The Huxley Lecture

Location
Haworth building, Room 101
Dates
Monday 27 April 2015 (17:00-18:00)
Contact

Helen Jones  +44 (0)121 414 7931

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In 1863, eight years before Darwin’s Descent of Man, Thomas Henry Huxley published his most famous work, Evidence as to Man's place in Nature. He provided evidence for the anatomical similarity of the brains of humans and apes, which underpinned Darwin’s case for their common ancestry. But neither Huxley nor Darwin had much to say about the emergence of the mind. Huxley famously wrote: “how it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp”.

The human brain is very big, but not as large as those of elephants, whales or even Neanderthals. Most of the so-called unique characteristics of human cognition have been demonstrated in other species. Yet there clearly is something distinctive about human cognition. Elephants can’t talk. Whales haven’t invented science. And we got rid of Neanderthal man! Moreover, the genetic changes that created the human brain occurred more than 200,000 years ago. To the extent that the minds of 21st century human beings are different from those of our Stone-Age ancestors, natural selection is not responsible for the emergence of the modern mind. What could have driven the evolution of culture?