The Thin Bone Vault: The Origin of Human Intelligence

by Menger, Fredric M.

• ISBN13: 9781848163362
• ISBN10: 1848163363
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-02-11
• Publisher: World Scientific Pub Co Inc

Summary

This book delves into one of the greatest riddles perplexing modern science: "Why are humans so smart?" In a format understandable even by the non-expert, the author investigates the origins of human intelligence, starting with classical Darwinian concepts. Thus, the strengths and beauty of natural selection are presented with many examples taken from natural history. Common criticisms of Darwin, from scientists and non-scientists alike, are confronted and shown to be either inconclusive or outright false. The author then launches into a discussion of human intelligence, the most important feature of human evolution, and how it cannot be fully explained by mutational selection. Modern humans are smarter than what is demanded by our evolutionary experience as hunter-gatherers. The difficulty lies in the inability of natural selection to answer the following question: how can a complex set of genes, controlling expensive traits with little immediate benefit, come into permanent existence within a short time period in every member of a small population (which was dispersed and geographically isolated over a huge planet) which had a low reproductive output and a low mutation rate? The book concludes with a speculative epigenetic theory of intelligence that does not require DNA mutations as a source of evolution. Although the book is comprehensible by anyone with a college education, this last section in particular should intrigue both layman and expert alike.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgment	p. ix
Evolution	p. 1
Introductory Remarks	p. 3
Darwin and Natural Selection	p. 11
Darwin Analyzed	p. 31
The Evolutionary "Story"	p. 31
Darwin as a Scientific Theory	p. 43
Reductionism	p. 49
The Wonder of It All	p. 52
Entropy	p. 63
The Gap Problem	p. 65
Complexity	p. 82
Molecular Evolution	p. 97
Lamarck	p. 107
The Thin Bone Vault	p. 129
Introduction	p. 131
Definition of Intelligence	p. 137
A Multifaceted Trait	p. 137
Linguistic Intelligence	p. 138
Musical Intelligence	p. 153
Mathematical Intelligence	p. 164
A Brief History of the Mind	p. 181
Population	p. 191
Culture	p. 201
Animal Intelligence	p. 211
Evolutionary Potential	p. 221
Introduction	p. 223
Elementary Genetics	p. 225
Gene Variability, Examples	p. 237
Snapdragons	p. 237
Sleeping Sickness	p. 238
Immune Diversity	p. 240
Globins	p. 244
Heat Stress	p. 245
Directed Mutations	p. 249
Genetics and Intelligence	p. 253
Evolution of Intelligence, an Epigenetic Model	p. 257
Introduction	p. 259
Epigenetics	p. 263
The Cranial Feedback Mechanism	p. 271
Bibliography	p. 291
Index	p. 299
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