Though this makes no sound, yet some few are already perking up. This level of reason, superseding thought, will leave others looking for something more comprehensible. Before opening to the moon, the scent of a rose is a reminder that slips away in the morning dew. Yet it leaves no question.
Here gathers an abundance of the uncollected, inhabiting no space, yet aware. And can this list of negatives define an affirmation? They do not. Affirmation is agreement, like to like, and only an object with physical characteristics can be so identified.
Thin gruel, is it not? To whom I allude, this will be satisfactory. Spices will not make it substantial. How many would be fooled? No preordained reasons will serve a flow of ideas, flowering, a breeze dance embraced in leaves, reason passing through on its own, unseen but known.
For about sixty years from the advent of radio, a reasonable guess has it that somewhere else in the universe it is used. The laws of physics as we understand them are deemed universal. Given this, life having arisen here, forebodes life elsewhere. Intelligence here, on one speck of earth in a galaxy that contains other trillions of earth-like planets, probably exists elsewhere and of course might, like us, choose radio as a means of communication over vast distances.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has been listening with radio telescopes. But so far, just static. Are we alone? Surely they must also be curious.
Speculation is comparable to the subject's galactic grandeur. Curiously, some assumptions have been overlooked. One is that we, (and they?) are completely electromagnetic in makeup. We use the same terms and measurements employed in the use of radio waves for analyzing the operation of our senses. Our laws of physics would thus apply to any intelligence presumed to exist, and to any possible communications between us and extraterrestrials. Of course.
Have they tried? Are we pointing our receivers in the right direction? Have we given it a chance? All things considered, we've scanned relatively few of the vast number of possible sources.
Perhaps it's our chosen means of communication, radio, in the electromagnetic spectrum. But we are not confined to that. Amongst ourselves we communicate telepathically. So do many animals that we know.
What reputable SETI scientist would suggest trying telepathy?
Abstract thought is an art. It communicates almost secretly. Go to a modern museum. On the walls are public replies to messages that do not acknowledge walls. A flood of words would not come anywhere near to answering: What is wetness? And yet there in the answer is the abstract. It passes through space on the way to obliterating it, as though that could be done, as though its absence were absolutely proven, and silent laughter a nod to what was never there.
Terms of art are superfluous, really above the flow of wetness. One forgets that the very walls were, in mundane phases of construction, called drywall. In the evolution of building arts emerged sheets of gypsum, encased in strong paper, that could be used in the construction of interior walls and ceilings, a time and labor saving alternative to lath and plaster which engaged a tedium akin to completing this sentence.
And all of this is no conscious part of the art that abstracts walls to nothingness. The thought that comprises this has nowhere to rest its head. The term of art thus, is an abstract engaging an act of attention. Beyond this is another level of reason.
