Not all that long ago, the SETI literature used to always start off with something like this: Sooner or later, natural selection would produce curiosity, leading to intelligence. Intelligence would lead to tool-using, technology, experimental science, and eventually a technologically based civilization not too different from ours. Aliens would be interested in their natural environment and would use their technology to help study it. They would eventually build microscopes…and telescopes. An interest in astronomy would sooner or later lead to mapping the Galaxy’s neutral hydrogen at the 21 cm line, which would lead inevitably to radio telescopes.

Being intelligent, ETI could certainly arrive at the same conclusions we did, so they would start broadcasting at 21cm knowing astronomers on other planets would certainly be listening at that frequency, or some harmonic of it, doing their own mapping. Karl Jansky first detected radio emission from the galactic plane in 1947. In about a decade, Frank Drake and others were already proposing programs to search the radio sky for signals from other civilizations. It all seems so naive today, almost childish in its optimism.

It was conceded that perhaps intelligent civilizations might not develop technologically, they might be like cetaceans, or hive entities like social insects. The former exhibit advanced communication and behvioral skills, the latter are capable of a group mind organization capable of extremely sophisticated engineering without any form of symbolic thinking. But this possibility was simply dismissed as irrelevant. If you don’t build radio telescopes or spaceships, you will never be detected, or detect us. So you really don’t count as being intelligent, do you? Whales and termites are savages, primitives. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Rather provincial, if not downright colonial.

On our own world and among our own species, the road to radio astronomy is a long string of technological coincidences, that in retrospect, seem to be extremely unlikely to be repeated elsewhere. Modern physics has given us the tools that make interstellar communication possible, but it isn’t difficult to postulate alien whales or bugs or other species, even highly intelligent ones, may have never duplicated our path. Modern technology depends not only on an advanced knowledge of nature, but on other, less tangible factors. We need advanced mathematics (Maxwell’s Equations for electromagnetic phenomena) and philosophical concepts, such as the Observational Technique and Scientific Method. Western science developed these concepts, borrowing mathematical notation from India and the concept of the “natural world” from the Pre-Socratic Philosophers of Ionia. But while these ideas were taking shape in Western Europe, the Chinese were developing an alternative tech based on trial and error and sheer human genius and intuition. Even with advanced philosophical tools, it took the West over a thousand years to catch up with the East. Until the late middle ages European Society was relatively primitive. And of course, there were non-technical factors that led indirectly to technological superiority, like the development of Capitalism. It was gunpowder, the magnetic compass, and the centerline rudder that pulled Europe ahead of Asia, even though all three of those inventions originated in Asia!

And that’s all on our planet, in the same species. ETI may live in a world very different from ours, or possess physical and mental attributes, or social organization very different from ours. Even if they do develop high tech, it may not look at all like ours. For example, what if the Aliens live in a world with a cloudy or opaque atmosphere. Will they ever develop astronomy, and therefore Newton’s Laws? What if they are aquatic creatures? Will they have fire, electricity (or Maxwell’s Equations), metals and atomic theory and chemistry? What if they never figured out how to make glass? There goes not only telescopes and microscopes, but laboratory glassware as well.

In fact, it is next to impossible for us to imagine any advanced alien tech that doesn’t follow the same historical development as ours. Read science fiction, the aliens are always on the same road we are, just further along. I’ve tried to imagine highly advanced civilizations based on other technologies, but I don’t really know if they are possible. Then again, there may be many alternative techs I can’t even conceive of because I’m a hopeless Newton-Maxwell-Einstein chauvinist.

Here’s just one. Consider an alien species that doesn’t build tools, but breeds specialized livestock to engage in tasks they are incapable of. Its not that far-fetched, human farmers have successfully bred livestock and plants for food and fiber, all without any knowledge of Darwin, Mendel, or Watson and Crick. And we have formed partnerships with other species for transport, companionship, work, war, hunting, herding, agriculture and many other functions. An alien civilization that has perfected such a technique might not even be recognizable to us as a civilization. To us such an alien civilization might appear like a rain forest, or coral reef, or some other natural ecosystem. They might not build spaceships and radio telescopes, but they might breed cows that can be milked for anti-cancer meds or construction material, or industrial packaging, or high explosives. A species that specialized in this kind of biotech may have a very advanced working knowledge of natural selection, genetics, and DNA modification without ever having invented the test tube, the Bunsen burner, or the mass spectrometer.

As part of my re-evaluation of SETI and astrobiology which I have engaged in over the last few years, I have tried to speculate on alternatives to our physical science technical methods, but I don’t know if I’ve really stumbled on to something here or if I’m lost in a maze of blind alleys. Can you guys help me out here? What I’m looking for is alternative science, not parapsychological nonsense or magic, but real scientific techniques that have taken advantage of other tools than we have. We’re pretty good with chemistry and physics, and certainly with electricity. But we’ve only lately been getting clever with the biological and behavioral sciences. Surely there must be alternatives we haven’t even considered yet.