Life and Language Beyond Earth
- Author: Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
- Date Published: September 2023
- availability: Available
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781009226417
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Have you ever wondered whether we are alone in the universe, or if life forms 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 a fascinating 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, palaeoanthropology, neuroscience and linguistics are uncovered, shedding new light on life as we know it on Earth, and beyond.
Read more- Questions how language could evolve among beings on exoplanets – could we ever understand them and possibly learn their language, or they ours, assuming they exist?
- Explores how human life and language evolved on our own planet in order to analyse the likelihood of life and language beyond Earth
- Considers the likelihood of intelligent beings existing on planetary systems beyond our Earth and considers how they might have evolved, developed societies, and built civilisations
Reviews & endorsements
'This book is a great read that grips you from the start - it's an absolute Wunderkammer of enthralling facts and informed speculations that build the case around possible life and language on planets beyond our Solar System.' Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics at Monash University, Australia
See more reviews'Raymond Hickey offers fascinating surveys of two very different fields: astronomy and linguistics. But his book is specially valuable and farsighted because these two topics may some day be linked: rapid advances in exobiology lead optimists to conjecture that extraterrestrials could be discovered this century.' Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal
'This fascinating book discusses the question of the nature of the languages spoken by possible intelligent extraterrestrials in an engaging and interesting way. The book is impressively wide-ranging, covering cosmology, evolution, biology, linguistics and many other fields. This is the most thorough treatment of these issues I am aware of and it will certainly be of interest to anyone curious to find out more about these fascinating questions.' Ian Roberts, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and IUSS Pavia
'Ray Hickey's work has always surprised me in the ever-widening range of complex topics he's tackled, but this book is a quantum leap beyond his earlier work. The story he tells here is amazing and along the way offers a crisp introduction to how linguists understand human language and our cognitive capacity for it.' Joe Salmons, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, USA
'Life and Language beyond Earth takes us on a wondrous tour of the universe, as we explore exotic worlds and the alien civilizations that might flourish throughout our galaxy. By pondering the evolution of intelligence and language in a cosmic context, we are forced to rethink what it means to be human.' Douglas Vakoch, President of METI International, editor of Xenolinguistics: Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language
'The book is appropriate for general readers as an intriguing view of possible exobeings and their languages, for advanced undergraduate and graduate students for specialized coursework, and as a thought-provoking read for professionals … Recommended.' N. W. Hinman, CHOICE
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×Product details
- Date Published: September 2023
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781009226417
- length: 695 pages
- dimensions: 236 x 160 x 42 mm
- weight: 1.11kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
How to use this book
Part I. Introduction:
1. Approaching the topic
2. Looking beyond Earth
3. Striving to understand
Part II. The Universe We Live In:
4. Trying to grasp size
5. Star formation and planets
6. The likelihood of life
7. Possible conditions on an exoplanet?
8. How and where to look for exolife
9. The limits of exploration
10. Assessing probabilities
Part III. Our Story on Earth:
11. The slow path of evolution
12. How does the whole work?
13. The road to Homo sapiens
14. The rise of human societies
Part IV. The Runaway Brain:
15. The brain-to-body ratio
16. How brains develop
17. Our cognition
18. Consciousness
19. Artificial intelligence
Part V. Language, our Greatest Gift:
20. Looking at language
21. Talking about language
22. The view from linguistics
23. The language faculty and languages
24. Language and the brain
25. Acquiring language
26. Humans and animals
Part VI. Life and Language, Here and Beyond:
27. Preconditions for life
28. What might exolife be like?
29. Looking for signs of life
30. The issue of first contact
31. Language beyond Earth
32. How human language arose
33. The language of exobeings
34. Looking forward: the basic questions again
35. Some final thoughts
Appendixes
Glossaries
Timelines.
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