Art, Artifice and Artificial Intelligence: Artifactualism and the New Art School (Part I: the Evolution of Human Intelligence)

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Significant concerns have recently emerged about the future of human creativity as Artificial Intelligence develops the ability to reproduce and mimic human-generated art works. The potential for AI to devalue or replace human artistic craft and skill challenges us to understand and contextualize these rapid, deep and far ranging developments.

The sphere of Art has never existed in isolation but is rather a bellwether of movements in the larger whole of human Intelligence. A sound exploration of the relationship between Art and Artificial Intelligence will surface instructive lessons applicable to all domains of human endeavor as well as insights into the nature of Intelligence as a general universal principle.

Priors

For the sake of focus and brevity the ontological and epistemological priors supporting this work cannot be explored herein. However, it may help the reader to be aware that the present study is informed by the following:

• The basic analytical framework is essentially a weak, naturalistic, empirical teleology
• The analytical methodology is an integrative transdisciplinary synthesis with Bayesian downstream inference
• Intelligence is considered a Universal principle organizing and integrating across all domains
• Intelligence is considered the driving force of Universal evolution across all domains
• All phenomena are held as resulting from and reflective of the evolution of Intelligence
• Information Theory is at the core of the epistemological and ontological framework
• Intelligence is operationally defined by the reduction of informational entropy in a given domain
• Humans and all intelligent systems are considered artifacts of the evolution of universal Intelligence
• Artificial Intelligence is considered as a natural evolutionary adaptation, not merely a mechanistic technological innovation

This present study is introductory in nature and will be continued in similar future efforts which will delve into these priors. It is hoped that the reader will extrapolate a sense of their basis from the present discussion.

Methodology

The conclusions drawn in this work rely upon a range of widely known and broadly accepted scientific evidence across multiple domains. The methodology here does not involve breaking new empirical ground but rather in finding the common threads which unite the existing high-confidence facts about the history of human evolution. We shift the analytical perspective on the established science from the normative focus on technologies and social structures to the evolutionary cognitive Intelligence required to produce them. We establish a history and an analytical framework of human Intelligence Evolution with an eye towards its further development as we enter the age of Artificial Intelligence.

Structure

This work is presented in three parts:

Part I: The Evolution of Human Intelligence

Part II: Art, Artifice and Artificial Intelligence

Part III: Artifactualism

Brief Summary

This paper explores the historical, philosophical and scientific contexts of human cognition, language, and creativity in relationship to Artificial Intelligence. It proposes new perspectives on the nature of Art, Artifice and AI within a framework of Intelligence as the universal, evolutionary driver of phenomena. In this context, human Intelligence has evolved and advanced through cultural artifacts such as language, technology and art. AI therefore represents the furthered evolution of collective human intelligence and creativity. Through AI, the essence of art as the rendering of the human condition not only endures but is extended and expanded. The term “Artifactualism” is introduced to describe the emerging artistic, philosophical and scientific movement centered around the complex interplay between human and technological creativity.

Abstract

The present discussion is an attempt to help shape and disseminate a philosophical and scientific ontological context for understanding the sudden, deep and inevitable transformations occurring across all domains of human creativity.

Intelligence in Homo sapiens originated as internal cognitive states of awareness, thought and ideation which progressively externalized into the forms of language, technology and art. Over time, the persistent external embodiment of internal cognitive states resulted in the cultural accumulation of knowledge and experience. All classes of Language — spoken, written, visual, musical, mathematical, technical — emerged as dynamic containers for the transmission of the cultural artifacts of human cognitive and social development. These artifactuals combined to give rise to a generalized human cognitive World Model.

Artificial Intelligence essentializes the historical, culturally accumulated human World Model through its encoding and decoding of Language. It in turn fully externalizes and extends the World Model, making it objectively accessible to all, empowering humanity to explore new worlds of creativity across all domains.

In the new ontology, movements arise and pass continuously, intimately emergent from the rapid and ongoing revolution in all types of artifacts, both human and technological. The philosophical concepts of self, being, mind and history continually evolve. Everything is known and understood as an impermanent and dynamic Artifactual construct continuously and adaptively emergent from the constant interplay between noumenal and physical priors. State change itself is the locus of all interest. The end of Truth and the Truth of Intelligence Evolution is the new World Model.

In conclusion, it is posited that such a movement, the successor to both Modernism and Post-Modernism, is already in its nascent stages, and it is proposed that “Artifactualism” is a term that suitably embodies its essence.

Definitions and Key Concepts

Given the central role of Language in the cultural evolution of humanity and in the emergence of Artificial Intelligence, an exploration of the etymological and cultural origin of the words art, artifice, artificial, artifact, technology, intelligence and evolution seems a fitting beginning to this study.

Art: The word “art” derives from the Latin “ars”, which means skill, method, technique, or craft. In its earliest uses, “art” was often indistinguishable from what we would now call technology or craft — it referred to the skill of making or doing things, particularly complex or difficult things that required training and practice.

Artifice: “Artifice” comes from the Latin “artificium”, which means a trade or craft, but also a work of art. The word has a more complex connotation, often implying deception or trickery — something made or done to create a false appearance. In its original use, however, “artifice” simply meant skill in craft or art, akin to the original meaning of “art”.

