Aro:
Many paleoanthropologists would agree with the idea that our evolutionary nche is, to a large degree, being a non-specialist. This goes back to early human ancestors, as well. In fact if you look at the hominids that didn’t make it, it appears that they often became too specialized, and that was, perhaps, one key reason that lead to their extinction.
I have always wondered if it’s entirely a coincidence that human females are the only mammalian females – certainly the only primate females – that don’t have an estrus cycle. Think how different we’d be if women went into heat once a year.
It seems a moot point in terms of intelligence, but I’ve read speculation that intelligence may have initially evolved in humans because it’s an advantage in figuring out the very difficult problem of how to get laid and keep other guys from getting laid when females don’t have rigidly defined breeding cycles.
I also think it’s knda funny that this singular aspect of human evolution doesn’t get discussed nearly as much as less sensitive issues like opposable thumbs, large brains and bipedalism.
BTW, the dinosaurs that were evolving toward intelligence are the ones called “the raptors” in the Jurassic Park movies. They very likely were more dangerous to something like a human than T-rex, spinosaurs and the lot were.
Following up on the thoughts of others …
The observation is not that humans as individuals are much more intelligent than other species (unless one uses a self-serving definition of intelligence like the Turing test which defines intelligence as acting human-like) but that the meta-organism of human society is somehow more “intelligent” than other animal societies. (Heck, compare the whale’s processing abilities on tasks salient to it, with ours and we’d look like slugs.) So why is this? What resulted in a human culture capable of accumulating knowledge and of adapting complex ideas to novel domains … translating and transforming concepts into new forms without needing to lose the old.
Language played a role but is not in and of itself sufficient. As already stated, flexibility of thought (think of the less efficient but more adaptable software fix rather than a more hardwired and more efficient hardwired one) also played a role. Symbolic communication other than spoken and gestural language was also needed … tally sticks, pictoral representations, and eventually written language as well. The need for even more adaptable brain power for individuals to thrive in such social situations provied some feedforward to this as well.
Evil,
Upright posture put the vulva out of view and farther from the nose. Yes human brain power co-evolved with the departure from chemical attractants being as primary in direct effects on behavior and more cognitive power needed to assure reproductive success.
See, being a nerd always paid off!
Cats, however, being the primary predators of the African grasslands, are more visually-oriented, which is why herding and camouflaging works. And why tall grasses would have served to hide prey from predator every bit as effectively as hiding predator from prey.
Try Troodon, a “cousin” to the dromaeosaurs (but more closely related to Tyrannosaurus than to Velociraptor, et al.). The dromaeosaurs proper (oh, how I hate Michael Crichton for that “raptor” nonsense) were otherwise occupied becoming birds (yes, I know that’s a gross simplification, but it sounds good). Troodon is thought to have been about as intelligent as modern birds.
Re-phrased: “What physical mechanism brought about humans’ different and unique characteristics”. Modern science cannot tell us. Therefore, any scientist or evolutionist who says they believe in anything is by faith, just like a religious person. Future science could show answer to physical mechanism? Yes, in same way future archeology and science could show answer in spiritual/Biblical mechanism. Since I see evidence of non-physicality in action, just like i see evidence of physical mechanisms, I consider the spiritual answer we have in the Bible just as sound as the scientific answer. Am I wrong here?
Okay, so any one feature doesn’t imply intelligence.
It doesn’t help you to survive/reproduce if you are smart, but walk on all four legs and have no language or culture.
If you have opposable thumbs (as do raccoons) but limited smarts, then you don’t build tools and cultures.
If you walk upright, but don’t have arms/hands/fingers, then you can’t build tools or write novels.
If you have language, fingers, thumbs, and a big brain, but are raised in a closet with only MTV, then…shudder…you have culture but do you have intelligence?
It seems intelligence requires a fortuitous, synchronized, serendipitous combination of factors. You have to have the right kind of body to use intelligence, and live in a challenging environment where your body and intelligence give you a clear avantage in survival. Otherwise intelligence alone won’t help you to reproduce and pass your Ivy League genes onto the next generation.
I like the idea that our lack of specialization makes a difference. In neurobiology, the proportional size of frontal lobe tissue in the brain seems to be correlated with intelligence and the development of culture. Scientists have struggled to describe the function of frontal lobes because the frontal area has an abstract kind of influence. Damage there doesn’t cause a failure of any basic ability, but seems to disrupt the organization of basic functions. Frontal functions are less specialized than other parts of the brain, and this fits well with the idea that our so-called intelligence is related to the evolution of larger frontal lobes.
