Supreme Intelligence To the “man on the street,” it was an “intelligent” human who planted a flag in the barren soil of the moon and posed proudly by it, in the world’s most expensive photo opportunity. Thus, we generally equate intelligence with a primate’s ability to assemble mechanical parts, to methodically follow the schematic of linear thought and its projection of calculations. A typical dictionary definition of intelligence might read, “ability to acquire and retain knowledge; mental capacity to solve problems; cleverness.” A less self-conscious definition usually follows; “information, or news.” At the bottom, there is sometimes an even less worldly definition: “an intelligent spirit or being.” Such definitions might lead one to wonder: is intelligence an extraneous ingredient, which could be dispensed with (similar to nutmeg in a cake mix) in the universe? In other words, where a brain (or a being) were enitrely absent in the cosmos, would the cosmos be operating then without intelligence? It is interesting that, in evolutionary terms, there was sexual reproduction for 370 million years before there were brains. Put another way, can intelligence be apart from anything, or is intelligence—in its deepest meaning—simply another description for the all-pervasive and ever-present “essence”? As a Johns Hopkins neurologist put it: “People think all intelligence resides in the brain, and therefore that if you take out half the brain, the patient ought to be half as intelligent.”
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