Although it is far from obvious what intelligence actually is, a scientific and technological intelligence of the terrestrial kind requires several essential features, including an ability to stand erect and walk upright. It also involves an ability to alter behaviour and the environment in ways that do not depend upon natural evolutionary processes. This would include the ability to use hands, stand erect, manipulate the environment – not merely adapt to it – and use fire. No non-human has ever learned how to do anything with fire other than flee from it. Human technology has developed by means of the accumulation and manipulation of information and the ability to employ a concept of ‘improvement’ – that is, the ability to perceive or imagine a better way of solving a problem than the existing one. Technological intelligence is clearly dependent upon certain natural facts, such as easy availability of fuel, minerals and metals. Our history is bound up with periods described as the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. A planet where the metals are miles beneath its seas is not going to experience an Iron Age. Of course we can have intelligence without metals, such as the intelligence of dolphins, but this is not an intelligence that will invent radio telescopes. A scientific culture requires a lot of help from natural history. There is no chance of radio communication without metal, as electricity and magnetism would never be understood. That chain of research from Volta through Maxwell to Marconi would not be thinkable on a planet without easy access to metal. Life may proliferate without any possibility of achieving a technological intelligence. The sea floor temperature of 380ºC and pressure of 250 atmospheres represent conditions as severe as those found on the planet Venus, yet it supports living communities (Impey, 1995). Nevertheless, these conditions would not permit the development of more advanced species and technological intelligence.

Intelligence, however, need not be linked to technology, or even linked to the development of tools and means of manipulating the environment. We can have intelligence without technology. For example, dolphins as well as many primates display abilities for abstract reasoning. We can also have technology without intelligence. Insects perform engineering feats, but are said to lack intelligence and the capacity for abstract thought. Many human societies have remained for thousands of years at the same level of technology. Many cultures in the Amazon and Africa have little history of technological development. There is something extremely parochial about the attempt to tie intelligence to the scientific and technical culture of North America and Western Europe. It may be equally parochial to link it too closely with human natural history. Our sensory apparatus – the greatest asset in a technological culture – is not merely limited to a narrow audio and visual range; it is governed by internal representa- tions of the objects experienced, which vary in sophistication according to memories and imagination. Lacking similar internal representations, a species with similar sense organs to ours would be beyond our comprehension.

Earlier (see p. 91), Puccetti’s appeal to a principle of convergence was described as a limit to biological liberalism. Puccetti also applies this principle to all forms of intelligent life, and maintains that:

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intelligent extraterrestrials everywhere will resemble Homo sapiens to a considerable extent … it follows inescapably from the fact that here on Earth animals and plants have independently evolved not only similar structures, but also similar biochemical systems and similar behaviour patterns as solutions to the same fundamental problems.

(Puccetti, 1968: 96)

If this is the case, then does it mean that if there are intelligent extraterrestrials they must be human? Puccetti rejects this, pointing out that they would not be members of the same species, capable of potential reproduction, with duplication of the same genetic code. The chances of that happening, he says, is as remote as the possibility that they would speak English. But they would, he insists, resemble humans in major respects.

It might be noted in support of Puccetti’s contention that on Earth at least four distinct ‘hominid’ populations have evolved and  come into contact with each other as intelligent beings (ibid.: 98). And if there are distinct human types, then there is a likelihood of some form of technology, which has flourished in isolated cultures throughout human history. Similar problems  tackled with similar resources have yielded similar solutions. But what of a scientific technological intelligence? Is this subject to a principle of convergence? Or is the development of science a post-Renaissance European phenomenon? Puccetti argues that science exhibits convergent tendencies: its aim is control of the environment, and the speed at which modern science spread across the world indicates the peculiar survival power of technological intelligence, which suggests a universal value to science for any life-form that accepts it.

One of the main objections to SETI’s prediction that intelligence is likely to be widespread is based on the neo-Darwinist claim that evolution is not law-like and is not predictable. Consequently, the emergence of intelligence is a matter of chance. On these terms the series of chances which led to the evolution of human-type intelligence and its survival and eventual hegemony are  very unlikely to be repeated. Recently, however, this objection has been countered with an appeal to the phenomenon of self-organization which is a feature of chemistry, physics, economic systems and biology. According to Paul Davies (1995: 54), the development from simplicity to increasing complexity, from ‘microbes to mind’, is a law-like feature of all physical and organic systems. ‘Life and consciousness are typical products of physical complexity, a product of law and not chance’ (ibid.: 71). On these terms, biological self-organization, resulting in the emergence of life, and later intelligence, is likely to be widespread  in  similar parts of the universe. Thus given a similar pattern of law-like behaviour throughout the universe, and a tendency towards self-organized complexity, we can expect the emergence of extraterrestrial intelligence, but whether or not it is akin to ours will only be determined through contact.

It thus appears that the likelihood of widespread intelligent life throughout the universe depends on which model of evolutionary theory is adopted. The

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