Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

Our newfound alien interlocutors tell us that they have found
evidence of these advanced beings in the irrational number
pi. After returning to Earth, the protagonist sets a powerful
computer to examine pi from multiple expressions. The
universal intelligence.
Note that Sagan artistically makes the move that we have seen
implicit in the development of science. We start with reality as
a set of individuals, thinking that humans are the only life. We
then move to relations, seeing ourselves as just one life form
in a universe with others. Finally, we take the holistic turn:
It is the entirety that is real, and individuals are modes of the
entirety. In , it is not that intelligent life is at some place
in the universe but that the universe is an intelligence, and we
are an aspect of it.
intelligence was to send messages into space. In 1977, the United
States launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, each bearing a “note”
from Earth. But there are several concerns about this approach.
these tiny craft are next to nothing. Second, extracting and making
sense of our message would require intelligence.
Another approach to discovering extraterrestrial life is to listen for
any possible contact it has tried to make with us. The lead in this
project has been taken by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI) Institute.
SETI’s most notable effort involves the Allen Telescope Array, a
collection of hundreds of radio telescopes arranged over more than
two acres of land in California. In particular, the array focuses on
signals coming from the so-called water hole.
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