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Life and Language beyond Earth
Raymond Hickey (671 pages, Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Cambridge University Press website
PART I Introduction
1 Approaching the topic
PART II The Universe we Live In
4 Trying to grasp size
PART III Our Story on Earth
11 The slow path of evolution
PART IV The Runaway Brain
15 The brain-to-body relationahip
PART V Language, our Greatest Gift
20 Looking at language
PART VI Life and Language, Here and Beyond
27 Preconditions for life
(CUP book blurb) Have you ever wondered whether we are alone in the universe, or if lifeforms on other planets might exist? If they do exist, how might their languages have evolved? Could we ever understand them, and indeed learn to communicate with them? This highly original, thought-provoking book takes us on an electrifying journey over billions of years, from the formation of galaxies and solar systems, to the appearance of planets in the habitable zones of their parent stars, and then to how biology and, ultimately, human life arose on our own planet. It delves into how our brains and our language developed, in order to explore the likelihood of communication beyond Earth and whether it would evolve along similar lines. In the process, fascinating insights from the fields of astronomy, evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience and linguistics are uncovered, shedding new light on life as we know it on Earth, and beyond.
Could we communicate with exobeings?
Table of Contents
1.1 Four basic questions
1.2 Working backwards for a moment
1.3 Questions, questions, questions
1.4 An unlikely story
1.5 Back to reality
2 Looking beyond Earth
2.1 Are we alone in the universe?
2.2 What we know about exoplanets
2.3 Exobeings and their planetary environment
2.4 Exobeings and humans on Earth
2.5 From knowns to unknowns
2.6 Sources of energy and biological evolution
2.7 The brains of exobeings
2.8 Emergence and consciousness
3 Striving to understand
3.1 What is scientific speculation?
3.2 What counts as proof?
3.3 What do scientists know and not know?
3.4 How accurate are facts?
3.5 What we still cannot explain
3.6 Problems and mysteries
3.7 The nature of exceptions
3.8 And what about 'weird life'?
3.9 How different could they be from us?
3.10 Two other questions
4.1 Astronomy and history
4.2 How has the universe developed?
4.3 Estimating the size of the universe
4.4 The observable universe
5 Star formation and planets
5.1 Red dwarfs
5.2 Brown dwarfs
5.3 The life of a star
5.4 Where do the elements come from?
5.5 Peering into the future
6 The likelihood of life
6.1 Basic preconditions
6.2 Favouring factors
6.3 Key developments and events
6.4 Mass extinctions in Earth's history
6.5 Strikes from beyond
7 Possible conditions on an exoplanet?
7.1 The fine-tuning problem
7.2 Small-scale and large-scale structures
7.3 The underlying basis of structure
7.4 Emergent properties
7.5 Unintended side effects
7.6 Things which only happened once
7.7 What are the alternatives?
8 How and where to look for exolife
8.1 Recent finds in our cosmic neighbourhood
8.2 Improved technology
8.3 Methods for finding exoplanets
8.4 A planet in the habitable zone
8.5 What about rogue planets?
8.6 Rare Earth Hypothesis
8.7 The Copernican Principle
8.8 Earth Similarity Index and Planetary Habitability Index
8.9 Classifying exoplanets
8.10 When is an exoplanet 'Earth-like'
8.11 Potential for life on moons
8.12 A lunar trio: Europa, Enceladus, Titan
8.13 Microbial life on a moon: what could it tell us?
8.14 Where are we at present?
9 The limits of exploration
9.1 Getting around the universe
9.2 Sending out probes
9.3 Getting here after we are gone
9.4 A feeling for distance
10 Assessing probabilities
10.1 Considering the Fermi Paradox
10.2 Looking at the Drake Equation
11.1 Just what is life?
11.2 Energy regime of the body
11.3 Finding out how life works
11.4 Our restless world
11.5 Energy gradients
11.6 Life getting under way
11.7 Functional principle and realisation
11.8 The rise of predators
11.9 Different kinds of evolution
11.10 Genes and phenotypes
11.11 Control from above or below?
11.12 'Design' from below
12 How does the whole work?
12.1 Devices and organisms
12.2 Evolution and design
12.3 Do the parts know the whole?
12.4 A question of scale
12.5 When do cells become an organism?
12.6 Sexual reproduction
12.7 Variety is the spice of life
12.8 A quirk in meiosis
12.9 Genetic mutation
12.10 Divergent evolution
12.11 Convergent evolution
12.12 Analogous and homologous structures
12.13 Epilogue: Profusion in nature
13 The road to Homo sapiens
13.1 The pitfall of compressing the past
13.2 Palaeoanthropology: reaching back in time
13.3 Rummaging around in caves
13.4 The Out of Africa hypothesis
13.5 ‘The march of progress’
