Page Content (OCR)
One can hardly be a complete human being without at least occasionally calling to mind the community of rational beings, as yet unknown, to which we presumably belong. Onn Toa. 19721 For much of their time on Earth, most humans have believed that they share their world with non-human intelligences, particularly spirits that animate natural phenomena. Those spirits could do good, providing rain for crops and granting survival to children. They could do harm, bringing droughts, floods, or disease. Such animators were implicitly intelligent. Earlier humans may have believed the world around them to be vibrant with unseen spirits motivated by thoughts and emotions mirroring their own, speculated astronomer Edward Harrison. He proposed that this “magic universe” arose hundreds of thousands of years ago, when our ancestors began to acquire advanced linguistic skills. These animistic beliefs often evolved into the polytheism seen in many earlier societies. Monotheism responded to the same need, providing a God who designed, created, and directed the world around us. Whether plural or singular, animators were intangible, beyond human sight or reach. This belief in sapient but unseen others has recurred in one form or another throughout our history. Their imagined natures and locations have evolved with cultural change, intellectual advance, and new conceptions of the cosmos. They have remained invisible, detectable only by the effects of their actions. gences a characteristic of Homo sapiens, a peculiarly human attribute? Or is it shared by other sentient beings that may exist elsewhere in the A Belief in Other Minds —Stanislav Lem, 1976! An Ancient Idea Here we enter into our first speculation. Is this belief in unseen intelli- cee tne eee Oe eet eee bee cette