What might we learn from communicating with an extraterrestrial civilization completely unlike our own--physically, culturally, and technologically?
(Warning: this post contains spoilers for Arrival.)
Hey, this is Taizo, and welcome back to Astrocenter.
Today's post is about one of my favorite works of science fiction: Arrival, based on Ted Chiang's short story "Story of Your Life". The original text is written beautifully, and I review it in further detail here.
In the film, Louise Banks decodes the language of the mysterious aliens who have arrived on Earth. To do this, she holds conversations with two "heptapods" nicknamed Abbott and Costello.
Arrival repeatedly presents the idea that language is influenced by and influences the environment and culture of the population. Before she is recruited to study the heptapod language, Louise shows an example of this effect in a human population:
Colonel Weber: [answering a previous question about the Sanskrit word for war and it's meaning] Gravisti. He says it means an argument. What do you say it means? Louise Banks: "A desire for more cows."
This effect is multiplied dramatically in the heptapod language, however. After interacting with the heptapods and seeing how their language systems are constructed, Louise comes to a stunning realization: they perceive time as non-linear. There is no beginning or end, and they know everything that will happen over the course of their lives.
The heptapods' written language shows their perception of time. Unlike human writing systems where there's a linear progression of letters and words across a page, the entire "logogram" is created simultaneously in a circular fashion.
Costello: "Abbott is death process."
It's difficult to imagine that we could ever contact a civilization as radically different as the heptapods. But if we do make contact, chances are, the civilization would be much more advanced than us. There would be a treasure trove of knowledge and culture waiting to be found once we establish cooperative communication, all developed in an environment completely foreign to Earth.
Currently, the only model of an "advanced" civilization we have is of our planet . Scenarios from brilliantly imaginative minds of speculative science fiction, while captivating, are just that—speculation. Until we finally detect an artificial radio source within the endless broadcasts of the cosmos or we're directly contacted by extraterrestrials, we'll have to do with science-based predictions, but there's no doubt that the truth will be stranger than fiction.
*****
Other works about SETI and first contact:
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Bibliography
“Arrival.” IMDb, IMDb.com, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/quotes/qt3357722.
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