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From: neveu@lll-crg.ARPA (Charles Neveu)
Newsgroups: net.sci
Subject: Re: Re: darwinism
Message-ID: <647@lll-crg.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 17-Jun-85 12:47:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: lll-crg.647
Posted: Mon Jun 17 12:47:47 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Jun-85 07:26:50 EDT
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Organization: Lawrence Livermore Labs, CRG group
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> >For some days the following question is bothering me. If the evolution
> >theory is right, then why the human brain evolved to about six times
> >as that of an orung-otung and yet human uses only about 5 percent of the
> >brain cells? 
> 	Is there any current data or informed opinion to
> support the statement that we use only X% of our brains?  In
> recent books, for the general reader, on brain function, I
> have never seen it asserted or supported.
> 	I conjecture that it is a new kind of folklore:
> scientific folklore.  [...]
> Perhaps, decades ago, when investigators were
> beginning to discover the detailed functions of different
> parts of the brain, they were able to assign roles to only X%
> of it, and said so, and the popular mind got the message
> wrong.  Can this conjecture be supported?  Are there other
> folk theorems that you have noticed?
> 
> Regards,
> Chris
I agree with you.  Somebody probably made an offhand statement to journalist
and it was published in Reader's Digest and now it is part of Common Knowledge.
Here is another folk theorem : It is Common Knowledge that Albert Einstein was 
a terrible student as a child and flunked math.  As far as I know,  the young 
Einstein was an excellent student.

Charles Neveu