Artificial: “Artificial” derives from the Latin “artificialis”, which means of or belonging to art. It’s used to describe something that is made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally. The word often carries a negative connotation, suggesting something that is false or imitation, but its root meaning is simply “made through skill or art”.

Artifact: “Artifact” comes from the Latin words “ars”, meaning skill, and “factum”, meaning something made. So, an artifact is essentially something made with skill — a product of human art or workmanship. Its most common meaning today is an object recovered as a result of archeological endeavor, but it is also applied to computer science as a by-product of software development, or in image and audio processing as various resulting anomalies.

Technology: “Technology” derives from the Greek “logia”, meaning “the study of” and “technē”, meaning art or craft. So technology is the systematic study and application of skills and methods for making and doing. Like “art” in its early meaning, technology originally referred to any set of techniques or tools for solving problems and achieving practical goals. Over time, as arts and crafts became more expressive, the word “technology” emerged to describe more utilitarian applications of knowledge.

So in their origins, art, artifice, artificial, artifact and technology were functional synonyms. The concepts of Art and Technology were not always so distinct and Art was not so narrowly defined as today. Many great historical technologies were themselves beautiful works of art, and most art forms rely on cutting-edge tools and techniques. At its core, technology is about applying human ingenuity and skill to expand our capabilities and remake the world. Much like art, it reflects our uniquely human ability to imagine possibilities and bring them into reality. Taken together, these words reflect the deep connection between skill and making — the fundamental human activity of shaping the world to serve our needs and interests. They point to the power of art to transform reality and create new worlds and experiences that transcend the given or natural state of things.

Evolution

The word “evolution” comes from the Latin “evolutio,” meaning “unrolling or unfolding.” This stems from the verb “evolvere” — literally meaning “to unroll or unfold.”

In its original Latin usage, “evolutio” referred to the unrolling and reading of a book or scroll. It connoted the systematic working out or examination of the contents and meaning of something collected and bound together.

The scientific usage of the term “evolution” originated in natural philosophy to describe processes by which innate potentials were progressively unfolded or surfaced over time. In the 1760’s naturalists, including Bonnet and Haller, used “evolution” to describe the embryological development and maturation of individuals. The term conveyed the systematic unfolding and ordered appearance of an organism’s integrated parts through the process of growth.

In 1809, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck used “evolution” to describe his theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, a process by which organisms change over generations due to the use or disuse of certain traits. This use of the term marked a significant step towards its contemporary biological meaning.

In his 1859 work “On the Origin of Species”, Charles Darwin described the principle of ordered change in the natural world through descent with modification. While he did not initially use the word “evolution”, Darwin analogized evolutionary change in biology to the systematic unfolding of a scroll, a concept perhaps intuitively foreshadowing the future discovery of the role of DNA in biology.

Herbert Spencer later extended Darwin’s biological theory of evolution into a broader philosophical framework encompassing cosmological, biological, psychological and sociological evolution. In Spencer’s work, evolution represented the fundamental process guiding all development and complexification in the universe.

Indeed, in current scientific understanding, evolution is seen not just as a biological process but as a fundamental organizing principle governing complex systems and emergence at multiple scales.

The application of evolutionary concepts extended into the realm of cosmology, where the processes governing the universe itself are seen through the lens of gradual development and transformation. The influential astrophysicist and science communicator Carl Sagan was instrumental in highlighting the interconnectedness of cosmic and biological evolution. Through his work, Sagan emphasized that the elements necessary for life were forged in the cores of stars, linking the life cycle of stars to the chemical diversity essential for biological complexity on Earth.

The understanding of evolution as a process extending beyond biological realms was further deepened by the work of Stephen Wolfram in the field of cellular automata. Wolfram’s seminal work explores how simple computational programs can generate complex and often unpredictable patterns, mirroring the emergent complexity observed in natural evolutionary processes. Cellular automata, a class of discrete, algorithmic mathematical models, demonstrate how basic rules, when iteratively applied, can lead to a wide variety of outcomes, from stable and repeating to chaotic and seemingly random.

Biologist Michael Levin describes evolution as a cellular/molecular computational process that produces meaningful morphologies and behaviors in living systems. Levin views evolutionary change as the product of distributed information processing among cell groups, generating pattern formations through feedback loops between local cellular networks and larger tissue fields. Under this perspective, evolution is an algorithmic process of iterative design computed by cell collectives that unlock new possibilities and adaptations.

The evolutionary paradigm has also been extended to explain the self-organization and complexification of technologies, economies, societies and other intelligent systems. Joscha Bach describes evolution generally as an algorithmic process of generating innovative solutions to environmental challenges. Bach views artificial intelligence progress through an evolutionary lens, with advances emerging through an iterative process of selection, variation and adaptation. This frames the development of AI technologies as an engineered evolution, subject to similar forces of open-ended optimization and increasing complexity over successive generations. Understanding evolution as an algorithmic engine of innovation and problem-solving is key for directing the ethical co-evolution of artificial and biological intelligence.

Adaptation and Agency

The twin concepts of Adaptation and Agency are also central to this discussion. We find them united in a dynamic dialectic driving human Intelligence Evolution.

