It is fun to look up the definition of words. Usually I learn something about a word's evolution that surprises me and sheds light where I didn't expect it.
One example is the word "sentience". Normal usage often refers to intelligent consciousness. Wikipedia points out that it refers to the ability to sense. For me, that made a bunch of things fall into place.
The closer one looks at the makeup of matter, the more one realizes that everything is made out of communications. Photons, gluons, gravitons and the like are the communications between particles. They are the glue that holds matter together. They are the forces that hold matter apart. Every piece of matter is sensing its neighbors.
Everything is sentient.
I suspect that if we look closer, we will find that it is plenty intelligent too.
We don't need to search the universe for sentient life.
Life pervades us at every level.
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