"Country Loon"  wrote in
message news:ck4bng$2h53$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> New to this group but an ardent evolutionist I have a question.
> I have noticed a similar thread but this is not quite the same.
> 
> Suppose a spaceship lands in central park and out pops the aliens - what
> (logically) will they look like. For instance they are unlikely to look like
> a green blob of jelly as they would have no mechanism for building tools and
> steering a spaceship.Can we therefore assume that such creatures would have
> hands similar to us, one head,two eyes and two ears and probably two legs.
> Maybe the star-trek idea of alien life is not far from the truth. I am not
> saying that green blobs will not exist but that space-travellers must
> necessarily look similar (though not identical to us). A dolphin cannot
> pilot a machine however smart it is unless there are 'speech' driven
> controls and even then there would have to be an evolution in technology
> from the primitive stage to get there in the first place.Or is this
> arrogance?Can somebody invent a fictional character that could pilot a
> spaceship that was radically different from the basic human form and that
> makes sense in an evolutionary framework.
> 
> Tom

My dull (disappointingly detracting form any chance of developing a debate)
comment is that you are right in everything for the same reason (the
principle of 'naturally required configurations' - or something like that)
as your supposition is (as far as I can see) naturally next to infinitely
unlikely to mirror what is possible in physical reality.

Peter
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