“Do Aliens Speak Physics?” speaks to the nature of science and human assumptions

If you want a synopsis of particle physicist Daniel Whiteson’s book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, an article by Whiteson in the March 14, 2026 issue of New Scientist provides an overview of his provocative question. Here’s a PDF of the article. It starts out this way:
Would aliens do physics, or is science a human invention? | New Scientist

Modern physics offers a remarkable lens on reality. In just over a century, it has decoded the architecture of atoms, traced the early history of the universe and produced laws that seem to hold everywhere, from Earth’s crust to distant galaxies. It is tempting to believe that these theories aren’t just accurate, but inevitable – that any sufficiently intelligent civilisation would eventually uncover the same truths.

I used to believe that, too. But lately I have started to wonder whether physics is less a window onto universal reality and more of a mirror, reflecting the particular kind of minds we happen to have.

That unsettling thought emerges when you ask a deceptively simple question: would alien scientists, shaped by a different biology or culture, arrive at the same physics that we have? Or might they develop something that works just as well, but looks utterly foreign – built on concepts and assumptions we would struggle to recognise?

This question sits at the heart of my book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, which imagines various scenarios of first contact, each designed to probe a foundational assumption of modern physics. In developing it – often in conversation with philosophers of science – I have come to realise something surprising: many pillars of physics that feel hardwired may actually be contingent. But recognising that doesn’t weaken science. It may be how we make it better.

I ordered the book after reading the New Scientist article, which touches on questions that fascinate me. Such as the extent to which the universe exists as we humans are conscious of it. Meaning, are we (1) perceiving the universe as it objectively is, (2) perceiving the universe as the human brain subjectively conceives of it, or (3) perceiving the universe through a lens that is some mixture of objectivity and subjectivity?

The most likely choice seems to be (3).

But even if we accept this, that mention of “some mixture” contains a lot of scientific and philosophical wiggle room. For if our conception of the universe is mostly objective, then if alien beings were to visit Earth, seemingly we’d have enough in common to be able to communicate with them. But if our conception is mostly subjective, then it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to find enough common ground for alien-human communication.

In his book Whiteson describes how hard it has been to comprehend the writing of ancient people when there is no one alive who knows what the writing means. He cites several examples of how scientists headed down the wrong track by assuming that the symbols of a long-gone language represented concepts, such as “dog” in English that can point both to a particular canine and an entire animal species.

However, it turned out that the symbols actually represented sounds in the ancient language. Whiteson writes:

The breakthrough came only when they realized they had been wrong — that hieroglyphics are not illustrations of the ideas they represent, but phonetic symbols, just like our own alphabet. Though they are distractingly pictorial, they represent spoken sounds, which are strung together to build the words that Egyptians said to each other. Archaeologists figured this out when they eventually noticed that the same sounds in ancient Greek were repeatedly translated into the same Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Given how hard it was to grasp the meaning of Egyptian communication, even though ancient Egyptians lived on the same planet as we do, and had the same body and brain as we do, the task of comprehending how aliens view reality would be hugely more difficult. One reason is that the assumptions we make about science — our best way of grasping reality — can be faulty.

Many scientists believe, with good reason, that mathematics is so effective in describing the laws of nature known to physics because the universe itself has a mathematical foundation.

Physicists often claim that physics is the deepest science. Everything else is just applied physics on a bigger stage. Until mathematicians clear their throats and chime in to say that, actually, it’s all just applied math. And they’re not wrong. It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to say that math underlies all of science. But then physicists grumble that math isn’t really a science, because who ever heard of a math experiment? They have a point.

If math is baked in to the substance of the universe, perhaps mathematics would be the key to communicating with members of an alien civilization. After all, if they could reach Earth, it sure seems that while the aliens would have mastered science and technology to a far greater degree than we have, there still would be a common denominator between our civilizations — in somewhat the same way as an elementary school level of science bears some resemblance to the science practiced by those with doctorates in physics.

Problem is, we humans make assumptions about alien beings that are based on how our species evolved in the particular environmental conditions of Earth.

It’s difficult to spot assumptions, especially one’s own. We sometimes don’t realize we’re making them because we’re unable to conceive of other options…. You can count yourself as one and your friend as another, and together you make two. Or can you? Where is the boundary between you and not-you? At the surface of your skin? On the tips of your arm hairs? Or you personal-space bubble? Are conjoined twins one person or two?

What if aliens arrive sloshing around in plasma environments where these distinctions are so fuzzy that the concept of a countable individual doesn’t exist and counting and arithmetic are unknown to them? The point isn’t that we are all one with the Universe, but that breaking the Universe into chunks and counting them can be arbitrary and perhaps not necessary.

…These questions about using symbols and math to build connections between human and alien brains are so fascinating precisely because they are infuriatingly hard to answer. How do we use our minds to examine the way our minds work? How many ways are there to encode the laws of physics or to communicate them between minds?

If we are rigorously skeptical, asking ourselves strange-sounding questions like “Where does the number 2 live?,” we start to realize that the idea that aliens will use the same kind of mental language or symbols relies on a great many assumptions.