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

POTENTIAL BETWEEN BRAINS 237

create the divisions of labor and their coordination. As Karen Visick and
Clay Fuqua put it, “Th e regulatory cascades involved in the response can
be staggeringly complex.”^1
In other words, the intelligence that emerges among cells, coaxing
diff erentiation and cooperation, is as dependent on environmental struc-
ture as any that evolved within cells. Th ere is no distinct executive or
supervisory agent. Individual cells do not bear a ge ne tic code for the form
of a fruiting body or for spore production. Th e pro cess is self- organ izing,
the eff ect emerging from interactions among the individual cells, them-
selves responding to a changing environment.
Such occasional sociality, of course, evolved into the permanent cooper-
ation of multicellularity. Th at entailed wider diff erentiation of cells together
with increased complexity of cell signaling and physiology. Th e upward
spiral in changeable environments eventually turned these multicellular
conglomerations into individuals that behave as one. And with that came
ner vous systems and brains and rudimentary cognitive systems.
Evolution thus laid the ground for another form of cooperation, at
a higher orga nizational level, to face even more challenging conditions.
Th is is the cooperation among behaving individuals, now through brains
and cognitive systems rather than quorum sensing and physiology
alone. Obviously, that turn of the spiral provided even greater scope for
individual variation in be hav ior, but only if those individuals could
be coordinated through an even more complex form of regulation. Let
us call that “epicognitive” regulation, meaning at a level above or beyond
the cognition of individuals. It is impor tant to ask: What is the nature of
that regulation? And what are its implications for understanding indi-
vidual diff erences?

SWARM INTELLIGENCE

Answers to those questions have been explored in social insects through

models and theories of what is now called “swarm intelligence.” Wikipedia

provides an in ter est ing defi nition: “[Swarm intelligence] is the collective

be hav ior of decentralized, self- organized systems... interacting locally

with one another and with their environment.... Th e agents follow very

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