“Earliest mammals sniffed their way to smarts – Yahoo! News”

What do you make of an opening line like this?

The unusually large brains of mammals apparently didn’t evolve so that we could ponder philosophy — but so we could sniff our way to success. A new analysis of some of the earliest mammals and mammal-like creatures shows their complex brains evolved in stages, starting with the regions that handle the sense of smell.

[From Earliest mammals sniffed their way to smarts – Yahoo! News]

Compare also the way the headline is worded.

I agree whole-heartedly with one thing: our unusually large brains certainly didn’t evolve so that we could ponder philosophy. I can’t even imagine how a brain could have evolved for that purpose. But I don’t think it’s for lack of imaginative skills. It’s because the skills involved in doing philosophy ought to be invisible to evolution.

And then there’s that interesting second-person pronoun in the first sentence…

Now to put this in context. I know that the headline and lede are there to draw attention. That’s a journalist’s job. Science journalists seem all too willing to bend facts for that purpose. The rest of the article seems truer to the actual science that’s being reported, and what it tells about the differences between animals is really quite interesting.

Tom Gilson

Vice President for Strategic Services, Ratio Christi Lead Blogger at Thinking Christian Editor, True Reason BreakPoint Columnist

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10 Responses

  1. Nick (Matzke) says:

    “I agree whole-heartedly with one thing: our unusually large brains certainly didn’t evolve so that we could ponder philosophy. I can’t even imagine how a brain could have evolved for that purpose. But I don’t think it’s for lack of imaginative skills. It’s because the skills involved in doing philosophy ought to be invisible to evolution.”

    I wonder how you came to the conclusion that, if evolution is true, the function of our brains must have been to do philosophy?

    What proportion of the human population throughout history has done philosophy?

    What else does the brain do?

    Have a look at (a) what stone-age societies use their brains for and (b) look up exaptation. It’s not as if your question is some huge mystery no one has ever given a decent answer to before.

  2. Tom Gilson says:

    I wonder how you came to the conclusion that I “came to the conclusion that, if evolution is true, the function of our brains must have been to do philosophy.” Odd that you would think I said that.

  3. Tom Gilson says:

    Lest the antecedents of my pronouns be confusing (and I think they might have been), let me translate:

    “I agree whole-heartedly with one thing: our unusually large brains certainly didn’t evolve so that we could ponder philosophy. I can’t even imagine how a brain could have evolved for that purpose. But I don’t think my being unable to conceive of that is because I lack imaginative skills. It’s because I know that the skills involved in doing philosophy ought to be invisible to evolution [i.e., natural selection in particular].”

    (Even with the confusion of my original wording, I still find it odd that Nick read it the way he did. It could have been misread, but I’m having trouble seeing how it could have been misread that way.)

  4. Crude says:

    look up exaptation

    Careful, Nick. Help yourself to too much of that stuff and you’ll start to sound like an ID proponent. 😉

  5. Tom Gilson says:

    Exaptation is a familiar enough concept, by the way.

    We need an explanation for the origin of abstract reasoning, not for its development since the Stone Age. They were already human then.

  6. Bill R. says:

    Nick must have been looking for a fight. When he saw the word “evolution”, he apparently assumed Tom was attempting to disprove the whole scientific theory (in a single paragraph, to boot), and went into attack mode. In Nick’s excitement to refute Tom, Nick forgot to check whether Tom was actually making such an argument.

    Sound about right?

  7. Tom Gilson says:

    So cynical, Bill R.?

    😀

  8. Tom Gilson says:

    Actually I was trying to disprove the whole theory in a single paragraph. I expect to get the first Nobel Prize in Biology for it. They’ll have to invent the Biology prize for the purpose, but hey, don’t you think an accomplishment like this deserves it?

    😉

  9. Bill R. says:

    Perhaps I was being overly cynical/snarky. I don’t like to use that tone, but Nick’s knee-jerk invocation of an obvious straw man and his rehearsed exasperation just had to be ridiculed.

    Anyway, allow me to be the first to congratulate you on your Nobel, Tom!

    🙂

  10. Tom Gilson says:

    No, I don’t think you were overly cynical. It was entirely in line as far as I’m concerned.