Intelligence

In 1823, William Olmsted put forth (in his seminal work An Examination of the Consciousness of Man) the hypothesis that what we call “intelligence” was actually the direct result of exposure to hallucinogenic agents released into the air by a rare species of iguana plentiful in the Amazon Basin. A study conducted two years later by the University of Virginia and led by noted biologist Alexander Shanower led Olmsted to modify his hypothesis: it was not the iguanas themselves releasing the hallucinogen; rather, it was the species of fern on which the iguanas occasionally subsisted. The hallucinogen had entirely permeated the atmosphere; by the time an infant had reached the age of fourteen months, Olmsted theorized, he or she had ingested enough of the substance that the brain’s composition was fundamentally altered enough to begin generating byproducts that fit the traditional definition of intelligence. The origin of this traditional definition remained unclear until 1836, when Olmsted announced that he had discovered (through innovative experiments on the soil of Death Valley) that it was created ex firmamento by the great Hebrew thinker Maimonaides. In short, William Olmsted didn’t believe in intelligence and neither should you.