Astronomy - September 2015

FROM OUR INBOX

Leave God out

I enjoyed your coverage of the Starmus Festival in the May 2015

issue (p. 54) of Astronomy. I agree with Editor David J. Eicher’s

concern about the general lack of public support for science.

Unfortunately, the quote from Stephen Hawking, “there is no

god,” was unhelpful, and it would probably have been better

if Hawking’s personal religious views were omitted from the

article. — Warren Morrison, Cavan, Ontario

14 ASTRONOMY • SEPTEMBER 2015

Y

our ancestors had to

do four things well.

They had to eat.

They had to avoid

being eaten. They

had to cope with the elements.

And they had to reproduce. If

they had failed at any of those,

you wouldn’t be here.

There are lots of ways to tackle

those challenges. Some species

went the route of sharp claws and

big teeth. Others learned to hide.

Still others just bred faster than

predators could eat.

Evolution took humans down

a different path; we’re smart,

and we work together. Evolution

provided us with curiosity, tool-

using intelligence, adaptability,

and the capacity for language

and culture. As our brains got

bigger and more complex, we

fared very well, indeed.

Now we are on top of the

heap. Hallelujah! We won!

Well, sort of. Big brains are

great for thinking, but they have

some serious evolutionary down-

sides. For one thing, that 3-pound

(1.4 kilograms) tangle of neurons

inside your skull is expensive to

feed! While making up only a few

percent of your body mass, your

brain uses something like 20 per-

cent of the calories you burn.

Physical size is another prob-

lem. Human childbirth is both

FORYOURCONSIDERATION

BY JEFF HESTER

Brains in a box

Pleistocene thinking in a post-Pleistocene world.

dangerous and painful, and we

are born totally helpless. That

is all due to the troublesome

mechanics of squeezing such a

big brain through a pelvis.

So yes, that fancy pattern

recognition engine between our

ears is nice to have. But evolution

favored brains that were abso-

lutely no bigger than they needed

to be. You might say we have

Goldilocks brains. Smart enough,

but not too smart, our brains fit

in a box that was just right for

the world where they evolved.

If you want to see one of the

walls of that box, look at the

boundary between classical and

modern physics. We’re naturals

at throwing and catching a base-

ball, but get anywhere near the

speed of light, and things get

seriously counterintuitive. Try to

think about elementary particles,

and it’s even worse. As Niels

Bohr famously said, “Anyone

who is not shocked by quantum

theory has not understood it!”

Relativity and quantum physics

are hard to think about for a very

straightforward reason. Thinking

like that didn’t help your great-

many-times-removed grandpar-

ents find their next meal!

Ye t we have broken outside

that box. We know about cos-

mology and curved space-time.

We know about wave functions.

Kicking down those walls

wasn’t easy. It meant redefining

our very concept of knowledge. It

meant replacing comfortable

modes of thought with bold cre-

ativity and cold reason. It meant

following observation and experi-

ment where they led, regardless of

whether we liked the destination.

Humans will never grasp elec-

trons or the Big Bang in the same

visceral way we grasp notions

like “day” or “rock,” but intellec-

tually we got there! And when we

did, it changed the world.

The difference between billiard

balls and quarks is hardly the only

place we run up against the limi-

tations of our programming. For

most of our evolutionary history,

generation after generation faced

the same basic challenges. So if

your ancestors’ solutions worked

for them, there was a pretty good

chance they would work for you

too. Your tribe’s very existence

was recommendation enough for

its way of doing things.

In that world, it paid to be

conservative because conserva-

tive worked. Questioning the

status quo truly was dangerous.

“Better” can be the enemy of

“good enough,” and while think-

ing was great, try to be too clever,

and you might not survive to

become anybody’s ancestor!

So evolution added to the box

around our brains. It’s difficult to

break free of tradition, group-

think, conformity, and tribalism

because they are hard-wired in.

Which is all well and good, were

it not for the fact that we don’t

live in the Pleistocene anymore.

When faced with a challenge,

millions of years of evolution

scream at us to hold tight to

traditional beliefs and behav-

iors. But heeding that cry in

today’s world could be our

downfall. Modern humans see

more change in a month than

our ancestors saw in many life-

times. Fighting a rearguard

action against an inexorable tide

of changing social, economic,

and technical realities is a path-

way to irrelevance — or worse.

The stakes are high. Today

our species shares a globally

connected and interdependent

planet. Huddling with our tribe

and snarling at the shadows

might scare off a lion hiding in

the bushes, but threats like over-

population, global warming, or

the ecosystem’s destruction

don’t frighten so easily.

The human brain came

of age inside a box. It also

evolved the ability to break out

of that box when it needed to.

We’ve done it before. But tak-

ing control of our own drives

and instincts cuts a lot closer

to the bone than rethinking

Newtonian physics.

Our fate is in our hands.

Time will tell if we are up to

the challenge.

BROWSE THE “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION” ARCHIVE AT http://www.Astronomy.com/Hester.

Our brains evolved to keep us alive in a time when the law was “eat or be eaten.” It is up

to us to evolve our thinking if we want to survive today’s more rapid rate of change.

Jeff Hester is a keynote speaker,

coach, and astrophysicist.

Follow his thoughts at

jeff-hester.com.

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