Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!bingvaxu!cjoslyn
From: cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: evolution of intelligence
Message-ID: <2355@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 2 Aug 89 00:15:39 GMT
References: <2153@hub.UUCP>
Reply-To: cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 22

In article <2153@hub.UUCP> silber@voodoo.ucsb.edu writes:
>>>Note that the largest and most rapid recent evolutionary change which   
>>>the human race has suffered is a very considerable change in brian size;
>>>this is usually presumed to be correlated with becoming cleverer. If we
>
>What do you mean by 'rapid', what do you mean by 'human species'? even the
>proto-humans of three-million years ago didn't have pea-brains.  

Further, there are many other gross morphological differences between
humans and non-humans: erect posture, loss of estrus, loss of most body
hair, growth of speech mechanisms.  No doubt the selective pressures on
all of the above interacted with brain development in our ancestors in a
complex, circular way.  Unless someone can provide a decent objective
measure of "size of evolutionary change" it would seem like simple
prejudice to say that brain increase is the most "significant" of all of
these. 

-- 
O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large
| Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton, cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .