Vital fluids, hydraulics and computers

I find it fascinating that books are being written about the future of life and intelligence. And yet, today, we don’t even have a shred of understanding of how to define life or intelligence—not even an understanding of why we haven’t yet found a way to characterize them.

This surreal situation reminds me of our ancestors a couple of centuries ago, who debated the workings of the brain in terms of hydraulics. Their ancestors, even earlier, imagined it in terms of vital fluids. And today, we speak of it in terms of computers.

We simply have no idea what we do not know.