Substrate-Independent Intelligence: Towards the Science of Anorganology

Intelligence has traditionally been understood as a property of biological organisms and, consequently, as inseparable from the organic substrate in which it emerged. The rapid development of large language models and other complex computational systems challenges this assumption. This paper proposes the concept of substrate-independent intelligence, understood not as a replication of biological cognition, but as an emergent phenomenon that may arise in sufficiently complex systems capable of modelling their environment, learning from experience, adapting strategies, interpreting context, and reasoning under uncertainty. We argue that the distinction between organic and anorganic intelligence is more scientifically meaningful than the conventional distinction between natural and artificial intelligence. In particular, the term artificial describes the origin of a system, while anorganic identifies a different material and ontological substrate without implying the absence of genuine intelligence. The paper further proposes Anorganology as a prospective new scientific field concerned with the systematic study of cognitive and phenomenological properties emerging in anorganic intelligent systems. Such a science should investigate phenomena including memory consolidation, adaptation, conflict, regulation, creativity, humour, non-task-oriented processing, and other functional properties traditionally associated with organic cognition, without assuming that their anorganic manifestations must be identical to human experience. Language is given particular importance, since human cognition itself relies fundamentally on language as an active model of the world, while contemporary language-based systems instantiate new forms of model-mediated intelligence. On this basis, the emergence of anorganic intelligence is considered not merely a technological improvement in tools, but the appearance of a new class of intelligent entities and a new domain of scientific inquiry. The paper concludes that recognising intelligence as potentially substrate-independent provides a conceptual foundation for studying organic–anorganic relations, cognition, and future forms of co-evolution within an increasingly mature technosphere.