"Can Intelligence Survive? Looking at this nonclassical evolution of intelligence, one even begins to wonder whether it is such a small Law after all, even from the sun's point of view. Men create lakes and can level mountains; their atomic explosions have already shaken the whole earth's magnetic field; and they send out visible satellites and sensors that now range the solar system. Will the evolution of these powers of go on increasing? Or must it finally run down, was the sun does by the great Second Law? f we think about this problem in the light of the physical and biological regularities of behavior that we now know, it seems to me that we are led to a further rather surprising conclusion: There is no thermodynamic reason why evolution should ever stop. What evolution leads to is the larger and larger control of environment by the organisms, first by genetic natural selection; then, with the growth of societies and language, by cultural natural selection; and finally by brains. And once we pass a certain threshold of brains and intelligence we begin to know how to insulate ourselves against all sorts of environmental changes."
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Original Language: English
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Cited in: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Vol. 24, Nr. 8 1968. p. 40
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John R. Platt
John Rader Platt (March 25, 1918 – June 17, 1992) was an American physicist and biophysicist at the University of Chicago.
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