New Miscellany 2: fossils, birds, the brain (General)

by dhw, Thursday, May 22, 2025, 11:48 (14 hours, 55 minutes ago) @ dhw

Human evolution: in Indonesia area

DAVID: New fossils are filling recognized gaps.

dhw: Yes, it’s happening all the time, so it’s perhaps a bit premature to say that recognized gaps will never be filled.

DAVID: I agree.

Thank you.

Astrocytes new found role

dhw: The experiments on fish, mice and fruit flies confirm that all cells in all types of brain will have a function. From a “design standpoint”, this will apply whether the design is carried out directly by your God, or by intelligent cell communities recognizing the need for certain types of reaction. The latter theory does not exclude your God as its designer.

DAVID: True agnosticism.

dhw: Thank you. A welcome sign that you are beginning to understand that agnosticism is not synonymous with atheism.

DAVID: You still come across as 90% atheist.

Dealt with in Part 1.

Chirality: new findings

QUOTES: "However, why life chose one chirality over the other has remained a lingering question.”
“Understanding how this evolved is a long-standing mystery key for understanding the origin of life.”

DAVID: still no answers as to why life is so selective in uses of chirality. And it complicates studying origin of life research.

Thank you for your reassuring comment. I was beginning to wonder if I’d missed something, but as is so often the case, these new findings leave us none the wiser.

Bird migration

dhw: Wonderment too at our human ability to study these miraculous feats and explain the processes which make them possible.

DAVID: This raises questions; how do unguided birds learn to fly such long distances? How do mitochondria change in anticipation of the flights? Changing as a result of the flights is understandable. It all looks planned and designed to me.

dhw: I agree. But the follow-up question is what does the designing and the planning, and what is the history leading up to the miracles now being achieved? These may well be the result of millions of years in which birds gradually extended their search for better living conditions, and their intelligent cells gradually adapted to the requirements of these journeys. Or do you think your God did one of his “de novo” acts, and in order to ensure the existence and survival of humans, performed operations on the cells of certain birds so they could immediately fly thousands of miles unharmed?

DAVID: Can a bird think "there must be a warm place in which I can over-winter in?" Why some at 10,000 miles?

No, but a bird will know that “it’s too damn cold to stay here now, so I’ll see if there’s somewhere warmer to go to.” And so the search begins. And maybe a few thousand years and generations later, they have compiled the current list of places to go to. I don’t know why it’s got to be 10,000 miles, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Whatever works for them will do.

DAVID: And which came first, mighty mitochondria, or extended flight to build them up? This is why design is so appealing.

Obviously the cells would have responded to the new requirements. Your muscles don’t expand because you intend to take up weightlifting.

Brain folding

QUOTE: "Do we think that an individual's capacity for reasoning is set in stone based on their cortical folding? No," she said. "Cognitive function depends on variability in a variety of anatomical and functional features, and importantly, we know that experience, like quality of schooling, plays a powerful role in shaping an individual's cognitive trajectory, and that it is malleable, even in adulthood."

It seems to me that this is the key, as with the birds’ microchondria and the weightlifter’s muscles. We know that the brain changes in response to new experiences (remember the illiterate women and the taxi drivers). The folds denote increased connectivity, as more and more activities create more and more connections. And so of course our human brains have increased folds compared to those of other animals.

DAVID: That it is hard to map the brain with such individual variability to cover, is explained by the brain plasticity accommodating itself to the needs of each individual.

I agree.

DAVID: Packing a brain into a small skull producing groves is empty thinking.

I disagree. The more experiences we have, the more connections we require. Hence the more folds, as above.

DAVID: Start with the premise based on design theory, everything is there for a reason.

But your design theory is limited to your God designing everything in advance, whereas I am suggesting (following Shapiro’s theory of cellular intelligence) that the brain has evolved IN RESPONSE to requirements and not in anticipation of them, as agreed in the past after much debate about crystal balls!