Emergence and historical connection

What persists is structurally coupled in this way to its environment. What exists as the current "core" is organised or integrated. Structurally coupled is a way of talking about the relationship between the organization of an entity and how it fits with the larger organization of its environment. For an entity to survive, this coupling must exist. That is, it must become part of a larger - and likely looser - organization.

We can begin to see the universe as connected by a history. A unique and important feature of that history is that it developed a structural coupling that may have evolved to something else over time but which existed from the beginning of its existence. We are connected by current structural coupling and by the historical basis for that coupling.

Alexander Pope and William Blake wrote exquisite poetry about this nature. Religions of the world and what we consider primitive belief systems provide rich ways of representing this phenomenon. The science of the day is discovering ways of speaking of the same phenomenon.

For an intelligence to exist, intelligence must already be there or co-emerge in the whole at the same time that it emerges in an individual or species. An intelligence with nothing intelligible doesn't make sense. The universe is intelligent - or organised in ways that an intelligence can comprehend - or intelligence would not emerge.

Intelligence as an individual phenomenon is also a matter of organization. It is not until the cells, neurons, etc. connect in ways which are beyond threshold points of linear control and simple processing that what we call intelligence appears. The organization of intelligence in a particular instance and the organization of the universe are structurally coupled.