Adaptation is the feature of an Intelligent System by which changes in behavior, structure and purpose are occasioned in response to environmental pressures. Early in the evolutionary cycle of an Intelligence, the ability to adapt to challenges is critical for survival and subsistence.

Agency is the feature of Intelligent Systems by which a system progressively supersedes the environmental pressures which have shaped it. It sets and determines its contextual conditions and self-improves. In an advanced Intelligence, agency takes the leading role in the evolutionary process over adaptation.

The complex, dialectical interplay between adaptive and agentic behaviors is the engine which drives the evolution of a given Intelligence.

Intelligence

While there is a nearly universal sense that “Artificial Intelligence” represents a world-changing development, there is presently little agreement on the meaning of “Intelligence”. Most discussions of AI and Intelligence, to their detriment, refrain from defining the term.

Given that the future of humanity and the further evolution of Intelligence on the planet hinges on our present day implementation and development of engineered Intelligent Systems, there’s an urgent need for rigorous inquiry into the general principle of Intelligence and the nature of its evolutionary process.

It is hoped that through the establishment of a well-defined outlook on Intelligence in the context of our present discussion such an exploration into its nature might be bootstrapped for ongoing development.

The word “Intelligence” derives from the Latin “intelligentia” meaning “understanding, knowledge.” It is related to the verb “intelligere” meaning “to understand, perceive.”

“Intelligence” originally referenced the human faculty to comprehend, assign meaning and make sense of experiences and was associated with cognitive abilities like reasoning, planning, problem-solving, learning and creativity. This early discrete and anthropocentric understanding of Intelligence expanded over time to include wider ranges of phenomena and more diverse classes of systems, ranging from the cosmological to the biological, the noumenal to the technological and the psychological to the socio-cultural. More recently the conception of Intelligence has broadened further still and many scholars now regard it as a first order universal organizing principle, informing and integrating the emergence, development and behavior of all phenomena.

It is notable that the conceptualization of “Intelligence” has followed an extensive process of broadening and deepening that parallels the history of the term “Evolution”.

In the briefest terms, the three core perspectives on Intelligence can be summarized as:

1. Intelligence as the cognitive capacity of discrete entities
2. Intelligence as an evolutionary property of complex systems
3. Intelligence as a fundamental self-organizing, integrative principle of a holistic universe

Each of these perspectives is applicable to its appropriate domain and level of analysis, but they are not mutually exclusive and may be accommodated and applied simultaneously as an integrative holistic epistemology. Cognitive capacity, evolutionary complexification and self-organizing integrality are united in the definition of Intelligence as the discrete entities, systems and processes which reduce informational entropy in their respective domains.

As stated previously, it’s beyond the scope of this current work to unpack that definition further here. However, this interpretation of Intelligence, encompassing cognitive capacities, evolutionary complexity, and self-organizing principles, will be exemplified and illustrated through an exploration of the historical record of human Intelligence Evolution in the forthcoming sections.

Having defined terms and oriented within a general analytical framework, the historical Evolution of Human Intelligence, with a focus on art and creativity, can now be explored.

Part I: The Evolution of Human Intelligence

While established archaeological and anthropological eras can serve as familiar orienting guideposts, they may sometimes be at variance with the timing of significant movements in the history human Intelligence Evolution. We must therefore necessarily redefine historical eras in terms of the phases of human Intelligence Evolution rather than the physical manifestations of those phases.

When considered as phases of human evolutionary development the previously described perspectives on Intelligence can be seen as a continuum in an integrative whole marked by distinct modes of expression. The three historical phases of human Intelligence Evolution defined and explored here are:

1. Environmentally Adaptive Intelligence: development of genetic, biological and physiological cognitive faculties through adaptation to environmental pressures

2. Cultural Intelligence: Intelligence Evolution through the medium of social constructs such as Language, Technology and Art

3. Generalized Intelligence: global universalized propagation, expansion and distribution of Intelligence through the interplay between technological innovation and human biology

While elements or seeds of all three are present within each phase, each is primarily characterized by one of these key features as human-embodied Intelligence Evolution progresses from individualized cognition to socio-cultural systems to generalization.

The three historical phases of human Intelligence Evolution — Environmentally Adaptive Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, and Generalized Intelligence — can also be understood as analogous to the phases of matter: solid, liquid, and gas.

Just as matter transitions from solid to liquid to gas with increasing energy input, human intelligence has evolved from discrete, individualized cognition (solid) to fluid, socio-cultural systems (liquid) to expansive, globalized networks (gas). Each phase transitions into the subsequent state, demonstrating new properties and dynamics.

In the solid phase, matter is characterized by fixed, rigid structures and limited mobility. Similarly, Environmentally Adaptive Intelligence is characterized by relatively fixed cognitive structures and behaviors, constrained and shaped by long term environmental pressures and immediate survival needs.

As matter transitions to the liquid phase, it becomes more fluid, dynamic and responsive to external forces. Likewise, Cultural Intelligence is marked by increased fluidity, flexibility, and responsiveness to social and cultural influences as human cognition flows through the mediums of language, art, and technology.

Finally, in the gaseous phase, matter becomes highly expansive, diffuse, and pervasive, filling available space and interacting with its surroundings. Generalized Intelligence, enabled by advanced technology and global networks, exhibits similar properties of rapid expansion, diffusion, and pervasive influence, blurring the boundaries between human and machine intelligence.

