Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
I only wanted to point out that intelligence doesn't have to mean tool using technospecies. And even if it does mean that, here we are on our own world interacting with a species that is physiologically very like ourselves and we can't even tell for sure it is intelligent or not, much less communicate with it and exchange information. It reminds me a lot of Fiasco. Imagine if a species just like dolphins but with arms and primitive tool use was found in a big Europan ocean biosphere. We would only know they were fairly intelligent because they have arms to do stuff with. They would otherwise be completely alien, we would have a hell of a time ever communicating and exchanging meaningful information with them.
I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to suggest that the invent of calculus and differential equations requires tool-making abilities.