Perhaps most mathematicians, at least tacitly, have Platonic ideas. Platonic philosophy holds that mathematics exist in some form regardless of the reality of space and time. Thus, the work of a pure mathematician is, therefore, like a gold digger, trying to find fragments of absolute pre-existing mathematical truth. The math is discovered, not invented.
Other mathematicians, however, argue the opposite. For them, science has no meaning or existence independent of human consciousness, is a mere figment of our intelligence, a social phenomenon, part of the culture of human beings. This anti-Platonic view holds that mathematical objects are created by us according to our daily needs. That evolution can strongly anchored to our brains a "simple form." Even neurologists think this might be located in a particular area of \u200b\u200bour brain: the inferior parietal cortex.
would not be too surprising if it turned out that we all have a unit Arithmetic processing in our brains. At the end of the day, our ancestors lived in a world where the ability was crucial to count discrete quantities of items such as predators or prey. This ability to perceive the number of certain objects is very useful and we would expect that animals possessed a kind of "number sense".
Indeed, it seems clear that different animals such as rats or chimpanzees (among many others) are able to perform rudimentary numerical judgments. However, it is unlikely that they can carry out a process of "telling", at least in the literal sense we understand. In animal experiments it is difficult to rule out the possibility that cognitive processes made using much simpler. For example, when it comes to a small number of objects, animals may be using the so-called "subitizing ." We, after all, do too. When we have a set with a small number of items (less than six, say) we are able to know the exact amount without explicitly counting them. However, we will not distinguish between, say, 27 or 28 cakes on a plate. In this sense, animals do not need to, because for them there much difference between having 27 or 28 bananas in a basket at the time of feeding. To distinguish between many and few, is sufficient. Thus, although the integral calculation ability, or simply multiply is not innate, one could argue if the fundamentals of arithmetic are. Whole numbers are not Platonic ideal forms that exist independently of human consciousness, but rather are creations of our minds, artifacts created by the manner in which the brains of our ancestors interpreted the world around them.
In all the above is an interesting question: what would the mathematics of a CET? Have they developed their own " Fermat theorem, mean value , etc..? If it appears that their evolutionary history has been similar to ours, maybe not. Why should I? If they had evolved in an environment where variables change continuously rather than discrete, may not have invented the concept of integer. What if I have developed a mathematical building not based on the concepts of number and set, for example? We may find this hard to imagine, but may not be more than a deficiency of our limited human imagination.
The key point is that mathematics allowed us to develop human technology. Perhaps this constitutes a necessary condition. For a civilization to build interstellar radio transmitters, you need only understand the law of inverse square law and some other math "Earth." One possible solution to the Fermi paradox CETs could be that mathematicians have developed other systems different from ours and inapplicable to the design and build communications systems or propulsion devices.
And, as usual, the drawback is the same. CETs not all have to do the same and proceed in the same way. There may be intelligent species that inhabit the waters of an ocean and do not need at all develop as the Pythagorean theorem, but surely there will also be other Earth-like and may resemble us, running to develop a similar math. Even putting in the worst case and admitting that his mathematics constituted something very different to ours, would not that just one of the reasons for wanting to communicate with other intelligent beings?