What imagining aliens can teach us about philosophy of science

Space aliens are one of the most common tropes of science fiction, and with good reason. We live in an immense universe and there seem to be a massive number of planets out there. Surely, at least a few are inhabited, right? Most Americans in opinion polls seem to believe this. A poll from November 2025 found that 56 percent of adults surveyed said they thought aliens exist. Former president Barack Obama appears to be one of them based on a recent interview he did with podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen.But whether aliens exist or not is only one of so many interesting questions the scenario presents us. And there’s one that perhaps you might not have thought of: If we ever met them, how could we even communicate with them?In novels, film, and television, decoding alien languages seems to always be a quick affair—math is math, after all. But that assumption is a very big one if you think about it. While they might seem universal, science, math, and language are all human constructs, even though they describe relationalities that are real.My guest on this episode is someone who’s thought a lot about all of this. Daniel Whiteson is a particle physicist at the University of California–Irvine and the host of the science podcast, Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe. But the centerpiece of our discussion today is his new book, Do Aliens Speak Physics? And Other Questions about Science and the Nature of Reality.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is available at the episode page. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content—Thinking outside Schrödinger’s cat box: Reality as quantum—Why reactionary billionaires love sci-fi authors like Robert Heinlein so much—Trump administration officials are seeking to eliminate merit and competition for NIH grants—As science faces unprecedented attacks, it must look within to defend and reform—Science and democracy need each other—Creationism, AI and the cult of the founder in Silicon ValleyAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction12:20 — Science is based on philosophy, whether it realizes it or not15:14 — Hieroglyphics, Etruscan, and alien languages24:05 — Science may not be universal at all, or at the very least the models humans use31:59 — The fact that science is limited in what it can describe doesn’t mean it’s fake35:30 — Eric Weinstein and the delusions and deceptions of ‘alt science’45:31 — Follow the money with anti-science influencers, they are the people getting the richest51:09 — Math and numbers are not part of reality itself01:02:29 — Don’t say you care about space if you support cutting science funding This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe