Watched this show on History Channel, and I have complaints

You'd be incredibly cute with a top hat and a bow tie. Even if you did grow them.

 

What, you cannot?

 

Just for wondering's sake, I wonder what extra-terrestrial life would look like. It's pretty much impossible to imagine a 'new' animal, as it would only be the rearrangement or reorganization of previously observed body parts of terrestrial life (kind of like trying to imagine a new color); so would this principle hold true on other planets, that its life is merely a variation of plants and animals found on Earth? It seems a bit unlikely; but when you consider that pretty much all life on Earth is said to be evolved from the same basic organism (I think), it seems plausible that arms, eyes, brains, leaves, roots, &c. could be just the product of that one first organism, and evolution, therefore, is limited in what it can produce.

 

Muro
We might be capable of intercepting fragments of messages being sent through the universe. It'd be like email, emails get turned into fragments of files and are sent through several different cities at the same time, but if you intercept a fragment of email, all you get is gibberish. We might be getting fragments of conversations broadcast in all frequencies to compensate for a nearby star.

wayne-scales
There are no limits to evolution. It's just that most dominant species of animals have been wiped out by some great cataclysm. Evolution is growth by adaptation, which makes flight astounding and intelligent life it's biggest threat. Now we don't have to evolve to do anything, we can just think of a way to get it done and do it. What will something that doesn't have to physically change turn in to when it's time to evolve? Is it possible to become more efficient? It's said we'll eventually lose pinkie toes and fingers. Kids are already being born without them. But what if life from other planets was millions of years ahead of us? They'd be socially and technologically far superior to us, should we experience them.Of course, there are those that still don't even believe in evolution, so there's that.

 

There're those who still think that the Earth is flat; but it doesn't mean we have to entertain every little stupidity that we encounter! What I mean is that no matter how far something evolves, it will always be merely an adaptation of features of the body already present; we can't imagine an animal or a plant that is entirely, and in every way, different to the plants and animals that we observe on an everyday basis. From this, I ask, are these bodily features, present in evolution, the limits of universal physiology (which I'm reasonably sure is the right word here), or of physiology limited to what can be achieved from its first cause? Obviously the second must be true; but are the limits of this 'unlimited' in the evolutionary sense?

 

New life that may help your extra-terrestrial fantasy

 

One thing to remember is that the limit of human imagination is not the limit of the universe. That one simple fact deflates most religious and scientific dogma which so often depends on the argument "It is impossible to imagine another possibilty."

For the record, a great number of novel anatomical blueprints were around in the Cambrian Era, one of the earliest stages of macroscopic life on earth. Most of these blueprints went extinct and nowadays they seem so unsual to us that scientists can't even tell the head-from-tails of their fossils. It is easy to imagine life evolving down another possible path, simply because most of evolution is happenstance.

Arthur C Clarke and his ilk (I spit on them) were pretty confident about their dogma: Intelligence needs fire, and tool-making limbs and oxygen and dry land, and two eyes are the best option and upright walking is only logical. All this crap is merely anthropocentric short-sightedness. And now he's dead hahaha.

 

Some people would say that there is no limit to the imagination.

 

Definitely not true, although of course we can imagine many, many things beyond what is physically possible, it doesn't mean that what we can't imagine is impossible.

Mathematically, there is a finite capacity to the processing power of the brain. More to the point, people limit their imagination to what they experience and, even more restrictingly, to what they're taught.

 

An idiosyncratic limit to imagination is not the same as a limit to imagination in general. Not that I have an opinion one way or the other.

What does a processing power of the brain have to do with anything? And even if you come up with some brilliant answer which puts me properly in my place, the above still holds true!

 

Quite true. In a thousand years perhaps we'll be cheerfully imagining six-dimensional life forms, or organic software octopus in algae-computers in nebula clouds. Or the thought-processes of galactic brains using antiphotons and gravitons as neurotransmitters, but my wee little brain will still run out of room for all the bits of information needed to model a fucking huge, complicated universe. I don't want to put you in your place, mate. Your place is where-ever you want, and your opinion is as good as mine. I'm just saying: We are tiny, we are short-lived, we are much, much smaller than the universe in which we live.

 

Obviously we have different definitions of imagination. As you say, we can't 'imagine' multidimensional objects in the sense that we can't picture them accurately in our heads; but I would say that that doesn't necessarily define imagination. I think that our imagination must be at least as wide, though most probably larger, than our past experience. I have no trouble imagining a pentagon in my head; but ask me to picture a hundred-sided polygon and I can't, even if I've seen one; however, I can conceptualize this idea, and this I assert to be just as much 'imagining' it as picturing the figure is. I would think it a bit silly to say that discoveries such as the concept of infinity or the strings allegedly inside sub-atomic particles or the idea of time as a further relative dimension hadn't been imagined before they were discovered; because it is only through this cognition or conceptualization or whatever that we can come across these discoveries.

 

I agree, I guess I was being too literal as usual. (Imagination = the making of an image).

Personally, I'm a bit of mystic, I think that consciousness is a direct-line to the heart of the cosmos, but what I object to is when people confuse their own imagination with reality and assert this as a kind of proof. You didn't do that, but so many scientists and preachers and laymen do.

The one example that always bothers me is "Obviously, only humans use language." When, really, they mean, "Obviously, I am a human who only speaks Human." Anyhow, I may be completely wrong. This wee discussion is an example of how opinion becomes conflict, when really none of us can be so certain of anything that we end up fighting. Peace, man.