Beyond the Soul: Cryonics, Nature and Rethinking Intelligence
Science, nature, and belief: Frozen life meets future possibilities. Art credit: Matt Vardy
A few weeks ago, I came across a Facebook post about a man who chose to have his body cryogenically frozen in hopes of one day being revived (refer to: news article). I’ve seen stories like this before, but this one really stuck with me—not because of the act itself, but because of the comment section below it. As expected, it was filled with opinions. Some were curious, some skeptical, but many outright dismissed the idea. The strongest pushback came from those with religious beliefs, many of whom said cryonics was futile because the soul leaves the body at death, heading to either heaven or hell. That was that.
What caught my attention wasn’t the theological debate, but the assumptions underneath it. It made me reflect on how our worldview is so often sculpted by a mix of personal experience, education and the environments we've been exposed to. Our beliefs about what’s possible tend to be filtered through those lenses, whether we're conscious of it or not.
When Nature Freezes and Life Returns
Take something as simple as winter. If you’ve grown up or lived in cold climates, you might already know that certain animals—wood frogs, insects and some fish species—have evolved to survive being frozen solid, thawing out in the spring and resuming life as if nothing happened. I remember seeing this as a child and being amazed. The idea that life could pause and resume wasn’t science fiction; it was just how things worked. For someone unfamiliar with this, however, the notion of suspending life sounds impossible. That gap in exposure creates a gap in imagination.
But it’s not just geography that influences perspective. Education, travel and even the media we consume play a role. Someone who’s read up on cryobiology or been exposed to stories of extreme life forms in nature might view cryonics not as a pipe dream but as an eventual milestone. Someone else, with no reference points for this kind of preservation or revival, may only see it as delusion. Neither is necessarily wrong—they’re simply seeing the world through the lens they were handed.
Rethinking the Shape of Intelligence
That realization led me to another question: What is intelligence, really, and who gets to define it? Humans tend to view ourselves as uniquely intelligent, sometimes even divinely set apart. But what if that belief is a product of our limited scope? What if the way we define intelligence is fundamentally flawed—too narrow, too self-referential?
Nature certainly doesn’t lack in examples that challenge our definitions. Elephants mourn their dead, standing vigil over fallen companions. Trees, through underground fungal networks known as mycorrhizal systems, share nutrients with their neighbours, especially those that are sick or dying¹. Crows not only use tools but also remember faces and teach their offspring social behaviours. Octopuses solve puzzles, open jars and display unique personalities. Even slime molds, single-celled organisms without brains, can navigate mazes and solve spatial problems².
What these behaviours suggest is that intelligence isn’t a singular, human-defined phenomenon. It exists across a spectrum, revealing itself in ways we may not fully understand—or be able to measure. If we’re honest, our current understanding of consciousness and cognition may be scratching only the surface.
Signs of Awareness All Around Us
The more we learn about the natural world, the more we’re forced to grapple with the possibility that other beings, and even ecosystems, operate with forms of intelligence that differ from ours but are no less real. For instance, plants communicate through chemical signals, warning neighbouring species of pests or drought³. Some researchers have even suggested trees may possess a form of memory or learning, adjusting their behaviours over time based on past events⁴.
In this light, the question of cryonics becomes less about whether it's possible and more about how open we are to redefining life and consciousness. If we broaden our definition of what it means to be alive or aware, suddenly, freezing and reanimation seem less like sci-fi tropes and more like extensions of what nature already does.
That’s not to say we’re anywhere near understanding how to freeze and revive a human being successfully. But the skepticism around it often seems rooted not just in technical limitations, but in rigid worldviews—ideas about what should be possible rather than what might be.
Possibility Is a Moving Target
The bigger takeaway for me was this: What we consider possible is shaped not just by science or faith, but by the stories we’ve lived, the knowledge we’ve acquired and the worlds we’ve moved through. Our definitions of intelligence, life and the soul may be due for an update—not because the old ones were necessarily wrong, but because the world is always showing us more than we previously knew how to see.
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