Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence may be regarded as the most impressive convergence of sciences and the most liberating experiment to unfetter the mind from restrictions imposed on it by Immanuel Kant. SETI invites humans to make a pilgrimage towards the beyond and transcend the boundaries of experience. In a practical manner, SETI aims to remove the tangle of misunderstanding between different cultures, religions, races and disabled people. It radicalizes the difference, turning our terrestrial neighbour into the star-away alien in order to elaborate a fundamental method of interaction between the Self and the Other. However, a fresh approach to the problem does not prevent it from the old blunders. SETI researchers and astrolinguists
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The Pioneer plaques as well as the Arecibo message, which date back to the 1970s, require the knowledge of binary digits, geometry and chemistry to be decoded by a recipient. Almost none of the unbiased scientists could correctly decipher a pictorial message of the Pioneer plaques. Needless to say, that the chance for extraterrestrial life to understand it is vanishing. Even the Voyager golden records, containing sounds and images, are “comprehensible to a scientifically literate society” only (Sagan 13). Images with some linguistic representation, which were seen as a powerful way to transmit unambiguous interstellar messages, still imply prerequisites of the same space and time perception (a priori forms of sensibility), vision and …show more content…
Having won the war and eradicated buggers’ home planet, Ender, the protagonist of the story, finds out that the conflict was actually a misunderstanding. Buggers killed humans because they did not know that each person on Earth possessed intellect and consciousness (as for buggers, only their ‘queens’ were sentient). When extraterrestrials realized their mistake, they tried to contact people, but it was too late: Earthlings interpreted buggers’ actions as a war, danger, threat (Card). This novel exemplifies value judgements of metalevel, messed and confused with the descriptive
The Pioneer plaques as well as the Arecibo message, which date back to the 1970s, require the knowledge of binary digits, geometry and chemistry to be decoded by a recipient. Almost none of the unbiased scientists could correctly decipher a pictorial message of the Pioneer plaques. Needless to say, that the chance for extraterrestrial life to understand it is vanishing. Even the Voyager golden records, containing sounds and images, are “comprehensible to a scientifically literate society” only (Sagan 13). Images with some linguistic representation, which were seen as a powerful way to transmit unambiguous interstellar messages, still imply prerequisites of the same space and time perception (a priori forms of sensibility), vision and …show more content…
Having won the war and eradicated buggers’ home planet, Ender, the protagonist of the story, finds out that the conflict was actually a misunderstanding. Buggers killed humans because they did not know that each person on Earth possessed intellect and consciousness (as for buggers, only their ‘queens’ were sentient). When extraterrestrials realized their mistake, they tried to contact people, but it was too late: Earthlings interpreted buggers’ actions as a war, danger, threat (Card). This novel exemplifies value judgements of metalevel, messed and confused with the descriptive