In the philosophy of science there is a segment, not so familiar, but with sufficient identity that it deserves the name: evolutionary epistemology (EE). One of the goals of EE is to explain how biological organisms understand their environment and respond to changes in it. In other words, how the biological organisms “know”.
The novelty that EE offers is the demolition of exclusivity. Intelligence is not only a human trait but a feature of all biological organisms from bacteria to whales. The exact number of biological species on the planet is unknown. One recent estimate suggests that about 9 million species currently inhabit the biosphere. This figure refers exclusively to non-microbial organisms. Estimates of the number of microbial species go up to a trillion!
Attributing intelligence to bacteria for example, may not satisfy cognitive puritans who believe in the primacy of human intelligence. But scientists such as a prominent microbiologist, James Shapiro, from the University of Chicago, are ready to risk their own reputation to defend the basic principles of EE. Professor Shapiro thinks that: “… bacteria are far more sophisticated than human beings at controlling complex operations.” In the same paper, Shapiro writes: “… our status as the only sentient beings on the planet is dissolving as we learn more about how smart even the smallest living cells can be.”
EE makes pragmatic steps forward, quietly but surely, thanks to persistent naturalists who do not pay much attention to scientific trends, nor to the philosophy of science. (“The philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds” Richard Feynman).
Befriending honeybees
When you look at another professor, Thomas Seeley and his research on honeybees, you are tempted to conclude that he is not trendy enough. Modern biology values disproportionately its molecular segment, which according to leading scientists is the key to understanding biological mechanisms useful for medicine, for example.
Unlike molecular biologists, Seeley is developing friendship with very smart living beings – the honeybees. His laboratory is the green field with lots of flowers. He uses simple, old-fashioned and cheap instruments for capturing, marking and monitoring honeybees. It is tempting to say this kind of work will never get him the reputation reserved for Nobel Prize winning molecular biologists.
Yet, the work of Seeley and his colleagues was awarded last year by one of the most important scientific institutions in America: AAAS. In short, the group of engineers noticed an analogy between how the honeybee colony distributes workers to collecting nectars from floral patches by listening to Professor Seeley’s radio talk, and how internet server capabilities are distributed according to the needs of individual websites. They contacted Seeley and after a serious mathematical work, the “honeybee algorithm” was born. Intelligence of the honeybee colony served as a source of innovation for solving the problem of human technology. The economic benefit that the “honeybee algorithm” brought to the internet hosting companies is estimated at around $ 10 billion!
There are other examples of intelligence from the EE repository that may be useful in solving our technological problems. I will try to identify some of them and present them on this blog. However, in the rest of the article I want to focus on one weakness of EE.
Plant intelligence
EE has at least two programs. One program is exclusively interested in cognitive processes ranging from those practiced by bacteria to the higher animal analogues. The formal name of the program is EEM or the Evolution of Epistemological Mechanisms. There is no unity within the EEM. There are disagreements between Neo-Darwinists, for example, and new sub-groups led by young scientists who are increasingly discovering the weaknesses of Neo-Darwinism.
The second EE program is interested in elements of human culture: how ideas and scientific theories developed in the light of the metaphor of evolutionary biology. The formal name of this program is EET or the Evolution of Epistemological Theories. A leading proponent of this programme was philosopher Karl Popper.
When the EEM principles are taken to the extreme, the consequence is that the whole evolution can be seen as a cognitive process. One of the consequences is the concept of microbial WWW and the Internet of Living Things described in an earlier article. If we accept for the moment the hypothesis that evolution is a cognitive process, it would be useful to sketch out a hierarchy of organisms on the basis of their representation in the biosphere so that we can get an idea which evolutionary cognitive forms dominates the biosphere.
Data in the scientific literature suggest that two groups of organisms dominate the planetary land: plants and microbes. Plants have the highest biomass on Earth’s land. If their biomass is presented as 100%, then microbes reach between 60% and 100% of plant biomass according to older estimates. However, more recent estimates suggest that the figure of the microbial biomass relative to the plant biomass may be lower than 60%.
Interestingly, the plant biomass exceeds the animal biomass 1,000 times. So, estimates unambiguously suggest that plants dominate the planetary land. Microbes follow behind them. All animals together do not exceed the threshold of 1% of the plant biomass equivalent. One botanist suggests that compared to plants, we only exist “in traces”.
Here we come to an interesting paradox. The expectation is that a group of organisms with the largest biomass, i.e. plants, will be recognized as a legitimate grouping within the EES program. However, the literature on which the EES is based mainly refers to people, animals, and sometimes microbes as practitioners of intelligent behaviour. Plants are ignored. Two prominent botanists, Stefano Mancuso and František Baluška, often emphasize this prejudice in their works. The roots of the prejudice are deep and present in everyday language. The term “vegetate”, for example, means to live passively as a plant. Passivity of vegetation does not associate with intelligent behavior. The prejudice is due to the fact that plants, in contrast to animals, do not possess the brain or at least the equivalent of a rudimentary nervous system. How to expect intelligent behavior from multicellular organisms without brain? Another prominent botanist, Anthony Trewavas, calls this prejudice “brain chauvinism”.
Mancuso, Baluška, Trewavas and other botanists patiently fight this prejudice. They are reminding us that Charles Darwin believed in plant intelligence. Namely, it is not widely known that Darwin thought that the equivalent of the plant brain is in the plant root. His book, The Power of Movement in Plants, contains the seed of a botanical hypothesis known as the root-brain hypothesis.
Let us hope that “brain chauvinism” will not stop us from recognising that plants are intelligent in a way different from us.