13.6 The context of the genus Homo
13.7 Divisions within the genus Homo
13.8 The progression of consciousness
13.9 Defining Homo sapiens anatomically
13.10 Energy intake
13.11 Narrow range of values
13.12 Brain size
13.13 Evolution of our anatomy and physiology
13.14 Defining Homo sapiens culturally
13.15 Tool making, cognition and communication
13.16 Making flint tools
13.17 The management of fire
13.18 The advent of cooking
13.19 Wearing clothes
13.20 Setbacks in our evolution
13.21 Hominins: the big picture once more
13.22 A unique species and the great cognitive gap
14 The rise of human societies
14.1 In the beginning was the group
14.2 Humans, the great extenders
14.3 The origins of the leader
14.4 Societies on exoplanets
14.5 The question of violence
14.6 Evidence for social organisation
14.7 The advent of farming
14.8 Culture and human evolution
14.9 Cultural buffering
14.10 Would exosocieties have money?
14.11 And would they have art?
14.12 The view from science fiction
15.1 Wallace's Puzzle
15.2 Are brains necessary for life?
15.3 Structure of the human brain
15.4 Some facts about the human brain
15.5 Windows on the world: the human senses
15.6 The cost of our brain
16 How brains develop
16.1 Embryogenesis and the brain
16.2 The proliferation of neurons
16.3 Childhood and puberty
16.4 Lifespan and aging
17 Our cognition
17.1 The limits of cognition
17.2 Theory of mind and the notion of self
17.3 Internalisation of the world we perceive
17.4 The tiger in the bush: our love of patterns
18 Consciousness
18.1 The role of emotions
18.2 The origin of emotions
18.3 The hard problem
18.4 The sense of self again
18.5 Size of the brain and consciousness
18.6 Where is consciousness?
18.7 Consciousness and attention
18.8 The conscious and unconscious brain: a division of labour
18.9 The quantum brain?
18.10 Memory
18.11 Neuroplasticity
18.12 Consciousness: an attempted summary
18.13 A final remark
19 Artificial intelligence
19.1 The singularity: a modern Frankenstein?
19.2 A conscious computer?
19.3 Sentio ergo sum again
19.4 The mental lives of exobeings
20.1 What is language?
20.2 The purpose of language
20.3 Definitions of language
20.4 Design features of language
20.5 Structural notions in linguistics
21 Talking about language
21.1 How words represent meaning
21.2 Linguistic relativity
21.3 Language as a reflection of speakers’ world
21.4 Names and language
21.5 Language, environment and culture
21.6 What do speakers know about language?
21.7 What are speaker intuitions?
22 The view from linguistics
22.1 The complexity envelope of language
22.2 Levels of language: modular organisation
22.3 Language typology
22.4 Language production
22.5 The human tongue and throat
22.6 What we hear
22.7 Vowels and consonants
22.8 Convergent evolution and language production
23 The language faculty and languages
23.1 The nature of language acquisition
23.2 The question of modality: sound or gestures?
23.3 Sign language
23.4 Communication by touch?
23.5 Receptive modality
23.6 Language and writing
23.7 Linguistic diversity on Earth and beyond
23.8 Was there one original language?
23.9 Language change
24 Language and the brain
24.1 Language areas in the brain
24.2 The binding problem in language
24.3 Evidence from language impairments
24.4 Types of aphasia
25 Acquiring language
25.1 Are we predestined for speech?
25.2 The absence of exposure to language
25.3 Characteristics of language acquisition
25.4 Stages of language acquisition
25.5 Abduction and ambiguity in language
25.6 Localisation of language and early childhood
25.7 Language transmission
25.8 The logical problem of acquisition
25.9 The evidence of pidgins and creoles
25.10 Is there a gene for language?
25.11 Constructed languages
26 Humans and animals
26.1 How intelligent are animals?
27.1 What can the range of a search be?
27.2 Abiogenesis and the panspermia hypothesis
27.3 What can be assumed about exolife forms?
27.4 Habitat-independence and flexibility
27.5 To recap: the likelihood of life
27.6 The role of serendipity
27.7 Being out of sync
27.8 Post-human - post-biological?
28 What might exolife be like?
28.1 Lifespan for exobeings
28.2 What would their average size be?
28.3 Alternative ecologies and behaviours
28.4 Feeling like an exobeing
28.5 What about free will and morality?
28.6 What are exobeings likely to share with us?
28.7 How smart might they be?
28.8 How would they count?
28.9 Would they have a sense of time?
29 Looking for signs of life
29.1 Biosignatures and technosignatures
29.2 The nature of a signal
29.3 METI: trying to get in touch
29.4 Would they want to know us?
30 The issue of first contact
30.1 Some scenarios
30.2 How to contact them: language-independent messages
30.3 A messenger from beyond?
30.4 Communicating without meeting them
30.5 And if we find one, what then?
30.6 Predicting reactions
31 Language beyond Earth
31.1 Research on evolution
31.2 When did it all start?
31.3 Where and why did it start?
31.4 Primary and secondary functions in biology
32 How human language arose
32.1 Looking for a beginning
32.2 Some early triggers
32.3 From proto-language to language
32.4 The evolving levels of language
32.5 Syntax: the grammar of sentences
32.6 A possible parallel: the immune system
32.7 Language and thought
32.8 The evolution of the language faculty
32.9 How complex can a language be?
32.10 Language, evolution and innateness
32.11 How did it become an instinct?
32.12 Language and the physical brain
32.13 Language and memory
33 The language of exobeings
33.1 What might their language be like?
33.2 Could we understand them?
33.3 Could they understand us?
34 Looking forward: the basic questions again
35 Some final thoughts
Appendixes
Glossary
Timelines
References
Index
