Calculus, Logic, Music and the Human Brain

[Statler Waldorf]

Hello all,

So I have a question for the evolutionists on here. We all agree that the human brain is the only brain that can reason logically, conduct and comprehend advanced mathematics such as calculus and create complex pieces of music such as a musical score. How did these unique abilities develop? Given your own timeline, about what time in man’s evolution did these abilities develop? (Different dates are fine for all three abilities but please be fairly specific). Thanks!

SW

[Rayaan]

How did these unique abilities develop?

The short answer is that these unique abilities developed as our brains evolved, obviously.

But see the following links to get started on the details behind the answer:
http://www.physorg.com/news83410847.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_o...telligence

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How did these unique abilities develop?

Adaptation and good breeding. Humans are very selective when it comes to breeding. Why are women's breasts so large when compared to other animals? We try to find the perfect mate. Not just physical beauty, but also for intellect. I'm just generalizing here, but usually a good looking attractive person will find another attractive person, and have children with them. The parents will pass their genes down and a very high chance that child will be very good looking. Same with highly intelligent people. All of my college professors this semester have a spouse, and each of their spouses are, you guessed it, professors as well. Now, do you think that people that are intelligent will raise their kids to be ignorant and "stupid"?

Face it, if you are not good looking, dumb as a rock, and don't have any money, it will be extremely difficult to find a mate that will want to have offspring with you.

Animals have done the same, but somewhere along the line humans have adapted to use their brains more. What weapons and defenses do humans have? No fangs, no claws, no tough skin etc. Without the development of the human brain, our species would be dead in the wild.

Given your own timeline, about what time in man’s evolution did these abilities (reason logically, comprehend mathematics and compose music) develop?

Not the biggest fan of history. I'm a fan of applied sciences, where you can examine and manipulate objects. I like the fact that we can learn from history not to make the same mistakes as our ancestors from long ago, but it's history. The past. Cya.

In my timeline, I'd say from the beginning of man we had a strong mind, but as we evolved as a species the capacity of the mind grew and grew and we used logic and reason more to find new ways to survive, which then lead to ways to make our lives easier, then eventually we used it to entertain ourselves which is what music is. Music doesn't help us survive. It entertains us

[Statler Waldorf]

The short answer is that these unique abilities developed as our brains evolved, obviously.

So you are saying that selective pressures weeded out the humans who did not possess enough cognitive capacity thus preserving those that did? So exactly when did we develop the ability to think logically and to conduct advanced mathematics? Would this have been around the time of the great philosophers in Greece around 4,500 years ago? Calculus first appeared in the 17th century, is this when humans developed the cognitive ability to do it?

Adaptation and good breeding. Humans are very selective when it comes to breeding. Why are women's breasts so large when compared to other animals? We try to find the perfect mate. Not just physical beauty, but also for intellect. I'm just generalizing here, but usually a good looking attractive person will find another attractive person, and have children with them. The parents will pass their genes down and a very high chance that child will be very good looking. Same with highly intelligent people. All of my college professors this semester have a spouse, and each of their spouses are, you guessed it, professors as well. Now, do you think that people that are intelligent will raise their kids to be ignorant and "stupid"?

First of all I have to admit, you have got the coolest avatar, sig, and username on this forum.

That being said, are you saying that ugly and stupid people don’t find other ugly and stupid people to mate with and pass their genes on with?

Face it, if you are not good looking, dumb as a rock, and don't have any money, it will be extremely difficult to find a mate that will want to have offspring with you.

Not unless she is all of these things you mentioned too.

Animals have done the same, but somewhere along the line humans have adapted to use their brains more. What weapons and defenses do humans have? No fangs, no claws, no tough skin etc. Without the development of the human brain, our species would be dead in the wild.

Ok, I understand that, but did humans have the mental capacity to do things like calculus before they were invented?

Not the biggest fan of history. I'm a fan of applied sciences, where you can examine and manipulate objects. I like the fact that we can learn from history not to make the same mistakes as our ancestors from long ago, but it's history. The past. Cya.

I like the observational sciences far better myself.

[Justtristo]

The short answer is that these unique abilities developed as our brains evolved, obviously.

So you are saying that selective pressures weeded out the humans who did not possess enough cognitive capacity thus preserving those that did? So exactly when did we develop the ability to think logically and to conduct advanced mathematics? Would this have been around the time of the great philosophers in Greece around 4,500 years ago? Calculus first appeared in the 17th century, is this when humans developed the cognitive ability to do it?

