
to human (which is not to suggest that we are the ultimate achievement
of evolution—we just make a good reference point for the present). The
search of the space of possibilities that led down to human intelligence
needed to discover RNA, DNA, nucleated cell structures, multicellularity,
breathing out of water, spines and centralized nervous systems, and so
forth in order to reach the social, linguistic primate called Homo sapiens.
At the same time the environment had to change and evolve, affecting
and being affected by the new forms that inhabited it. It may have been
“technically” possible to jump from bacterium to human in one huge
mutational leap, ...