Customer Reviews

Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry into Knowledge

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In this immensely readable, fascinating book anthropologist author Jeremy Narby explodes the myth that 'the lower animal, insects, organisms' do not possess intelligence. Whether or not the reader subscribes to all of Narby's findings and postulates really doesn't matter. What DOES matter is the fact that this bright gentlemen has opened windows into the concept of 'knowledge', that knowledge is not the property of man, that lower animal life and plant life demonstrate an economy of putting information together that allows them to survive and outwit their predators!

Some aspects of insect and animal behavior have been observed and then relegated to Darwinian survival of the fittest without pursuing it further: camouflage techniques, heightened sense of smell, night vision are easy categories to assign as 'traits'. Narby enters the world of shaman and shares how trances induced by varied means give the shaman the ability to communicate with organisms, understanding their innate intelligence.

But the real joy of reading this treatise is the manner in which Narby relates his information. No 'from the pulpit' technique here, instead this is a conversational, open minded, keenly observant and intelligent man who encourages us to be more aware of the fellow nature creatures around us, giving them the respect that is their due. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, February 06

Readers of Jeremy Narby's first book, The Cosmic Serpent, might wonder as I did, after reading Intelligence in Nature, why he wrote this latest book. They might also wonder what happened to the spirit of personal discovery that was so present in his previous work. Where Cosmic Serpent fairly rings with the kind of unbridled enthusiasm that comes with uncovering splendid mysteries, Intelligence in Nature reads more like a transcription from the Discovery channel.

Narby's search for intelligence in nature takes us into the biology labs of a select group of scientists around the world who are trying to identify humanlike intelligence within the plant and animal life of the natural world. From the Peruvian Amazon to Japan, we meet scientists whose investigations are undoubtedly fascinating. But Narby's inquiry begins and ends with large questions hanging in the air. We learn interesting things about how slime mold, for example, appears to make decisions, or how certain tropical birds ingest clay to prevent disease in much the same way that we use antibiotics. But then what? Why is intelligence in nature such a puzzling question to science when it seems so obvious to anyone who regularly walks in the woods with a curious and observant eye? And why should it be left to mainstream science to decree the existence of something for which scientists themselves can reach no defining consensus?

Narby asks good questions in this book but he doesn't go very far with them. His tentativeness in the company of scientists is curious given the open-minded enthusiasm he brought to his experiences with shamans in the Peruvian Amazon, which he first wrote about in The Cosmic Serpent. There, far from his academic and cultural roots, he eagerly pushed the edge of conventional knowledge. Describing his experience with ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic healing plant of the Amazonian basin, Narby made a symbolic connection between the double-helix imagery of DNA and what the shamans described as the "language twisting-twisting" experience of ritualistically altered consciousness. Through their profound knowledge of the natural world, the shamans revealed a larger intelligence governing all life. Narby's experience and subsequent description of this revelation was truly inspiring.

But it's possible that The Cosmic Serpent was more than Western science could handle, which may be one reason why Intelligence in Nature is so tentative and inconclusive. Once bitten, twice shy, perhaps. In 1997, following publication of The Cosmic Serpent, Harvard biophysicist Jacques Dubochet roundly criticized Narby for insufficiently testing his hypothesis about DNA and universal intelligence. Accusing Narby of "blindly charging down the wrong path," Dubochet made it clear that in his opinion Narby had succumbed to the least responsible path of science.

But it was never meant to be a formal scientific inquiry. Jeremy Narby is an anthropologist, not a scientist, and his intent clearly was to use his own experience to inspire us to think more deeply about our intelligence and what our potential could be. Subjective experience is not admissible to established scientific methodology, which is fine for science. But for the rest of us, personal experience is the only real knowledge there is. That's where Jeremy Narby is strongest, and where he can be an inspiration for all of us. He's done it once, he can do it again.

- Swami Gopalananda
ascent magazine, Issue 27

I found this book to be refreshing and intriguing. It is a very pleasurable and at once, thought-provoking book to read. I highly recommend this book for its narrative approach, its well-considered thoughts and precious interviews with scientists that he has the privilege of interviewing, whereas most of us will not be traveling to Japan to discuss the sense-data of butterflies. This is much like having a well-read anthroplogy student or professor over for tea. He intuits what you would most like to ask, extensively footnotes his research and has given us the best of what leading journals like Nature have to tell us about the conciousness of other life forms. He does not inundate the reader with esoteric vocabulary and acurately and succinctly describes scietific concepts. In conclusion, while I have yet to peruse the endnotes for my next book on the subject, and I value being able to, I was so sad that those extra pages at the end weren't another chapter of Narby's writings on the subject.

