Thinking intelligently about extraterrestrial intelligence: An application of living systems theory

Recent developments in the physical and biological sciences suggest that the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe is sufficiently high as to justify a $100 million radio telescope search. The present paper suggests that despite the limits of our current knowledge we can still formulate useful working hypotheses about extraterrestrial intelligence. As we develop such hypotheses, we should remain within the framework of science and view the evolution of life and civilizations as orderly processes which proceed within broad natural limits. James G. Miller's Living System Theory (LST) provides a simple framework for disassembling and analyzing, in identical terms, systems of different sizes and complexity. A simplified version of LST involving three systems levels (organism, society, supranational system) and two basic processes (matter-energy processing and information processing) is applied to organize current thinking about extraterrestrial intelligence. It is concluded that LST's categories and principles will prove useful for comparative studies of terrestrial and extraterrestrial life forms and civilizations.