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283 There is no single-track itinerary of scientific and technological develop- ment that different civilizations travel in common.” The scientific revolution on our own planet was not a uniform phenom- enon, geographer David Livingstone reminded us, but a complex historical process shaped by geographic conditions. Local knowledge circulated and, by doing so, became universal. What made knowledge universal was stan- dardization, which amounted to the triumph of certain local practices over others. That process took centuries.”* One of the prerequisites for the development and growth of modern science on Earth was regular communication among the scientists and interested gentlemen of European scientific societies. That network, McNeill noted, rested on a fertile field of shared culture. It is that common ground that we will lack with extraterrestrial intelligence.” Rescher identified conditions needed for alien science to be functionally equivalent to ours, providing a basis for a meaningful exchange of informa- tion. First is formulation: Extraterrestrials must use mathematics like ours. Second is orientation: The aliens must be interested in the same sorts of problems. Third is conceptualization: They must have the same cognitive perspective on nature as we do. Their science will be geared to their sensors, their cultural heritage (which determines what is interesting), and their environmental niche (which determines what is pragmatically - -1N useful). The idea that another civilization is scientifically more advanced requires that they be doing our sort of science. However, cautioned Rescher, natural science as we know it is a man-made creation correlated with our specifi- cally human intelligence. Extraterrestrials, with different needs, senses, and behavior, are unlikely to have any type of science that would be rec- ognizable to us.”° Even among humans, the science of one era may be incomprehensible to that of another; the two may not even talk about the same things. Rescher predicted that Earthly science in 100 years would be unintelligible to us today. “Unless the message was specifically tailored to a civilization just emerging into space,” Rood and Trefil warned, “an extraterrestrial science book would be as incomprehensible to us as the wiring diagram of a radio would be to an aborigine.””” Mind-Stretcher. Musso proposed a different scenario. Scientific progress might not continue indefinitely in any civilization; at some point, it might substantially stop. In that case, even a civilization 1 billion years older than ours might be only two or three centuries ahead of us.” Some see mathematics as a universal. Minsky thought that all intelligent problem-solvers must be subject to the same ultimate constraints: limita- tions on space, time, and materials. Two principles—sparseness and eco- nomics—show that every intelligence will be forced to develop an arithmetic and a language whose structures are rooted in the natures of things. They Will Speak Science