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THE GENIUS WITHIN Discovering the Intelligence of Every Living Thing
If we're so smart, why are we still at the mercy of treacherous microorganisms? The Genius Discovering the Intelligence of Every Living Thing asks readers to let go of brain worship and look at the incredible problem-solving skills of viruses, ants, and other lowly creatures. Neurosurgeon Frank T. Vertosick Jr. seems an unlikely candidate to write a book celebrating noncerebral intelligence, but his knowledge helps him draw comparisons that others might miss. The fast-moving genetic intelligence of bacteria and immune systems might not match the precision of digital computers, but they have devised arms races much more complex--and deadly--than our comparatively paltry efforts. Vertosick's grasp of what it means to behave intelligently comes through clearly, even if he is as stumped as anyone trying to define the I word. Exploring parallels between neural networks, insect colonies, and our own brains, he finds common ground and shows that, as far as evolution is concerned, we're not so bright. It's not all bad, we're very good at what we do, and Vertosick hopes that we can learn to use our intelligence more wisely. --Rob Lightner
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First published June 5, 2002
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About the author
Frank T. Vertosick Jr.
6 books85 followersFrank T. Vertosick, Jr. is a neurosurgeon and is the author of three books: Why We Hurt, When the Air Hits Your Brain and Mind: A Unified Theory of Life and Intelligence which was previously published as: The Genius Within: Discovering the Intelligence of Every Living Thing.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 19, 2008
This book is one of the most amazing books I've ever read! I find I can learn more about philosophy through cellular intelligence then I ever could through the "wise" and "educated".
June 7, 2019
This is an excellent and fascinating book about intelligence and one that I highly recommend!
Frank Vertosick is a neurosurgeon who, in this book, combines his medical knowledge and experience with intensive research to come up with a radical new theory about intelligence.
Vertosick defines intelligence as “ the general ability to store past experiences and to use that acquired knowledge to solve future problems.” Starting from this definition, this book explores how intelligence works and his theory that ALL living things, from bacteria to humans, from invertebrates to vertebrates, have intelligence. Further, he postulates that we have a human brain chauvinistic bias that prevents us from seeing that not only do all living things have intelligence but that “the sum of a species’ genetic and non-genetic learning capacity is the same for all species on earth”. Needless to say this is a rather radical idea.
Just as a single drop of water is not aware that it is part of an ocean, a single neuron or bacterium is not aware of the larger world. However, once hundreds, thousands, millions, or billions of these collect together a network consciousness is created which has intelligence. Vertosick explains, in great detail, how networking works in bacteria, ants, and the human brain.
While this book deals with some very sophisticated scientific concepts and research studies, Vertosick does an excellent job of writing in a style that is geared to the scientist and non-scientist alike. As he explains, the purpose of this book is to reach the widest audience possible so that he can share his research and ideas for others to consider. While there are sections that may cause your brain to struggle, I believe that the basic concepts he is presenting (which he reviews and sums up at the end of most sections) are clear enough for most adult readers. He also includes some self-deprecating examples that helps the reader to relax and feel better about their own stumbles.
This book was originally published under the title The Genius Within: Discovering The Intelligence Of Every Living Thing in 2002 and republished under the new title in 2014. Therefore, while some of the research material may be a little out of date, I believe that the concepts and theories Vertosick proposes are as interesting and radical now as when first published. I enjoyed this book immensely, learned a tremendous amount about how living things evolve, and have a new slant on what it means to be intelligent.
Frank Vertosick is a neurosurgeon who, in this book, combines his medical knowledge and experience with intensive research to come up with a radical new theory about intelligence.
Vertosick defines intelligence as “ the general ability to store past experiences and to use that acquired knowledge to solve future problems.” Starting from this definition, this book explores how intelligence works and his theory that ALL living things, from bacteria to humans, from invertebrates to vertebrates, have intelligence. Further, he postulates that we have a human brain chauvinistic bias that prevents us from seeing that not only do all living things have intelligence but that “the sum of a species’ genetic and non-genetic learning capacity is the same for all species on earth”. Needless to say this is a rather radical idea.
Just as a single drop of water is not aware that it is part of an ocean, a single neuron or bacterium is not aware of the larger world. However, once hundreds, thousands, millions, or billions of these collect together a network consciousness is created which has intelligence. Vertosick explains, in great detail, how networking works in bacteria, ants, and the human brain.
