Blind Alien Science: How Would Different Perceptual Systems Change the Course of Science and Technology?

As a species which primarily uses vision for object location and identification, humans discovered elements of basic science through visual cues: watching the movement of shadows, observing the path of a swinging pendulum or monitoring the progress of lights in the sky, and then creating hypotheses to account for these observable data. The fact that observations were made visually is a nontrivial factor in determining the sequence and scope of scientific and technological progress.Species which rely on different perceptual systems would arguably be guided and limited in different ways and construct different tools.They might work through a different sequence of understanding and make different kinds of errors along the way. This paper follows a course of discovery of basic astronomical concepts as they might be deduced by a race of intelligent beings who are entirely blind. I propose no exceptional abilities beyond that which humans might have if human culture had developed to support and encourage non-visual exploration.The goal is to investigate how modification in perceptual systems might shape the course of the development of science and technology and perhaps even influence the kinds of technosignatures that might be observable across space.