Order of the Universe #39
[…] we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing
all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations. I do not doubt that
natural selection acted in building our oversized brain—and I am equally
confident that our brains became large as an adaptation for definite roles
(probably a complex set of interacting functions). But these assumptions do
not lead to the notion, often uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians,
that all major capacities of the brain must arise as direct products of
natural selection. Our brains are enormously complex computers. If I install
a much simpler computer to keep accounts in a factory, it can also perform
many other, more complex tasks unrelated to its appointed role. The
additional capacities are ineluctable consequences of structural design, not
direct adaptations. Our vastly more complex organic computers were also
built for reasons, but possess an almost terrifying array of additional
capacities—including, I suspect, most of what makes us human. Our ancestors
did not read, write, or wonder why most stars do not change their relative
positions while five wandering points of light and two larger disks move
through a path now called the zodiac. We need not view Bach as a happy
spinoff from the value of music in cementing tribal cohesion, or Shakespeare
as a fortunate consequence of the role of myth and epic narrative in
maintaining hunting bands.
Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (1981)
