Vien
JF-Expert Member
- Mar 6, 2020
- 8,508
- 15,276
Your argument is another misconception rooted in intellectual naivety: you confuse observation with imitation and inspiration with dependency.If human is intelligent, why does he need to study the nature first before designing something?
For example in aviation, man needed to study how do birds fly, before coming up with the idea of wings.
If man is intelligent, why can't he solve the ultimate mysteries of nature?
The fact that humans study nature does not prove intellectual weakness; it demonstrates epistemological sophistication. Intelligence is not the ability to create from absolute nothingness – that is an impossible standard you have invented. Intelligence is the capacity to observe reality, extract underlying principles, manipulate knowledge, and generate solutions beyond natural limitations.
A bird does not understand aerodynamics. It does not know lift, drag, air pressure, fluid dynamics, or the mathematical equations governing flight. It simply follows biological programming shaped by millions of years of evolution. Humans, however, studied flight and went beyond biological imitation by creating aircraft capable of carrying thousands of people across continents, flying faster than sound, and operating in environments no bird could survive.
You also commit the fallacy of anthropocentric absolutism by assuming that intelligence must mean possessing complete knowledge of the universe. No intelligent being claims omniscience. The ability to recognize unknowns is not a weakness; it is the foundation of scientific inquiry.
A child who asks questions is not less intelligent because he does not know everything. Likewise, humanity’s pursuit of nature’s mysteries is not evidence of failure–it is evidence of metacognition, the rare ability to think about what it does not yet understand.
Furthermore, every advancement in human civilisation has come from studying reality and then surpassing its limitations. Medicine studied biology and defeated diseases. Engineering studied natural forces and learned to control them. Physics studied the universe and revealed mechanisms hidden for billions of years.
Nature is not a textbook that humans copy; it is a complex system that humans decode.
The irony of your argument is that you are using the very product of human intelligence–language, technology, and communication–to argue that intelligence does not exist. That is a self-defeating paradox.
Animals exist within nature.
Humans investigate, comprehend, and deliberately reshape their relationship with nature.
That difference is precisely what separates instinctive adaptation from conscious innovation.