Yes, I think it might well be, for that matter they might not have maths at all.
Can get a starting point here from the many different abilities humans have ranging from dyscalculia to lightning calculators. ETs surely could range in capabilities by that much or more.
Also, the many ways that we have thought about maths historically - including e.g. civilizations that hadn't yet got zero in its modern sense, or negative numbers, or ability to express fractional quantities as a ratio. Yet in other ways were very advanced in their thinking.
Put even best mathematician of our time back then, and they would be in the same situation so these concepts don't come instinctively to humans.
So seems to me, some ETs might not have all these ideas either - or might have other ideas that haven't occurred to us yet - or replaced them with different ideas of their own.
Also the paradoxes of set theory, impossibility of making a unified theory for all of maths, and the many different approaches to foundations of maths - I think those also suggest that ET mathematicians might well come up with other ideas there. At the least - range of ideas available to ET mathematicians surely includes all those developed by human mathematicians - and some ideas held by just a handful of human mathematicians - might be the norm in some ET civilizations, and vice versa, our maths ideas that we see as standard might be ideas held by just a handful of mathematicians in an ET civilization.
No idea how probable all that is. Could be that almost all ETs think about maths pretty much the way we do, if so then that would help a lot with communication. But there again, perhaps they don't, and don't see how you can assign a probability here.
Anyway to find out more:
You might be interested in my answer here, if you haven't read it yet:
Robert Walker's answer to Is it possible that an alien civilization has completely different mathematics than ours? Is mathematics absolute?
(is a long answer, thought better to link to it than to copy it here and try editing it to match this question).
Can get a starting point here from the many different abilities humans have ranging from dyscalculia to lightning calculators. ETs surely could range in capabilities by that much or more.
Also, the many ways that we have thought about maths historically - including e.g. civilizations that hadn't yet got zero in its modern sense, or negative numbers, or ability to express fractional quantities as a ratio. Yet in other ways were very advanced in their thinking.
Put even best mathematician of our time back then, and they would be in the same situation so these concepts don't come instinctively to humans.
So seems to me, some ETs might not have all these ideas either - or might have other ideas that haven't occurred to us yet - or replaced them with different ideas of their own.
Also the paradoxes of set theory, impossibility of making a unified theory for all of maths, and the many different approaches to foundations of maths - I think those also suggest that ET mathematicians might well come up with other ideas there. At the least - range of ideas available to ET mathematicians surely includes all those developed by human mathematicians - and some ideas held by just a handful of human mathematicians - might be the norm in some ET civilizations, and vice versa, our maths ideas that we see as standard might be ideas held by just a handful of mathematicians in an ET civilization.
No idea how probable all that is. Could be that almost all ETs think about maths pretty much the way we do, if so then that would help a lot with communication. But there again, perhaps they don't, and don't see how you can assign a probability here.
Anyway to find out more:
You might be interested in my answer here, if you haven't read it yet:
Robert Walker's answer to Is it possible that an alien civilization has completely different mathematics than ours? Is mathematics absolute?
(is a long answer, thought better to link to it than to copy it here and try editing it to match this question).
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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