{"id":1248,"date":"2004-07-09T12:35:49","date_gmt":"2004-07-09T16:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1248"},"modified":"2004-07-09T12:35:49","modified_gmt":"2004-07-09T16:35:49","slug":"this-isnt-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1248","title":{"rendered":"This isn’t true"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adair Turner, criticising John Gray’s Straw Dogs,<\/em> wrote in Prospect:<\/a><\/p>\n\n

mankind’s development of larger brains several hundred thousand years ago was a product of natural selection, pure and simple. But once the accident occurred, man was blessed or cursed with a brain large enough to change the conditions of his life in ways different from those available to other species. And in this important respect man is not only different in degree but unique among the species of which we are currently aware.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Right now, I’m sympathetic to almost any general criticism of Straw Dogs,<\/em> one of the most irritating books I have ever read. And I don’t think Gray understands the biological concept of “species”. But Turner’s wrong, too, to suppose that there is anything biologically unique about our using our brains “to change our conditions of life in ways unavailable to other species”<\/span>. All<\/em> species use their brains to construct a more favourable environment for themselves. To some extent, that’s what brains are for. Even creatures without brains, like aerobic bacteria, change the world to suit them better.<\/p>\n\n

What natural selection acted on wasn’t the brains themselves, but the things that the brains enabled us do; and this was presumably true for every incremental (and expensive) growth in brain size. Adair Turner should read the Extended Phenotype.<\/em> but so should everybody else.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adair Turner, criticising John Gray’s Straw Dogs, wrote in Prospect: mankind’s development of larger brains several hundred thousand years ago was a product of natural selection, pure and simple. But once the accident occurred, man was blessed or cursed with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}