While this book deals with some very sophisticated scientific concepts and research studies, Vertosick does an excellent job of writing in a style that is geared to the scientist and non-scientist alike. As he explains, the purpose of this book is to reach the widest audience possible so that he can share his research and ideas for others to consider. While there are sections that may cause your brain to struggle, I believe that the basic concepts he is presenting (which he reviews and sums up at the end of most sections) are clear enough for most adult readers. He also includes some self-deprecating examples that helps the reader to relax and feel better about their own stumbles.
This book was originally published under the title The Genius Within: Discovering The Intelligence Of Every Living Thing in 2002 and republished under the new title in 2014. Therefore, while some of the research material may be a little out of date, I believe that the concepts and theories Vertosick proposes are as interesting and radical now as when first published. I enjoyed this book immensely, learned a tremendous amount about how living things evolve, and have a new slant on what it means to be intelligent.
July 19, 2020
Eh... Overall okay...
The author practically asserts that all life, both individually and collectively, is a network(s). While he does not endorse the religious aspects of Gaianism, he does believe and describe the scientific side of superorganisms, a.k.a. what I would describe as self-adjusting networks.
I am a Christian and feel a little miffed every time he bashes on Intelligent Design often without pointing to exact evidence, but what else do you expect from a passionate atheist.
On the other hand, I did learn a bit more about how lymphocytes interact with each other in the immune system. It also had a couple other tidbits of modern science, but never went into too enough detail, unfortunately.
3/5 Wouldn't read again or suggest to another, but still learned some things.
The author practically asserts that all life, both individually and collectively, is a network(s). While he does not endorse the religious aspects of Gaianism, he does believe and describe the scientific side of superorganisms, a.k.a. what I would describe as self-adjusting networks.
I am a Christian and feel a little miffed every time he bashes on Intelligent Design often without pointing to exact evidence, but what else do you expect from a passionate atheist.
On the other hand, I did learn a bit more about how lymphocytes interact with each other in the immune system. It also had a couple other tidbits of modern science, but never went into too enough detail, unfortunately.
3/5 Wouldn't read again or suggest to another, but still learned some things.
August 4, 2018
Lots of interesting examples support the author’s assertion that life=intelligence, through networking, whether or not a brain or even DNA is present. The book loses a star for me because of his repetitiveness. At every step in his argument, he re-summarizes all his previous points. By the middle of the book, this already becomes very tedious.
July 20, 2020
An excellent overview of the concept of Mind
Sleepers Wake!
We have to break free from our reductionist paradigm and think hard about how on Earth we even think.
Vertosick goes a long way towards doing this. My only criticism is that he doesn’t get into the problem of Consciousness. But maybe that’s asking a little too much.
Sleepers Wake!
We have to break free from our reductionist paradigm and think hard about how on Earth we even think.
Vertosick goes a long way towards doing this. My only criticism is that he doesn’t get into the problem of Consciousness. But maybe that’s asking a little too much.
March 24, 2024
This is my favourite book about the brain I've read so far, mostly because it's not really about the brain, but about the generalized idea of intelligence, and the way it presents data really changed the way I think about what intelligence is and what it means to have it.
Which is the point of the book - up front, the author presents the idea of 'brain-chauvinism', the tendency of humans to think intelligence is 'what a brain does' and that without a brain, intelligence is lacking.
The book starts with three chapters about intelligences that are not human, that don't have brains - including the human immune system and single celled organisms. The author makes compelling cases that these are intelligence, just not in a way that would ever win a game of chess - but at the same time, pit a human intelligence at the problems that these are solving, and we would lose easily.
The next three chapters get deep into the idea of network intelligence. I could imagine this part might be challenging to follow if these ideas are new to you, but these are the same ideas that machine learning is driven on, and having studied that, I had the pre-requisite knowledge to help me make sense of the ideas. This section explains in details how anything that has neurons, weights between the neurons, and the ability to revise those weights, is capable of network learning. It goes into detail about different types of networks, how the human brain has a network of neurone, but how in previous examples, the immune system and cells were actually operating on exactly these ideas.
