Page 1 of 1

Brain Size

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 8:42 am
by grpugh
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... linda+beck

The above links to an article in the WSJ. The author notes that our brains have shrunk 10 percent in the last 5000 years. Might not that link to the issues of the bicameral mind?

Re: Brain Size

Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 2:33 pm
by Moderator
Perhaps very tangentially in the sense that it demonstrates that there have in fact been changes to the brain over the course of much shorter time scales than previously thought possible.

Gregory Cochran has written on the topic of recent evolution and brain changes with regards to Jaynes's theory. See his book "The 10,000 Year Explosion." Although I don't think he specifically discusses Jaynes in this book he does elsewhere.

Re: Brain Size

Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2011 10:57 am
by bfinn
Yes, I've recently read The 10,000 Year Explosion which I strongly recommend. He doesn't mention Jaynes however.

The main gist of the book is that human evolution didn't stop with the birth of agriculture & civilisation (as is often assumed) - on the contrary, it has sped up. Indeed the authors contend that one reason the Industrial Revolution occurred when it did rather than centuries (or millennia) earlier is due to evolutionary improvements in IQ and/or other abilities; perhaps that a critical mass of people with certain innate abilities (e.g. above a certain IQ) was required for it to come about.