Cosmological Cartography and Intelligence Ecology

View from the 3-D visualisation tool developed by Hervé Bouy, Center for Astrobiology (CSIC-INTA), Spain, and João Alves, University of Vienna, Austria. Image credit: H. Bouy (CSIC-INTA) & J. Alves (U. Vienna). From Visualising the Sun’s neighbourhood in 3-D.

Mapping the Structure of the Universe

New tools are becoming available for astronomers for mapping the cosmos in three dimensions, and, being the primarily visual creatures as we are, better visualizations often mean better understanding, and sometimes even better insights (on the centrality of vision in human experience cf. **Binocular Vision and Bilateral Symmetry**). Better telescopes and continually increasing computer power are enabling powerful visualization tools that allow us to better understand the cosmos, and this understanding will allow us to map the structure of the universe in a way that changes the meaning and value of the universe for us.

Just as we human beings at first believed our world to be flat because of our planetary endemism, so too when our ancestors looked up into the sky they saw (or thought they saw) a vault of “fixed stars,” upon which they projected both familiar and mythological figures from their lives. Still today, thousands of years later, we recognize the constellations, though we have learned that the stars in a given constellation are not fixed stars all in the same plane, forming a hemispherical vault over our flat Earth, but rather that we are looking into the depths of the universe. The stars of any one constellation may consist of stars relatively close to us, or at a great distance. When the whole the universe is compressed into what appears to be a flat screen of stars, it is difficult to distinguish which is which. Hence much of modern cosmology has been focused on formulating a “cosmological distance ladder” that can allow us to accurately and reliably measure the distances to the stars and ultimately to other galaxies and galaxy clusters.

This knowledge of the distances of stars and other astronomical objects has been slowly accumulated throughout the history of our civilization (though with increasing rapidity given advances in technology), but, as we know from many human experiences, seeing is believing. This is one of the reasons that the overview effect is so powerful. We can learn all we like about a given phenomenon, but seeing it with our own eyes can make all the difference. As I noted above, we are visual species —with our binocular color vision bequeathed to us by ancestors who needed to select ripe fruit from among the branches of trees — and we require visualizations of knowledge in order to fully understand and appreciate abstract concepts. Hence a better visualization of cosmology means a better visualization of our place in the universe.

Mapping the Living Universe

The next obvious step, which has already been suggested by astrobiology in improved studies of habitable zones, is detailed three dimensional modeling of galactic habitable zones (GHZ), such as in the recent paper **“Evaluating Galactic Habitability Using High Resolution Cosmological Simulations of Galaxy Formation,”** by Duncan Forgan, Pratika Dayal, Charles Cockell, and Noam Libeskind.

A GHZ is potentially habitable, and thus may (or may not) include planets with a biosphere, so that the next step beyond a better three dimensional mapping of potentially habitable zones will be the three dimensional modelling of planetary systems that actually have a biosphere. Such a map is a little farther out in the future than a good map of GHZs, but we can already see both the technology and the technique on the horizon by which we will be able to remotely determine biosphere signatures (firstly by spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres).

Here we have in outline an embryonic scientific research program, and it would not require much effort to lay out a definite method by which we could, both through the building of scientific instruments, and the use of these instruments to obtain new data, set out to answer the questions of astrobiology and bioastronomy by which we would chart the habitable zones of planetary systems and of galaxies, thereby mapping the living universe. Such a research program might be ambitious and aggressive, or cautious and conservative, but we can clearly see the steps we need to take in order to gradually map the living universe, a process that will be improved and refined as our technology improves and the science matures.

As with the mapping of the structure of the universe noted above, the more we can pursue mapping the living universe in terms of robust visualizations of knowledge, the more successful this scientific research program will be in impacting our actual day-to-day thought, which often means changing what the world means and how we value it — which, in the case of mapping the living universe, means changing what terrestrial life means and how we value it.

Mapping the Intelligent Universe

After we have a better grasp on mapping the living universe, the next step is to map the intelligent universe, i.e., to lay out a scientific research program by which we can see, i.e., visualize, the structure of intelligence in the universe. SETI is the first step in this direction, but it is only the first step, and a tentative step. We have only a few instruments and a few concepts at our disposal, and no scientific theory of mind, intelligence, or civilization, so we do not yet know how to study mind, intelligence, and civilization scientifically. When we have passed beyond the inchoate stages of scientific theories of mind, from which intelligence arises, upon which civilization in turn supervenes, we can bring the full resources of scientific methodology to mapping the intelligent universe.