I have no idea, and have no interest. A spiritual answer from the Bible is an answer. It’s done. Nothing left to explore, at least nothing that I find interesting. Science, because it has no answers, is far more interesting to me. There is excitement to discovering new data and imagining new ideas, and I find that in science and culture.
Fuel…
—Geez, all I meant from the beginning is that science as we know it does not have an answer for the existence of human beings… our characteristics, our emotions, our differences from the rest of the animal kingdom… it’s all a mystery right now.—
It has many good general answers, and good evidential starting points for further possible lines of inquiry. So it’s not a “all a mystery.” It isn’t entirely clear either. I’m not exactly sure what your point past that is: you seem to be making a god of the gaps argument, but mixed in with some ill-thought scoffing at scientific inquiry. The reason people think science does, and will continue to have, insight into these sorts of questions is not only that it has in the past, but also that its method really is the best, epistemologically, for “how did” sorts of questions.
I understand that you think it not answering the “who decided all this” question makes it somehow lacking, but then, did you ever consider the possibility that it could be false question?
—And it has observable evidence, the Bible.—
Perhaps you could explain exactly how this is evidence of what?
For instance, I’m going to flip a coin. If it lands heads, that means that dinosaurs had blue skin. If it lands tails, they had purple skin. Either way, flipping that coin will provide me with evidence of dinosaur skin-color, allowing me to know what they looked like. Is this epistemology sound?
—Therefore, any scientist or evolutionist who says they believe in anything is by faith, just like a religious person.—
Many scientists and “evolutionists” ARE religious people. But they’ve learned to keep the two domains separate, considering that they operate with vastly different methodologies.
—Future science could show answer to physical mechanism? Yes, in same way future archeology and science could show answer in spiritual/Biblical mechanism.—
I don’t see the connection. When has archeology ever provided evidence of spiritual mechanisms? Archeology is an academic inquiry into the historical past by examination of physical finds from past cultures. Because of that, it doesn’t, and can’t, study the spiritual, and certainly not the mechanisms of the spiritual.
—Since I see evidence of non-physicality in action, just like i see evidence of physical mechanisms, I consider the spiritual answer we have in the Bible just as sound as the scientific answer. Am I wrong here?—
Well, maybe. I don’t know exactly what your “spiritual answer we have in the Bible” even is. Have you even considered the possibility that YOUR spiritual answer might not be the right one, even just in a Biblical context?
I mean, in science, you can’t pretend that just because they’ve thought of a mechnism to explain some process, that it is the ONLY possible mechanism.
What sort of evidence do you have for what you call spirits in action? Is it evidence available to everyone, or only to you? And how do you get from whatever evidence that might be to your assertion that the Bible’s creation account is true? How does this whole line of thought work?
Project Omega came the closest to a really intriguing theory that I read in the original Lucy book, whose name I don’t remember right now. But in the back of the book a professor laid out a theory of intelligence that laid it all at the feet of sex.
There are two ways of insuring offspring survive:
1 - Have lots and hope that one or two make it to breeding age.
2 - Have very few, but nurture them as much as possible so that each individual has a better chance of breeding.
Apes chose the latter, of course. What distinguished hominids is that they went just a little further down the line, and this started a feedback loop that eventually went nuts and produced us.
As Project Omega points out, having a bigger brain means your born earlier and more helpless. So the female is stuck with a baby that can’t fend for itself for some period of time, making it harder for her to provide both for herself and the baby. What she needs is a mate that will go out and get the food she and the baby need until the baby is independent.
This presents a problem: her mate has to be devoted to her in order to provide this service. How do we insure this? Well, we have another very unique adaptation: facial uniqueness. This serves the sexual purpose of having a mate that is attracted to you alone and who can instantly recognize you. So this makes it possible to have a mate that will provide for you when both you and your baby are unable to.
