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

HUMAN INTELLIGENCE 271

highly complex acoustic streams of speakers. As we know, they do this
with great fa cil i ty so long as a speaker is playing the game: vocalizing
with clarity and emphasis, anticipating diffi culties, and “scaff olding” the
experience for the learner.
Th e immediate result in all cases is a compound spatiotemporal struc-
ture, full of nonlinear feedforward and feedback loops among, not merely
within, brains. As with the dynamics of the ants, then, culture is a self-
organ izing structure. Th e great advantage is that such a dynamical cul-
ture is far more representative of complex environments than any one
brain alone could achieve and is far more adaptable to environmental and
social change. By the same token, the dynamics can generate well-
targeted, harmonious, responses far more quickly and creatively and can
refract them through individual participants.
Joanna Sänger and colleagues refer to these shared cultural structures
as “hyperbrain networks.” Th ey arise among and then modulate the
“within brain networks” of individuals.^15 Others have referred to a “super-
brain,” the “invisible social brain,” or a “distributed” social cognition.
Uri Hasson and colleagues put it as follows: “Cognition materializes in
an interpersonal space. Th e emergence of complex be hav iors requires
the coordination of actions among individuals according to a shared set
of rules.... Brain- to- brain coupling constrains and shapes the actions
of each individual in a social network, leading to complex joint be hav iors
that could not have emerged in isolation.”^16
Th is is what human culture is and where culture resides. It is not the
pale extension of ape mentality and social life but a whole new intelligent
system. As Gabora and Russon explain so well, “One does not accumu-
late ele ments of culture transmitted from others like items on a grocery
list but hones them into a unique tapestry of understanding, a worldview,
which... emerges through interactions among the parts.”^17

COOPERATION, DEMOCRACY, AND HISTORY

Here we may refl ect on these points a little by comparing and contrast-

ing human social intelligence with the social intelligence of ants, and fi sh

schools, and bird fl ocks. Th e ant brain exhibits relatively little plasticity.

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