Ultimately, mapping the intelligent universe will be a discipline within astrobiology, but the astrobiology in question will have to be a future astrobiology expanded to account for all possible minds and civilizations, which may include non-biological minds. This may sound paradoxical — why should astrobiology study non-biological minds? — but it is not unusual for sciences to develop in this way and to become far more comprehensive, in the way that cosmology today is a far more comprehensive discipline than astronomy. Consider this analogy also: the first speculative formulations of exobiology were viewed with suspicion and in some cases ridicule, but now these ideas have been fully integrated into the mainstream of biological research and it has become astrobiology, which is more comprehensive, but also adds immeasurable substance to exobiology from existing biological thought. Astrobiology will, in turn, incorporate the substance of other disciplines and so become more comprehensive.

Eventually it will become necessary, in order to converge upon a comprehensive conception of mind, to study biologically emergent minds in the context of artificial minds constructed by biologically emergent minds, as the latter are likely to be far more diverse and specialized, and therefore will shine considerable light on less specialized biological minds. Moreover, artificial minds will derive from civilization, which supervenes (initially) upon biological intelligence. In this way, the study of the intelligent universe will lead to more comprehensive conceptions of intelligence that will allow us to study the phenomenon of intelligence by more objective, non-anthropomorphic, and non-anthropocentric methods.

Predicting the range of intelligent species

Mapping the intelligent universe is an exercise in cognitive astrography, formulated parallel to **cognitive astrobiology (or perhaps as an extrapolation of [bioastronomy](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iau-c51.org%2F&t=MDllNmYzZDVmYzVlYjZjMTRlNWRlZWNlOWNjMDU2Y2RiMDYzZTM3ZSxXM2hFbW1iTQ%3D%3D)**). Ultimately, we will want to formulate a science of mind, intelligence, and civilization in a cosmological context that will be both retrodictive and predictive. In other words, a mature science of cognitive astrography (or whatever more comprehensive discipline this falls under, which would likely be astrobiology or bioastronomy) would seek to predict where mind, intelligence, and civilization may have been found in the past, and where it is likely to be found in the future.

If an intelligent species could have an native range greater than that of a single planet, and we have not yet discovered this because we are now confined to a planet and have run up against its limits (i.e., the limits f planetary endemism), but when we assume our separate and equal station among the powers of the cosmos as a spacefaring civilization (that is to say, when we pass further horizons of spacefaring civilization), we will then discover the “natural” limits of a technologically facilitated civilization. Generalized to all possible spacefaring civilization, we would of course ask the question as to how many worlds a typical spacefaring civilization involves, and what the characteristic distribution of these worlds would be.

If we could then also visualize the results, as in the examples given above, we would understand better the nature of spacefaring civilization to see it superimposed upon the cosmos, itself represented visually to us. Needless to say, we would also want to animate these visualizations of spacefaring civilization, so that we could understand their histories also, as we see them expand from their **homeworld, penetrate to a certain range within their galaxies, perhaps even span multiple galaxies, then gradually slow, decline, and disappear. One form that mapping the intelligent universe may take is that which I sketched in [The Halos of Vanished civilizations](http://geopolicraticus.tumblr.com/post/133755351412/the-halos-of-vanished-civilizations-revised)**, which concerned the structure of signals left by now vanished civilizations, and this is an example of mapping the disappearance of a technological civilization. Eventually we would want to generalize from vanished civilizations to any civilization whatever — in other worlds, a generalization to astrocivilization.

Most of this mapping of the universe to which we can look forward is going to take place before we possess the technological wherewithal to travel to the other worlds that we have mapped. I have pointed out elsewhere that, even as human space exploration has stalled, space science has increased our knowledge of the universe exponentially since the advent of the Space Age. That we may be able to map the universe, map the living universe, and map the intelligent universe all while large marooned on the surface of a single planet is an historical reversal of our epistemic relation to exploration. While explorers in the future will still have much to discover, the kinds of things they will discover will be different from the kinds of things discovered by past explorers, because human explorers of the cosmos will depart with a map in hand.

A brief history of humanity’s native range

It is often a matter of fraught commentary on contemporary ills that human beings seem to have outrun the carrying capacity of their environment, and as a result are doing irreversible harm to the planet. While there is a sense in which the growth of human population numbers have been an ecological catastrophe, looked at from another perspective, the peculiarity of the growth and distribution patterns of an intelligent species may be telling us something.

Earlier human ancestors made their way out of the endemic species range for hominids (i.e., East Africa), employing a rudimentary technology to settle throughout Eurasia, but it was immediately following the **cognitive modernity** of human beings that our ancestors made a rapid breakout from Africa and went on the settle in every quarter of the globe, adapting to life in every climate — not through structural adaptation, but by behavioral adaptation.

