24 May 2017

100,000 years (2): Are we Geocentrics after all?

Is there 'intelligent' or 'advanced' life elsewhere in the universe?

But hey ... are we an 'advanced' species? If you could be snatched up and then deposited into the environment of an earthworm, or a squid, or a gannet, how would you get on? You would be dead within minutes. Because you are not adapted to their environments. From the standpoint of those species, which are superbly adapted to their own environments, you are the very opposite of 'intelligent' or 'advanced'. These terms are, in fact, simply patronising and speciesist ways of saying how similar or dissimilar other species are to our own. They have no objective connotations.

Could we communicate with 'intelligent' and 'advanced' alien species? Heavens above, we cannot even communicate (except in one or two cases at a crude Pavlovian Dog level) with other species on our own planet. Living species on other and different planets are likely to be even more 'other' than the millions of species on our own planet with whom we cannot even begin to communicate.

But if we invoke the logic of a vast (but, we are told, not infinite) Cosmos having an inconceivably vast number of possibilities, and if we also grant argumenti gratia  the existence of species whom we would categorise as 'intelligent' and 'advanced', how could we possibly relate to them? The distances concerned would be the least of our problems. Remember that in the history of our species the capacity for electronic communication is very recent. We would need there to be an 'alien' species which had reached just such an identical window of capacity at just such a moment that, given the light-years involved in inter-stellar intercourse, their attempts to communicate with us reached us during our own little window of capacity. And, given the distances involved even for dialogue conducted at the speed of light, it would be next to impossible to have a dialogue with such beings.

It all seems to this poor befuddled Classicist a bit like playing darts blindfolded and without the tiniest assurance that we are even facing in the general direction of the darts board or even that there is a darts board.

Oh ... and I should have made this obvious point: it might not follow that because a species possessed such a capacity, it would have the same inquisitive desire to be in touch with us that we (or some of us ... at this particular instant in our intellectual history) have to be in touch with them. And if there are species out there longing to be in touch with us, they are almost certain, having evolved differently in a different planet, to be using forms of technology which are inconceivable to us.

The idea that the Earth is the physical centre of the Universe, 'Geocentrism', is regarded with derision. It may even be cheerfully termed 'Medieval'. But it seems to me that the preoccupations I have been touching upon imply de facto an assumption of a universe which is measured and judged by our planet and, even more narrowly, by our own species and, yet more narrowly even than that, by our own species at one particular tiny moment (this one!) within its development. Tellus is once again at the centre of everything! ... and we (!!) are (Doxa hemin!!!) the apex of Tellus!!!!

In other words, we have the 'old' Geocentrism, but even more narrowly focused. It has a smart new up-to-the-minute coat of paint, but remains happily intact in all its essential conceptual features.

Neo-Medieval but without the Neo.

Delightfully Dark Age. 

4 comments:

neilmac said...

I agree with the main thrust of your argument, yet find myself I disagreement with a detail. I do believe that there is a fundamental biological difference between man and the animals. All animals have biologically adapted to their environments. Man, who is fundamentally poorly biologically adapted to living in any environment, has, through his intelligence, the ability to adapt himself to live in a huge variety of environments and to adapt those environments to suit himself. Take any animal out of the environment to which has become adapted and it will not survive. Transfer a kangaroo to the jungle, or a camel to the tundra, or a panda to the prairies and it will die. A man, however, can adapt himself the these varying environments and survive.

Sprouting Thomas said...

This is defeatist talk, Father! Don't you know that the Moon is already ruled by Endymion, a frightfully sound chap and one of ours, after all? We'll soon have all those silly horse-ants and giant spiders licked into shape. They're not bad fellows, after all, these aliens - just need a firm hand, you see. Weston out.

You've given me a worrying thought, though. Isn't earth's spin slowing down? Just how is Francis MDCCXVII going to fix the calendar when there's only three days left in the year?

p.s., weren't the real "geocentrists" of the Middle Ages likely to hold a rather humbler view regarding how comprehensible those above the sphere of the moon were likely to be, and exactly how aberrant the human experience was in relation to the fixed stars?

SAM said...

Lewis' Space Trilogy resonates with this post a bit: Perelandra was particularly well written

Richard said...

And of course the earth is flat, almost all the time. A car or a football or water will roll down a slope, but in the absence of a slope they will stay put. Granted you can't sail off the edge of the earth, and if you go to the moon the earth looks spherical - but so what?
And Donald Trump is talking about hell in Saudi Arabia. Maybe we are at long last coming to our senses.