Are Biological Nervous Systems Just the First Step in the Rise of Intelligence in the Universe?

Abstract

In 1950, any book that might have had a chapter with this unusual title would have been immediately declared as being the ramblings of a deranged author or an excerpt from a really bad science fiction novel. However, in the last few years, our scientists have now made a number of absolutely incredible and totally unexpected breakthroughs in several different fields of science that now makes a chapter title like this, while still strange for many of us, perhaps not so farfetched for some others among us. Our life scientists now tell us that the first living creatures were actually able to evolve on Earth circa 4 billion years ago almost as soon as our hostile world had cooled down sufficiently to allow water to exist on its surface. And even more startling is the discovery that, even today, the descendants of these first life forms (which our scientists now label as extremophiles or “lovers of extreme environments”) that can tolerate all kinds of hostile environments that would kill all the rest of us are still living and thriving anywhere on, under, or above our world that they choose as long as they have access to carbon atoms and water. Thus, life on our planet may be complex but it is definitely not always fragile, and it may be incredibly more adaptable than any of us would have believed possible just a few short years ago. And, since 1995 our astronomers have started telling us that other planetary systems may be common in our universe, and many of these exoplanets are not twins of Earth that might support carbon-based specimens like you and me but might be homes for life forms that are more similar to some of our own extremophile relatives.