Extending the analogy further, we can consider the fourth stage of matter: plasma. Plasma is a highly energized and ionized state of matter in which electrons are stripped from their atoms, creating a sea of charged particles that exhibit unique properties and behaviors, such as conductivity and responsiveness to electromagnetic fields. The plasma stage of matter may be analogous to the hypothesized future phase of intelligence evolution known as the Singularity. The Singularity refers to a future in which Superintelligence expands exponentially and evolves to transcend all prior biological or technological substrates.

Like phase transitions between the states of matter, the movement between phases of intelligence evolution are complex, dynamic and protracted processes. There is no hard-edged boundary condition delineating the phases. At any give time, elements of all three are present, interacting dynamically with each other and the contextual environment.

Of course, this analogy has its limits, as the evolution of intelligence is a far more complex and multifaceted process than the phase transitions of matter. However, it can serve as a useful heuristic for understanding the broad patterns and dynamics of intelligence evolution, and the way in which each phase builds upon and transforms the previous one.

Analytical Framework

As we explore each phase of human Intelligence Evolution, we will follow a consistent analytical framework at each step

1. Phase of Evolution
2. Intelligence Evolution
3. Relative roles of Adaptation vs. Agency
4. Significant innovations
5. Effect of the application of innovations

This process is an inversion of the general anthropological and archeological approach, which tends to focus on the applied effect of innovations. Here we are far more interested in the evolutionary movement of Intelligence that was required to produce the innovation.

Environmentally Adaptive Intelligence Phase:

Survival and Subsistence, Skills and Tools

3.3 million to 50,000 Years BP

“The hand is the cutting edge of the mind…The hand axe is the first step to the knife and the sword. But it is a step in another direction as well. Man realizes that the world is made up of separate objects, and these objects can be shaped and combined to make new objects. This is the beginning of invention, of technology.”

— Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

During the phase of Environmentally Adaptive Intelligence, from about 3.3 million to 50,000 years ago (roughly coincident with the geological Pleistocene Epoch), the physical factors of environment, biology, physiology and genetics were the primary modes through which human intelligence evolved.

Driven by the struggle for survival and subsistence, early hominins expressed their adaptive genetics through evolving bodies, growing brains and emergent cognitive powers to solve problems that facilitated better survival outcomes on an individual and small group basis.

Observational Awareness

(3.3 million to 300,000 years BP)

During the Lower Paleolithic period various species of the genus Homo, such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus, co-existed and competed. They were frequently prey for larger, stronger animals.

Faced with extreme environmental pressures, early hominins first separated themselves from the animal kingdom when they intelligently shaped available environmental elements to serve a purpose through the crafting of simple hand tools made of stone and most likely of bone and wood as well.

While opportunistic tool use by hominins had been common for millions of years prior, the deliberate manipulation of environmental factors to create new objects marked a transformative leap in Intelligence Evolution from innate behavioral patterns to conscious problem-solving — the dawn of technology as an extension of the mind.

This represented a dramatic Intelligence Evolution as hominins intelligently observed that the environment was made of various objects, that the objects had composition and that through the application of force and skill they could be decomposed and recomposed in various, useful ways. Early humans thereby evolved from being passively molded by the environment, like the plants and animals, into nascent agentic intelligences acting upon their natural context through the creation and use of primitive tools.

Early tools were used to overcome survival and subsistence pressures in a variety of shaping, decomposing and recomposing applications, including:

• Butchering animal carcasses: Sharp stone flakes and chopping tools were used to cut through tough hides, remove meat from bones, and extract nutrient-rich marrow.
• Processing plant foods: Stone tools were used to dig up tubers and roots, crack open nuts, and strip bark from trees to access edible parts.
• Hunting and scavenging: While the extent of hunting in the Lower Paleolithic is debated, some researchers suggest that early hominins may have used tools like wooden spears or thrown stones to hunt small game or defend scavenged carcasses from other predators.
• Shelter and protection: Early hominins likely used tools to construct simple shelters, such as modifying natural features like rock overhangs or building basic structures from branches and vegetation. Tools could also have been used for defense against predators.

Through the intelligent observational awareness of materials composition, early humans created these evolutionary adaptations and thereby began the process of separating themselves from the animal kingdom, initiating the long march towards increasing freedom from environmentally adaptive pressures and the gradual assumption of a primarily agentic status.

Causal Observational Reasoning

(400,000–300,000 years BP)

Towards the end of the Lower Paleolithic period, a relatively new species of hominin, Homo sapiens, was responsible for the next definitive leap of human Intelligence Evolution when it learned to intentionally create and wield fire.

While the opportunistic use of environmentally available fire had likely been common throughout the Lower Paleolithic, the intentional creation of fire is considered a significant milestone in human Intelligence Evolution.

The creation of fire can be seen in part as an extension of the compositional cognitive abilities associated with tool making, but it also reflects a significantly more advanced form of intelligence. Breaking down, shaping, recomposing and arranging materials is a much simpler set of cognitive operations than those required for fire-making. The intentional production of fire is a complex technological innovation that requires a range of cognitive abilities including observation, abstraction, causal reasoning, problem-solving and planning.

