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Life and Language Beyond Earth

Recent astronomy has revealed the presence of many exoplanets orbiting the habitable zones around their parent stars. If life can exist there, how would it communicate? In this remarkable study, the linguist Raymond Hickey draws on biology, physics, palaeoanthropology and neuroscience to examine the way life, the human brain, and language have evolved on Earth, in order to understand how they might develop in other parts of the universe.
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Product information:
  • Publisher: Cambridge UP
  • Year: 2023
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 696pp
  • Illustrated: No
  • Dimensions: 234x158mm
  • ISBN: 9781009226417
  • Condition: New
  • Weight: 1.1kg
Product code:
546361
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Product information
Full publisher description
Have you ever wondered whether we are alone in the universe, or if life forms on other planets might exist? If they do exist, how might their languages have evolved? Could we ever understand them, and indeed learn to communicate with them? This highly original, thought-provoking book takes us on a fascinating journey over billions of years, from the formation of galaxies and solar systems, to the appearance of planets in the habitable zones of their parent stars, and then to how biology and, ultimately, human life arose on our own planet. It delves into how our brains and our language developed, in order to explore the likelihood of communication beyond Earth and whether it would evolve along similar lines. In the process, fascinating insights from the fields of astronomy, evolutionary biology, palaeoanthropology, neuroscience and linguistics are uncovered, shedding new light on life as we know it on Earth, and beyond.
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