RE: Calculus, Logic, Music and the Human Brain
October 7, 2011 at 1:52 am
(This post was last modified: October 7, 2011 at 3:28 am by Darth.)
When you ask about the invention of calculus we are not looking at just evolution, we are looking at human history as well.
First we would need to evolve to the point where at least one human in the population is sufficiently intelligent. The whole population needn't be, just the guy/girl right at the intelligent end of the bellcurve.
However this alone is not enough. It's all well and good for a person to exist who is hypothetically intelligent enough, but if they are spending all their time hunting and gathering then they won't get around to it. What about writing materials? Prior work, they didn't invent calculus from scratch, they would have built on the work of others. Life expectancy? Motivation/drive/field of interest (Individually and culturally), Education, Social status, Gender, Knowledge transfer (and suppression), Wars, brutality, disease, preexisting mathematical system, funding, free time...
When did the hypothetical potential for these things (calculus, music...) develop? Haven't the foggiest. Their development would have been dependant upon other things having evolved AND the social/environmental context. I'm not knowledgeable enough on the topic (I'm studying speech and language (Just started though) and couldn't tell you much about that even) but I'm sure there is research/hypothesising out there on the topic. But I would like to talk about emergentism, a theory of language development (in individuals), it states that rather than language development being a product of specific language structure/s, language is the result of more general, interworking components having evolved and, in combination with each other and the social context, they are able to start to produce language. The brain evolved to x point, and language is simply a natural result of so many neurons in the structure they are in along with the plasticity/adaptable nature of our brain and exposure to language, rather than actual language specific part of the brain having evolved specifically to learn language. In contrast there are theories suggesting an innate language acquisition device that has evolved that allows children the ability to acquire language. My points are these: We don't yet know enough about the brain as it currently is, let alone how it was, and looking at when x ability evolved is a bit simplistic: We would need to look at the environmental/social context, the prerequisites for the invention and learning of that ability, and whether it is a specifically evolved ability or a byproduct of other things.
First we would need to evolve to the point where at least one human in the population is sufficiently intelligent. The whole population needn't be, just the guy/girl right at the intelligent end of the bellcurve.
However this alone is not enough. It's all well and good for a person to exist who is hypothetically intelligent enough, but if they are spending all their time hunting and gathering then they won't get around to it. What about writing materials? Prior work, they didn't invent calculus from scratch, they would have built on the work of others. Life expectancy? Motivation/drive/field of interest (Individually and culturally), Education, Social status, Gender, Knowledge transfer (and suppression), Wars, brutality, disease, preexisting mathematical system, funding, free time...
When did the hypothetical potential for these things (calculus, music...) develop? Haven't the foggiest. Their development would have been dependant upon other things having evolved AND the social/environmental context. I'm not knowledgeable enough on the topic (I'm studying speech and language (Just started though) and couldn't tell you much about that even) but I'm sure there is research/hypothesising out there on the topic. But I would like to talk about emergentism, a theory of language development (in individuals), it states that rather than language development being a product of specific language structure/s, language is the result of more general, interworking components having evolved and, in combination with each other and the social context, they are able to start to produce language. The brain evolved to x point, and language is simply a natural result of so many neurons in the structure they are in along with the plasticity/adaptable nature of our brain and exposure to language, rather than actual language specific part of the brain having evolved specifically to learn language. In contrast there are theories suggesting an innate language acquisition device that has evolved that allows children the ability to acquire language. My points are these: We don't yet know enough about the brain as it currently is, let alone how it was, and looking at when x ability evolved is a bit simplistic: We would need to look at the environmental/social context, the prerequisites for the invention and learning of that ability, and whether it is a specifically evolved ability or a byproduct of other things.