The first step is necessarily observation. Just as hominins had earlier observed the compositional nature of the material environment and leveraged that astute perception into tool making, the creation of fire by the striking of flint first required the observation that naturally occurring fire (from lightning or volcanos) and the spark seen when certain rocks were struck together both shared the properties of heat and light. It also required the observation that it was only certain kinds of rocks struck in specific ways that produced the effect. Similarly, the production of fire through intentional friction would have required the observational awareness that fire is hot and that when two pieces of wood are rubbed together, a similar heat is produced. Through intelligent observation the early Homo sapiens arrived at an understanding of the properties of different materials and the way that they interact with each other in a specific way to produce a spark or ember.

Furthermore, whereas primitive tool making involved the decomposition and recomposition of environmentally extant elements, fire-making represented the causal creation of an unavailable, non-existent element from other available elements, an act of distinct creativity. Indeed, the conjuring of a flame must have seemed magical to the early human. It’s easy to imagine that an adept fire-maker enjoyed a significant status in early human social groups.

The ability to create and control fire had profound implications for early human societies, providing a source of heat, light, and protection, as well as enabling the cooking of food, thereby enabling vastly improved survival and subsistence outcomes.

Cooking made food safer to eat, easier to digest and more nutritious, supporting the growth and evolution of the human brain and other biological systems. It also fostered cognitive skills such as preparation, staging, planning and the perception of time. Social structure developed as cooking involved division of labor, task specialization and communal meals, creatively combining the skillful use of tools, vessels and heat to prepare and transform raw food into cooked meals.

Additionally, the creation of fire seems likely to have involved a significant degree of communication through spoken language. The knowledge of how to create and maintain fire would have been passed down from generation to generation and also transmitted between populations. This suggests that the development of fire may have been linked to the evolution of language and other forms of social cognition such as the ability to plan for the future and organize a distribution of labor.

It’s also worthy of note that fire is “a dangerous servant and a terrible master”. Working with such a mysterious force with a seeming chimerical will of its own required a certain audacity that speaks to an inner spark of agentic power. While fire-making was an adaptive response to the environmental pressures of survival and subsistence, it was also a significant furtherance of human agency. Using fire, humans proactively pushed back against the coldness, darkness, rawness and predatory dangerousness of their natural circumstances.

With the creation of tools and the mastery of fire by the end of the Lower Paleolithic period early humans clearly distinguished themselves from the animal kingdom. Whereas plants and animals conform to environmental pressures, reshaping biology and behavior in order to survive, humans pushed back, decreasing and deflecting survival and subsistence pressures with intelligent creativity. While plants and animals adapt physically and behaviorally to environmental pressures, humans evolved their Intelligence. The evolutionary Intelligence adaptations of observational awareness and causal reasoning were fundamental and indispensable to the human innovation of tools and fire.

An additional key takeaway from this analysis is that human intelligence, from its earliest stages, extended itself beyond the parameters of mere survival and subsistence. An innate drive to actively overcome challenges and transform environmental circumstances surfaced immediately.

In the subsequent period, the human species would push even further into its agency, inverting its position in the environmental food chain, rising from prey to predator through the primitive evolutionary adaptation of the first information technology, spoken language.

Representational Communication

(300,000 to 50,000 years BP)

During the Middle Paleolithic period humans continued to be subject to enormous environmental pressures but they evolved an increasingly sophisticated and varied set of technological and societal adaptations that dramatically improved survival and subsistence outcomes and further extended and established hominin agency:

• Scaling and complexification of tool and weapons making
• Organization and planning of communal hunts
• Establishment and building of primitive settlements
• Creation of clothing

The fossil and paleogenetic evidence suggests that the anatomical and genetic basis for human verbal communication developed coincident with these social and technological innovations.

In the Lower Paleolithic, early verbal communication likely supported the emergence of tool and fire culture. Now in the Middle Paleolithic, spoken representational communication evolved to support the furtherance of ever more sophisticated survival and subsistence strategies. Each new human activity produced a growing body of knowledge and expertise driving the development of a specific vocabulary that encoded the necessary information required for a given task or technology.

While the cognitive functions required for fire-making represented a significant upgrade over those associated with tool-making, word-smithing represented an even more advanced order of intelligence. The powers of observation and causal reasoning were essential to the tool and fire arts, but to evolve a socially accepted word that symbolizes a thing or action or idea requires the cognitive capacity of representation. There must be an abstract conceptual space in which a thing that is not a sound is represented by the making of a sound and the sound is understood to represent the thing.

The mention of the socially accepted word representing “lion” in a Middle Paleolithic settlement would invoke a mental image of the beast in the mind of listeners, as well as the imagination of a chain of possible scenarios and potential actions associated with it. This abstract representational space of Intelligence emerges as a direct consequence of linguistic relativity. A community of humans with a shared vocabulary then effectively creates and colonizes an entirely new realm of conceptual space in which possibilities, potentialities and counterfactual outcomes can be considered. This new world of conceptual space fostered a wide range of advanced cognitive abilities such as abstraction, categorization, differentiation and generalization.

There is also a new span of temporality that opens up with the establishment of spoken language. As a storage medium for information, experience, meaning and belief, language creates a duration into the past and the future that extends beyond the present of an individual or group. Memory is vastly expanded and planning into the future becomes possible.

