Science Forums 2

[sman]

No. Civilization is defineately not natural. Yes, the term is ambiguous and yes, the question is terribly unscientific, but that doesn't make it meaningless. Or arrogant.

The cognitive niche is a sideline biological experiment that has never taken place before. Our environment is changing much faster than our evolution - we are only able to survive these changes by our extra-genetic plasticity which is totally unique to us.
Our instinctual apparatus hasn't changed since the hunter-gatherer times of hundreds of thousands of years ago, but our society has changed enormously since those times. Our gargantuan population is rife with the conflict between what we feel we must do because of our primeval instincts and what we know we must do because of our extragenetic learning.

Language is a good example. Most of it takes place in the visual cortex, that is, the machinery that, in chimps, is designed to process the continuous stream of optical data into meaningful correlations with our environment. In humans it has been co-opted for the expression of abstract concepts through metaphor. If you examine language you'll notice that it's mostly visual and spatial metaphor. Many other pieces of the primate brain have been hijacked by language in humans. In fact, I'll bet - with no other guide than a language like English - there's enough information to draw an almost complete wiring diagram of the brain, and not just the neocortical areas, the older parts too. The chances of a very strange east African Miocene ape communication globally with type-face symbols via the internet is about the same as the chances of adaptive saltation - and about as natural.

I believe the best we can do in this environment is to remember that it is not natural and that our best guides are artificial, like science and art and inter-tribal compassion - and internet forums. If we rely on what is natural I'm afraid this exquisite uniqueness called humanity, careening through space on this pale blue dot, will be lost.