Evolution and humans: big brain or concept first? (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, June 29, 2017, 18:30 (2702 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Hand stone tools, not spears for habilis. Hand stone tools simply rewired the habilis brain as in Indian women reading with our brain. You are totally inconsistent.

dhw: My mistake. Thank you. Habilis came up with a new idea (stone tools, not spears). How the heck do you know that these simply rewired the brain? How many of our fellow animals invent and manufacture tools, no matter how primitive? This was a huge mental step forward in evolution, and it required a physical leap in order to manufacture and use the tools.

Simple answer. We know the brain has plasticity. The first advanced hominin brains undoubtedly had that property. What is plasticity but rewiring as in the illiterate women. No enlargement from plasticity. The brain can accommodate new ideas without enlarging. Happens to all H. sapiens whose brains have shrunk. Obvious concept.

dhw:You say God enlarged their brain first, and then they thought of making tools. Please explain how you know that the effort to implement the new concept of tool-making was not the cause of their brain enlargement, or that the effort to swim was not the cause of legs changing to flippers, or that the effort to walk on land was not the cause of fins changing to legs.

Habilis did not know what it did not know. When it did something new its brain rewired as happens now. Now you are proposing that effort causes speciation?

dhw: The effort to read caused rewiring because the brain had already long since reached its optimum size. There has to be a limit to brain growth. Before it reached its optimum size, the brain expanded in response to the effort to implement new concepts.

If our brain is 'optimum' humans are the end point of evolution. Thanks.