Fred on everything, including evolution: Hot air about big brains

Columnist Fred Reed offers a send-up of speculative theories about the evolution of large brains in humans, “Circling the Paradigm: Protecting the Theory at Any Cost” (April 21, 2008):

A standard theory among a large school of evolutionists is that intelligence is low among people in sub-Saharan Africa, where humanity apparently originated, because life in tropical climates doesn't impose great intellectual demands; when people migrated to colder climates, as for example in Europe, they had to evolve higher intelligence to survive. To most people it seems obvious that higher intelligence would be useful anywhere at all, so why, they ask, didn't it arise below the Sahara?

Hart replies that larger brains carry not only benefits but also costs and, by implication, that in some places the costs are greater than the advantages. The costs of larger brains are, he says:

1) Larger brains require larger amounts of energy.

2) Larger brains require larger heads, which create strains on the muscular and skeletal structure.

3) Larger brains (and larger heads) require wider female pelvises and the wider pelvises result in less efficiency in walking and running."
This is evolutionary boilerplate, and also absurd. The two are often seen keeping company.

I won’t even try to keep up with Fred in debunking the “big brains” nonsense, but here is an interesting fact: Size of brain does not necessarily correlate with intelligence in humans. See these Mindful Hack stories, for example:

How much brain does a man really need? Not much.

Also: How much brain do you need? Could you use that space for something else?

While we are here, it is worth noting that some creatures, like whales, have much bigger brains than humans, but have not used them to develop thinking faculties similar to humans.

My own view is that when people believe in mechanistic theories, they tend to reach for them as an alternative to other theories, whether they are useful or not. Where they are not useful, they spin them out a little more, as in Fred’s hilarious examples. Here is more of Fred on Everything.

Free will and fruit flies And now hornets

If you have been following the recent findings on free will and fruit flies here and here, you'll enjoy Fred Reed's charming reflections on the behaviour of hornets (e.g., "A hornet has practically no brain, probably a few milligrams or some equally depressing amount. But consider what the dangerous little spike can do.") More seriously, he comments,

Today the language and modes of thought of computing dominate the biological sciences. One speaks of behavior as being genetically “programmed” or “hard-wired,” and of a brain’s “processing power,” of “integrating” information in “real time.” We are perhaps not always aware that we do this. When you think in terms of a particular scheme, you can begin seeing it where it isn’t, begin projecting it onto the world.

When I think of how the control of a hornet’s legs must work (except of course that it doesn’t have to work the way I believe it must), I think in terms of sensors of angle and force, of procedures to calculate this and that. Do hornets do it this way? Maybe not. Scientists as much as other people struggle to escape their preconceptions or, more usually, don’t struggle. Many don’t seem to know that they have preconceptions.

He also asks,

Now, add up all hornetary behavior, including a lot we haven’t touched on—communication between hornets, caring for the young, and so on—and ask how much more complex, if at all, is the behavior of whales, who have brains you could sleep in.

Actually, the relationship between brains and thinking (if the hornet thinks) isn't really very clear and I doubt whether computer analogies are really any help at all.

Brains are sites for thinking in those animals that have them. It doesn't follow that they are necessary for thinking. I am reminded of the claim that alligators cannot feel because they do not have a mammalian brain, and the response of a man who worked with alligators for years:

When I call alligators by making the grunting call of a young alligator it attracts alligators of all sizes. It is unclear if they are simply curious or if they will defend the young. It is akin to the alarm call a newborn calf will make where the entire herd will indeed come and defend the young one.

So perhaps the alligator uses something other than the mammalian brain to respond to the baby gator's alarm call? Clearly, we don't know the half of what we don't know.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, detailing events of interest in the intelligent design controversy.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), anoverview of the intelligent design controversy, and of Faith@Science. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).