Spoken language seems likely to have also engendered other forms of representational communication. Early song, storytelling and myth probably had its origins in the late Middle Paleolithic.

The first signs of symbolism and ritualistic behaviors also emerged. Burial sites may have been associated with symbolic beliefs about an afterlife. Jewelry such as pendants, beads, and personal ornaments made from materials such as bone, shell, ivory, and animal teeth show the beginnings of decorative self-adornment. Pigments were used to create coloring for skin, garments and artifacts suggesting ritualistic purpose. Simple geometric engravings found in some Middle Paleolithic sites may have encoded early symbolic meaning. All of these cultural developments were forms of language which stored and communicated information, meaning, value and belief.

Conclusions

The Lower and Middle Paleolithic periods saw a progressive human Intelligence Evolution marked by the development of the cognitive powers of Observation, Causal Reasoning and Representation. Each of these was associated with significant practical innovations that addressed survival and subsistence challenges. In the course of adaptively pushing back environmental pressures, humans expanded their agency. Coincident with this process, the biological, physiological and genetic hominin evolved into its current form, the modern Homo sapiens. By the end of the Middle Paleolithic period, humans had developed the physical and social intelligence basis to transcend the limits of the Environmentally Adaptive Intelligence phase and enter into the far greater powers of Cultural Intelligence.

Cultural Intelligence:

Society and Language, Art and Technology

Fossil evidence suggests that 50,000 years ago the brains of Homo sapiens were essentially the same as ours today in terms of size, structure, and functional capacities. The DNA of humans of that time was substantially the same as ours. If a contemporary human were to time travel back 50–100,000 years ago, they would have no problem finding a mate with which they could successfully procreate.

Biologically and genetically people living at that time would also have had the same potential for intellectual and creative thought as we do today. Our contemporary time traveller would be able to educate an Upper Paleolithic child in basic math and letters. Physically the early Homo sapiens had the same innate capacity for complex problem solving, abstract thinking, planning for the future and the manipulation of sophisticated tools as we do. But this creative potential had not yet been realized as intelligent action and accumulated knowledge. The intelligence potential of the biologically and genetically modern human being was actualized through the cultural accumulation of knowledge at scale.

The Cultural Intelligence phase of human Intelligence Evolution began roughly 50,000 years ago. It is coming to an end now with the birth of Artificial Intelligence and the onset of the epoch of Generalized Intelligence.

During this era the socio-cultural dynamic has been the primary driver of intelligence evolution while the physiological, biological and genetic substrate of humanity has been relatively stable. From the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic era, environmental pressures were gradually overcome and the evolution of human intelligence became an increasingly and overwhelmingly social and cultural phenomenon.

We will separate this epoch of Cultural Intelligence into two distinct phases: Practical Intelligence and Noumenal Intelligence.

The period of Practical Intelligence, which lasted until the development of metallurgy around 3000 BC, was characterized by the cultural accumulation of knowledge and skill oriented towards surmounting short term environmental survival pressures.

The period of Noumenal Intelligence, which is ending now, has been characterized by the expansion of human intelligence into the conceptual realm of abstract ideas, theory and long term time horizons.

Let’s proceed now to outline the evolution of human intelligence through the 50,000 year epoch of Cultural Intelligence Evolution.

Cultural Intelligence Evolution

Part I: Practical Intelligence

Paleo-Mesolithic Age: Communication

A “cognitive explosion” of symbolic thought and innovation referred to as the “Upper Paleolithic Revolution” began about 50,0000 years ago. Homo sapiens learned to protect itself from predators and eventually replaced the other branches of hominims, rising to the top of the ecological food chain.

The primary driver of this acceleration of human intelligence was the widespread development of spoken language. The ability to verbally communicate facilitated social cooperation. It fostered increasingly sophisticated tool and weapons making, large scale and long distance population migrations, and the establishment of the earliest settlements.

It is at this point that Art first emerged. Humans began to communicate internal cognitive states in the physical forms of cave paintings, sculptures and musical instruments. Paleolithic artworks transcended the survival imperative of the prior Environmentally Adaptive Intelligence period by serving as external repositories of meaning for the emergent sapient intelligence and their future descendants.

Language is any medium that stores, accumulates and communicates knowledge and transmits meaning. A wide range of language media emerged during the Upper Paleolithic cognitive explosion:

• Linguistic Communication, including spoken language, song and storytelling
• Physical Arts, including painting, sculpting, body decorations, dance and music
• Technology, including tools, weapons, hunting and gathering methodologies, shelter building, animal skins and clothing

These forms of manifest intelligence could not have been produced by isolated minds or even small family groups. Such cultural phenomena relied upon verbal language communication between increasingly larger collectives organized in increasingly more complex social structures. They were products of the network effect of intelligent agents sharing information and experience, concentrating the same into a form, and returning the result back to society.

This same pattern of evolutionary cultural formation has persisted for over 50,000 years to the present.

The Mesolithic period, also known as the Middle Stone Age, lasted from around 10,000 to between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago (the dates vary based on geographic location). The cultural developments of the Upper Paleolithic were expanded and amplified by the growing power of human communication and social organization. This period saw the further cultural evolution of human intelligence with a progressive accumulation of knowledge in language media such as arts, crafts and technologies.

