On Chapter Four "Sounds" (Assignment Three)

Imagine a year far from now in the distant future, when humanity survived several natural, economic and social catastrophes, and it succeeded in evolving technology as advanced as James Cameron imagined for his blockbuster “Avatar”. Now you are on a mission into the deep outer space, you have spent years and years of travelling through the universe and living on a spaceship as a member of the scientific research team. It is the first mission of this type and your investors desperately expect the discovery of a second “Earth”, or at least outstanding findings. One day, a situation occurs that was commonly believed to be impossible: the spaceship is hovering in front of an Earth-like planet. The results of tests that remotely controllable probes bring to your team from the new planet are clear without ambiguity! This is Earth Two. A small group of researchers including you is sent down. What is on all your minds are numerous questions: Is it really possible? Is this a dream? Have we been sedated and this is just a computer programme running in our brains to simulate this discovery? Can this be the answer to a question our ancestors back in 2014 already posed (and even their ancestors tried to find an explanation for the existence of themselves hundreds of years before that)?
There has always been a weird sense of asking questions like these in people. We are keen to get satisfying answers, especially scientists like you. But what we are really striving for is to explore our bodies of knowledge until we meet limits, until we get proof that we can’t know everything. 

What would you do? Probably the very same that all great philosophers, engineers, pioneers, and thinkers of various centuries did: look at nature, let yourself be inspired by her, and learn from her. Using the picture of Mother Nature, the following image can be drawn: Mother Nature talks in multifarious ways to us; at least that is what we are prone to believe. Sometimes the motivation is a religious one, at other times it is a strongly scientific starting point, and again at another time it is plain, sheer fascination. Nature talks, lives, and we try to understand her. For that, we need “translators”, devices that help us to firstly, understand her life, and secondly, draw conclusions for ourselves and the environment that is around us.
Still, these explanations would be in “our language”. If some alien race from a parallel universe came into our space-time-continuum, they would probably have other explanations because their “language” differs from ours.

 

The “translators” are technological achievements that mankind developed over time.  These achievements could be summarized as measuring, observing, and recording devices. By the aid of these three steps (observe, measure, record) plus the last one, that is probably also the most difficult one (interpret), we strain ourselves to elucidate the life of Mother Nature, and thus our lives. The translation process was successful, but can we be absolutely sure, that our findings are correct? For us they are, we even establish certain scientific laws that we do not question. What remains is the thought that they might not be universally valid. Do we care about universal validity? We are not universal; we are subjective, so why would we need universal truths? Technology helps us to understand Nature although we might not be sure that our results are completely true. As far as I know, a dictionary for “Human – Nature, Nature – Human” does not exist.
In a very broad sense, technology does in fact sharpen our sensual acuity for nature! Those of us who wear glasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, cardiac stimulators, and the like know that the balancing features of technology can give rise to an intense and precious feeling towards Nature.