Who speaks in the name of the Earth? We, definitely not.
Man is the only animal that eats without being hungry, drinks without being thirsty and speaks without having anything to say.
-Mark Twain
In the science fiction television series universe created by Eugene W. Roddenberry, the United Federation of Planets (also known as the UFP, as its name suggests, is a Interplanetary federal state made up of more than 150 member planets and about a thousand colonies that extends for more than 8000 light years in the Milky Way (Bragga, 2005).In the real world, the question of a planetary representation was taken very seriously, so much so that Carl Sagan considered the following: "We know who speaks on behalf of the nations. But who speaks on behalf of the human species? Who speaks on behalf of the Earth? "(Sagan, 2004), concluding at the end of the book that is not, but that we, Humanity, have the obligation to speak on behalf of the Earth.
But let's ask ourselves the question here: in the event of contacting extraterrestrial intelligences, who would represent Earth? Who is or should be that we? Is there something already arranged in this regard? Until now we know that he would be a human being, although the international authorities have not yet agreed on the protocol to follow. (United Nations Organization, 2010).
The conclusion reached was that a world plan is necessary for possible contacts with extraterrestrials, warning that the governments of the world have to prepare for an encounter with an extraterrestrial civilization. The meeting ended with an international call for the United Nations to develop a working group dedicated to "extraterrestrial affairs." But who has given us parental authority over the planet and we only exercise it convincingly? Could it be that our territorial ego, influenced by our religious tendencies, filters into scientific anthropocentrism and makes us believe that we are the pinnacle of intelligence, and -therefore- the best representatives of our planet? (Conway Morris, 2011)
Having the ability to speak with animals is one of the most ambitious and ancient dreams that humanity has harbored since its inception, which has been reflected in myths, shamanic traditions, fables, stories, etc. To this day through cartoons, movies and children's storybooks.
It has been shown that Homo Sapiens sapiens is not the only intelligent being on planet Earth, non-human intelligence has outstanding representatives such as the great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and bonobos), cetaceans (dolphins, orcas and whales ) according to the encephalization index (Gruart i Massรณ, 2009), so if we want to find a worthy representative we must leave our anthropocentric comfort zone and become aware of the wide range of beings, also terrestrial, that could well be worthy of being be world spokespersons.
According to information theory, language is a means of information exchange (Shannon & Weaver, 1950), words are the key in which information is encoded in order to be exchanged. In this process, the information is initially a mental representation that resides in the brain, in the case of humans, in the form of neural connections and chemical signals. In order to transmit this information to another brain, we must encode it using the rules of what we call language.
If we could find animals in nature, in which their communication system shared some characteristics with ours, specifically if these animals showed clear signs of intelligence, we could support the idea that we would need a symbolic language to maintain a communication congruent enough to be considered intelligent (Ballesteros, 2010). This could be an evolutionary convergence question, so let's go over our closest evolutionary relatives.
We share approximately 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos, 98% with gorillas, and 97% with orangutans; so they were the first candidates to teach them the oral language. However, the anatomical differences with their tongues and respiratory systems make it difficult for them to vocalize the sounds of human language (Wayman, 2011); it is also complex with cetaceans, they use another sensory system to communicate, so there is no way to understand them using ours (Schnoller, 2015) and the only experiment that has wanted to bring them closer to oral language -in the case of dolphins- ended in the failure of the project (Cunningham, 1967) and with the language of whales compared to human language, which can generate 10 bits of information for each word that is spoken, whale song carries less than one bit of information per second. Despite this difference, and the fact that the language of the whales does not have much to do with ours (Suzuki, 2006).
Specifically, Miyagawa and his collaborators think that some of the apparently infinite qualities of modern human language, to be analyzed, show the finite qualities of the putative languages โโof other animals.
This means that human communication is more similar to that of other animals than is generally believed. ยซYes, human language is unique, but when analyzing its two parts it is discovered that they actually come from a finite state, these two components have antecedents in the animal world. According to our hypothesis, the two came together only in human languageยป (Miyagawa, Ojima, Berwick, & Okanoya, 2013).
The researcher thus maintains that human language is made up of two different layers: the expressive layer, which refers to the mutable structure of sentences; and the lexical layer, where the basic content of sentences resides.
This idea, in turn, is based on the linguistic works of other scholars, such as Noam Chomsky, Kenneth Hale or Samuel Jay Keyser. The expressive layer and the lexical layer have their antecedents in the languages โโof birds and other mammals, respectively (Pinker, 2007).
Until now the responsibility of caring for this planet falls on each one of us. We have been for a long time, the main cause of mass extinctions, climate change, deforestation and pollution; however, although we were the main cause of these problems, we are both the best and fastest solution. We have a tool that, although it is not perfect and is far from giving us absolute truths, is without a doubt the best we have to achieve a balance between nature and society: this is knowledge, not from a science isolated but from the holism of several, such would be for the study that I propose, the interdisciplinarity conferred by the study of theories of artificial intelligence, linguistics, zoology, ethnology, sociology, psychology, communication sciences.
It is from the unlearning of the arrogance of anthropocentrism that we will understand our planetary companions and thus understand our real place in this cosmos. Using it responsibly is the greatest legacy that we can leave to the following generations. Of course, not everyone thinks this way, in fact, many do not even think about this matter.
In interspecies communication, there is still much to do, much to know, but above all much to value and love. Enjoying and learning on the journey through the space-time of knowledge will lead us to perhaps the solution to hundreds, perhaps thousands of problems that afflict human civilization today. The key is wanting to search, always wanting to question with a skeptical question, what can we do to change this world to be a more collaborative, more equitable one where all voices can be heard.
Bibliography and references
Ballesteros, F. (2010). ET Talk. (DR Altschuler Stern, Ed.) Londres, Inglaterra: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-6089-4_7
Ballesteros, F. J. (2008). Extraterrestrial Grammars: Communication with Interstellar Civilizations in the Light of Science (1st ed.). (F. Sapiรฑa, Ed.) Valencia, Spain: Publicacions Universitat de Valencia. Retrieved on July 8, 2021
Berwick, RC, & Chomsky, N. (2016). Why only us?: Evolution and language. (A. Padilla, Ed., & F. Marfa, Trad.) Mallorca, Barcelona, โโSpain: Kairรณs. Retrieved on July 4, 2021
Bragga, B. (Producer), Roddenberry, E. (Writer), & Livingston, D. (Director). (2005). The Birth of the Federation [Film]. United States. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0FwXuyGmU
Conway Morris, S. (13 de Febrero de 2011). Predicting what extra-terrestrials will be like: and preparing for the worst. doi:https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0276
Cunningham, J. (1967). dolphin mind; to non-human intelligence (1st ed.). Miami, Florida, USA: Doubleday. Retrieved on July 5, 2021
Flynn, J. (2009). What is intelligence? (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved on July 6, 2021
Fouts, R., & Tukel Mills, S. (1997). Next of kin: what chimpanzees have taught me about who we are (1ยฐ ed.). (W. Morrow, Ed.) New York, New York, Estados Unidos : Living Planet Book. Recuperado el 6 de Julio de 2021
Gruart i Massรณ, A. (March-April 2009). The brain as a machine to learn, remember and forget. (SD Gonzalez, Ed.) ARBOR Science, Thought and Culture, CLXXXV 736 (763), 451-469. doi:10.3989/arbor ISSN: 0210-196
Hess, E. (2008). Nim Chimpsky (1st ed.). New York, New York, United States: Bantman book. Retrieved on July 4, 2021
Lanza, R., & Berman, B. (2016). Beyond biocentrism (1st ed.). (E. Gรณmez Belastegui, Trad.) El Viso, Mรกlaga, Spain: Sirio. Retrieved on July 5, 2021
Loeb, A. (2021). Extraterrestrial: Humanity before the first sign of intelligent life beyond Earth. (A. Guardia Berdiell, Trad.) Barcelona: Planet. Retrieved on July 1, 2021
Miyagawa, S., Ojima, S., Berwick, R., & Okanoya, K. (2013). The integration hypothesis of the evolution of human language and the nature of contemporary languages. Frontiers en Psychology, 4-71. doi:https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00564
United Nations. (October 15, 2010). Director for Space Affairs warns lack of plans for contact with the outside. Retrieved on July 8, 2021, from UN News: https://news.un.org/es/story/2010/10/1202701
Pinker, S. (2007). The language instinct: How the mind creates language. New York, New York, USA: Harper Perennial. Retrieved on July 2, 2021
Recio, B. (2017). Inside animal hearts and minds: bears that count, goats that surf, and other true stories of animal intelligence and emotion (10ยฐ ed.). (J. Balcombe, Ed.) New York, New York, Estados Unidos: Skyhorse publishing. Recuperado el 2 de Julio de 2021
Sagan, C. (2004). Cosmos (24th ed.). (M. Muntaner, & M. Moya Tasis, Trads.) Barcelona, โโSpain: Planet.
Sagan, C., & Shklovskii, I. (1966). Intelligent life in the universe (1st ed.). (D. Duncan, Ed.) San Francisco, California, United States: Holden day. Retrieved on July 3, 2021
Schnoller, F. (22 de Abril de 2015). Underwater observations of dolphin reactions to a distressed conspecific. doi:https://doi.org/10.3758/s13420-015-0179-9
Shannon, C., & Weaver, W. (Diciembre de 1950). The mathematical theory of communication. The Mathematical Gazette, 312-313. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/3611062
Suzuki, R. (28 de Febrero de 2006). Information entropy of humpback whale songs. The Journal of the American Acoustics Society, 119(3). doi:https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2161827
Wayman, E. (August 11, 2011). Six talking apes. Retrieved July 7, 2021, from Smithsonian online: www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/six-taking-apes-48085302/
