Is Man the climax species?

[waxcap]

Originally Posted by fairplay

Then he becomes bored, leaves the stick with a few pebbles attached on a flat but sloping surface, the stick starts to roll down the slope, older brother puts his thinking cap on and not only do we have the wheel, but the axle as well.

Yes ? or perhaps ... no.

Neil.

Nice try Neil but I think you'll find that the "Thinking Cap" came much later - probably the early 17th Century.

Dave.

[davecatt]

Originally Posted by waxcap

Nice try Neil but I think you'll find that the "Thinking Cap" came much later - probably the early 17th Century.

Dave.

Did we not have the wheel and axle before the 1600's then?

Perhaps the Romans, and our ancestors who opposed the Roman invasion, used sledges instead of those chariot with big blades sticking out of the axle hubs?

[davecatt]

Originally Posted by Cotham Marble

So do corvids ‘think outside the box’ ? Clever Crows Use Tools in New Way | Wired Science | Wired.com

Equating behavioural change with evolution is problematic, and while one could invoke epigenics as a source of evolutionary instigation of behaviour change, epigenic changes are frequently ephemeral. *1 The notion of ‘invention’ as a single ‘eureka’ event is very much a 19thC notion, linked to the apparent instantaneous production of new and wondrous things by new and wondrous men (*2 the absence of women in that story is very telling). We need to cut through the self congratulatory propaganda of the ‘industrial age’ to understand what invention might actually be.

Use of fire need have been no more than applied observation, responded to variously by hominims over millions of years. Fire may be a rare natural event in northern Europe, but it happens with great frequency on the African savannahs and near savannah woodland. Making use of ‘nature’ cooked food, fire shattered stoned or fire hardened wood need not have been anything other than slow absorption of a natural process into species behaviour. Generating fire at will is clearly a more specialised behaviour, but with fire a familiar phenomenon other behaviours such as striking rocks together as anvils (sparks produced) for opening nuts may have allowed sophistication over protracted time.

As to the wheel, it’s tempting to see it as a single entity developed in one go for a single purpose – yet there’s no reason for that to be the case. The wheel as technology for transport is only useful given certain parameters, either human made roads, or ground that is naturally dry and firm, of flatish or at least smoothish profile, lacking obstructing vegetation and rocks. Other transport technologies such sleds, pack animals and water transport offer far more facility than the wheel in many environments. The development of wheels may have been ancient – the use of sticks for winding fibres, with spindles being a sophistication, pulleys being a further development and only then after thousands of years, actually applying a wheel to run along the ground to carry a load.

That humans are capable of rapid behavioural change is clearly the case, but how we get there may not be because of ‘eureka’ moments but far less ‘considered’ processes.*

CM

*1This is news to me. Who assumes that?*2 Indeed. It tells us that we are more advanced educationally and sociologically than our ancestors only 200 years ago

Thinking outside the box has got nothing do with sudden revelation, its more a case of "considered’ processes" but applied outside of the accepted perception of usage.

Invention comes of the re application of known commodities for an innovative process. I call it thinking outside the box.
Dave

[waxcap]

Originally Posted by davecatt;873482
Thinking outside the box has got nothing do with sudden revelation, its more a case of [B

"considered’ processes"[/b] but applied outside of the accepted perception of usage.

Invention comes of the re application of known commodities for an innovative process. I call it thinking outside the box.
Dave

So

Thinking outside the box = "considered’ processes" applied outside of the accepted perception of usage.

and

Thinking outside the box = the re application of known commodities for an innovative process

therefore:

"considered processes" applied outside of the accepted perception of usage. = The re-application of known commodities for an innovative process

That makes perfect sense to me Dave. It's also a good example of Thinking outside the box.

[fairplay]

Originally Posted by waxcap

So

Thinking outside the box = "considered’ processes" applied outside of the accepted perception of usage.

and

Thinking outside the box = the re application of known commodities for an innovative process

therefore:

"considered processes" applied outside of the accepted perception of usage. = The re-application of known commodities for an innovative process

That makes perfect sense to me Dave. It's also a good example of Thinking outside the box.

I don't see any box, therefor I don't believe in them. (Blimey Dave, how do you expect me to understand that ?)

Neil.

[waxcap]

Originally Posted by fairplay

I don't see any box, therefor I don't believe in them. (Blimey Dave, how do you expect me to understand that ?)

Neil.

Exactly Neil! you have to get in a box first - before you can think outside of it!

