Two Professors from Boston, Walter B. Cannon, a physiologist at the Harvard Medical School, and Norbert Wiener, a mathematician at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were pioneers in the intellectual breakthrough that opened the door to a naturalistic explanation of purposeful life and intelligence. Cannon’s book The Wisdom of the Body published in 1932 and Weiner’s work in Cybernetics introduced the concepts of organization and control into the biological and social sciences.

Cybernetics and Information Theory became new engineering disciplines. Computer programs were created that could duplicate many feats of human intelligence and the possibility of intelligent machines was explored. Alan Turing found it appropriate to devise a test that could be used to distinguish between the reactions of a man and those of a machine. The mathematician John von Neuman wrote a book entitled The Computer and the Brain. W. Ross Ashby published a book entitled Design for a Brain. In a little book entitled Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology Valentino Braitenberg described a world of goal-directed mechanical devices that could develop the skills of optimistic prediction. Douglas Hofstadter wrote a Pulitzer prize winning book that carried the subtitle: A Metaphorical Fugue on Minds and Machines in the Spirit of Lewis Carroll.

For the first time scientists became aware of the possibility that life and intelligence might have evolved directly and naturally from the complex interactions of the forces of nature. For creationists this was the ultimate heresy but for twentieth century scientists, steeped in the rationalism of the eighteenth century, it was not a religious issue. It was merely another possibility in their search for the laws and designs in a world of natural laws.

The biologists turned to the practical task of looking for the origins of intelligence in primitive creatures. The stimulus-response models of animal behavior gave them a tool for examining the reactions of biological organisms and for developing “black box” models of their decisions. Their studies of the adaptive behavior of animals and of their nervous systems identified mental memory as the key to the development of intelligence. Although the details of the psychological mechanisms required for the creation of mental memories are still largely unknown, the biologists of the twentieth century developed a plausible story for the evolution of animal intelligence. It is, however, a story that changed dramatically when one social species developed symbolic languages. From that point on, the story of the evolution of intelligence became a story of the cultural evolution of the human species.

The biological story of evolution has only one theme: survival. The emergence of intelligence, however, gave some of the survivors the freedom to enjoy activities that were not essential for their survival. It opened up a new world of imagination and dreams: a new world that was rewarding but dangerous. Primitive man in his hunger for security and certainty gave his leaders the rights and responsibilities of “gods.” But his leaders weren’t gods. As mortals, they lacked omniscience and were often guided by self-serving and malicious motives. In the authoritarian civilizations that evolved these “ruler-gods” became a force for both good and evil. As surrogates for natural selection, they became the dictators of cultural and intellectual matters and often held the life and death of their followers in their hands.

Mythology, magic and religious beliefs are found in all primitive cultures and, until they are replaced by better ideas, they are our guides to the unknown. They are, in Bertrand Russell’s words, “comforting fairy tales” that explain the unknown and that add interest and purpose to the lives of the members of the society. There is no reason to question the truth or falsity of these fairy tales unless they lead to mistakes or to social problems, which unfortunately some of then do. By modern standards, beliefs that require human sacrifice or that make the earth the center of the solar system, for example, should be corrected. The third part of the book follows the story of the attempts to seek changes in top-down doctrines that led to bad science or to cruelty and oppression.

As the urbanization and the growth of the population weakened or destroyed the personal ties between individuals and their rulers, abuses of authority became serious and commonplace. At this stage of human history, foreign invaders controlled many territories and countries and used their authority to exploit and enslave the tribes they had conquered. The rulers, judges, tax collectors and soldiers were strangers from different tribes or nations. They wore different clothes, believed in different gods and often spoke different languages. Personal protests or appeals were pointless. Exploitation was a privilege of conquers and of the ruling classes. Jared Diamond has described these developments as a movement from egalitarianism to kleptocracy, i.e., to governments characterized by rampant greed and corruption. The Marxists described them as:

“...characterized by the growth of private property, by the division of society into classes, by the creation of the state which enables a part of the population to live on the produce of the other part, i.e., it is characterized by the exploitation of one individual by another.” *

In this environment the laws, the customs and ethnic perceptions of the conquers were applied to the conquered. Practical struggles were decided by political and military strength that buried the intellectual issues under religious authority. The rulers either claimed to be God or his chosen representative and, as military and political victors, they ruled the religious and intellectual debates. Dissent was heresy as well as treason. Those without political or military strength were helpless. The ties between the religious and political authority solidified the abuses that were inherent in the new class structure. The top-down doctrines of the entrenched elite became the doctrines of the church and state.

Ironically, the first stages of the battle for intellectual and political freedom had to be fought within the boundaries of religious doctrines Religious beliefs were, and are, so important for so many people that the concepts of political and intellectual freedom had to be approved by, or at least tolerated by, the dominate religious doctrine. Jesus of Nazareth set the stage for the long and difficult struggle for the religious recognition of intellectual and political freedom in the Western world by insisting on God’s concern for the poor and oppressed. His uniquely democratic view of God’s attitude toward man gave every individual an equal place in the eyes of God and denied the claims of the elite priests and rulers to the exclusive rights to the words of God. It was a revolutionary approach that armed the oppressed with the religious rights to resist the abuses of political and religious authorities.

The third part of the book traces that story. The struggles that led to the important advances were not about faith in God but about the right to speak for God. They took place within religious organizations and institutions and were most fruitful under the egalitarian doctrines of Christianity. The reformers were just as religious as the priests and rulers. Christ was just as religious as the Pharisees he scorned. Luther was just as religious as the Pope. The battle for intellectual and personal freedom led to the recognition of the dangers of placing too much authority in the hand of mere mortals and to the distinction between theology and reason.

