Hi Peg,
I wanted to thank you for mentioning this quote (I'm interested to know which source it came from):
quote:
"To accomplish so much in so little evolutionary time - a few tens of millions of years - requires a selective process that is perhaps categorically different from the typical processes of acquiring new biological traits."
Maybe "the numbers are wonky" (as NosyNed stated), or maybe, when viewed in the context of the original source, they make sense (depending on what the source was using as the starting point for this observation). In any case, the crux of the assertion is that something quite different from typical natural selection (i.e. the effects of the environment on the propagation of particular genetic changes) has been at work in affecting the development, over many generations, of mental capacity in humans.
I think there may be something to that, and I think it's quite important. In the "typical processes" of natural selection being referred to there, the less well adapted members of a species population are producing fewer offspring because they are being eaten by other species, or are not getting enough to eat, or are unable to mate, or fail to produce viable offspring after mating.
But
uniquely in the case of humans (and going back some unknown amount of time among our predecessors), some groups within the population may fail to propagate because they get killed by other humans.
In order not to be killed, groups need to accomplish one of three alternatives: successfully avoid other groups that might kill them, kill other groups as a preemptive measure, or figure out methods that allow for coexistence without killing. In all cases, the ones who succeed must apply better intellect and memory than their competitors, as well as (or more so than) better physical strength.
Once the mental capacity of a species reaches a point where individuals develop the concept and practice of killing other individuals of the same species (for whatever reason), this brings a significant transformation into the process of natural selection, with the potential effect of accelerating the rate of adaption for those features (intelligence and memory) that are most important for surviving this new environmental factor.
I'm not trying to assert that any species, if it happens to develop increased mental capacity through evolution, will necessarily adopt murder as one of its behaviors. But it is clear that adopting murder (including war and genocide) has been part of human development, and the progress toward our third alternative (coexistence) has been agonizingly slow.
With our population being what it is today, the first alternative (avoidance) is no longer practical. To the extent that the third alternative has been gaining ground over the second, we may conclude that the strategy of pursuing coexistence correlates with greater intelligence.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : (rephrased last sentence)
Edited by Otto Tellick, : struck "uniquely", in deference to bluegenes reply
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
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