The point it makes that is really fascinating is how 'intelligence' happened at evolutionary speed before, but how the evolution of brains inside vertebrates allowed intelligence to happen at brand new time scales. At the same time, evolutionary intelligence is necessary for advanced animals to survive - hence why we have immune systems that still take advantage of that process. That may be the greatest accomplishment of our biology, merging these two very different intelligent systems together.
In the final three chapters, building on these ideas, the author digs into the idea of 'superorganisms', like an ant colony, where each ant may represent a neutes how if you view an ant colony over years, the colony itself goes through specific phases similar to an organism, where it behaves differently - a your, adolescent, and old age phase.
This is the kind of stuff I just love. Absolutely fascinating. The book then goes into currently unproven ideas that the author thinks are of interest, like Gaia theory, and how there may be some sort of overall planetary intelligence, but also there may not, and he explains the reasons for and against using the ideas built upon in this book.
Ultimately, this book introduced so many fascinating ideas and applied them in new ways. This is why I am coming to love reading science, the way that it causes you to view the whole world differently. And I specifically love science books that challenge the ideas of the limits of life and intelligence. This book somehow ties in everything from climate change to evolution in its theory of evolution, and it utterly fascinates me.
Absolutely worth reading. And for me I think I read this at the right time, where I've accumulated some related knowledge that helped me colour what the author was sharing, and have been vastly curious about this type of subject for some time.
I happened to find this by chance, it seems like this book is not very well known despite being 20 years old. I can see how it's fairly niche, but I definitely recommend it if the subject matter is of interest to you.
Which is the point of the book - up front, the author presents the idea of 'brain-chauvinism', the tendency of humans to think intelligence is 'what a brain does' and that without a brain, intelligence is lacking.
The book starts with three chapters about intelligences that are not human, that don't have brains - including the human immune system and single celled organisms. The author makes compelling cases that these are intelligence, just not in a way that would ever win a game of chess - but at the same time, pit a human intelligence at the problems that these are solving, and we would lose easily.
The next three chapters get deep into the idea of network intelligence. I could imagine this part might be challenging to follow if these ideas are new to you, but these are the same ideas that machine learning is driven on, and having studied that, I had the pre-requisite knowledge to help me make sense of the ideas. This section explains in details how anything that has neurons, weights between the neurons, and the ability to revise those weights, is capable of network learning. It goes into detail about different types of networks, how the human brain has a network of neurone, but how in previous examples, the immune system and cells were actually operating on exactly these ideas.
The point it makes that is really fascinating is how 'intelligence' happened at evolutionary speed before, but how the evolution of brains inside vertebrates allowed intelligence to happen at brand new time scales. At the same time, evolutionary intelligence is necessary for advanced animals to survive - hence why we have immune systems that still take advantage of that process. That may be the greatest accomplishment of our biology, merging these two very different intelligent systems together.
In the final three chapters, building on these ideas, the author digs into the idea of 'superorganisms', like an ant colony, where each ant may represent a neutes how if you view an ant colony over years, the colony itself goes through specific phases similar to an organism, where it behaves differently - a your, adolescent, and old age phase.
This is the kind of stuff I just love. Absolutely fascinating. The book then goes into currently unproven ideas that the author thinks are of interest, like Gaia theory, and how there may be some sort of overall planetary intelligence, but also there may not, and he explains the reasons for and against using the ideas built upon in this book.
Ultimately, this book introduced so many fascinating ideas and applied them in new ways. This is why I am coming to love reading science, the way that it causes you to view the whole world differently. And I specifically love science books that challenge the ideas of the limits of life and intelligence. This book somehow ties in everything from climate change to evolution in its theory of evolution, and it utterly fascinates me.
Absolutely worth reading. And for me I think I read this at the right time, where I've accumulated some related knowledge that helped me colour what the author was sharing, and have been vastly curious about this type of subject for some time.
I happened to find this by chance, it seems like this book is not very well known despite being 20 years old. I can see how it's fairly niche, but I definitely recommend it if the subject matter is of interest to you.
April 4, 2018
I read this book a long time ago. I dont really remember any specifics from the book. I just remember being amazed by it. I still have a copy so I guess I should read it again.
November 17, 2018
interesting, but very hard work at times.
