Genes, Brains, and Human Potential The Science and Ideology of Intelligence

INTELLIGENT DEVELOPMENT 163

being seated within the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions
from the sense organs, and directing the several movements.”^22
Richard Karban says something similar about physiology in his book,
Plant Sensing and Communication: “Plants communicate, signaling within
[themselves], eavesdropping on neighboring individuals, and exchang-
ing information with other organisms.” Th ey have adaptable responses,
he says, such that, if they happened at speeds humans understand, would
reveal them to be “brilliant at solving prob lems related to their exis-
tence.” Or, as an article in New Scientist (May 30, 2015) puts it: “Th ey are
subtle, aware, strategic beings whose lives involve an environmental sen-
sitivity very distant from the simple fl ower and seed factories of popu lar
imagination.”^23
Of course, we now know that physiological functions incorporate the
intelligent pro cesses of the cell, described in chapter 4, but integrated at
a higher level. As in the cells, that involves using genes as resources, not
as commands. As a result, physiology amplifi es and extends develop-
mental functions and becomes a new intelligent system— a new level of
intelligence. It achieves greater adaptability of living things by creating
wider variation in responses and response tendencies than the informa-
tion in genes alone could ever create. On a lifelong basis, physiological
pro cesses are constantly responding to numerous variables in the inter-
nal and external environments. Th us they create the major life transitions
(e.g., metamorphosis in reptiles and insects, or puberty in mammals).
And they constantly recalibrate the system as a whole to environmental
change.

Individual Differences in Physiology

Multicellular organisms evolved from single cells, but they needed phys-

iology to coordinate their cells. As we have seen, though, this was only

pos si ble with an intelligent physiological system based on dynamical

princi ples. So what does this tell us about the causes of individual diff er-

ences in physiology? Physiology is oft en assumed to be a good model for

a “biological” view of psychological intelligence and individual diff er-

ences in it. Th e founder of the IQ testing movement, Francis Galton, was

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