More important are the beginnings of serious attempts to communicate combined with the development of the science of understanding language and communication. Here Oberhaus takes the reader on a series of discussions about how we might communicate with intelligences that do not share our culture, biology or indeed references points. Many readers will be familiar with SF films or novels that show communication where the two alien species attempt to communicate around common knowledge. Maths is the normal starting point, and indeed this forms the basis for much of how such communications might happen. Oberhaus shows how messages can be used to use simple maths to build up communications teaching, for instance, counting, then logic and so on. But there is always a problem. What knowledge is common across the universe? Will aliens understand our maths? Is maths even a thing likely to be held in common? Oberhaus writes, while discussing the possible use of set theory and logic to establish common ground:
Axiomatic set theory and symbolic logic have come to dominate mathematics over the past century to the point htat it feels entirely natural to conceive of the order of the world in terms of sets and cognition in terms of symbolic logic. Yet this misses the cirtical transition from grounding metaphors, which can reasonably be assumed to be shared with extraterrestrial intelligences since they arise from direct experiences... to linking metaphors, which are the creative productions of human minds meant to deal with human experience. In other words, a very useful mathematical invention that meets the idiosyncratic needs of embodied human intellifence has been naturalised to the point that it is taken to be a trait of the universe itself.
There's a good example in the book. We might think physical understanding is a common ground. But what if we had communicated with aliens when our only understanding of the atom was Bohr's model and not the quantum models now favoured. Might a more advanced alien race have ignored us?
Oberhaus grapples mostly with the sciences of communication and languages. But there are some interesting moral points. He notes, for instance, criticism of the Pioneer plaques that only depicted humans who looked caucasian. The Voyager records were better, mixing languages and music from many cultures, but still displaying cultural limitations. Indeed none of these languages offered enough information to allow real communication or understanding to develop. Perhaps their greatest success would have been in terms of inspiring future scientists here on Earth.
Oberhaus also makes a further interesting point. When we communicate, "do we want to tell extraterrestrials the truth?" Indeed do we share the limitations of our civilisation or, as we have done so far, share "messages into space [that] hve been filtrered through rose-tinted glasses".
Realistically there is little chance that any historic messages to space, or indeed any ones in the near future will be received or answered. While I was not convinced by Oberhaus' arguments that other aliens may well share biological traits with us, and indeed DNA might not be unique, the bigger problem is that aliens are likely to be extremely rare. I suspect that most life in the universe will be some form of slime or bacteria. That said the scale of the universe is such that statistically there ought to be intelligences out there, that we might converse with. That is unlikely to happen. But the science of how we communicate, and this fascinating little book, are part of developing our own knowledge of ourselves and our universe. As Oberhaus says, "each message... is like a mirror that reflects the spirit of the age that crafted it".
Related Reviews
Rubenstein - Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race
Bell - The Interstellar Age
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