
What Would It Take to Imagine a Truly Alien Alien?
PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES Science fiction illustrates the perspective-bending challenge of conjuring intelligent life that’s radically different from humans. This story is adapted from The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos, by Jaime Green. Thomas Nagel’s essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” unfortunately does not endeavor to answer its titular question. (As a friend put it, it should actually be called “We Will Never Know What It’s Like to Be a Bat, Alas.”) But Nagel is not even interested in questions of batness. His project is to interrogate “the mind–body … Continue reading What Would It Take to Imagine a Truly Alien Alien?