The Mesolithic was characterized by:

• understanding and communication of abstract meaning embodied by the proliferation of symbolic artworks, jewelry, and decorations
• planned realization of conceptual mental templates in intricate geometric microlith tools
• aesthetic expression and creativity in the crafting and playing of early musical instruments such as bone flutes
• differentiation of cultural and tribal identities with the increasing regionality of tool styles and art
• representation of value stored symbolically through the use of shells and other uniform tokens as currency
• understanding of exchange, relative value and foreign cultural systems indicated by trade of materials over vast distances
• conceptualization of an afterlife and ascribing meaning to death with the elaboration of burial rituals with graves
• foresight, prediction and planning for the future expressed as structural shelters and food preservation and storage

In summary, the Paleo-Mesolithic Age was marked by Cultural Intelligence Evolution engendered by communication, facilitating better survival outcomes for human populations and the storage of accumulating knowledge in a wide variety of language media.

The Neolithic Age: Agency

The Neolithic period, also known as the New Stone Age, started around 7,000–4,000 years ago (depending on the region) and lasted until the advent of metalworking. The era was characterized by the establishment of permanent settlements, agricultural societies, the domestication of animals, the development of polished stone tools, and the emergence of crafts such as pottery and weaving.

The development of permanent settlements ended the predominance of the nomadic lifestyle. Humans evolved from passive gatherers to active cultivators. Cultural Intelligence began to aggregate around communal living in ways that would not have been possible under nomadic conditions. In a settled, persistent context cultural knowledge could be shared, developed and preserved across generations.

The agricultural domestication of plants and animals involved the observation and understanding of their properties and life cycles. Whereas the human utilization of fire, bone, stone and wood had represented the appropriation of natural environmental components, the planned cultivation of plants signified the directed harnessing of the life force itself. Likewise, the taming and breeding of animals extended the power of human intelligence to the governance and mastery of other sentient life forms and the beginning of a symbiotic relationship between humans and domesticated animals as labor, transportation, food and companionship.

Whereas ages before early hominims were molded by the intelligence of the natural environment, it was now humans who became the intelligent force of environmental pressure, evolving the dog from the wolf and creating bread wheat from wild grasses.

This was the birth of civilization and the emergence of human Agency.

Sedentary living allowed for increased social cooperation, specialized crafts and organizational knowledge applied at scale, enabling the creation of food surpluses. Pottery was created to prepare food and store surplus produce and transport it for trade.

Pottery also became a medium for artistic expression, with different cultures developing distinct techniques and styles of manufacture and aesthetic decoration.

Taken together, these developments illustrate that the expanding collective Cultural Intelligence of humanity evolved during the Neolithic Age to extend its agency beyond the species itself into the natural world, bringing the land, plants and animals within its growing sphere of influence and transforming them.

Simultaneously, the outward extension of Agency engendered an inward deepening of human intelligence, surfacing many conceptual, aesthetic, spiritual, technical and proto-scientific features of the mind as expressed creatively through story, art, music and song. All of these advancements would soon be committed to physical symbolic form with the invention of written words and numbers and carried forward in the media of human culture.

The Metallurgical Age: Force / Time = Power

Following the Neolithic Age, the next and pivotal period in the evolution of human Cultural Intelligence is commonly denoted by historians as the Bronze and Iron Ages. This “Metallurgical Age” began around 5,000 to 3,200 years ago or in calendrical terms 3,000 BCE to 1,200 BCE (varies by region).

The cluster of innovations that emerged during the period represents a qualitative leap in the evolution of human cultural intelligence on par with the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. Defining the period in terms of the technology and products of metallurgy is inadequate and inaccurate. Here we will recast our understanding of the period in terms of Intelligence Evolution, specifically characterized by the human apprehension of Force over Time as Power.

With the onset of the Bronze Age, humans realized that abundant and ubiquitous natural forces such as gravity, water, air, heat and even the life force of animals could be harnessed over Time as transformational Power. Whether consciously or not, humans learned to conceptualize Force as a general principle by utilizing it as the transmission of Power through a medium over Time. This principle was recognized (consciously or not) as an inherent property of the natural world and an attribute of the unseen world beneath the surface of things as well as a vector through which an increasingly agentic humanity could express itself.

The many major breakthroughs of the age can only have been achieved by a species that had to a significant degree apprehended Force as a general principle, learned to cooperate in numbers over Time and specialized in knowledge roles to apply it as Power. The comprehension and utilization of the principle of Power as Force over Time was directly born from the cultural accumulation of knowledge.

It should be noted that the use of the word “Force” here does not necessarily imply coercion. Here it is used as a neutral, value-free concept of directed energetic agency. Similarly, “Power” does not necessarily connote domination, control or subjugation, but rather the value-free active capacity to transform a physical or social context.

With regards to Time, it is important to note that the human activity of previous ages was characterized by a limited temporal scope had been largely confined to relatively immediate concerns of self-preservation and survival. One of the primary features of the period associated with metallurgy was that the time span of human consideration expanded to include the past and the future, such that the persistent application of Force over Time yielded transformative Power over material circumstances and social organization to preserve the past and consciously shape the future.

