I’ve been wondering about dreams…maybe these are stupid questions, but I still wonder.
I know babies dream…do they dream in the womb? What would they dream about? And you know how you have dreams at times about places you’ve never been? Do they?
We know dogs dream…lots of other animals…how far does it go? Do insects dream? What about smarter ones, like mantises?
If evolution is true, how would dreaming assist in survival of the fittest? Why would that manifest?
Dreams and evolution… I knew I had just read something a while back on this subject. Check out this book review from our own DavidB: Why Do We Dream? From DavidB’s introduction: “Why do we dream? Many answers have been suggested, but none has really stuck. In the interesting and convincing book, Dreaming Souls: Sleep, Dreams, and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind, Owen Flanagan says dreams didn’t really evolve for any reason, but just came along for the ride.”
As for lower animals and dreams, I think that, since dreams occur in a specific part of the brain, it stands to reason that if an animal’s brain hasn’t developed that part, then it wouldn’t dream. Now it’s up to you to start dissecting brains and figure out how low on the evolutionary ladder you can go before you stop finding that part.
Comments to offer:
When I was studying calculus, I often dreamt about points I did not understand; awake I could not remember the details of the dream, but I did understand the new points I was learning.
My dreams are visual; so what could I have dreamt in the womb before I could see?
Normal humans are immobilized when they dream.
I believe two different ‘reasons’ for dreams:
They reinforce new physical neural connections, and
they are our connections to elements of the universe our society and culture allow us no other connection to, because our society and culture do not admit these elements exist (God, non-linear time, etc.)
I hold both view simultaneously.
As for animals, my dog dreams, and my cat doesn’t; but the cat doesn’t live in my definition of reality.