Human beings not only settled in every terrestrial biome, but increased in numbers to the point of stressing local ecosystems that had not evolved under the selection pressure of an intelligent primate capable of eliminating all natural enemies. Natural mechanisms that have limited the growth in the number of other species have not been effective in checking the growth of an intelligent species. The number of human beings has continued to spike upward, especially after the industrial revolution and the advent of scientific medicine.

Perhaps the optimal range of an intelligent species cannot be defined in terms the geographical regions of a single planet. Human beings, long before they produced civilization, had already moved into every geographical region and positioned themselves as the apex predator. No other species has done that. This colonization of the world entire I have **elsewhere called extensive totality. Perhaps an extended conception of the “range” of a species, not dependent upon [planetary constraints](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgeopolicraticus.wordpress.com%2Fplanetary-constraints%2F&t=MDk4MWY5NWIxZWQwMzA2NjZlN2E2YTg2YTZhZmJmZDlkNTQwODc0Zix1VHR4WE55cw%3D%3D)**, is necessary to understand the growth and distribution of an intelligent species.

Seven billion individuals of a given species of megafauna is a lot for a single planet, and for an intelligent species a single planet may be too restricted of a range. The entire planetary system of a star might be a more comfortable range for such a population, and a galaxy would be a more comfortable fit yet. While seven billion intelligent individuals is a lot for one planet — perhaps too much for one planet — even this number would be very thin on the ground in the galaxy of 400 billion stars.

Cognitive astrobiology and ecology in an extended sense

The universal terrestrial distribution of Homo sapiens (we require the use of machines to inhabit air and water, but, given these machines, we are the apex predator in every life zone of our planet) means that human beings are an invasive species, and it has been our unique status as the sole intelligent species that has made it possible for us to thrive in every ecosystem we have entered, effectively dictating the terms upon which other species are allowed to continue in existence.

Humanity is the ultimate invasive species, forcing its way into non-native ecosystems and causing the extinction of endemic species. We are, in other words, a weedy species. David Quammen quotes a conversation to this effect that he had with paleontologist David Jablonski:

“Do you see Homo sapiens as a likely survivor, I ask him, or as a casualty? ‘Oh, we’ve got to be one of the most bomb-proof species on the planet,’ he says. ‘We’re geographically widespread, we have a pretty remarkable reproductive rate, we’re incredibly good at co-opting and monopolizing resources. I think it would take a really serious, concerted effort to wipe out the human species.’ The point he’s making is one that has probably already dawned on you: Homo sapiens itself is the consummate weed. Why shouldn’t we survive, then, on the Planet of Weeds?” (Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, W.W. Norton, 2008)

It would be interesting to consider the counter-factual of an intelligent species that was not also an invasive species. An intelligent humanity that had not also been an invasive species might have remained endemic to East Africa. An endemic intelligent species would be at greater existential risk, as implied in the above quote, than an invasive intelligent species, which latter could easily survive regional extinctions. It is our invasive nature as much as our intelligent nature that has made us **biologically successful** to the degree we now enjoy.

If we extrapolate this beyond the geographical regions of a single planet and think of human ecology in planetary or interstellar terms (which, as I noted previously, may be **the native range of an intelligence species**), an invasive species that distributes itself widely is, again, tolerant to regional extinction. On a cosmological scale, a “regional” extinction might be extinction across an entire planet. But if an invasive intelligent species has entered into many different ecosystems on multiple worlds, a local or regional extinction on a single world would still leave the species intact elsewhere. However, the adaptive radiation that led an invasive species to many worlds would rapidly result in genetic drift and divergence from distinct selection pressures. Even a widely distributed species would rapidly become “endemic” to a single world.

Both the idea of the native range of an intelligent species and of an invasive intelligent species (in contradistinction to an intelligent species that was not invasive) are relevant to my previous posts on **intelligence-rich biospheres. In an intelligence-rich biosphere one would expect to find a diversity of expressions of intelligence, so that different intelligent species would have different ranges, and while some intelligent species would be invasive, some would remain endemic, and perhaps as unique as the finches of the Galapagos islands. In an [intelligence-rich biosphere](http://geopolicraticus.tumblr.com/post/110485939327/another-astrobiological-thought-experiment)* one would expect to see the specialization of intelligence, and, with the specialization of intelligence, the narrow adaptation to a niche that would result in endemic species (or, at least, more endemic species, as we now have no* endemic intelligent species on Earth).

