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.