Intelligence as Historical Entity

Ernst Mayr spent five decades arguing for the autonomy of biology from physics: not that physics is wrong about biological systems, but that biological entities have properties grounded in their specific, unrepeatable evolutionary histories that physical law cannot derive. A species is not a configuration of atoms that happens to be arranged in a particular way, the way a crystal is. A species is a lineage—a historical entity shaped by a unique, contingent sequence of selection events, environmental encounters, genetic drift, geographic isolation, and accidents that produced this particular outcome from the vast space of possible outcomes. Knowing the physics of DNA replication does not explain why the polar bear exists; explaining the polar bear requires telling a specific narrative about the divergence of ursid lineages, the glaciation of the Arctic, the selection for white fur and fat reserves across thousands of generations. The physics is constant; the history is not, and the history is the explanation. Intelligence