On the Evolution of Maps -- Mapping the Cosmos

“In space there are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns...”-- Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)

Conscious bipedal beings are capable of mapping their environments. They are also capable of using depictions to document their external world in the form of preserved maps. The species environmental consciousness starts out small, and this is true across all species that can navigate their environments. As the conscious beings explore their territories more, externally recording their surroundings, they grow in a consciousness of their planet. This continues until the whole of their planet is mapped, as feasible for the beings. Certain places are left unmapped. For humans these places may have at first been hostile or difficult to traverse. Currently human beings have not been able to map out the whole of the ocean floors. Such boundaries of the mapping of a planet may result in a limited mapping of the terrain. Furthermore, when the mapping has reached a large enough scale the sentience is said to have reached a level of awareness termed, “planetary consciousness.” This mapping has led us to the awareness that our home planet is a sphere. Outwardly, human beings gazed into space, and even mapped the heavens. With the advent of the telescope, steadily there arose a consciousness of the solar system and its bodies, a continuously larger map of the universe was developing. Some humans, with an awareness that there were other planets, proposed that on these planets there might exist living beings. Eventually, the invented telescope could observe and even record planets outside our home solar system. We hypothesized that there was a “hospitable zone” for planets in any solar system to exist within that increases the likelihood that similar life could exist on the “exo-planet.” See this article on Bio-Signatures for Life.
  Planetary mapping + Telescope + Camera + Ship Propulsion = Consciousness of planets beyond home planet and the increase in the probability of first contact with alien life.
  Like Columbus and his comrades sailing out to the new world, with our telescopes we are anticipating that there will be something awaiting our discovery (stars, planets, other life forms ) out there in the vastness of unmapped space. There is a chance that such beings with similar physical and cognitive abilities along with the technologies we have, are going through the same process we are going through. Given enough time and observation there will be a contact. This contact may not be mutual, in the respect one life form may observe or not observe the other.
  We may look at such life from a vast distance and only see slight signs of their civilization, as in artificial lighting, electronic signals (ex: radio-waves), combustion, or something more advanced like a dyson sphere, or other mega structures. These are signs we will be looking for, but alien life forms may not have evolved much of a civilization. For billions of years life on planet Earth did not include a bipedal species, capable of such historical, technological, and cognitive advances that we have turned into intelligent civilization. There may be very minor signs of life, as such escapes our notice, like unto the life that exists in the microscope world. I believe there is life out there, few and far between, a rare and not often event, within the boundaries of consciousness we have of the known universe. Like Bruno hypothesized the number of planets that are Earth-like and that do have sentient beings is probably countless. Our mapping may never be as extensive as the space provided.

Relative Awareness - Conscious Individualism

"We all start with a conceptual framework that is essentially blank. We are born with zero innate ideas. In the same way we are not born with language. A human mind becomes fashioned with ideas, constructed by senses, brain, environments, and other human beings. There are potentials in infants for emotions, speaking, and awareness, but these are only actualized by mind through interactions with the environment. We have an environment that promotes and provides public education, social learning, religion, and objective science. In all of it there are commonalities and differences, subjective and objective experiences, shared experiences but also a place for your own unique and relative awareness as a human. The development of the mind, that is the establishment of consciousness, is phenomena-level dependent.
  The primary techniques of gaining consciousness are utilized in teaching children how to speak, spell, read, and write, and later how to count and perform arithmetic. Once these have been educated into one’s mind, they are capable of gaining consciousness of the vaster fields of science, religion, and history; thus a greater level of learning of the dimensions of the universe are attainable.
  Every one’s level of education is undergone in a systematic process, and at a point in time the human being may not advance any further in a field. When the human advances in a particular field this is a kind of specialization of intelligence that permits it to have a functional place in the labor economy.
  Education levels can thus be relative, although in modern educational systems we tend to try to uniformly bring each student's consciousness into a standard awareness of the world. However, this does not cross out the elements of conscious experience that we have of our own lives, which can be relative. Educational levels are standard but the narrowness of knowledge specialization and the level of intelligence of each human is relative (though measurable in the brackets of exams and intelligence tests).
   One crucial method of learning is repetition, which strengthens memory. So, in the case of a mathematical formula, the formula most be memorized. Secondly the formula must be applied multiple times, with various numerical variables to cultivate a learned mathematical articulation. Thirdly, that articulation is tested and whether one has acquired that mathematical intelligence is determined by the success or failure of the completion of the test. When the completion of that level of education is achieved, a more advanced mathematical intelligence can be cultivated with further education. This continues in grade stages, till the highest known form of a particular knowledge is acquired. The finishing of this is college graduation, where the highest forms of a particular domain of knowledge are taught, and learned successfully or unsuccessfully. 
  There may be a final degree one attains, (such as a Phd) but there are also two other factors that can result in life long learning in a field: A) Field work. For example a psychologist must do an internship before they can work as an independent therapist. Not only this, but throughout their lives as clinicians they will be learning about human psychology from each of their patients. B) Updates in the education requirements. I have known various people who have gone back to school because the information or the textbook knowledge has altered. There is also the possibility of changing trajectories in 'knowledge specialization" to A) Take a new occupational path B) Integrate the information from one domain into another (such as economics into metabolic science)."

- Articles on the Neurobiology of learning.