I think you have to find yourself a box then you'll understand what on earth is being said here!

it reminds me of an 80's sketch

[Jim Ford]

This thread's taking a decidedly weird turn!

;^)

Jim

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by davecatt

*1This is news to me. Who assumes that?*2 Indeed. It tells us that we are more advanced educationally and sociologically than our ancestors only 200 years ago

I'm not sure what assumption is involved, it's a matter of what is in the historical record, I can't offer you a proof of the negative. One can make a retrospective progression of how 'inventor' is treated over time; from the mythical 'culture bringer' of oral tradition (fire, agriculture etc) to the philosopher/scientist of the Greek and Roman world, later reprised in the Islamic tradition, and then to the artist/architect/engineer of the late medieval. However none of these iconic figures describes with any certainty, any species wide behaviour changing development that resultsed from an individual, 'thinking outside the box'.

Your point 2. - are you suggesting that by acknowledging that women have a role in invention that I am demonstrating behavioural change that is evidence of evolution, and that this evolution has taken place in the last 200 years ? If so I can't see any reason to believe that women were not credited with invention in cultures that preexisited 19thC Europe. It would seem entirely reasonable that the technology reprsented by the apparently woven headresses adorning iconic paeolithic date figurines such as the Venus of Wilendorf would have been credited to a 'cultural mother', as indeed was perhaps the far older and definitively evolutionary invention of the 'digging stick'. Far from being 'evolutionary' the changes in European influenced societies may be no more than the back and forth of fashion.

Originally Posted by davecatt

[Thinking outside the box has got nothing do with sudden revelation, its more a case of "considered’ processes" but applied outside of the accepted perception of usage. Invention comes of the re application of known commodities for an innovative process. I call it thinking outside the box.

That seems to me to be a semantic rephrasing, which is fine - my use of the term 'eureka moment' could be seen as limiting 'invention' to an exceptionally brief chronological process. But I'm still confused by your insistence that there is necessarily a deliberative process that must preceed invention, and that this deliberative process is evolutionary. I come back the the 'inventive' corvid, if a crow can make novel uses of an available tool, without each use being of evolutionary significance, why should human invention have a greater significance ?

When the nth great grandma hominin picked up a bit of broken branch and dug around the stem of a withered vine in the dry season, and came up with a starch and moisture rich root which confered survival on her family that day, was she actually engaged in a deliberative process, or was she just following a mamalian fossicking instinct ? The nth great grandma certainly achieved something that was outside of the box of her culture - whether 'thinking' was involved, and what the nature of that thinking was are not easily answered. Farady, Bell, Marconi et al may well have shaped modern societies by use of a deliberative process, but we have no evidence of that deliberative process having been material to either the creation of the load bearing wheel or to the hominin use of fire. Whether one chooses a semantic construction to cast Farady, Bell and Marconi as 'thinkers outside of the box' is I guess a matter of perspective, however we have no certain evidence that the deliberative process employed by Farady, Bell and Marconi has any evolutionary quality, simply because we lack a sustained chronological body of recorded evidence of individual thinking. One can reasonably propose that deliberative processes will eventually be demonstrated to have evolutionary import, but the evidence for it is not there in the available human record as it stands.

CM

[Cotham Marble]

And serendipitously this week's New Scientist magazine has an editorial Sign in to read: Social media's moment will pass ? but when? - 15 February 2012 - New Scientist

from which:

"WHEN it's steam engine time, people will invent steam engines."

So goes an adage that has become popular in some technological circles in recent years. In other words, major innovations occur not when an inventor is struck by a bolt from the blue, but when the scientific and social conditions are ripe.

The steam-powered "aeolipile" was invented by Hero of Alexandria in Roman Egypt during the 1st century AD, but it wasn't until some 1700 years later that the steam engine as we know it emerged, thanks to better construction materials, plentiful fuel and, critically, growing industrial demand for an alternative source of power.

Some advocates of the idea suggest that it is a kind of guiding principle for the development of technology in general.

CM

[Dorts]

Originally Posted by Cotham Marble

The steam-powered "aeolipile" was invented by Hero of Alexandria in Roman Egypt during the 1st century AD, but it wasn't until some 1700 years later that the steam engine as we know it emerged, thanks to better construction materials, plentiful fuel and, critically, growing industrial demand for an alternative source of power.

Some advocates of the idea suggest that it is a kind of guiding principle for the development of technology in general.[/i]
CM

It can be summed-up with the old saying: "Necessity is the mother of invention ". In other words, we invent what we need, when we need it.
Makes sense really!
Dorts.