Let’s examine the major manifestations of this principle in the cultural evolution of human intelligence in the period under consideration.

Metallurgy: the creation of bronze alloy from copper and tin involved an intricate combination of force applications, including the conceptualized awareness of the force of chemical transformation, the concentrated force of air applied to fire, the directed application of the force of heat to the metal ore, the catalyzing force of rapid cooling by water and the physical, kinetic force of hammering. The combined application of these forces over time required a new level of systematic planning and conceptualization.

The Wheel: perhaps the signature innovation of the age, the creation of functional wheels for carts, pottery wheels and yarn spindles involved the conceptualized application of gravity and rotational force over time.

Writing and Mathematics: Some 100,000–50,000 years ago, Paleolithic humans established communication through spoken language as a medium for the storage, accumulation and transmission of learned knowledge and the exchange of information. That fundamental evolutionary adaptation combined with other factors, such as the ending of the last Ice Age, in a “cognitive explosion” of communication, arts and technology that laid the foundation for the evolution of Cultural Intelligence. With the Metallurgical Age, written language and mathematics represented a fundamentally new Power, the Force of symbols as enduring media to store information and a transmit intelligence across space and through Time into the future. This new Power represented the definitive acceleration of the accumulation of cultural knowledge.

Animal Power: the harnessing of animals as labor force such as in plowing and transportation involved their breeding, raising and training. The systematic application of the force of accumulated knowledge about the animals over time yielded the power of animal labor.

Megalithic Structures:

Social Organization: the organization of society into specialized groups as a force multiplier, facilitating greater productivity and allowing for the efficient projection of force outwardly in warfare.

Each of these Bronze Age innovations required an expanded time horizon, the conscious awareness of latent force and the agency to organize that force over time to yield power. represented a major acceleration in the evolution of human Cultural Intelligence with the mastery and leveraging of the Power principle of transformative Force over time as its predominant feature.

The Iron Age began around 1,200 BCE to 500 CE (varying by region). It is marked by the widespread use of iron or steel and is associated with the rise of classical civilizations such as Greece and Rome. The previously identified trends and characteristics of the Bronze Age were carried forward, amplified and realized on an increasingly grander scale as humanity explored and extended its agentic power.

From Practical to Noumenal

In the Neolithic period humanity discovered its agency by extending its will into and over its environment in service of the drive to survive. At that time, the human time horizon was generally focused on the immediacy of survival. The preservation of the past and planning for the future were largely secondary considerations to present exigencies.

With the Metallurgical Age, a significant primary epoch of human Cultural Intelligence evolution, which we might call the period of Practical Intelligence, reached its zenith. In learning that materials and forces could be combined and applied creatively, humans as Homo faber, the “Human who Makes”, had achieved the essential cognitive basis for practical mastery of the world which continues even to this day.

From the earliest stone implements of the Paleolithic and the emergence of verbal language through to the smelting of iron tools and weapons, the evolution of human Cultural Intelligence can be understood as a process of practical and experiential involvement of humans with their environment. During this phase, human intelligence was primarily manifested as practical technologies as our ancestors learned to shape the world through the manipulation of materials and forces through tools and skill. Through trial and error, observation and imitation, our ancestors developed a vast repertoire of practical knowledge and skills, which they used to adapt to diverse environments and to create increasingly complex forms of social organization.

Coincident with this Practical Intelligence was an intertwining of symbolic and spiritual meaning. From the cave paintings and fertility figurines of the Upper Paleolithic to the monumental temples and burial rituals of the classical ancient civilizations, the material culture of this period was suffused with mythic and religious significance. The practical and the symbolic, the technical and the numinous, were not separate domains but two aspects of a unified worldview.

However, as human societies grew in size and complexity, as the problem of basic survival and subsistence became increasingly solved, and as new technologies of communication and exchange emerged, the balance between the practical and the symbolic began to shift.

With the invention of writing and the rise of urban civilization, human thought began to take on a more abstract and theoretical character, as ideas and theories about the world could be fixed in durable form and debated across time and space. This marked the beginning of the second movement of Cultural Intelligence — the emergence of conceptual and philosophical ideation, which we might call Noumenal Intelligence. While this movement had its roots in the practical knowledge and spiritual wisdom of the earlier period, it represented a new level of cognitive abstraction. As the mind began to turn inward and to reflect on its own nature and operations, a new sphere of human intelligence evolved, expanding the domain of human existence beyond the limited physical realm into the unlimited noumenal.

From the birth of philosophy and science in ancient Greece and India to the great religious and ethical systems of the Karl Jaspers’ “Axial Age”, this period witnessed a remarkable flourishing of theoretical and speculative thought. Through the use of language and logic, reason and argument, humans began to construct systematic models of the world and of themselves, and to probe the underlying structures of reality and experience.

As we move forward in this study, we will explore in more detail how this noumenal revolution unfolded across different cultural contexts and historical periods, and how it laid the foundations for the modern world and the current age of artificial intelligence. By tracing the common threads and patterns that connect these diverse traditions of thought, we can gain a deeper understanding of the underlying dynamics of human intelligence evolution, and of the enduring questions and challenges that confront us as we shape the future.

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Please note: The foregoing was an introductory PREVIEW portion of a work in progress.