So the goal that evolved them into intelligent bodies was the search for food.
Well, Lock, it's good to see you so stoked over your becoming an ultra-genius, though your train of thought is starting to lose me. Anyway, you might be interested in two related references:
(1)
A TED Talks video on intelligence being necessary only if an organism needs mobility, sort of like your insight that it was the need for food that gave rise to intelligence:
Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains
TED
Published on Nov 3, 2011
(2)
Corroboration that most of science is mundane "fill in work" based on a more fundamental discovery made by some major pioneering work done by an outstanding individual in the field:
(p. 34)
These three classes of problems--determination of significant
fact, matching of facts with theory, and articulation of theory--
exhaust, I think, the literature of normal science, both empirical
and theoretical. They do not, of course, quite exhaust the entire
literature of science. There are also extraordinary problems, and
it may well be their resolution that makes the scientific enter-
prise as a while so particularly worthwhile. But extraordinary
problems are not to be had for the asking. They emerge only on
special occasions prepared by the advance of normal research.
Inevitably, therefore, the overwhelming majority of the prob-
lems undertaken by even the very best scientists usually fall in-
to one of the three categories outlined above. Work under the
paradigm can be conducted in no other way, and to desert the
paradigm is to cease practicing the science it defines. We shall
shortly discover that such desertions do occur. They are the
pivots about which scientific revolutions turn. But before begin-
ning the study of such revolutions, we require a more pano-
ramic view of the normal-scientific pursuits that prepare the
way.
(p. 37)
If, however, the problems of normal science are puzzles in
this sense, we need no longer ask why scientists attack them
with such passion and devotion. A man may be attracted to
science for all sorts of reasons. Among them are the desire to
be useful, the excitement of exploring new territory, the hope
of finding order, and the drive to test established knowledge.
These motives and others besides also help to determine the
particular problems that will later engage him. Furthermore,
though the result is occasional frustration, there is good reason
(p. 38)
why motives like these should first attract him and then lead
him on. The scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to
time prove useful, open up new territory, display order, and
test long-accepted belief. Nevertheless, the individual engaged
on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these
things. Once engaged, his motivation is of a rather differ-
ent sort. What then challenges him is the conviction that, if
only he is skillful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle
that no one before has solved or solved so well. Many of the
greatest scientific minds have devoted all of their professional
attention to demanding puzzles of this sort. On most occasions
any particular field of specialization offers nothing else to do,
a fact that makes it no less fascinating to the proper sort of
addict.
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1996.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Third Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
P.S.--I'm disappointed that nobody asked me what an "inter-loka being" is. Oh well, you all lost your chance to discuss a fascinating topic.