A critical point in the evolution of i

Two Professors from Boston, Walter B. Cannon, a physiologist at the Harvard Medical School, and Norbert Wiener, a mathematician at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were pioneers in the intellectual breakthrough that opened the door to a naturalistic explanation of purposeful life and intelligence. Cannon’s book The Wisdom of the Body published in 1932 and Weiner’s work in Cybernetics introduced the concepts of organization and control into the biological and social sciences.

Cybernetics and Information Theory became new engineering disciplines. Computer programs were created that could duplicate many feats of human intelligence and the possibility of intelligent machines was explored. Alan Turing found it appropriate to devise a test that could be used to distinguish between the reactions of a man and those of a machine. The mathematician John von Neuman wrote a book entitled The Computer and the Brain. W. Ross Ashby published a book entitled Design for a Brain. In a little book entitled Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology Valentino Braitenberg described a world of goal-directed mechanical devices that could develop the skills of optimistic prediction. Douglas Hofstadter wrote a Pulitzer prize winning book that carried the subtitle: A Metaphorical Fugue on Minds and Machines in the Spirit of Lewis Carroll.

For the first time scientists became aware of the possibility that life and intelligence might have evolved directly and naturally from the complex interactions of the forces of nature. For creationists this was the ultimate heresy but for twentieth century scientists, steeped in the rationalism of the eighteenth century, it was not a religious issue. It was merely another possibility in their search for the laws and designs in a world of natural laws.

The biologists turned to the practical task of looking for the origins of intelligence in primitive creatures. The stimulus-response models of animal behavior gave them a tool for examining the reactions of biological organisms and for developing “black box” models of their decisions. Their studies of the adaptive behavior of animals and of their nervous systems identified mental memory as the key to the development of intelligence. Although the details of the psychological mechanisms required for the creation of mental memories are still largely unknown, the biologists of the twentieth century developed a plausible story for the evolution of animal intelligence. It is, however, a story that changed dramatically when one social species developed symbolic languages. From that point on, the story of the evolution of intelligence became a story of the cultural evolution of the human species.

The biological story of evolution has only one theme: survival. The emergence of intelligence, however, gave some of the survivors the freedom to enjoy activities that were not essential for their survival. It opened up a new world of imagination and dreams: a new world that was rewarding but dangerous. Primitive man in his hunger for security and certainty gave his leaders the rights and responsibilities of “gods.” But his leaders weren’t gods. As mortals, they lacked omniscience and were often guided by self-serving and malicious motives. In the authoritarian civilizations that evolved these “ruler-gods” became a force for both good and evil. As surrogates for natural selection, they became the dictators of cultural and intellectual matters and often held the life and death of their followers in their hands.

Mythology, magic and religious beliefs are found in all primitive cultures and, until they are replaced by better ideas, they are our guides to the unknown. They are, in Bertrand Russell’s words, “comforting fairy tales” that explain the unknown and that add interest and purpose to the lives of the members of the society. There is no reason to question the truth or falsity of these fairy tales unless they lead to mistakes or to social problems, which unfortunately some of then do. By modern standards, beliefs that require human sacrifice or that make the earth the center of the solar system, for example, should be corrected. The third part of the book follows the story of the attempts to seek changes in top-down doctrines that led to bad science or to cruelty and oppression.

As the urbanization and the growth of the population weakened or destroyed the personal ties between individuals and their rulers, abuses of authority became serious and commonplace. At this stage of human history, foreign invaders controlled many territories and countries and used their authority to exploit and enslave the tribes they had conquered. The rulers, judges, tax collectors and soldiers were strangers from different tribes or nations. They wore different clothes, believed in different gods and often spoke different languages. Personal protests or appeals were pointless. Exploitation was a privilege of conquers and of the ruling classes. Jared Diamond has described these developments as a movement from egalitarianism to kleptocracy, i.e., to governments characterized by rampant greed and corruption. The Marxists described them as:

“...characterized by the growth of private property, by the division of society into classes, by the creation of the state which enables a part of the population to live on the produce of the other part, i.e., it is characterized by the exploitation of one individual by another.” *

In this environment the laws, the customs and ethnic perceptions of the conquers were applied to the conquered. Practical struggles were decided by political and military strength that buried the intellectual issues under religious authority. The rulers either claimed to be God or his chosen representative and, as military and political victors, they ruled the religious and intellectual debates. Dissent was heresy as well as treason. Those without political or military strength were helpless. The ties between the religious and political authority solidified the abuses that were inherent in the new class structure. The top-down doctrines of the entrenched elite became the doctrines of the church and state.

Ironically, the first stages of the battle for intellectual and political freedom had to be fought within the boundaries of religious doctrines Religious beliefs were, and are, so important for so many people that the concepts of political and intellectual freedom had to be approved by, or at least tolerated by, the dominate religious doctrine. Jesus of Nazareth set the stage for the long and difficult struggle for the religious recognition of intellectual and political freedom in the Western world by insisting on God’s concern for the poor and oppressed. His uniquely democratic view of God’s attitude toward man gave every individual an equal place in the eyes of God and denied the claims of the elite priests and rulers to the exclusive rights to the words of God. It was a revolutionary approach that armed the oppressed with the religious rights to resist the abuses of political and religious authorities.

The third part of the book traces that story. The struggles that led to the important advances were not about faith in God but about the right to speak for God. They took place within religious organizations and institutions and were most fruitful under the egalitarian doctrines of Christianity. The reformers were just as religious as the priests and rulers. Christ was just as religious as the Pharisees he scorned. Luther was just as religious as the Pope. The battle for intellectual and personal freedom led to the recognition of the dangers of placing too much authority in the hand of mere mortals and to the distinction between theology and reason.

A critical point in the evolution of i