2.1.13. No Intelligence in Biology it is just a Clock Works! Really?

Summary: The text discusses the mechanistic view of the natural world, comparing it to a clockwork without intentions or intelligence. It highlights the idea that if causes are mechanistic, then motives and purposes are irrelevant. The speaker is exploring this concept from a book on the history and philosophy of biology.

I was actually curious, what's the current understanding of intelligence in biology? Because my background in geography is a bit different. So I thought I will take a look. So I got this recent book. It's called Thinking About Life: The History and Philosophy of Biology and Other Sciences. So I'm going to read the whole quote. The main point here is that if causes are mechanistic, Then it is misleading to consider motives and purposes because there are no motives and no purposes. Events in natural world have no intentions behind them. In other words, the whole world is a big clock. This clock doesn't have any desires, any feelings or any intelligence. It simply works because, you know, it was made once like this or it happened to randomly came together like this. And because it's a clockwork, we can do whatever we want with it.