Be prepared. As with his previous "The Cosmic Serpent" Jeremy Narby's latest work requires from the readers the unwillingness to question many of the most basic assumptions of our culture.
"Intelligence in Nature" is the work of a visionary - not of the cheap and bland type of futurologist our technoculture is so good in creating. This book re-instates Narby as a visionary in the best sense of the word. His scientifically trained anthropological gaze is, thankfully, still untamed enough to place itself outside both the usual frontiers of our institutional academic research and the comfortable safety of our socially acquired common sense.
In "Intelligence in Nature" his account of our efforts to understand and cope with the present challenges of our life amidst a multitude of other sentient life forms is built from the stand point of a consciousness that has actually been there - on "the other side" of our arbitrary cultural, existential and psychological boundaries. Having experienced first hand the meaningfulness and uniqueness of the abundant life that envelops our own restricted and partial understanding of nature Narby - as the shamans he has once learned from - is again in an ideal position to guide us through the path toward plenitude he has been gradually building with his works.
Following the best anthropological tradition Narby goes out yet again to do his field work. It is only that this time the field includes not only the rich landscapes of the Peruvian Amazon inhabited and acted upon by shamans and parrots, the French-Swiss border where the Jura Mountains are criss-crossed by purposeful scientists and earthworms or the old Estonian farm where a herbal healer and her "talking" plants share their knowledge in front of a welcoming fireplace. Now the field also encompasses a myriad of scientists and laboratories working relentlessly in France, Japan, Scotland, Switzerland and elsewhere. Speaking from within our hard sciences' core production plants such subjects are given the chance of enunciating questions and answers that might eventually lead us forward in the direction of a knowledge more fine-tuned to the realities already present within the cultures of other peoples and life forms. The result is a rich picture of knowledge seeking wisdom, not necessarily power.

Apart from the vast and exciting information the author is capable of unleashing into our wider pool of knowledge and practices the book also excels in showing the cultural realities that frame the production of truth within what we call the hard sciences. In this sense "Intelligence in Nature" resonates with the work of Bruno Latour. While Latour has brilliantly exposed the artefacts that allowed the western thought to completely detach science from life - placing the former out of and above the reach of the latter - Narby gives visibility to some efforts within specific branches of contemporary life sciences which are strongly pressing for a revision of our mechanistic and behaviourist accounts of both nature and life. In this trajectory Narby is led to confront the works of some of the pillars of modern science like Descartes and Darwin.
Specially encouraging is his finding that working from a slightly different cultural perspective - since there seems to be more to the Japanese word "Chi-Sei" than what our almost equivalent "intelligence" can grasp - some scientists do already find it quite amazing the western difficulty in acknowledging that we humans are not alone and when it comes to intentionally intervene and act upon nature.
In "The Cosmic Serpent" Narby managed to portray the effectiveness and truth of the knowledge produced by the convergence and undisociability of man and nature in the shamanistic practices in the amazon basin. In this "Intelligence in Nature" Narby brings his inquisitive nature back home only to find he is not alone.
In spite of Narby claims to be "no scientist", this book is simply science made live and meaningful. Wisely protecting his work from shallow criticisms that will most likely attempt to cover the blinding truth with the veil of cheap and rusty "scientificism" Narby does not expect his readers to be fooled. And that's fair.
To pretend we believe in his humble plead for innocence is all the author is asking from us in order to justify our existence amongst the infinitude of knowledge producing biological, social and cultural entities here brought in to play. I would take his offer.

highly recommended. this is an easy read which makes several striking points. It is quite different than his previous book, the Cosmic Serpent which is a little more academic. But Narby captures the same essence here with objective examples from the most recent research on a variety of topics. very good, the only reason it is not a 5 is because it is fairly brief. I found the footnotes to be a regirgitation of the text. I was eager to read this book because his previous one was great. But Intelligence in Nature is more of a one-two punch than a 10 round bout. But it is a potent one-two, I'd say Tyson just a little bit after his prime.

I give this a four because this book didn't make me go a little crazy like Narby's last book. This is also a good thing. Narby asks questions and realizes that there aren't any concrete answers. It makes me look at my cat and think, "She's onto something with her animal ways." Narby presents a lot of research in a pretty understandable format and backs it all up with his sources- this is good. He also faces his critics, which is interesting. This is no "Cosmic Serpent"- but I expect this book was better received because it was low key. A very enjoyable read and I hope to see more works by him soon.

In his search for the answer to the intelligence in nature and in an attempt to disprove Descartes' dictum ("I think, therefore I am"), an anthropologist Jeremy Narby wrote this intriguing and an easy-to-read book, which outlined his journey. And, he also included endnotes, which do indeed make an interesting read.

Throughout the book, the two subjects that most intrigues me are the plant communications and transformation in butterflies. An interesting thing about plants is the fact from this book that they have "spirits" and those who were able to see them. And, with a cited research, it is an understanding that plants do communicate with one another. Yes, everyone have some thoughts or two about this phenomena but a scientific research showed this to be true is interesting. Also, the transformations of butterflies are quite a fascinating read.

It is not the journey of Narby that is just important here, but his cited research, evidences, and his conversations with noted individuals to discover this "communication" and "intelligence" in nature as well as between the living beings. This book brings an addition to my respect for the nature and for all beings and a new perspective of how nature works.

