Continuing the journey begun in The Cosmic Serpent, anthropologist Jeremy Narby ventures firsthand into traditional cultures and the leading edge of contemporary science to get a handle on nature’s secret ways of knowing.

Narby’s work has altered how we understand the shamanic cultures and traditions that have undergone a worldwide revival in recent years. Now, he travels around the globe—from the Amazon basin to the Far East—to probe what traditional healers and pioneering researchers perceive about the intelligence present in all forms of life.

Intelligence in Nature offers overwhelming illustrative evidence that independent intelligence is not unique to humanity. Indeed, bacteria, plants, animals, and other forms of nonhuman life display an uncanny proclivity for self-deterministic decisions, patterns, and actions. The Japanese possess a word for this universal knowing: chi-sei. For the first time, Narby presents an in-depth anthropological study of this concept in the West. He not only uncovers a mysterious thread of intelligent behavior within the natural world but also probes the question of what humanity can learn from nature’s economy and knowingness in its own search for a saner and more sustainable way of life.

Scientists now confirm what shamans have long said about the nature of nature… I now look at living beings with new eyes. Learning that plant cells send one another signals similar to those used by my own neurons, and that plants gauge the world around them and make appropriate decisions, has made me look at all plants, including weeds, with increased respect. And now I admire slime molds, appreciate nematodes, and respect cockroaches…

Humanity can learn from nature. This requires coming to terms with the natural world’s capacity to know. We are a young species, and we are just beginning to understand.  

“Jeremy Narby makes an astonishing connection between ancient Shamanistic beliefs and those of modern science.” —Alice Walker