In the back pages of New Scientist magazine, in a section called Almost the Last Word, readers pose questions that are then answered, usually by well-informed other readers. In the July 13, 2024 edition, someone asked, “Once life is established, is the evolution of intelligence inevitable?”
Garry Trethewey of South Australia attempted the first answer. “Probably not. Wings have evolved four times—in birds, bats, pterosaurs and insects. Legs and eyes have evolved multiple times. Swimming ability has also evolved many times. But intelligence has only evolved once, very recently. Is it useful? Is it a survival trait? Is it somehow better than not-intelligence? Given the 8 billion of us versus the vastly greater numbers of microbes and how long they have been around, I would put my money on the microbes.”
And Graham Watson of London in the UK offers the same answer. “I say no. The dinosaurs had 165 million years and never came anywhere close to evolving what we would regard as intelligence.” And, incidentally, they came to an untimely end some 66 million years ago through no fault of their own.
Consider other species. Ants have been here for about 150 million years. Turtles? For about 230 million years. And the cockroach? It’s been here, largely unchanged, for about 300 million years, its 4,600 species inhabiting every continent but Antarctica. Fungi? For at least 1 billion years. And bacteria and archaea for about 3.5 billion years. We are now learning more about the sophisticated social organization of ants, bees and termites, and the navigational skills of birds, turtles and whales. They might not have our particular kind of intelligence, but they certainly do things that are impressive.
But the original question about the inevitable evolution of intelligence does not describe what intelligence is. It usually means the attributes that we have, a rather self-congratulatory definition that rules out all candidates but ourselves. We have been an identifiable species for about 300,000 years, a mere blip in the history of other species, and the advantages of our intelligence is yet unproven. Indeed, given the present environmental mess that we have created, plus the potential for annihilating much of the life on our planet because of the deliberate or inadvertent use of our massive stocks of nuclear weapons, the capability of our particular kind of intelligence is questionable.
Neither does the reader’s question regarding intelligence specify the difference between the individual and the collective. In a review of our individual lives, most of us can probably recall decisions of incredible stupidity. Collectively, our human history has been saturated with marvellous accomplishments, but also with wars, oppression, exploitation and disasters. Great civilizations have risen and fallen. All our examples of admirable cooperation, cohesion and ingenuity are usually counterbalanced with examples of destructive competition and mindless brutality. At best, our collective intelligence has a mixed record.
Because of our expansive sense of history, maybe the time has come to review our past, examine our present, and consider our future. An objective appraisal of our intelligence may find some suggestions for improvement.
Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra
Top image cerdit: Intelligence – Photo by LeaESQUE via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)