Because human beings have been the sole intelligent species on Earth, we have not developed an ecology of intelligence — partly because of our sense of **human exceptionalism, and partly because of our lack of comparable species (much as we have no non-human civilizations with which to compare our civilization, we have no non-human intelligence with which to compare our intelligence). Given our [sentience-rich biosphere](http://geopolicraticus.tumblr.com/post/110621590627/a-sentience-rich-biosphere)*, we could formulate an ecology of sentience, but I don’t think that this has been done in any kind of conscious or systematic way. We recognize that there is a distinctive ecology of mammals, most of which possess sentience to some degree, but we do not usually think of this as an ecology of sentience. We could* think of it that way, but, typically, we do not.

More generally, we can imagine an ecology in an extended sense that takes account of a range of cognitive functions — a cognitive ecology, if you will, and a cognitive ecology might be considered in the context of **cognitive astrobiology** — all of which are emergent from consciousness (in its various grades), whether intelligence, or sentience, or any other quality of mind, and all of which profoundly affect behavioral adaptation and so figure prominently in the evolutionary history of our world (and presumably also on any other world).

Quantifying civilization in a scientific research program

If the native range of an intelligent species is interplanetary or interstellar, then an intelligent species possessed of exclusively planetary scope (i.e., defined by **planetary endemism) is by definition a [suboptimal civilization](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgeopolicraticus.wordpress.com%2F2015%2F04%2F25%2Fsuboptimal-civilizations%2F&t=MDc4NmE2MWM1YTNlNGZiNDA4ZDNmYWRiZjFlMDMxMGUxY2Q5YTBiOCxkdnh4QXZjcQ%3D%3D). However, [planetary endemism](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgeopolicraticus.wordpress.com%2F2016%2F01%2F30%2Fcivilizations-of-planetary-endemism%2F&t=ODVhYjBjMDU5MDFmMTM2YTM1MzI1MzNlODYyNjkyMGZhZTBlMzE2Yixkdnh4QXZjcQ%3D%3D) must be acknowledged as a stage in the development of a civilization and in this sense a developing civilization comprising an entire planet but no more is in no sense [suboptimal](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgeopolicraticus.wordpress.com%2F2015%2F04%2F27%2Faddendum-on-suboptimal-civilizations%2F&t=ZGViMzY2OTI3NzA3MjAyY2IzMzdkNzBjMWJiOTcxYzhjMmUxYzZkOCxkdnh4QXZjcQ%3D%3D). We must then distinguish between a civilization stalled at the developmental stage of [planetary endemism](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgeopolicraticus.wordpress.com%2F2016%2F01%2F30%2Fcivilizations-of-planetary-endemism%2F&t=ODVhYjBjMDU5MDFmMTM2YTM1MzI1MzNlODYyNjkyMGZhZTBlMzE2Yixkdnh4QXZjcQ%3D%3D)** on the one hand, and on the other hand a developing civilization naturally having attained a planetary scope, and the next step for which civilization is the extraterrestrialization that will make that civilization a true spacefaring civilization.

There are several tests that might be applied to distinguish between a stagnant planetary civilization and a developing civilization that happens to have attained planetary scope, but which is likely to soon exceed planetary scope and, as a spacefaring civilization, to establish a transplanetary range (becoming, as Elon Musk recently put it, a multi-planetary species). The length of time that a civilization remains at a planetary scope, especially in relation to the length of time that civilization (or its predecessor civilizations) remained at previous stages (a comparative concept), would be one such test. Another test would be whether a planetary civilization was in the process of a buildout of industrial infrastructure that would allow for the transition to spacefaring civilization. As this transition could take many different forms, and could employ many different technologies, so it would behoove us to construe this test rather widely.

It would be instructive, in this vein, to consider what “tests” more generally speaking could be applied to a given civilization by an outside observer that, once applied, would yield certain insights into the nature and development of the civilization in question. This speaks to my longstanding interest in determining what kind of observations could be made of civilization in order to arrive at controlled observations that could be the basis of a science of civilization. A “test” of a planetary civilization as described above could be considered an experiment in a science of civilization, and part of a scientific research program that has civilization per se as its object of study, and if we conduct experiments in the **science of civilization**, we would be well on our way to defining a body of scientific knowledge about civilization.

Astronomers have used modern techniques to create a 3-D visualisation of all of the Hipparcos O- and B-type stars within 500 parsecs (1630 light-years) of the Sun. This new visualisation uncovers evidence for new structures in the distribution of these nearby hot stars, and new and surprising theories of how those stars formed. The Sun is located at the centre of the circle on this artist’s impression of the Milky Way. Image credit: ESA. Acknowledgement: H. Bouy (CSIC-INTA) & J. Alves (University of Vienna). from Visualising the Sun’s neighbourhood in 3-D

This post was assembled from material from four earlier posts, including:

**The Native Range of an Intelligent Species**

**Intelligent Invasive Species**

**Addendum on the Native Range of Intelligent Species**

**Mapping the Intelligent Universe**