Intelligence in Nature - Jeremy Narby [59]
I also look at living beings with new eyes. Learning that plant cells send one another signals similar to those used by my own neurons, and that plants gauge the world around them and make appropriate decisions, has made me look at all plants, including weeds, with increased respect. And now I admire slime molds, appreciate nematodes, fear Salmonella, and respect cockroaches. And when I drive in the summertime and insects crash into the windshield, I know too much.
Now other species seem more human to me, and humans seem more natural. Recognizing that the capacity to know exists outside humanity leads to a richer, more adventurous, and more comfortable life. Instead of trampling blindly all over the planet, we can see that lifeâs prodigious powers are housed in all its denizens. Chi-sei forms a continuum across the living world.
There does seem to be one difference between contemporary humans and other species: we accumulate our knowledge outside ourselves in artifacts such as written texts. This greatly accelerates the transmission of knowledge, putting us on a learning curve shared by no other species. We acquire and transmit knowledge at an unprecedented rate. But this has given us dominance over most other species, which we are currently abusing by depleting nature at an unsustainable pace. We have yet to learn how to control our predatory nature.
Jaguars set an example on this count. They stand at the top of the Amazonian food chain yet lead discreet lives. As top predators in the rain forest, they can both swim and climb trees with ease; their prey ranges from fish, turtles, and caimans to rodents, deer, and monkeys. These versatile cats often kill their prey by piercing the skull with one swift bite. Their name comes from the Tupi-Guarani word yaguára, meaning âan animal that kills its prey with one bound.â Jaguars have no rivals besides humans, but they tend to hide. In fact, they move around with such stealth that biologists have difficulty studying them. These impeccable predators control their power.
Humanity can learn from nature. This requires coming to terms with the natural worldâs capacity to know. We are a young species, and we are just beginning to understand.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
P. 2: TESTING HYPOTHESES IS THE METHOD OF SCIENCE
Biophysicist Jacques Dubochet declared in 1997: âWhat bothers me in the case of Narby, is that his approach goes against what I try to teach my students and what I try to practice with rigor in our research. During the weekly meetings with the doctoral candidates who collaborate with my research, I always have to fight to get them to test their hypotheses. I tell them: âYou must set up the test that will destroy what you are trying to set up; you must always try to refute the hypothesis you have just made.â This is the famous scientific method, which puts hypotheses in question. This is a hard way to work, it advances only modestly, and it makes the rigor and difficulty of our profession. Here is an example of this from our current experiences in the laboratory. Our team studies knots in the DNA filament, and our work has led us to formulate an apparently fundamental idea for the mathematical theory of knots, according to which any knot can be precisely defined by the length of the shortest string which constitutes it. My colleague Stasiak put forward this hypothesis after we had studied four or five different DNA knots. Since then, we have had confirmation for his hypothesis with about fifteen other knots. From there, two paths were possible. We could continue to explore the consequences of this idea, which seemed very exciting; this might lead to a method for undoing any knot; or it might explain how some systems tend to self-organize themselves into a more orderly state; one can even imagine that this idea might explain