Unnatural Bias
I think there are three principal reasons why evolution is not generally viewed as an intelligent process. First, intelligence often has connotations of consciousness, and many of us would doubtless find it hard to attribute consciousness to Nature (at least akin to the kind of consciousness we have). Second, evolution happens over lengthy time spans, as opposed to the relatively short time spans over which human intelligence operates. Third, we are a terribly proud and arrogant species that likes to imagine that we ourselves are the smartest thing on two legs. Intelligence belongs primarily to us and not to the more abstract systems of which we are a part (I presume that this outlook is connected to the human ego, as alluded to earlier).
However, intelligence, when understood as a process, does not necessarily entail consciousness (intelligence can also be
Reductive science does not recognize natural intelligence because reductive science looks to isolated entities and attempts to seek explanations for their existence on lower levels. To glimpse natural intelligence is to view the larger system of which the components are a part. This larger system is, ultimately, the entire Universe, a specifically configured backdrop that provides the essential conditions necessary to promote the digital computational procedure that is evolution. These essential conditions are things like the sensible flow of energy throughout the Universe; the convenient formation and enduring presence of suns; the facilitated formation of DNA, with its conveniently plastic and linguistic nature; the continual presence of factors that conveniently induce DNA to vary and mutate; and, most important of all perhaps, the instructive nature of the environment that ensures DNA can be expressed in ever-more sophisticated ways. If we contemplate in large-scale holistic terms, then natural intelligence emerges. Darwin’s groundbreaking legacy therefore resides in his discovery of the
Superfluous Icing on the Darwinian Cake?
Some might object here and claim that to infer that evolution represents an intelligent process is to introduce superfluous and scurrilous gossip-making baggage into what is already a sufficient theory. In other words, why infer natural intelligence when it is not absolutely necessary to use such terminology for our understanding of the mechanisms by which evolution proceeds? Well, this might be true, yet to refuse to elaborate on evolutionary theory is to impose limitations on our understanding, especially if we desire a holistic and metaphysically satisfying view of Nature. Perhaps this is why there have been so many attempts to do away with Darwin’s theory, not because it is wrong but because there is some conceptual element missing, an element that can more properly capture and appreciate the amazing power of evolution.
As far as I can see, if we don’t infer that Nature is smart, we can’t explain why exactly Nature should allow, and indeed encourage, biological evolution. Why, for instance, should the emergence of self-replicating, self- repairing DNA be an inevitable consequence of the laws of Nature? Why does DNA have language-like properties that can be expressed through proteins? Why are millions of proteins able to effortlessly fold into exquisite organismic patterns? Why, through genetic variation, is life continually able to forge solutions to various problems? How come there is a biological way forward most of the time? Why are DNA and genes so plastic and flexible? Why, indeed, is Nature made of such elegantly versatile, Lego-like components? And why should something as amazing as consciousness eventually be facilitated by life? The questions go on. The fortuitously creative brute facts mount up. The smart self-organizational properties of Nature abound. Something important is clearly happening everywhere.
The Ultrasmart Complexity of Organisms
Allow me to reiterate a previous reiteration: your own self-repairing body, your visual system processing these words, your autonomic breathing system and autonomic digestive system—all are far more smart than any manufactured computer or fabricated device currently in existence (especially when one considers how the body’s various functions are integrated into a coherent and enduring unity). Perhaps you are familiar with some latest piece of computer software, some brand-new nifty program embodied in computer code. You will certainly concede that this code is smart. Yet reflect on the huge store of digital DNA coding etched into almost every one of your many trillions of body cells and you will realize that human-derived programs pale in the face of those written by Nature. This becomes more apparent if we bear in mind that the DNA is essentially the same in all our cells, whether liver cells, lung cells, skin cells, or brain cells. Yet somehow that self-same information can be expressed in many different ways. The final orchestrated result—a living organism—is so wonderfully complex as to defy a complete understanding.
Somewhat paradoxically, I would suggest that it is precisely because Nature is so very, very smart that we do not acknowledge it. Biological processes, in the main, are so perfected in their natural execution that we fail to comprehend just how much complexity is involved (recall my detailed discussion of neuronal events, for instance). It is only when biology goes wrong that we suddenly become aware of just how ingenious it usually is in its operation. And yet, more often than not, we do not awake in the morning with a broken eye, a crashed memory module, a faulty connection in our ear, or an intermittent lung. Unlike our machines, our nervous systems do not tend to blow a fuse or suffer incongruous shutdowns. Thus, for the most part we may take life for granted and fail to grasp the very real miracle of our conscious organic existence. Similarly, if computers were so perfectly designed that people were able to utilize them for a thousand years without one single breakdown, we would soon lose sight of just how smartly they were designed. We would become completely accustomed to computers and take them for granted without a thought as to their intelligently designed infrastructure. However, should malfunctions begin to occur, we would suddenly wake up to their underlying contrived functionality.
Returning to human biological processes, they are generally so impeccable that they take care of themselves, which is to say that Nature is a pretty smooth operator. For most of us, we grow from babies to adults faultlessly, yet the myriad steps in this morphological feat are absurdly sophisticated. Think of a couple of identical twins and the amount of steps involved in turning them from microscopic single-celled entities into macroscopic trillion-celled entities. Yet after all that incomprehensibly complicated development, they both look exactly the same!
Such fine biological precision is a creative manifestation of what I am calling natural intelligence—a naturally smart process that has yielded as part of its output we beings endowed with consciousness, a process moreover that has been operating over an immense stretch of time. Yet just because the information-gaining evolutionary process that led to you and I took billions of years does not mean that it is nonintelligent, as we have been led to believe. To surmise that high intelligence exists only in our species is to be blind to both the natural intelligence that facilitated evolution and the natural intelligence embodied in all biological systems.
We have arrived back at the idea of the Universal Computation (or cosmic seed even), for it would appear that all the information necessary to construct suns, planets, molecules, amino acids, cells, microorganisms, plants, animals, and conscious brains was somehow written into primeval Nature, lying dormant as it were until the right conditions had developed somewhere and somewhen in which this information could be “read out.” This is a breathtaking idea, and if it should generate a small gasp of wonder, this is but nothing compared to the awe generated by entheogens like the psilocybin mushroom, an awe that is intimately connected to realizations of our potential significance, as conscious agents, in the reality process.
Nature thus emerges as being incredibly smart as well as deadly, and I can close this chapter with an apt
