Quote by Spuriousmonkey
'survival of the fittest' was never a term used by Darwin, but rather coined by Herbert Spencer.
Does it matter that the term was not coined by Darwin himself. This is like saying that Darwinism is an invalid theory because Darwin himself (allegedly) repented and said he believed in a God when on his death bed. Supporters of Darwinism correctly argue that it would not matter because his theory would stand or fall on its merits. Same with the term “survival of the fittest”. Darwinists for many generations have embraced this term because it accurately sums up the Darwinian concept in a short and very catchy little phrase.
Quote from Canute
Is the human brain past its optimum size?
From Chapter 13 of God Gametes that can be down loaded free from
www.e-publishingaustralia.com
The Human Brain:
When addressing the issue of the rapid evolution of the human brain Dawkins points out that in 3 million years the cranial capacity of homo sapiens’ brains has nearly trebled. Figures provided in The Blind Watchmaker for our Australopithecus ancestor is a brain volume of about 500 cubic centimetres. The average modern human brain has a volume of about 1,400cc, an increase of 900. Dawkins points out that if it took 3 million years for Australopithecus to evolve into modern homo sapiens, and assuming an average of 4 cycles per century, the increase in brain volume has been less than 0.01cc per generation. 6 The suggestion here of course is that such a small increase in cranial capacity can easily be explained by cumulative selection.
Let us however examine more closely what is involved in this seemingly insignificant increase in brain volume.
Modern homo sapiens’ brains have an estimated 100 billion nerve cells interconnected by an incredible 100 million, million pathways.7 This means that in 3 million years our species has evolved an additional 64.3 billion nerve cells (i.e. 500cc divided by 1,400cc multiplied by 100 over 1, equals 35.7% - or Australopithecus had about 35.7 billion nerve cells. 100 billion homo sapiens’ nerve cells less 35.7 billion Australopithecus nerve cells gives a 64.3 billion increase.) If it took 3 million years for our species to evolve 64.3 billion new nerve cells, this is an increase of 21,430 per year but Dawkins has allowed for 4 generations per century so on average a son or daughter will have 535,830 more nerve cells than parents (i.e. 64.3 billion new nerve cells divided by 3 million years multiplied by the generational time of 25 years, equals 535,830).
This increase cannot be explained by selective pressure on a particular group that for some reason needed a larger cranial capacity to facilitate adaptation to unusual geographical conditions or a changing environment. It is the average increase for our entire species common to all geographical regions and climatic conditions to which our species has had to adapt. So if greater cranial capacity were being driven by natural selection it is extremely unlikely increases in brain volume would be common to all areas when environmental conditions have varied so much.
Given that our intelligence has presumably improved as the size of our brains increased, it would not seem unreasonable to conclude that each incremental increase conferred a related upgrading of intelligence. It would in fact be an understatement to simply argue that human intelligence has increased threefold over a period of 3 million years in line with the trebling in brain volume. Increase in human intelligence has been explosive and the Darwinian theory of natural selection cannot dismiss it by reference to the number of cubic centimetres by which our brain has grown. Homo sapiens’ brains have evolved on average 535,830 new brain cells for every generation for the last 3 million years. This happened in an extremely short time and cannot be explained by cumulative selection. An average increase of 535,830 new brain cells in every generation for 120,000 generations with the complex wiring up and the increased intelligence they confer, is not what Dawkins previously referred to as the minimal X.
The Darwinian theory of evolution needs to explain why our species, regardless of climatic conditions or geographical locations have evolved such significant increases in brain size.
Even if cumulative selection and mutation could find a way to evolve 535,830 new brain cells in every generation there still needs to be a reason why. It is not as if we were competing with another intelligent species for the same environmental niche. Some will argue that our increased intelligence might have provided a benefit in developing hunting and gathering skills yet our more primitive relatives do not appear to have had problems acquiring the necessary skills for making a living gathering food or hunting prey.
Natural selection cannot explain why the size of our brain has continued to increase when it would have imposed a significant survival liability on our species. A larger head would no doubt have caused many premature deaths of mothers giving birth. If young mothers, their death would not only mean their own loss to the population, but the child they were carrying and also any future children they might bear. And if the mother already had children, the infants in her care would most likely not survive. Our increased brain size made it necessary for much of our cranial development to happen after birth and this meant that newborn members of our species have been far more dependent on parental care and for a far greater period than our close primate relatives. Again this would have placed enormous hardships on our species. For most of the 3 million years our ancestors were evolving greater brain volume they would have found it conferred no survival advantages but numerous disadvantages.
