Page Content (OCR)
284 Because arithmetic is the same everywhere, alien mathematics will be congruent to our own. Because things are, in their most general aspects, the same everywhere, aliens will have evolved thought processes and lan- guages that will match our own to a degree that will enable us to under- stand them.” Others have challenged this assumption. Mathematics is just another language, argue some linguists, with symbols that are connected to certain ideas only by convention. We can no more assume that extraterrestrials will share mathematics with us than we can assume that they will share LL oweteh we. TT. ase nee bw nee ne re | ee ee ne te ee tn. English with us. Human mathematics may be only one of several equally valid, physically true languages.*° Platonists Versus Anti-Platonists Some mathematicians have endorsed Plato’s concept that numbers and mathematical laws are etherial ideals, existing outside of space and time. Others reject this argument, insisting that mathematics is a human cre- ation like literature, religion, or banking. If mathematics is universal and eternal, claim the Platonists, aliens will understand concepts like prime numbers and pi. The anti-Platonists dismiss this idea as anthropomorphic; alien brains, responding to dif- ferent environments, would have radically different mathematics.*! As Baird saw it, the messages anticipated by astronomers and engineers read like a shopping list of unsolved scientific problems. This, he declared, is scientific chauvinism.” Many of the modern assumptions about contact reflect the scientific and technological interests of our specific era in history. We emphasize tele- communications, information technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and genetics. Those interests will change with further scientific and tech- nological advance and with cultural evolution; other civilizations may have moved beyond them. There is another dimension to this debate: Those who foresee contact as an exchange of scientific information do not represent popular opinion. Surveys show that science is not the only reason, or even the primary reason, for public support of SETI. Most people focus more on other aspects of knowledge, culture, and behavior. This might be true in the other civilization as well. A society able to afford the enormous effort that interstellar communication requires can hardly be motivated solely by practical considerations, Puccetti argued. They would want to know things that might outweigh in importance further gains in scientific or technological knowledge.** Ideas about those subjects may be the most difficult to convey. Assumptions: After Contact