D: It's not that scientists are looking for "intelligent" life because we think it's more important than "unintelligent" life. I imagine most biologists would be overjoyed at the discovery of _any_ extraterrestrial life at all. Thing is, "intelligent" life may turn out to be easier to locate, because (assuming their intelligence is like ours) they could be doing things like transmitting information on the radio spectrum, building Von Neumann probes and sending them out, detonating antimatter bombs and looking for intelligent life; things which are easier to spot from our position than, say, alien microbes floating in the atmosphere of a gas giant. Not to suggest that the microbes wouldn't be incredibly cool to take a look at, mind you.

Creationists who think themselves clever sometimes ask why, if evolution is true, we don't see bacteria re-evolving into multicellular organisms.

Ummm ... because there are already multicellular organisms filling that niche? Specialized ones? So no brand-new one could compete?

This insight, and the humility it brings, are worth remembering whenever we Homo sapiens are tempted to imagine ourselves the crowning glory of life on Earth.

Good thought. We can still count ourselves best amongst the planet with many measures, but there are many measures still that show otherwise. In general, most people are blind to this, preferring human-centric measures of our dominance and superiority. One thing I don't get about this article, though, is the opening quote from "Song of Myself." The original meaning had that Whitman, as a person, contained thoughts from many viewpoints even though he was one guy. In other words, he was a "dividual." The substitute in meaning for this article seems arbitrary.

The order in the world would say otherwise...

What order? All I see in nature is chaos - animals killing to live, earthquakes and high-velocity storms demolishing all forms of life, stars exploding in supernovas, meteors crashing into planets and much more! If there is anything in nature that could be contrued as "order" I don't see it...

Pattern and chaos are inextricably linked. Even within chaos there must be pockets of "order." The transient emergence of self-guided organization within disorder* is mathematically necessary under our conditions; and so here we are on planet Earth amidst the universe.

*Or the present results of initial disorder during the first moments of the Big Bang.

I'm not sure I agree. A particular mutation in an individual that inclines them to instinctively preserve other members of the species is perhaps less likely to propagate than one that improves their reproductive capacity directly, but that doesn't guarantee it won't. If it's not immediately beneficial but not actually detrimental either, it could still spread through a population - and if it were to spread through one isolated population of a species but not through another, over time that population would see a benefit and perhaps displace the other.

I wouldn't refer to evolution as having "goals", either, since it's an emergent process - call them "likely effects" or something.

There is no action humans have performed that has not already been eclipsed in Nature. Our finest art pales in comparison to the breathtaking vistas both on our planet and out in space. Both our life-giving goodness and raw destructive power are no match for even a single star. Our most vicious acts of genocide stand mute next to the mass extinctions shown in the fossil record. Our petty conflicts on this tiny rock are nothing to the colliding Antenna galaxies.

Crowning glory? Hardly. We've had a mixed run, at best, and many of the worst marks on our record have been caused specifically by this anthropocentric hubris, whether it has been voiced through religion, politics, or any other mindset that says we're somehow "better" than anything else around.

Strictly speaking, yes. But it's still a valid way of looking at things if you view competition (and cooperation), reproduction and evolution as the effort that *genes* make to survive and spread rather than the effort than organisms make, a la "The Ancestor's Tale".

"Fitness" really means the *species* survives, not the individual organism.

You're entirely wrong. There's no such thing as group selection. The closest you get is kin selection, which leads to things like eusociality (the technical term for how bees and ants live). What bees do is NOT group selection. Why? Because the workers share 75% of their DNA with one another and with the queen. Besides, species don't actually exist anywhere but inside our own heads. It's useful to group like organisms, but it's not like those organisms reproduce by our rules just because we've grouped them.

It's notable that K-type organisms tend to be far-travelers (i.e. whales, that migrate the entire length of the western hemisphere each year) whereas R-typers tend to stay in one place.

I also disagree with this statement. Insects can travel large distances, especially when aided by wind and water. Sea turtles also exhibit little care for their offspring yet migrate huge distances.

I seem to remember reading that termites actually produce a few of their own cellulases. But yes, they mainly rely on symbiotic bacteria.

"Fitness" really means the *species* survives, not the individual organism. If a person does not reproduce but contributes to the survival of others, then they've enhanced species fitness.

This part is a misunderstanding of evolutionary thinking. The closest ideas to that that have some acceptance among biologists are kin selection & group selection ideas.

Kin selection is the idea that if you help eg: your nieces & nephews survive, you are indirectly passing on your genes. Group selection is the idea that genes for helpfulness within the tribe will help the tribe in competition with other tribes & so those genes will persist & spread. Kin selection is well established. It is controversial whether group selection ever has any significant effect.

The notion of 'the good of the species' as a goal of evolution is wrong.