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Chapter 22 Five Other Properties of Intelligence 20) Intelligence appears to manifest a process of self- generating complexity as an inherent basic property. As a force in opposition to the entropic process, intelligence has resulted in the earth becoming more complex and richer in information. Intelligence seems to manifest an inherent, instinctual drive that produces a positive pressure, resulting in the evolution of most systems in the direction of increasing complexity. This principle is operating in life forms, stars, planets and galaxies as well. The entire universe appears to be in a continual process of evolving into a state of greater complexity. Ilya Prigogine, a Nobel Prize winner for chemistry in 1977, has recognized this phenomenon and developed his "Theory of Dissipative Structures" around it.1...He believes that open systems have a tendency to move forward toward a more highly organized state rather than backward toward a simpler state. He sees these more highly organized states as highly improbable on a basis of chance and without some type of organizing principle driving them in the direction of increasing complexity.2...Prigogine believes that open systems begin in a state of disorder, become unstable, and then enter a stage in which energy accumulates and structure develops through a series of fluctuations.3 He describes a fluctuation as representing a chance occurrence deviating from average behavior, which can either be smoothed out or under special circumstances can grow larger and become established. If a fluctuation reaches a critical size and becomes too great for the system to absorb, it will be forced to reorganize in an equifinal state of greater complexity.4...The system then manifests higher integration and connectedness along with greater energy flow-through. Each level of reorganization is more complex than the preceding one and becomes increasingly vulnerable to additional fluctuations and reordering. This process creates a condition for an accelerated evolutionary development, and would help explain the non-linear upward evolution of intelligence. Prigogine has developed mathematical formulas which attempt to show that the greater the complexity of the system, the more flexible it becomes in its ability to readapt to change and new circumstances.5 Louise Young also recognizes this natural tendency for self- organized wholes to form or regenerate when disturbed. She believes this process applies not only to living matter but to inorganic matter as well, including atomic structures, the earth, stars and galaxies.6...She states that, "Each self-organized unit possesses the innate tendency to preserve and extend its own existence, thus increasing the total amount of Form as measured in space and time.".7 There simply can be no question that the evolutionary process could not have occurred without some underlying force propelling it forward. Such a force is required to overcome the other natural tendency for the universe to undergo entropy. Without this opposing force the entropic process would preclude the formation of complex structures.
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