Hypothetical Life

The best known kinds of Hypothetical life are classified by habitat.  Since the list of hypothetical life in the Library is (not surprisingly) exceedingly long, we will limit ourselves to the brief mention of a few of the more intriguing forms. One such form is Plasma life.  As no galactic technology has been designed to enter a sun's corona (or for similar stressors), the exsitence of Plasma life must forever remain in the realm of speculation.

Another interesting possible form of sapient life might live on the surface of neutron stars and would be essentially two-dimensional.  However, the ultimate hypothetical life-form may be Post-Event Horizon sapience.  The possibility of post-event horizon life is itself an interesting twist on the "organic universe" theory, but what makes this the ultimate in hypothetical life is the clear impossibility of meaningful information passing either way across an event horizon.

The reader should not, however, think that all hypothetical life forms are related to stellar bodies.  For example, there are innumerable sightings of "hyperspace" entities on record --and while Galactics usually give these reports the same credence that serious Terragen scholars give to the Loch Ness Monster or the Yeti, it is worth remembering that before Contact we used to put Unidentified Flying Objects in the same category of archetypal projection and hysterical wish fulfillment.
 

The other main arena for speculation about new forms of life centers around the structure and dynamics of sapience.  These are the hypothetical "Gestalt Intelligences:"  the Macro-Symbiotic, Sapient Gestalt, and Dynamic Gestalt Field sapiences.  These forms of sapience are distinct from what are known as "societal intelligences," "corporations" or "group thinks."  Group "intelligences" are formally considered emergent phenomenon that result from the interaction of entities that are themselves sapient.  In practice, this means that to demonstrate the existence of a Gestalt Intelligence each distinct participating organism or entity must either be non-sapient, or at most have very limited sapience.  That is, no component is fully sapient by itself --sapience truly emerges from the gestalt.

The simplest kinds of Gestalt life-forms are the Macro-Symbionts.  In fact, Macro-Symbiosis is not a purely Hypothetical form of life.  Many examples actually exist.  The Jophur are probably the best known example, and finding Library records on modular Machine sapients is a trivial exercise.  Nor are Macro-Symbionts limited to the so-called trivial cases of intra-species or even intra-order symbiosis.  It is not known if any Machine-Mimetic races have ever been true Macro-Symbionts, but Alliance for Progress scholars are confident that experimental forms could be built.⁽¹⁾
        Moving to the hypothetical end of Macro-Symbiosis, the most intriguing possibilities have a structural principle of "encapsulation."  That is, a larger structure includes, or houses, smaller structures.  For example, a large Machine or a Hydrogen Breather might encapsulate symbiotic Oxygen breathing species.  Note that none of the participants in the symbiosis could be sapient.  However, if any party were sapient it would still be a most interesting case of endo-parasitic mutualism.⁽²⁾  It should be noted that such an endo-parasitic mutualism could be highly beneficial to both parties.  The larger partner would gain considerable "immunological" advantages, the smaller partner gets a superb hiding place, and both gain major defensive advantages against aggressors.
    Also in the realm of hypothesis, Quantum life forms might form a Macro-Symbiosis with any other kind of life.

In contrast no Sapient Gestalts have ever been documented.  The reader will note that a Macro-Symbiotic relationship involves a relatively small number of potentially autonomous entities (seldom more than twenty), that the kinds (or species) of entities participating in the symbiosis are quite limited (usually two or three) and that the symbiotic participants in the Macro-Symbiosis typically present as a "unitary body," in which case we say that the sapient entity is "embodied."  A Sapient Gestalt retains the practical requirement that participants be non-sapient, and without empirical cases it is difficult to know how many participants a "normal" Sapient Gestalt might contain.  However, there is reason to expect Sapient Gestalts would include more participating species than Macro-Symbionts and that they would be less likely than Macro-Symbionts to be embodied.  In short, a Sapient Gestalt's intelligence emerges from the interactions of a fairly definable community rather than from a simple diadic (or triadic) relationship.  The transport vines of Garth, and the participants in a given transport vine network --though non-sapient either individually or as a collectivity, are an illustration of a gestalt relationship.  The astute reader will notice that the transport vine networks on Garth can be huge.  Without actual data, there is no way to know what scales might be possible for Sapient Gestalts.  Most interested scholars have speculated about groups of perhaps as many as thirty-two entities and up to eight species participating in a pre-sentient gestalt.  However there is no reason, a priori, why a Sapient Gestalt could not include hundreds of species and cover entire continents --or even whole biospheres.

The "Dynamic Gestalt Field" (D.G.F.) lies even further inside the realm of speculation.  A sapient Dynamic Gestalt Field would be unlikely to be embodied, and by definition it has no stable "membership" (though all potential participants may belong to a definable --and even countable --group).  Indeed, any stability that a D.G.F. might have, is a dynamic stability that emerges from the continuity-of-the-process producing sapience rather than any necessary continuity-of-membership.  In the purest form of a Dynamic Gestalt Field membership is entirely fluid, yet the sapience persists.  An actual D.G.F would be a great boon to theoretical sophontology because even as an abstract hypothesis the D.G.F. poses fascinating problems in recruitment for multi-entity sapience, in "personality," and even more in the understanding of memory systems.
 

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