Higher

The Day Of Their Return, 16.

Yakow makes three leaps of faith:

first, that the Builders did not become extinct:

"'It is a reasonable inference that these beings did not perish, but rather went elsewhere...'" (p. 200)

(Comment: It would be a reasonable inference if there were some way to test it. Otherwise, it remains an unverified hypothesis.)

- secondly, that they "went elsewhere" not only spatially but also spiritually:

"'...putting childish things away as they reached a new stage of evolution.'" (ibid.)

(Comment: This is completely unwarranted. Beings that have survived and gone elsewhere have not necessarily evolved to "a new stage.")

- thirdly, that they will help:

"'And it may conceivably be wishful thinking, but it does seem more likely than otherwise, that the higher sentiences of the cosmos take a benign interest in the lower, and seek to aid them upward.

"'This hope, if you wish to call it no more than that, is what has sustained us.'" (ibid.)

(Comments: It may indeed conceivably be wishful thinking! More likely? That is not enough to go on. "Higher" and "upward" in what senses? A mere hope, indeed.)

Ivar thinks in response:

"...why should intelligence progress indefinitely? Nothin' else in nature does. Beyond that point where technology becomes integral to species survival, what selection pressure is there to increase brains? If anything, we sophonts already have more than's good for us?" (ibid.)

Yakov's "higher" clearly means something other than increased intelligence although he needs he clarify what he does mean by it. But, when technology becomes involved, we are no longer dependent on selection pressure. At least one rational species could set out to enhance its own consciousness deliberately. And that might have happened somewhere. Ivar also thinks:

"...what we've explored is one atom off outer skin of one dustmote galaxy..." (ibid.)

And John Ridenour had reflected that the universe - the universe of the Technic History, at least -:

"...produces sophonts as casually as it produces snowflakes."

-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire " IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010, pp. 1-72 AT p. 7.

So the probability that at least one species has progressed further and gone higher increases significantly. Or, if no one else has, we can. However, I would not place a Yakow-like faith in such a proposition. The question remains empirical.