Those great philosophers in Greece existed 2500 years ago or so, not 4500 years ago.

[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.

[Rayaan]

So you are saying that selective pressures weeded out the humans who did not possess enough cognitive capacity thus preserving those that did?

I didn't say that - although yes - that is an extrapolation of what I said.
And yes, I do believe that the brain was subject to selective pressures because selection is a key mechanism for evolution.

See this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1876205/

So exactly when did we develop the ability to think logically and to conduct advanced mathematics?

I don't know the exact time period when we developed the ability to think logically and to conduct advanced mathematics.

However, the two important things you should know are that logical deduction emerged much earlier than the ability to perform advanced mathematics, and secondly, that the development was a gradual process and that's why I don't think that any scientist will ever be able to accurately determine at exactly what point in human evolution we developed these cognitive abilities.

Would this have been around the time of the great philosophers in Greece around 4,500 years ago?

Yes, because if they were great philosophers, then it logically implies that they also had all those abilities to a certain extent (irrespective of the time that they lived in). Also, as Justtristo noted, the correct number for how many years ago the great philosophers lived in Greece is around 2,500, not 4,500. However, if you still think that I'm wrong, then I would like you to mention the name of a particular philosopher or philosophers that you originally had in your mind.

Calculus first appeared in the 17th century, is this when humans developed the cognitive ability to do it?

Not necessarily, because even if calculus first appeared in the 17th century, this doesn't mean that this is the exact time when humans developed the ability to do calculus.

There may have been other people who lived before the 17th century that knew a few basic things about calculus, things that are related to calculus, or perhaps things that are less advanced than calculus (if not calculus). Afterall, there are many branches of mathematics and each has its own level of difficulty. But again, as I said before, the important thing is that these logical, mathematical, and musical abilities that you are talking about didn't pop up in our heads in a single day nor in a single century. Rather, their development was simply an evolutionary process.

[The Grand Nudger]

We've been equipped with the same headgear for a long time. Could our earliest human ancestors have understood calculus? Yes, they could have if they received an education similar to our own. What reason would we have to believe that they couldn't? We have cave art that could be as old as 35k years. It's likely that we've been counting things for much longer, and all tools demonstrate an understanding of the basic concepts of physics (kinetics, leverage, ballistics, and force in particular). That we suffered selection pressure to increase cognitive ability is beyond doubt. Other hominids went other routes with their development, they're mostly dead, we're mostly alive. Now, we have other things working for us, in that not all of our knowledge is inborn. We do teach each other things, spanning generations. The kind of knowledge you're talking about more accurately falls into that group. Another reason that it payed to be smart.

[downbeatplumb]

The evolution of human society took a big leap when complex language evolved people and they shared knowledge, the ability to use other peoples knowledge beyond 'tiger to the left' was a great help and came into play about with a full vocal language system having evolved by about 100,000 years ago with the evolution of homo sapiens, but this grew on the older cruder language abilities going back to homo erectus 2,000,000 years ago. So about 100,000 years ago people had the language and the brain power for everything from the theory of relativity to calculous to whatever.
But something was missing.
The ability to reliably store information over the long term, storing information in old peoples heads is just not sufficient for some really tricky concepts.

So writing came in to play.

Now with writings invention approximately 5000 years ago a system that can reliably build on the achievements of past generations was in place and with the developement of the printing press the amount that can be relayed exploded.

The only thing holding up the pace of human developement then was the over reliance on the lazy catch all explanation for everything 'goddidit'.

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First of all I have to admit, you have got the coolest avatar, sig, and username on this forum.

Thanks

That being said, are you saying that ugly and stupid people don’t find other ugly and stupid people to mate with and pass their genes on with?

I'm not saying that ugly people do not have kids, just said it is extremely hard. Evolution doesn't take a few days. It comes from millions of years of adapting and changing and breeding. Using ugly people as an example probably wasn't my best idea I'll admit

Ok, I understand that, but did humans have the mental capacity to do things like calculus before they were invented?

I think we had to mental capacity to do them, but not the intuition or the need at the time before it was invented. Many people's main goal in the past was to simply survive and pass on their genes. The few who did think and comprehend these maths were lucky and had the time and money to do so. A regular peasant wasn't worried about the derivative of 3x²-4x-1 was. The regular peasant and workers were worried about surviving another night with no food and clothes. As the people like Newton and other mathmeticians and physicist came along, they gradually found ways to improve lives to where less people were starving and working in the fields.