Nature "learns" by trial and error while humans have the capacity to reason about things. In the long run intellect will win (although in most cases we are far far from that point).
Citation needed. What's even more possible is that in the long run nature will win -- it is a far more powerful force than intellect.
In the very least, let's see how intellect fares against the heat death of the universe...
Of course, there are probably species that burn through a few generations per hour but these are not really suited to solving problems that mammals can.
For some problems regarding the functioning of living things yes, but for other problems evolution doesn't apply, and nature (aka the universe) can "strike" before science had the time to find anything to protect against them (e.g. a meteor hit).
And for other problems still, science might be the one that created them (e.g. nuclear annihilation, global warming, etc).
>Of course, there are probably species that burn through a few generations per hour but these are not really suited to solving problems that mammals can.
No, but some of them could e.g. mutate and kill all humans or enough to destroy civilization.
But in another sense, intellect vs nature is a useful distinction to make.
(E.g. blind forces of evolution through selection/mutation/etc, vs conscious targeted changes).
Human knowledge in general might, but I'm talking about how humans take action and shape the world around them vs how evolution does.
Conjecture and refutation are not like random mutations -- that's just the "survival of the fittest" part of evolution, which is not the actual mechanism and which applies to everything (after all, anything that survives is fitter that what didn't).
ESTablishing shot: Motorhome parked in remote field.
SUPER: Meanwhile, at the Soylent lab...