Strange how these "emergent properties" are so intricately structured...

I think you are probably correct...

Though you would be saying intelligence is simply an emergent property of complex interactions of matter...

So what sets the rules? The properties of matter as it interacts with other matter, right? This explains geometric formations in nature, the complex structure of the physical world, molecules, and so on, right? ...just how intelligent life fits in, that's still puzzling...

At first, after the big bang things were hot, and there was only hydrogen, then helium and it's isotopes (and deuterium;heavy hydrogen) formed via nucleosynthesis, then lithium, then everything heavier than lithium was produced through stellar nucleosynthesis (produced by stars), eventually resulting in chemical reactions and the creation of physical matter, planets, etc...

How life fits into all this physical matter puzzles me...

How about this, if all this matter was in existence, containing all its brilliant order, yet there was nobody there to observe it, would it even really "exist", as observers we give validation to the existance of all matter and order, and life could be a simple observers role... though that still doesn't explain how life results from these complex physical interactions...

Life from physical matter is a puzzle indeed.

-eg