Evolving Intelligence. The Generative Path from Information and Computation to Cognition and Intelligence. A Book Presentation

Abstract

This paper provides a presentation and structural overview of the book Evolving Intelligence. The Generative Path from Information and Computation to Cognition and Intelligence. The monograph is forthcoming with World Scientific in 2026. Evolving Intelligence develops a naturalistic, generative framework for understanding how intelligence emerges from the organization of nature. Rather than beginning with human reasoning or with artificial intelligence, the book traces a continuous path from physical and chemical organization in nature through life and cognition to human symbolic culture, artificial intelligence, and hybrid human-AI systems. Its central framework, ICON (Information-Computation-Cognition Naturalism), connects these domains through morphology, interaction, observer-agency, information, computation, cognition, consciousness, and intelligence. The guiding question is not simply “What is intelligence?” but “How can intelligence arise at all within nature?” The book therefore shifts attention from intelligence as an isolated human faculty to the generative processes through which increasingly complex forms of organization, sensing, memory, anticipation, agency, meaning, and problem solving emerge.