This sets the feedback loop going: in hominids, the more intelligent, the better able to provide you are. But increasing intelligence means larger brain size, which means you have to be born earlier and earlier and increasingly more helpless at birth, which means a longer period of helplessness, which means you need a mate who is both more intelligent and more devoted to you and you alone. As any married person can tell you, this ups the importance of communication skills exponentially. So nature is forced to increasingly select for hominids with greater intelligence and better and better communications skills, capable of devotion to a single mate for as long as it takes to raise an increasingly helpless baby. Eventually the feedback loop produces highly intelligent beings capable of being totally devoted to a single person for life.
In other words, a human being.
It’s not so much that you’re wrong, but that you don’t belong. This is a discussion of evolutionary theory, not creationist theory. Start a creationist thread along these lines if you like. I’m vaguely annoyed at having to scroll past cartoonish creationist myths on this thread.
I have to disagree here. Suppose we were looking at an animal like, say, the cheetah, that has evolved for speed. We then say, “How fortuitous that its legs function as springs so it gets extra energy from each step! How fortuitious that its backbone is so flexible that it gets spring from it as well! How fortuitous that its chest and legs are linked so that the act of running forces more air into the lungs, allowing it to function like a turbocharger!”
Yet we look at human intelligence and say, “How fortuitous that we are bipedal! How fortuitous that we have opposable thumbs! How fortuitous that we have sharp vision! How fortuitous that our females don’t go into heat!”
Isn’t it a lot more logical to assume that all these traits are linked to whatever the central driving point of human survival was, that each came about because it contributed to the survival and reproductive success of the individuals who possessed them?
pantom,
I think you have found the ‘tipping point’.
It wasn’t standing upright, as the early hominids did that-
ditto opposable thumbs.
The tricky mating problem that arose when oestrus changed sexual behaviour in females
from a monthly free for all
to a constant slow burn
is difficult to date in the fossil record,
but I’d put money on that change being the trigger
Yeah, being as it were always in heat was a part of the prof’s theory. Your idea that this would foster intense selection for communications skills is certainly a good one. I don’t remember whether the prof agreed with you or had it perform a different function. Just looking at what I wrote I suppose from the female POV being always available would of course keep the male half always interested and therefore serve to keep him around when she needed him during the baby’s early years. The male half would, of course, have to hone those communications skills in order to get in the um, front door.
Ya never know. Some old Beatles tapes have shown up from time to time…
You’re re-phrasing my statement as a tautology, and it is not what I meant.
I am assuming that “all these traits are linked to whatever the central driving point of human survival.” Hence we agree on that. I don’t agree if you are saying, for example, that any animal will benefit by developing legs that function as springs. Bird legs are good for birds because of their environment and their other physical characteristics. Cheetah legs worked for cheetahs because it helped them to survive, given their environment and other physical and mental characteristics.
So are you saying that any environmental conditions can lead to intelligence – that intelligence always gives an advantage in survival, i.e. that there is nothing in the environment that favors one kind of mutation working better than another (i.e. that there is nothing fortuitous about one trait working for cheetahs but not for birds)?
Are you saying that any body type in any environment is capable of using intelligence to survive better? Surely it is a combination of factors that made intelligence a good solution for proto-humans – as opposed to keeping our brains small and growing as big as elephants, for example.
Columbia University link about the brain:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/08/brain_circuit.html
Yuste said it is important for scientists to understand how neurons, the fundamental unit of nervous tissue, make connections in the brain. "The cortex of the brain is solving very complicated computations using particular ‘nuts and bolts,’ " said Yuste. "Unless we understand how this hardware works – how the neurons connect and what they tell each other – we will never achieve a real understanding of how the brain functions. The fact that we find extremely specific connections indicates that the cortex is a very precise machine with a specific purpose."
Kinda makes ya think, doesn’t it?
yuk yuk
No, what I’m saying is that where intelligence confers an evolutionary advantage, it will do so in conjunction with physical traits that allow that intelligence to manifest itself. So it’s not fortuitous that humans have opposable thumbs and so forth, those traits arose in conjunction with intelligence, conferring a singificant advantage for those who had them over others who did not.
I think the dromaesaurids may have been on the way to evolving into an intelligent species of dinosaur. Hard to say if it would have happened. Dolphins and octopi also look like contenders in this respect, especially ocotopi as their tentacles can manipulate their envrionment suprisingly well (as in, they can unscrew jar lids). But that watery environment may be an inhibiting factor. Still, look at octopi – very good vision, well-developed brains, subtle, well-developed manipulating appendages … a very similar set to ours, when you think about it.