> One thing we'd share with any alien species is our perception of the universe, and stars and galaxies are eminently countable, so the development of numbers

> One thing we'd share with any alien species is our perception of the universe, and stars and galaxies are eminently countable, so the development of numbers seems inevitable. I don't this is immediately obvious. There is an assumption here that stars and galaxies are these inherently well defined things, therefore they are countable. I don't think that's necessarily true. Where does a galaxy really begin and end? Or a star for that matter? If there is a solar flare occurring and solar matter is being ejected into the surrounding area is that matter still part of the star? We have this faculty which seems to be quite good at taking complex systems and approximating them to singular entities (planet, star, galaxy, table, audience, country), we can reason about. It seems to be a core aspect of human cognition but I'm not sure if this is a prerequisite for cognition in general.