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As we approach the announcement of the 2024 Mary Mulvihill Award, Eoin Murphy investigates the science of this year’s theme, intelligence.
Intelligence. How do we define it? How do we measure it and who decides what type of intelligences are more important?
Despite our interest in this field stretching back thousands of years, it is only in recent decades that the technical ability and scientific willingness to accept the complexity of intelligence has allowed for the field to move forward.
Human intelligence
For all the great discoveries which have contributed to science, there has always been ‘bad actors’ that have used scientific findings to wrongfully support their beliefs. The science behind the field of intelligence is no different.
Charles Darwin’s 1859 publication, ‘On the Origin of Species’ is considered the foundation of evolutionary biology. However, Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton would take the findings of the book and unjustly use them as the basis for his eugenics programme.
Then when Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon created the world’s first IQ test in 1905, they had no way of knowing the sinister programmes for which the test would come to be used. Although the test had been designed as a mechanism for identifying students who may be better suited to alternative education, Galton saw an opportunity to use the test to champion his views.
After crossing the Atlantic, the IQ test was translated into English before becoming known as the Stanford-Binet test. At the time, American psychologist H H Goddard tried to use the test as justification for racial and ethnic discrimination. The consequences of this action are still seen today.
The popularity of the IQ test spread throughout the 20th century and then in 1994 a book arrived, which would bring the topic of IQ testing to centre stage. Authors of ‘The Bell Curve’ claimed that average IQ differences between racial and ethnic groups were partly genetic in origin.
Thankfully, the link between intelligence and race has since been discredited by mainstream science, with debate now shifting to the area of animal cognition and that of other living creatures.
Animal intelligence
In many ways, the racist views embedded into the studies of intelligence have slowed the advancement of our understanding of animal intelligence. The spread of Christianity and its differentiation between human and animal ensured that the concept of animal intelligence continued to be seen as unscientific right up to the 19th century.
Then, in 1871 another Darwin publication, ‘The Descent of Man’, concluded that humans shared a common ancestor with other great apes. This statement placed humans in the animal kingdom and shattered the belief that humans and animals were different. But it would take one observation to truly transform our understanding of animal behaviour and how we perceive animal intelligence.
While carrying out field research on chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, Jane Goodall observed a chimpanzee bend a twig, strip it of its leaves and use it to fish termites from their nest in a tree. This discovery challenged the view that only humans could make and use tools.
In the decades since Goodall’s observation, researchers have recorded intelligent behaviour right across the animal kingdom. Just this month, an orangutan in Indonesia was observed treating a facial wound with a biologically active plant.
Microbial intelligence
If we have been slow to accept the presence of intelligence across the animal kingdom, the idea that microbes can behave in an intelligent manner still remains controversial. Recent findings however suggest that bacteria living within biofilm communities can attract distant cells through the use of electrical signals.
In the case of fungi, we now know that fungi can trade with plants like a stock market, shifting their own resources to the side of the plants root bundle where resources were more scarce, thus being able to demand more from the plant in return for the fungi’s resources.
Plant intelligence
We could be forgiven for ignoring the possibility of microbial intelligence, due to the fact that the majority of microbes are invisible to the naked eye. The same however cannot be said for plants.
Our own evolution has been inextricably linked to that of plants. They have provided food, shelter and oxygen. As humans evolved, we came to use plants for medicine and clothes, before we finally domesticated plants and created agriculture.
Nowadays, we have become so disconnected from plants and the essential role they play in our lives that a name has been placed on the condition: plant blindness. Nevertheless, in recent years research groups around the world have made some remarkable discoveries in the area of plant intelligence.
Stefano Mancuso and colleagues demonstrated that when water was dropped onto the plant mimosa pudica, it responded by recoiling its leaves. If the stimulus was repeated, the plant learned that water was harmless and stopped recoiling, retaining the knowledge for weeks.
In 2017, the neuroscientist Greg Gage went further than Mancuso and claimed that the Venus flytrap could in fact count. During the same Ted Talk, Gage demonstrated that by hooking up the Venus flytrap to a Mimosa plant via electrical cables, he could induce the Mimosa to close, simply by touching the Venus flytap.
The studies to date of plant intelligence have divided scientists. The main point of contention is based on some wanting to introduce a new field of investigation known as ‘Plant neurobiology’.
Paco Calvo, the renowned cognitive scientist and philosopher of biology, believes the field needs to move past these differences. Speaking on the Brain Science Podcast in 2023 he posed the questions: “Why are we so obsessed with neuronal tissue? Why are neurons so special?”
Artificial intelligence
There is an irony in the fact that we as humans are hesitant to accept or even consider the presence of intelligence past our own species, when for the most part we have invited artificial intelligence so deeply into our lives.
Ever since Alan Turing’s 1936 paper ‘On Computable Numbers’ established the field of computer science, we have seen a steady but continuous move towards a world ever more reliant on technology. From Turing’s Bombe machine helping break the codes of the German enigma machine to the creation of supercomputers and chatbots, technology has continued to advance.
When in 1997, DeepBlue, a chess playing computer programme created by IBM defeated world champion Garry Kasparov, the potential of AI became even more apparent.
This century saw major advances in voice recognition technology leading to the creation of Siri and then Alexa. In recent years, AI technology has become almost omnipresent playing a crucial role in a whole host of areas such as transport, education, finance and even advertising. All of this without even considering the impact ChatGPT will have on our lives.
Many people have concerns about how AI will affect their privacy and ability to make informed decisions. But for as long as computer science and AI have been research fields, there have been fears around where the technology would lead us.
But could it be that AI might actually provide us with the means to go further than before in our understanding of the science behind intelligence? Not just human intelligence, but intelligence across all forms of life? Only time will tell.
By Eoin Murphy
Eoin Murphy is a biochemist, educator, science communicator and 2021 winner of the Mary Mulvihill Award.
The 2024 Mary Mulvihill Award and this year’s Science@Culture talk will take place on Thursday, 23 May 2024 at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies HQ. Tickets are free but limited.
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