Mar 02 2009
Evolution and the Inevitability of Intelligence
A 2008 issue of Skeptic Magazine (vol. 14, No. 2) contains a number of articles critical of the idea that the evolution of life [eventually] leads to intelligence. Many people do seem to think, Well yah, given enough time, a species will stand up, start talking, and create computers and rocketships. The SETI folk are banking on it. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Here are a few thoughts that cause me to doubt the notion that wherever life evolves intelligent life is sure to follow.
1. The horseshoe crab. And thousands of other species that have remained relatively unchanged over millions of years. Time alone doesn’t create intelligence. What else is necessary?
2. Remote human tribes that have been found living just fine, thank you, without advanced tools, let alone machines or electronic technology. If left alone for thousands of years would they develop the need and ability to build a radio (from, say, bamboo fiber)? Intelligence alone doesn’t magically lead to technological advancement. What else is necessary?
3. In my own thinking, one of the things that led to human intelligence is this: at crucial points our kind was a misfit. In a time of dynamic change (climactic, etc.) survival is somewhat of a game of musical chairs. Who fits the existing niches best? For those less fit, the mis-fit, the name of the tune is change or go bye-bye. How close did our branch of the shrub of life come to going bye-bye? Without nearly losing the game of musical survival would human intelligence have still evolved? Too little challenge, no intelligence; too much challenge, no intelligence?
4. How essential was it to the development of human intelligence and technology that we are an omnivorous animal that tends to live in limited group sizes in a variety of ecosystems that thus could and would be interested in trade?
5. If we subtracted any of these resources from the earlier human environments, would we be talking on cell phones today: flint-able stone (none here in Florida) iron ore, crude oil, copper . . . ?
6. Finally, is it also possible that our kind has been quite fortunate to not encounter super-predators and direct meteor strikes, etc.?
Is the development of intelligent life inevitable? I doubt it. There are just too many contingencies.
[...] that half a wing is useful indeed. The final straw was when the Evolving Mind noted that evolution does not inevitably lead to intelligence. They ran away, leaving me alone once more in the internet [...]
[...] that half a wing is useful indeed. The final straw was when the Evolving Mind noted that evolution does not inevitably lead to intelligence. They ran away, leaving me alone once more in the internet [...]
YES!!! this is exactly right! How many variables came into play in not only our intelligence, but the condtions witch made the evolution of intelligence favorable… and now in our reletively resent past we evolve the ability to destroy ourselvs… maybe intllegence is rare because it is so self fatalistic
@ j thorny – Thanks for the compliment! Though I’m not totally clear on “self fatalistic.”
Intelligence is always going to be a highly valuable adaptation, because more than anything it allows us to spread out to a very, very wide range of environments. Human beings are the ONLY animal that’s found from the North Pole to the South and everywhere in between, and this is because our technology (clothes, fire, preserved food, water purification, sea travel, air travel, et cetera ad nauseum) have allowed us to expand, to colonize. Consider that our ability to exist on virtually any corner of this planet has made us effectively the most hardy species ever to evolve on Earth — and, as we are ENTERING a period of mass extinction, this will come in handy. Yes, human beings don’t have any “natural weapons” like claws or poison, but somehow we’ve made it to the top of the food chain anyway. How? Intelligence. And we will watch in the next few centuries as most of the species that live on this planet with us disappear, long before we ourselves become a threatened species — and of course the very FIRST species to disappear will be the large carnivores, who will find their fangs and claws rather useless as their prey get more and more scarce. Consider the fate of the saber toothed tiger, which was one of the most feared predators of prehistory. Everywhere that HUMANS went, the tiger disappeared, because its saber teeth were no match for our stone tools. WE are the most adaptable species on Earth because of our intelligence and the products of our intelligence. It seems reasonable to me to expect that somewhere else out there some other organism stumbled upon intelligence, which is both the ultimate natural weapon and the ultimate environmental adaptation.