What is intelligence?
Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence, by James Bridle (2022, Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence, by Paco Calvo and Natalie Lawrence (2022, The Bridge Street Press)
As the poet and visionary William Blake wrote:
‘The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.
Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all.
But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.’
James Bridle (p. 16; 2022, Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
In the last bit of research I did for my final project, an exciting new way of looking at intelligence is proposed by James Bridle in his book, Ways of Being. He explains that much of the science of studying intelligence in non-human beings, has until recently been flawed by human-centric bias. By measuring other animals abilities to solve puzzles, scientists have wrongly measured intelligence according to human perceptions of how it should be defined. Instead, recent science is revealing that the ‘more-than-human’ have experiences of their own, unlike ours, and that for them, intelligence could mean something different that we can’t fully grasp, a wholly subjective experience of the world.
“To think against human exceptionalism requires us to think outside and beyond it, and to recognise in Blake’s vision the deep truth of his words: nature is imagination itself. In this truth is encapsulated the philosophy behind the phrase I used earlier: the more-than-human world.”
James Bridle (p. 17; 2022, Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
In Planta Sapiens, a book I have recently started, Paco Calvo reveals through studying plants, that he is able to demonstrate to the public that plants respond to anaesthesia and go to sleep, just like an animal or human would. He then posits the question, does that mean they are normally awake? He suggests that each plant has an individual experience of the world, as they can move to follow the sun, and even predict its position the following morning. Does this mean they are aware? If this is true of the smaller plants he studies, I wonder what it might mean for giant ancient trees. After all, in Suzanne Simard’s work I studied last year, the ground-breaking scientist who revealed that trees can communicate via underground mycorrhizal networks, if her science has only recently come to the fore, what else might we discover?
“We are so entrenched in the dogma of neuronal intelligence, brain-centric consciousness, that we find it difficult to imagine alternative kinds of internal experience.”
Paco Calvo, (p. 3; 2022, Bridge Street Press)
