Alternate Rationalities Part III

If we follow a thread from the non-rational to our emotional rationality the next step may well be the rational intelligence of bacteria. A few months back All in the Mind aired a fascinating program on the intelligence of bacteria. If we work with the notion that that "being reasonable" is like singing in tune with who you are and what the universe is like, then this program would seem to suggest that bacteria are very reasonable and perhaps even rational creatures.

myxococcus xanthus "the primate of the bacterial world".

One of the more astounding ideas that comes up in this program is the notion that certain bacteria can process 1 000 000 000 bits of information per second. This is probably one of the facts that leads Jeffry Stock, a molecular biologist to quote Koshland who says "that there's no question that bacteria are the most intelligent organisms on earth, at least on a per gram weight basis". Stock also says that "the real question is why they wouldn't be the most sophisticated intelligent organism on earth because they've been around a lot longer than animals, and they have evolved extremely rapidly, and they are very, very competitive with one another. So why wouldn't they be as intelligent as an organism could possibly be? There's an incredible selection pressure for intelligence." Download the audio here (you may need to right click and "save link as..." from the fly-out menu on this one).