Quote Originally Posted by denuseri View Post
I am sure if we survive the comming three way evolutionary apex of diminishing resources vs levels of population growth vs technological inovation we will continue to evolve as scheduled.
I do not believe we have evolved into this situation you describe, if by 'evolve' we mean going forward. I believe we are going the way of the dinosaurs.

I do not think there is a schedule, either, if by that you mean that things will keep getting better, that the species must continue to function better than the previous generations over time.

Evolution, as I understand it, is much more chaotic that that. It is not a straight line from less funtional to more, there are lots of hit-and-miss expereriments on the way.

And considering how busy we are cutting off the branch we are all sitting on, I am inclined to consider us a 'miss. Humans, with all their knowlegde and brains and power, are incredibly stupid.

The way the brain works, its structural arrangements (the anatomy from the atomic level to the large scale) and the coresponding functions there of (the phisiology IE what and how the brain works and what one can and cannot do with it etc, how memories are stored why some people become serial killers and why others are predisposed to become saints, why humans behave they way they do in any given situation etc) are all things that we know a lot more about than we did in preceeding generations, especially in the past ten years as multidisiplinarian experiments have confirmed repeatably the predicted outcomes
I remember reading so many times researchers say that there is so much more we do not know, than we know. Brains are still a mystery. Just think of recent experiments with such a simple thing as when the brain is or isn't dead. There have been some intersting surprises there in recent years :-)

It is said by people who study the history of science that from time to time science reaches a sort of plateau where they say: "now we know just about everything about everything." And then we have amazing new discoveries, and humility and curiosity comes back with a vengence.

We may all wish romantically or out of some sence of overinflated human pride that we must some how be different
From animals, you mean?

Just like some people have pedispositions to substance abuse, gambeling, or any number of other traints, diseases, sexual prefrences, different types of criminal behaviors, etc etc the list goes on and on and on.
Yes, genes have been the buzz word for quite a while, and attemps are to try to make them explain just about anything. But as many biologists say, genes can not explain behaviour in such detail.

And a lot of new stuff have come up about genes, that they themselves have genes (my term, as I cannot remember the biological expression for this), and the whole thing is vastly more complex than we have been lead to assume.

A lot of us will want to compromise and say its a 50/50 thing between nature and nurture...but the more we know about it, the more the nurture precentages seem to decrease.
That depends who you ask. There are a number of scientists discussing whether culture is overtaking biology - weird as it sounds. At least to me.