Nope.
Apes did evolve into people. In fact people are apes.
Apes are our grandparents. They are also our cousins, and our brothers and sisters. We are all apes. One great big family of apes descended from along line of apes. We didn’t stop being apes, nor did the other apes.
We came from apes and we remain apes, with apes for cousins and apes for grandparents and apes for siblings.
Alright. But, in the context of the discussion this arose from, I’d think that sort of thing would count as a general problem-solving ability rather than a specific one… that is, this sort of thing would be an example of having evolved the general ability to dedicate a portion of the brain to a task without having to have evolutionarily hardwired the specific capability to handle that particular task. The fact that I can speak English very well isn’t illustrative of selective pressure for speaking English well, as such; it’s an offshoot of selective pressure for more general capabilities which happen to allow English speech as one of their instantiations.
No.
If we accept this then you are also forced to argue that the linguistic ability of the brain is also the result of having “evolved the general ability to dedicate a portion of the brain to a task without having to have evolutionarily hardwired the specific capability to handle that particular task”. Because as I pointed out linguistics works exactly the same way. People aren’t hardwired to speak Cantonese or Russian after all. So are you arguing that human language results from general problem solving ability.
If so then I’ll leave you to argue with every neurobiologist in the world.
As far as we can tell there are brain centres, at least two and probably more, that deal with mathematics specifically. Not generic problem solving centres that can become co-opted, but specially dedicated centres just for processing numbers. That is very different from something like, for example, out ability to learn how to use machinery, which is indeed a generic problem solving skill and that uses different centres and pathways in different people. It appear more akin to something like our navigation or linguistic abilities: handled by dedicated centres but perhaps capable of being programmed to become optimised to local conditions.
And if that is the case then it certainly isn’t a generic problem solving skill any more than linguistcis or navigation are generic problem solving skills. And that neatly explains why people can have such disparate abilities at mathematics, linguistics or navigation and general problem solving.
No, it is not. It is beyond any shadow of a doubt the direct result of an ability to speak a langauge well. That is not a general ability. It is a very specific ability. It doesn’t allow English speech as one of its instantiations, it allows speech as its sole instantiation. The fact that it is malleable in which language you operate in doesn’t make it any less dedicated to a very specific task: speech.
If your point is that the human brain has evolved an ability to handle mathematics to the same degree and with the same level of dedication, specialisation and complexity as it handles linguistics then you have adopted a position that is the polar opposite to the original claim that mathematical ability is the result of generic problem solving ability. Speech is very definitely not the result of generic problem solving ability. It is the single most specialised cognitive function of the human brain. If mathematics is like speech then it is certainly not a generic problem solving ability.
Of course I’m not saying speaking English is a result of an entirely unconstrainedly generic problem-solving ability; I’m just saying it happens to be a result of a slightly more general ability than just speaking English: namely, the ability to speak some generic language (the particular language not being evolutionarily determined).
Similarly, then, it might just as well be the case that, e.g., such specific tasks as being able to handle calculus, while not resulting from some entirely unconstrainedly generic problem-solving ability (not that such a thing would really make sense), are instantiations of an at least somewhat more generic ability, perhaps even more wide in scope than simply about mathematics itself. If that were the case, then the original suggestion (that mathematical ability is an offshoot of selective pressures targeted at more generic capabilities) would still be in play.
My knowledge only comes from a cursory glance at the literature, so if anyone knows better, please correct me where I’m wrong. From what I understand, there isn’t a “multiplication centre” in the brain. Rather, multiplication and addition depend on different functions, and hence on different brain regions, but these regions are not exclusively multiplication or addition regions. Specifically, multiplication is closely related to rote memory and language, whereas addition is related to general assessment of quantities.
Here is an article (pdf) that gives an overview of the neuroscience of arithmetics. With regard to brain lesions it has this to say:
On preview:
Again, from what I’ve read, and is supported by the article I linked to, there is one region, the intraparietal sulcus (HIPS in the quoted text) that is exclusively dedicated to quantities and numbers. It’s active in addition and estimation. There are two other regions associated with mathematics, the posterior superior parietal lobule and left hemisphere angular gyrus. The first of these two is associated with spatio-visual processing and the second with language.
Hence, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hypothesize that high-level mathematic abilities may have evolved as a side effect of other more readily advantageous skills: assessing quantities, language and spatial cognition.
I don’t know about different brain centres, just wanted to say that multiplication and addition are the same thing.
Multiplication is adding a number over and over to reach a total, similarly subtraction is adding a negative number. Once you have subtraction, division is just taking away numbers over and over.
Well, Blake,
this is clarifying:
Stating that there is “a brain region” which is essential for “multiplication or high level mathematics” does not mean a lot if you don’t tell us which brain region it is and exactly which kind of mathematics operations you mean.
I was also reading the whole thread and wondering “what does Blake refer to ?” the whole time.
