But in cooperation with other insects, it could solve the problem. We can overcome this handicap by communicating with one another. If I, as one insect, see this sphere as a circle, and you as another insect see this sphere as a circle from a different viewpoint, we can talk to each other and share our data. Then in principle we have a chance of reconstructing that the thing must be a sphere. So we need communication, and I am amazed at the possibilities of improved communication which are opening up, both technologically and via the media.
Communication is our big chance to ascend the steps of cognitive evolution.
We've only just begun. See, about 150 years ago, one of my intellectual mentors, James Star Maxwell, the father of Maxwell's Equation, for purely aesthetic reasons declared that there must exist some sort of electromagnetic waves that spread at the speed of light. Until that moment, they had not even existed in theory. Years later, Heinrich Hertz was able to prove that these electromagnetic waves really do exist. And I think that this sort of Maxwellian breakthrough thinking will continue to take place tomorrow and the day after, again and again.