Our words

The second thing I’ll note is what that intelligence is for : finding a way to survive. We sometimes use that word today to refer only to the meanest conditions of survival—that is, to survive but not to thrive—but I think that demeans the work of survival. The word comes from the Latin vīvere, that is to live, to be alive. To be alive in all our f... See more

“Everything is intelligent. When people say they can’t see it, they’re talking about academic intelligence. They assume what they’ve heard in school about IQ and human intelligence is what it is....[But that] academic achievement, that’s not about survival. What I’m talking about is not academic intelligence. It’s biological intelligence....Every o... See more