What I'm Reading This Month
By Nadine Holder
June 2006
Intelligence in Nature by Jeremy Narby. A difficult book but worth it if you ever ponder on the nature of intelligence. Not what you would call a good or interesting writer, but his subject matter is fascinating. The book got off to a slow start with me because he starts off with three chapters on South American shamans and he nearly lost me - still don’t know what it had to do with the book as he doesn’t close the loop at the end. He perhaps does it at the end of the third chapter where he briefly discusses shamans’ capabilities to transform themselves into spirits who can commune with nature and then leads into the rest of the book with the transformation of intelligence in nature to intelligence in humans via evolution.
After South America he travels to Europe and Japan and looks into what scientific studies are being done on intelligence in animals, birds, insects, and, yes, slime mold. There are multitudes of such studies being done now when a few years back the very idea of such intelligence was just scoffed at.
He really had some difficulty too in defining “intelligence” and ultimately found (for himself) that the Japanese concept of “chi-sey” seems to be a more general definition that can apply equally to humans and to the rest of the natural world.
I had always had trouble with the theory of evolution but he does a great job with the evolution of the human brain and how various parts of the brain point to an exact development from lowest life to us (assuming we are the highest!). He gives many, many examples from a myriad of studies. He has broken the book into two parts - his narrative and notes at the end. I am not finished wading through the notes as they are dry but I will persevere as I want to know the basis for his conclusions. I do finally understand the basis for the theory of evolution.
Having always had “pets” - or more specifically “roommates of a different genus” I was very aware that there was animal intelligence quite equal to ours and since coming to Arizona have expanded that notice to the insects. He even has some plausible studies on plant intelligence and has further convinced me of its existence (beyond my own observations).
Basically, the only advantage in intelligence that we as humans have over the rest of our world is the ability to project our intelligence to records outside ourselves - in other words we can collect the thoughts of others way beyond those we converse with in everyday life and in this century. And it gives us a great advantage over our cohabiters of the world. Between that and opposable thumbs we have got it made (until perhaps a life form of a different order shows up from outer space!)
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