Quote:
On 2002-05-08 20:45, Tim Thompson wrote:
Look at the debate between Ernst Mayr & Carl Sagan. Ernst Mayr is the dean of evolutionary biologists, and Carl Sagan was certainly the arch champion of SETI. But I think Sagan's overwhelming desire for intelligent life to be ubiquitous might have gotten the better of him. As Mayr points out, if (human-like) intelligence alone is a strong factor for natural selection to work on, then there should be more than one "intelligent" species, right here on Earth.
I think it's more appropriate to say that intelligence evolves to meet the needs. We see ourselves as "intelligent", when it might be more appropriate to see ourselves as "technological". The more we learn about intelligence in non-human animals, the more it seems that they have the intelligence they need. How does a California Sea Otter know that it can crack open crabs with rocks? It has the intelligence it needs to survive, that's how.
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I think many people fail to recognize intelligence in animals, thereby judging it to be rare when perhaps it is common. Intelligence is more than just knowing how to find food, etc. Animal intelligence is only beginning to be understood. Human brains are not that different from other primates. Marine mammals' brains are highly developed.
I once put candles out by some oatmeal to watch raccoons eat at a campground. They picked up the candles and turned them upside down to put them out. That had to be more than a learned response.
I am not familiar with the time frame of the debate you refer to. It might be that Mayr, at that time, had less evidence of intelligence in mammals than is available today. Also, I would have to guess that anything an evolutionary scientist wrote more than 5 or 10 years ago may not be valid without new evidence genetic research has provided since.
Evolution is more complex than simply the fittest surviving. Genetic research has opened huge doors into evolutionary models. Genetic change can be random, forced by climate change, forced by other environmental factors such as disease, and/or the result of being associated with some other survivable trait.
For example, a small percentage of Northern Europeans have a genetic mutation that provides resistance to HIV infection. It evolved in a population not exposed to HIV and has not appeared in Africa despite HIV being in humans there the longest.
My point is that intelligence doesn't have to be only that needed to survive. I think the evidence supports intelligence in animals on Earth as common, not rare.
We didn't think there was any life in our solar system beyond Earth. Life found at seafloor volcanic vents changed biologists view of the limits of life. Life is abundant in crustal rocks now that we're looking for it there.
Who knows what might be in Europa's oceans until we look. (Actually, I hope NASA gets with NOAA and tries listening first. NOAA has been detecting incredible sounds from unknown animals in the open ocean.) It may be that internal planetary heat can support much more than limited life. We know there are big tube worms, crabs and fish that feed off the lower life forms at ocean vents on Earth. But there may be higher life forms feeding off those organisms also. Larger animals might not be around all the time and might not have been observed yet. There isn't any biological barrier that I can think of which would prevent larger and smarter creatures from existing off of tube worms, crab meat and fish.
In medicine we say you can only diagnose what you know. It's a warning not to limit yourself to only the things you are familiar with.