Is intelligent life inevitable as a result of evolution?


There is a poll regarding this question that can be found here.

__________________
InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

If the "point" of evolution (a dangerously nonscientific concept) is to maximize your gene's chances for survival -- and that is pretty much the dominant idea since Dawkins -- then bacteria are the most successfrul form of life on the planet.

Sure, peacocks may have pretty tails, whales have impreeive bulk, moose awesome antlers and humans have fine minds, but each of these specializations came at an evolutionary cost.

Until a 100,000 years, or so, ago human intelligence came at a great price; we were not very successful -- a hasty survey of life on the planet might well have missed our ancestors entirely... and our brains have not increased in size or complexity since then.

We've just been extremely lucky, and it was luck that was pourchased at a price. We have ridiculously long pre-reproductive lifespans (almost half of the historically average human lifespan); our children are born very immature; human females give birth with extreme difficulty, etc.

I doubt that, should we wipe ourselves out, intelligent life such as us will ever re-emerge.

__________________
Grassaf, Eolas

I agree that re-emergence of human intelligence, similar in structure to what we currently possess, is relatively unlikely to occur a second time.

However, this is because the number of possible evolutionary pathways is vast. If something should happen to us, I do see some other kind of large-brained intelligence eventually establishing itself in the niche that we vacate.

I really differ on this point.

The biological costs of a large brain are huge -- humans starve to death in a few weeks, smaller brained creatures survive (and thus procreate -- the only winning hand in the evolution game), months or longer without much in the way of ill effects.

Some of the other costs of a large brain include: risky childbirth for the mother (passing an object sliglty smaller than a bowling ball through an opening the size of a fist), risky birth for the child (labour is long, traumatic and requires deforming the skull), immaturity of the newborn (horses can run within minutes of birth, even other primates can cling and scramble around within a day...a human infant can barely move on its own for the first year of life), ridiculously long infancy and childhood, etc.

So no, I can't see evolution throwing that up as an option in another species...

Intelligence might, I suppose, evolve in some different form. Perhpas some sort of colonial entity, where the aggregate possesses intelligence but the indicidual only a limited degree. How that would either evolve of function is speculation, though, not science.

__________________
Grassaf, Eolas

If a large brain is actually detrimental in many ways, that raises some really interesting questions. The fact that the great apes did develop big brains suggests that the structure did prove to be desirable and advantageous at some point. But under what conditions, and are those conditions likely to occur again?

Even ignoring the impact of humans on their environments, the fact is the great apes were never a successful species (in terms of being numerous or widespread geographically) -- no where need as successful as rats, for example, or finches, and markedly less successful than the truly successful genera, like ants and beetles.

And they do prefectly well with little intelligence.

You need to stop looking through preconceptions; just beacuse you have a large brain, that doesn't make your sepcies or genera (or allied genera) successful.

__________________
Grassaf, Eolas

AFAIK, homo sapiens sapiens comes from the great ape line. And we even made it to Antarctica, which probably annoyed the penguins.

Nonetheless, despite the obvious disadvantages of a large cranium, it somehow managed to develop. And what happened once, under conditions currently unknown to us, may happen again if those conditions recur.

The problem with assuming that, because we are numerous, we are necessarilly successful is that it ignores the fact that (as genetics demonstartes) in the past the numbers of humans have dwindled as low as a couple of thousand... what would rank as "extremely endangered" on any species list.

Right now, our use of technology (extremely wasteful in terms of energy consumption and perhaps disaterous, as you should know) has given us a chance to spread widely. But this is over a geological microsecond..really only over the past 3000 years (and only over the last 200 years in numbers greater than a billion).

Any species that puts all its evolutionary egss in one basket -- in our case, our large brains -- is likely in trouble in the long run. Evolution has thrown up millions of remarkable species, and nearly all of them are extinct; most of then extinct because they were too specialized to withstand environmental change or competitive pressure. Just because we can rub two sticks together, that is no guarantee we are immune to such inevitabilites, no indicator of evolutionary success; on the contrary, human beings are almost certainly an evolutionary dead end.

__________________
Grassaf, Eolas

Eolas, I agree with you that humans are quite possibly in a rather undesirable position evolutionary. Our physical structure is rather haphazard -- We don't run particularly well; we're prone to an extraordinary spectrum of illnesses; and the meat-eaters among us don't possess appropriate physical attributes like powerful jaws, claws or a mouthful of sharp pointy teeth.

All we seem to have going for us is intellect, and we use that against ourselves and others as often as we use it in our favour.

IMO, intelligent design, as we define it, is inevitable.... because here we are.

Sure, maybe there is the possibilities that there could have been other random occurrences... but there wasn't.

It seems there are ideas that we are an emergence of an underlying "conciousness"... and I like the way Carl Sagan said it in that we are part of the cosmos trying to know itself!

There is a very controversial approach to how our universe began. Some say the more popular scientific version in that matter was here first, then life came, and through life came consciousness. However, I am inclined to what Amit Goswami has to say. He agrees there is a quantum wave of possibilities and it collapses into a single occurrence. Some say the brain does this, however Goswami rebuffs that notion because he suggests the brain itself is a result of a collapse of this quamtum wave of possibilities. His idea is that "consciousness" was here first and created matter. It is this underlying consciousness that is responsible for the collapse of the quantum wave into a single possibility.

Maybe that would suggest intelligent life emerging may not be so random then?

More on Amit Goswami here: http://twm.co.nz/goswam1.htm

A really cool site on man's evolution is here:
http://www.abouthumanevolution.org/html/site/intro.htm