In "Intelligence in Nature" Jeremy Narby shares his journeys as he attempts to answer the question regarding whether or not there is truly intelligence in nature - Do animals have intelligence, or do they act purly on instincts alone? How about plant life, is there intelligence there?

Mr. Narby travels all over the world, to places like the Amazon, Japan, Tokyo, Great Britain, etc..., speaking with scientists & shamans alike - learning about, and sharing with us, the evidence & experiences related to this question about intelligence. What he finds is truly amazing! In the last decade or so, it appears that science is beginning to find out what shamans have said all along - that naure is intelligent, including animals, insects, plant life, and even uni-cellular organisms.

The author also discusses the benefits of science & shamanism coming together to learn from one another, as well as some of the problems encountered when attempting to answer questions dealing with intelligence, including the problem with using the word "intelligence", as it has become a "loaded word" in many countries, and the current scientific view that all things not human must by machine-like (although he also shows that this view is starting to change, with the abundance of research being contrary to this mechanistic view of nature).

Overall, I found this to be a thought provoking, interesting read. As such, I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the possibilities concerning intelligence in nature.

I read this book some time ago, but my fly-leaf notes are forever (one reason I don't borrow books), and I am catching up.

This book is extraordinary in every way possible, from well-developed presentation to eye-opening examples to a truly amazing bibliography that I enjoyed item by item.

Here are my notes, sorted to provide some coherence and appreciation.

1. The bottom line is that we have wasted 50 years since WWII when we could have been studying animal and plant cognition while also cultivating collective human intelligence. Instead we have been destroying nature, indigenous populations, and the very foundations of our complex Earth system of systems.

2. Although humans have the largest brains among the living species, and hence the most *potential*, we are NOT competitive with all others when it comes to sensing, sensibility, and harmonization with nature (both animal and plant.

3. Across the book I have notes on the excellence of the author's discussion of both the human brain's form and function, and the nature of plants and other animals as sensing, communication, foraging, fighting thinking beings.

4. Invertebrates *do* learn, the author discusses how science has erected false walls, to which I would add, one cannot understand what one cannot see [see 1491 for a fantastic description of how shaman's first saw the ships of Christopher Columbus).

5. Animals learn by wathching, bees have a very short lifespan adn are very fast learners, and I have a note: all this applies to how we might innovate in educating the five billion poor without needing to stuff them into classrooms (see Earth Intelligence Network for one concept, free cell phones and call centers that educate one cell call at a time).

6. The author, who has studied shamans in relation to nature in the past, places emphasis on the importance of indigenous knowledge, especially as articulated by shamans, and especially in relation to nature, pointing out that indigenous knowledge is ultimately validated by natural sciences.

7. Humans are a very young species with only 7,000 biological gneerations in comparison to other living things, but with a language skill that is the key to adaptation. The author is persuasive in his discussion of how animals and plants *do* communicate, and suggests that we should as a species be seeking to teach language skills to other species [as some have done so well with the gorilla community].

8. The author discusses the definition of intelligence, and what stays with me is that the root of the word is about choice, about making decisions, and that many other cultures define intelligence in ways that are distinct from our own, for example, emphasizing the ability to listen, to hear, to tell stories, to havea strong sense of ethics, etc. Further on in the book he refers to the 1974 definition by New Zealand philosopher and psychologist David Stenhouse, "adaptively variable behavior within the lifetime of the indivdiual."

9. Bees understanding abstract concepts and slime solving a maze both stay with me. Although I have enjoyed Howard Bloom's work, including his chapter on Group IQ in an edited work, this book goes a long way toward deepening my appreciation for non-human intelligence in the senses of sensing, sense-making, and social action.

10. Birds in the Amazon are documented as knowing the difference between natives working with scientists and natives working with hunters.

11. I note "Wisdom is intelligence in harmonization with the past and the present, collective intelligence." This is one of the books that has persuaded me that individuals can be smart, but only groups in the aggregate can be wise.

12. I have notes on rocks having souls, on sand beaches in the aggregate having a soul. That's a bit hard for me, but worth noting.

13. Killing nature also kills spirits and communications among distinct beings and communities, and I am reminded of Buckminster Fuller and his emphasis on being able to seek out all feedback loops, seeking to assure the integrity of each.

14. The Japanese get a great deal of credit in this book for pioneering the study of animals as inherently social and intelligence, and the author notes that the differences between Western and Eastern religions appear to faciliate Eastern science and retard (my word) Western science in this regard.

I have a final note: Integrity is where you start, intention is where you end. Integrity. Intention.

This is a SUPER book for anyone interested in exploring life.


Other books that I recommend in relation to this one:
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
The Lessons of History
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World

I feel that one must read 'the cosmic serpent', his previous book, to truly appreciate this work. However, having said that, this book is an excellent extension of his earlier thoughts and shows another angular viewpoint to the ultimate questions of life. I believe Narby is "on to something" with his work and I admire the heart and soul he gives to furthering our knowledge by gracefully pushing the envelope of the Western mindset. If one views Narby's work with an open mind, it will change the way one views the world and everything in it. "To live and learn, what else you want?"