July 20, 2014
This is not the usual book on the brain, I want to say this because I've read a lot of them and this does not belong to the popular genre; first of all because it is quite complex and while not giving things for granted, it is very thorough. It starts from the cellular genesis with excursus in the chemistry of the molecules before going to talk about axons and synapses, after which he dives into the theory of systems networks and at that point things get really difficult, even if the author in the final of the book admits he simplified everything to avoid shocking those who were not versed in the concepts of artificial intelligence, although this will attract the barbs of experts in the field. I do not think I understand everything perfectly, indeed, but this book is certainly a good news in the landscape of the millions of books that are currently sell about the brain and the intelligence.
Questo non é il solito libro sul cervello, ci tengo a dirlo perché ne ho letti tanti e questo non appartiene al genere divulgativo, prima di tutto perché é decisamente complesso e pur non dando cose per scontato, é molto approfondito. Si parte dalla genesi cellulare con excursus nella chimica delle molecole per arrivare a parlare degli assoni e delle sinapsi, dopo di che ci si tuffa nella teoria dei sistemi ed a quel punto le cose di fanno veramente difficili, anche se l'autore nel finale del libro ammette di aver semplificato il tutto per evitare di scioccare coloro che non erano addentro ai concetti dell'intelligenza artificiale, anche se questo gli attirerá gli strali degli esperti del campo. Non credo di aver capito tutto alla perfezione, anzi, ma comunque questo volume é di sicuro una bella novitá nel panoramo dei milioni di libri che attualmente stanno uscendo con argomento il cervello.
THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA FOR THE PREVIEW!
Questo non é il solito libro sul cervello, ci tengo a dirlo perché ne ho letti tanti e questo non appartiene al genere divulgativo, prima di tutto perché é decisamente complesso e pur non dando cose per scontato, é molto approfondito. Si parte dalla genesi cellulare con excursus nella chimica delle molecole per arrivare a parlare degli assoni e delle sinapsi, dopo di che ci si tuffa nella teoria dei sistemi ed a quel punto le cose di fanno veramente difficili, anche se l'autore nel finale del libro ammette di aver semplificato il tutto per evitare di scioccare coloro che non erano addentro ai concetti dell'intelligenza artificiale, anche se questo gli attirerá gli strali degli esperti del campo. Non credo di aver capito tutto alla perfezione, anzi, ma comunque questo volume é di sicuro una bella novitá nel panoramo dei milioni di libri che attualmente stanno uscendo con argomento il cervello.
THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA FOR THE PREVIEW!
May 11, 2009
I read this several years ago and put it down. The first chapters were fascinating and engaging, but it eventually gets bogged down in technical detail.
I recommend it to all, but if you are not a medical researcher, statistician, or math whiz, you will get lost like me. The good news is that this book is very informative and useful if you can just avoid getting bogged down in the technical verbiage.
I recommend it to all, but if you are not a medical researcher, statistician, or math whiz, you will get lost like me. The good news is that this book is very informative and useful if you can just avoid getting bogged down in the technical verbiage.
September 5, 2014
I loved the book. The author describes his theories with a clear and entertaining style. You might agree or not with a vision of a 'universal intelligence' based on network learning architecture (personally I find it quite an interesting theory) but nevertheless it brings some good food for thoughts.
December 8, 2021
Biology, brain chemistry, inmunology, network theory, AI, philosophy and questioning the status quo.
Defining what consciousness might be, how thinking might work, also focusing into the deeper machinery of cells, without loosing sight of the emergent behaviour of networks.
Science and food for thought. Pun intended. Must read.
Defining what consciousness might be, how thinking might work, also focusing into the deeper machinery of cells, without loosing sight of the emergent behaviour of networks.
Science and food for thought. Pun intended. Must read.
July 28, 2007
I always like reading about biology. I like his thesis that all living species have equal intelligence beacuse they're all still alive. But the author wasn't clever enough to hold my attention.
January 26, 2008
Changed the way I think of everything in the world. If you can get through the science without getting bogged down in the details, this book may just blow your mind.
Read
May 24, 2008Frank Vertosick is one of my favorite science writers. His books are fascinating.
Read
June 1, 2012Eeeeeeenteresting. Intelligence can stem from groups rather than individuals. Groups of brain cells, for instance. Groups of bacteria? Groups of other things?
January 17, 2015
I loved this book! The way the author broke down network theory was awesome!
December 29, 2018
I don't think I agree with anything in this book.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews