RECOGNITION

MANKIND is preparing to embark on a voyage to Mars. While there, our Astronauts are going to look for extraterrestrial life. But how will they recognize a Martian life form if it doesn’t resemble in some way, life forms that we are already familiar with? If that alien life form is completely foreign to what they have ever seen before, how will they or the scientists back home recognize it?

They won’t. As an example, when the British settlers famously sailed into Jamestown, Virginia, in the New World of America in the seventeenth century, the Native Indians had never seen a sailing ship before. When they heard the sounds of the approaching armada, they did not see the ships in the bay because they were so alien to what the natives had ever seen before.

It was only after the natives had numerous encounters with the ship’s crew, did they finally see and recognize those large canoes with flapping white wings for what they were.

There is speculation amongst scientists about what type of life forms might be found on Mars. They expect to find only microbial life, if any, but even that microbial life will have to resemble in some way, the bacteria we already know about. If it doesn’t, it will not be recognized as such.

If there is life on Mars, it may well not resemble anything we have ever seen before, but even if it resembled say, a rock – would we recognize them as living creatures or think of them only as rocks, deciding in our earthly wisdom that Mars is barren and lifeless?

If any life forms found on Mars (or anywhere else in the universe for that matter) cannot be correlated against the life forms we are familiar with in our limited, Earth based minds, Martians could be there right beside our astronauts and they wouldn’t recognize them for what they were.

And if those Martians were of a completely different shape and form to us, but still as fully self aware and intelligent, they would probably not know the astronauts were there either, for we would be just as alien in shape and form to them as they would be to us…

Dan’s Quote: “We can only comprehend something from our past.
_________Anything new must first become part of our past before it can be recognized.”- DJB

Inspiration for this chapter came from the writings of Joel Kramer, Eckhart Tolle and others.

This blog is publicized to Yahoo! Updates, Facebook, Linkedin, Messenger Connect and  my Randidee Twitter account. Also a copy is posted to Google Blogger as Mind WorX