Sure, although for carrying out many calculations, no one actually explicitly conceptualizes them that way. (Reflect on your own thought process in calculating, say, 25 * 30). Which perhaps makes it all the more necessary to be explicit about just what kinds of facility with addition and multiplications we’re talking about here… Calculating 2 + 4? 257 + 498? 100 cows + 50 geese + 2 ducks + 900 cows + 30 geese + 4 ducks? Recognizing when addition would be useful in solving a problem? Realizing the commutativity of addition? One could imagine different skills coming into play in each of these.
(I particularly want to contrast 2 + 4 and 257 + 498; surely, for the typical person, there are different faculties invoked in calculating the former than the latter, to an extent which makes it necessary to be explicit about which is being analyzed)
I’m going to press ahead and get into a Jens Pulver/Randy Couture fight with Chronos here (he’s Randy).
I admit all your factual points. At the very real risk of sounding like an Oscar presenter, I value the skill of imagination more than any of the abilities mentioned in opposition to my post.
It is not through underwater breathing etc. that the humans have dominated the world, it is through abstraction and the ability to see possibilities.
I think the ability most unlike those of the previous species shows the most evolution. Therefore, we are the most evolved species.
In what sense have other animals not also dominated the world, demonstrated abilities much unlike those of their ancestors, etc.? There are an awful lot of birds around, to use the example in the thread title, and flight is quite an impressive ability quite different from what had come before. Yeah, yeah, it’s not through flight that humans have dominated the world, but so what? It is through flight that birds have dominated the world. And so on for every other extant creature…
Human intelligence is a wonderful thing. But it’s totally weird and unjustified to think of it as making us the “most evolved”; why not just say “most intelligent” and leave it at that?
But as Jovan pointed out, while that’s how your computer performs multiplication that’s not how most humans do it. When multiplying 6*8 I don’t add eight six times, I remember that six times eight is fortyeight.
Without this so-called “horrible design flaw”, we’d have no ability to vocalize, unless we evolved another hole for the respiratory function completely separate from the nares (or we’d have to speak from our nose…). So we’d have to have a “speaking hole” and an “eating hole”. Seems more efficient to combine them and have a mechanism to shunt the food away from the lungs to me.
For “evolved”, read “were given”…
I’m hoping this ends all that “a chimp isn’t a monkey” RO.
One time I got a migraine and temporarily lost all my peripheral vision. Except, I didn’t immediately realise that that’s what had happened – all I knew was something “wasn’t right” about my vision.
I stood in front of a mirror and waved and stuck out my tongue. It was only when I realised I couldn’t simultaneously see both things, that I realised my field of view was tiny :eek:
In the past I’ve tried to debate this point but I think now that either usage of the term monkey is acceptible.
Most cites still define monkeys as being Old or New world monkeys, and exclude apes (and certainly humans), but many now also allow for the term being used in a broader sense and so I don’t think anyone can out-pedant anyone on this.
Personally I prefer not to call apes monkeys, simply because if they are, then there becomes a redundancy between the term “monkey” and the term “simian”.
Correct, but not for the reason you think. We haven’t dominated the world through underwater breathing, because we haven’t dominated the world through any means.
For what value it may be, Wikipedia on bird evolution.
For the record, the confusion of birds evolving from Saurischia, not Ornithischia, is understandable but not relevant. For quite distinct reasons relating to how abdominal organs were likely slung under the backbone, the pubis bone (one of the three bones making up the pelvis) in Saurischia projected “down” and “forward” as it does in modern reptiles – evidently the original diapsid structure – while in the Ornithischia, the pubis paralleled the ischium, another pelvic bone, “down” and “back” (forward and back being relative to the head-to-tail axis of the animal). The hip structure appears to be related to the animals’ digestive system and has nothing to do with ancestry – it’s a case of convergent evolution that ornithischian dinosaurs and birds (and therazinosaurs) experienced a migration backwards of the pubis bone.
Actually, (as a general rule) that’s not how computers do it either. If a computer is calculating 1,357 x 678, it is not adding 1,357 to itself six hundred and seventy-eight times.
Depending on the situation, and whether it assumes these are integers, it’s probably doing a variation of what humans do: break it down to 1,357x 600 + 1,357 x 70 + 1,357 x 8, and so on. The process looks a little different because the computer uses binary instead of base-ten, but the idea is the same.
It seems clear we are wired for language, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that higher math is not performed by a general tool. I think it would be important to know what other mental functions were diminished in the examples where the multiplication was impacted. What is similar to calculus but is not math that would help us figure out where the line (the fuzzy line) might be drawn?
When I remember back to calculus, there were certainly concepts that needed to be understood, but generally doing well in the class meant I was able to understand the set of rules and apply those rules to the problem at hand. How do I integrate secant to the fifth? I need to follow the rule for integrating secant to an odd power, the rest is making sure I’ve broken down the problem to a point where I can apply the rules. To me, this seems similar to writing software or building a house (apply the rules at the right time to get the result you want), which seems like general problem solving.
I know that’s all speculation, so I’m interested to know if you are aware of the relationship between various problem solving abilities and brain damage, like in your previous math example.