Jack & Rebecca
In Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, the plot centres around a linguist called Dr. Louise and her breakthrough in speaking with aliens who have travelled in the space with gigantic spacecraft. Then an idea came to our mind: if we were Dr.Louise, how would we introduce one of the human technologies to heptapods in the way they could understand?
First of all, we need to understand the linguistic characteristics of heptapods’ mode of communication: the physical structure of heptapods’ bodies can influence how they communicate. As a result of the specific configuration of its seven limbs, a heptapod has a symmetry pattern known as heptaradial symmetry. They have limbs that feature joints that are similar to those seen on arthropods and end in points that are capable of separating to create a “hand” that has seven lobes, similar to those found on starfish. It seems as if they walk with five limbs in front of them while the remaining two are behind them. Their writings do not have a “forward” orientation since their bodies do not have a “forward” direction at all. Because of this, they are able to read a word with the same amount of ease regardless of how it is rotated. Therefore, it’s important to draw symmetrical shapes in the plaque.
Next, heptapods’ mindsets about physics knowledge also influence their perceptions. As mentioned in the text, “Humans had developed a sequential mode of awareness, while heptapods had developed a simultaneous mode of awareness. We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all. A minimizing, maximizing purpose “(Chiang, 32). This explains why they could understand physical laws that appeared difficult to humans while failing to grasp the most fundamental physical properties. Based on this peculiar phenomenon, we assume that they could understand Newton’s Three Laws of Motion.
Inspired by the great wisdom of the ancient Chinese, we decided to introduce a traditional woodworking joint that has been used for ages—mortise and tenon.
As demonstrated in the plaque, there are two pieces of wood in the middle. How to stably connect them together in a T-shape? If we look at the left part, only putting them closely to each other is useless since forces in many directions can cause them to separate. Then it’s necessary to introduce mortise and tenon. The first step is to cut out a triangular body, a flat rectangular body and a small triangular body in the middle of a piece of wood as mortise and cut excess wood at one end of the other piece of wood to fit the three shapes above. Then just put the corresponding parts together and insert the small triangular body into the slit to fix. Thanks to the Interaction forces between objects and static friction, the joint wood is very stable and durable to withstand significant weight and stress from all directions.
For heptapods, they are likely to understand our plaque because nearly all of the shapes in our plaque were symmetrical and the physical knowledge of mechanics is also within their scope of knowledge. Besides, we use arrows as a way to help understanding. What’s more, mortise and tenon can be applied to other situations such as building a space architecture or designing a spacecraft, which is crucial for heptapods to explore in the universe.
Work Cited:
1.Chiang, Ted. “Story of your life.” Stories of your life and others (1998): 117-78.
