prey, have influenced our understanding of space and time. This understanding plays a fundamental role in Newtonian mechanics and in both differential and integral calculus. Investigating this role enables us to identify aspects of our science, and of our mathematics, where we and an alien race might differ.

Keywords: Interstellar communication, newtonian mechanics, calculus, Euclidean geometry, hyperbolic geometry

2.1 Introduction

We don't know if alien societies exist and, if they do, what they might be like. Our method of searching, however, does put restrictions on the kind of society we might find. We will only detect societies that have a technology. It seems likely that such a society will also have a science on which to base that technology. Science here on Earth has shown us certain obstacles that had to be overcome before progress could be made. An alien society, in developing its science, will have faced the same obstacles. It would seem then, that by examining the development of science here, we can gain insight into the possible nature of the science on other worlds.

2.2 The Why and How of Interstellar Communication

The stars, as we all know, are very far away. Reaching them by spacecraft is well beyond our current abilities and will remain so for the foreseeable future. So, if we are to contact an extraterrestrial society, we must do it by radio or some other type of electromagnetic radiation.

This, of course, limits the kind of civilization we can hope to find. There may be many races out there that excel in art, music, philosophy or literature that cannot, or do not choose to, send radio waves into space. At present there is no way we can detect such a race.

There is so much we'd like to know about any race we do contact. What do they look like? Do they have two sexes? What are their social organizations like? Do they have music, art, theological ideas, political ideas, scientific theories?

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to obtain such knowledge.

I think the desire for such knowledge is so great that many forget the incredible technical challenges this kind of communication involves. We may be able to do little more than recognize each other's existence. But, if nothing else, interstellar signaling is at least a way to pass on a "legacy" to other intelligences in the galaxy.

It is a way to let them know we were/are here, that we lived and learned and did things, and experienced life. It is one way of extending the life span of humanity and a necessary one because the Earth will not last long by cosmic standards and once it is gone, so is all human accomplishment. Presumably, the society we contact will do the same, giving us some knowledge of their totally alien civilization. We want to know about them just as we want to know about the Mayans, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Not because this knowledge will "save" or even change us, but because they lived. Just knowing they exist will enrich our thinking and broaden our understanding of the nature of life.

I do not see contact with an alien society as a "metaphysical" experience, nor do I expect that a society that knows nothing about us will somehow have the answer to all our problems.

Curiously, there is a persistent belief that communicating with an alien society will be easy-almost trivial! I have spoken about such communication at many scientific conferences. Invariably someone will insist that pictures, or music, or computers will easily handle the problem and have us and the aliens talking like old friends.

I find this rather puzzling. Wouldn't it mean that human to human communication would also be trivial? So why do people bother learning foreign languages? Couldn't we travel the world with a sketch pad (or a musical instrument if you can play one) and instantly communicate with the natives in any country? As for computers, why haven't they taught us to speak "dolphin"? In connection with language, even human languages, our computers still have their limits.

We must keep in mind that when two humans communicate, they both have human bodies with similar needs, they share the same sense organs and also share the culture of their time. Even with all this, face-to-face communication can be difficult, as anyone who has done any travelling has learned.

Now imagine communicating with a non-human. We recall a statement usually attributed to Wittgenstein: "Even if a lion could speak our language, we wouldn't understand him." This is not saying that a human and a lion cannot communicate. I mean, if a lion came into your room and said "I just woke up from a ten-hour nap and I am famished. I could really go for a snack right now," I think you would get the message. What Wittgenstein's remark is saying is that even with a common language two beings can be so different that only a very low level of communication is possible. This may be the case between us and an extraterrestrial race. We must be aware that the level of communication possible with such a race may be frustratingly low. After all, we may have more in common with a lion than we have with an alien.

Interstellar communication will not be a dialogue in the usual sense. If we hear from a society that is, say, ten light-years away, we will not send a message then wait twenty years or more for a reply, then send another message, and so on. What we should, in my opinion, do, and what I believe the aliens will also do, is immediately send a series of messages, perhaps a week or a few days apart, each containing more information than the last, but each containing some redundancy as a check on understanding. In this way each society leaves with the other a knowledge of its existence and, perhaps, something of its accomplishments.

My allusion to the ancient peoples listed above shows why we need social scientists on any "SETI team." This kind of communication will be, at least for quite a while, one-way, as indicated above. Our communication with past societies on Earth is one-way. We will have to glean what we can from the messages the aliens send us, extracting some understanding of their sense organs, their psychology, and their social structures along with whatever we learn of their physics, chemistry and mathematics.

But what should our messages say? More to the point, what can we say that would be comprehensible to an extraterrestrial?

2.3 An Early Language

If the aliens are mentally human-like we may be able to communicate by creating a language based on logic. The idea of constructing such a language goes back at least as far as Gottfried Leibnitz (1646-1716). Late in the nineteenth century Giuseppe Peano (1858-1932) discussed such languages extensively. These efforts had an important impact on the development of mathematical logic, and computer scientists, in connection with the development of programming languages, also drew on this work. However, the idea of using a logic-based language as a means of communication, the original intent of both Leibnitz and Peano, was forgotten until 1960. In that year the Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal (1905-1990) published a remarkable book called Lincos (a contraction of the words Lingua Cosmica). He set himself the problem of designing a language suitable for communicating via radio with (hypothetical) intelligent extraterrestrials. Since such beings would have no knowledge of our natural languages and could not be shown physical objects or demonstrations, there is nothing but logic on which to base a common language. Freudenthal showed that, if their thought processes are human-like, a language suitable for mutual communication could be taught to them. The disadvantage here is in the length of this work. A good deal of the book is devoted to developing the language. He even planned a second volume but this was never completed. References to the works quoted above can be found in Freudenthal's book Lincos - Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse, which is available online.

2.4 A Language Based on Science

My colleague Richard T. Oehrle, a linguist and logician, and I tried a different approach to cosmic discourse [2.1]. The society we detect will have something like a radio telescope, hence they have an interest in their astronomical environment.

Our astronomers know a lot about stars of course, but they have very detailed knowledge of only one star, the sun. They would love to get the same detailed knowledge about some other star. Our geologists and meteorologists would love to get detailed knowledge of some other planet, and our space scientists would love to get detailed knowledge of some other "solar system". An alien society with an interest in its astronomical environment would welcome such knowledge from us. In other words, the first step in this communication is to develop the ability...