I have read about three different cell biologists that refer to cells as intelligent. One of those cell biologists further explains the usage of the word "intelligence". Intelligence in this case is not in any way being compared to human intelligence (though we do need to honor that our intelligence is a because our cells cooperate as a community). Rather, intelligence is being used in its most purest definition - that these cells make decisions. Even if that decision is binary, left or right, it's still a decision. It's still intelligence in it's most fundamental level. You can argue all you want, but it's my understanding that these biologists are using the term intelligence in a very fundamental way.


Anyways! Cells always blow my mind away!

Years ago I saw a video of living single cells in action, going about their business. It blew my mind away! Sure the cells still seemed dumb to me, but they were DOING things. And even at this most basic level you could see the interactions between plant and animal. The plant cells were drifting slowly, while the animal cells were zipping about, sometimes even stopping completely, to just swim back where it came from.

Years later my mind was blown ago thanks to TED.com when I learned that all bacteria speak, and that each species has it's own unique language. Why does bacteria need a language? What kind of messages are they saying? "Food this way"?? Suddenly the single celled bacterium looked more and more like a miniature animal.

Then I discovered the works of Elizabet Sahtouris, thanks to this forum. The materialist isn't going to like her work, but she offered such a fresh look on cellular life that its' never left my mind.

Elizabet Sahtouris suggests that the evolution of cellular life, is a microcosm of evolution in its entirety. That we only need to look at the history of cellular life to understand our own evolutionary future! And that cellular life is a lot more remarkable then we conventionally allow. I'm really terrible of paraphrasing. But basically cellular life reaches a critical point, akin to the world being nearly destroyed. Cellular life has to make a choice, continue the same old dog eats dog strategy and die, or take evolution on it's daring new step, cooperate. And organisms, complex cellular communities, are created.

Now evolution is no longer about the individual cell, but evolving the community!

After reading Elizabet, I was forever convinced that the key to evolution is cooperation, NOT the Darwinian of a dog eats dog world. When we take into consideration cellular evolution, COOPERATION actually by large is the most common type of ecosystem. And the testimony to the greatness of cooperation IS US! HUMAN KIND! Our body is akin to a world, a world with one common goal. The survival of this world, AKA the human body, is dependent on this massive cooperation AND uniqueness. We have so many different kinds of cells. Cooperation does not require conformity. Survival needs uniqueness.

I learned about fractals, and how nature is fractal, how space is fractal which would make time fractal. Elizabet and other biologists are now suggesting that because nature is fractal, so is evolution.

We can even look to our history and see this evolution being paralleled. We started out as primitive apes. Everyone had the same job - forage - survive. We formed small communities, different jobs were created, not unlike cellular specialization. Our communities merge and form more complex communities requiring some sort of system to keep our large community together. We needed to develop ways for one end of the community to communicate with the other end. That's what a central nervous system does. It tells cells in one part of the body what's happening in another part of the body. Traditionally we have given this role to government, right? We at least hope the government is going to tell us if a city else where is under attack.

No individual cell has the intelligence or the consciousness of the human mind.

But some how, something magical takes place when their efforts are pulled together and they multiply their talents. A thinking wonderful brain. Something that no cell alone could ever understand, fathom, or imagine.

Just like we humans have no idea what we will become when we pull our collective heads out of our asses and cooperate as a single human race. The evolution of the organism comes to a closing, and a new chapter of evolution begins. The more we learn about cells, the more we learn about past, present and future.