Intelligent universe

Frank Vertosick’s Mind: A Unified Theory of Intelligence is out there. He argues that living things are all intelligence, going so far as to suggest that “amoebas may be the smartest things on the planet” and claims that life is intelligence at the molecular level.” In short, “all living things—even those entirely devoid of nervous systems—can (and must) use some form of reason to survive. In fact, I believe that intelligence and the living process are one and the same: to live, organisms (or communities of organisms) must absorb information, store it, process it, and develop future strategies based upon it. In other words, to be alive, one must think.”

He rails against “brain chauvinism,” the claim that intelligence only exists in brains. Bacteria have intelligence: “All cells can change their rate of mutation intentionally to some degree, thus altering the nature and rate of their own evolution. Bacteria and immune cells at war during an infection can cram a million years of evolution into a few weeks.”

It’s a Darwinian view of intelligence, intelligence as trial and error, intelligence measured by success in survival and reproduction: “Flies have small brains but spawn a thousand generations in the time it takes for brainier beasts like us to have one. Insects can solve problems with their genes as fast, or faster, than we can with our nerve cells. Life is about solutions and survival; how a species solves problems is immaterial as long as the problems get solved.”

It’s also intelligence that may exist without consciousness. Vertosick is not all that interested in consciousness. He is more interested in pattern recognition, which he claims is the heart of the intelligence that is essential to life itself: “By intelligence, I mean the general ability to store past experiences and to use that acquired knowledge to solve future problems.”

It’s out there, as I say, and Vertosick knows it. But it’s an intriguing out there. Put aside the Darwinism; put aside his denial of any intelligent designer; why shouldn’t we think of bacteria, amoebas, flies, and spiders as intelligent beings in the sense that Vertosick uses the term? And why should we want to restrict intelligence to higher forms of life? By acknowledging the universal intelligence of living things, we might in fact gain some theological insight: We might be able to identify more specifically what it is that constitutes humanity’s unique character as image of God.