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Chapter 11 Continued Non-Linear Evolution of Intelligence (9) There will continue to be a further upward evolution of intelligence at a non-linear exponential rate. There is no clear reason for us to think that humankind is the end product of the evolutionary process. There are reasons to suspect that evolution of intelligence is continuing at the present time, although even non-linear evolution would be hard to perceive in just a few thousand years of recorded history. As time continues to pass, perhaps the upward evolution of intelligence will be easier to recognize, because as a non-linear process it will continue to increase. There are those behavioral scientists who would present arguments that because man himself has intervened into his own life process through cultural evolution, the selective pressures now favor the less intelligent individual, and because of this the average intelligence of man is now declining. George Gaylord Simpson has argued that if more intelligent parents have more children, then the population will become more intelligent and that the opposite will occur if less intelligent parents have more children. He would then maintain that it is possible, if not probable, that on average each new generation nowadays is mostly derived from the less intelligent members of the last generation. Because of this he believes that mankind as a whole, or at least a considerable segment, may be evolving in the direction of less intelligence.1...Although his logic would seem to have merit, there are many reasons why this does not appear to be in fact happening. Even if he is right for the moment, the evolutionary increase of intelligence, as it has occurred to the present time, need not necessarily have been an unbroken straight line of upward mobility. It may well have had its peaks and valleys. The Integrated Theory of Intelligence would advance the hypothesis that there will continue to be an upward evolution of intelligence in spite of these other selective pressures. It would be a very self-centered assumption on our part to conclude that man in his present form, particularly with regard to intelligence, is the final product of evolution. We have continually fallen into the same trap throughout our recorded history, believing in essence that the universe revolved around us in our present state of near-perfection. It has been recognized by a substantial number of scientists in various fields that the evolution of increasingly complex organisms has occurred non-linearly. The evolution of lifeforms began extremely slowly according to paleontologists. Prokaryotes, which are the simplest single-celled organisms in existence, have been dated back about three billion years, and for at least the next two billion years were the only lifeforms in existence. The first evidence of eukaryotic cells dates to about 600 million years ago, which represents the beginning of the Cambrian period.2...The appearance of eukaryocytes led to the beginning of an evolutionary explosion which has been accelerating forward ever since. Most of the major phyla of the invertebrate animals came into being over the next few million years.3...This was eventually followed by the appearance of vertebrates.
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