More on Human and Nonhuman Minds

The topic of human 'uniqueness' was brought up again lately by a paper in the recent issue of the Behavioral and Brain Sciences called "Darwin's Mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds" and was discussed a bit on the blogosphere (see, e.g. here, here, here, and here).

Now there are some other interesting post on the topic, for example:

• Greg Downey of Neuroanthropology takes a critical look at an New York Times article by Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in in Leipzig, Germany, called "How are Humans Unique?"
  

• Christine Kenneally, author of The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, has written a piece for New Scientist called So You Think Humans Are Unique? (you can find a full write-up here)
  

• Also, Greg Downey links to an interesting article on human evolution in ScienceNOW

• Larry Moran of The Sandwalk links to an interesting Symposium called From RNA to Humans: A Symposium on Evolution, including the videos of talks like "Probing Human Brain Evolution at the Genetic Level" by geneticist Bruce Lahn of the Unviersity of Chicago, and "A Neanderthal Perspective on Human Origins" by geneticist Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Antrhopology in Leipzig, Germany

• Last but not least, on May 6 and May 8 there was a symposium in New York called "Darwin: 21st-Century Perspectives", where

  "Some of the world’s leading Darwin experts discussed the far-reaching legacy of Charles Darwin and the implications of his thinking for science and society today in a special two-part symposium, Darwin: 21st-Century Perspectives, hosted by The New York Botanical Garden and the American Museum of Natural History, which was open to the public."

Their website features high-quality videos and/or mp3s (depends on the talk) of the talks. Hiughlights (in my oppinion) include:

- Michael Ruse, philosopher, Is Darwinism an Exhausted Paradigm? (audio / video)
- Kenneth Miller, biologist, author, and expert court witness, Darwin, God, and Design: America’s New Battle over Evolution (audio)
- Gerald Edelman, biochemist and neurobiologist, Neural Darwinism

I've listened to some podcasts featuring Edelman lately, so I think by now I definitely know Gerald Edelman's favorite facts about the brain:

If you unfolded your cerebral cortex it would be the size of a (large) paper napkin. There would be 30 Billion Neurons and a Million Billion Connections. If you were to count every synaptic connections, counting one connection per second, you were only finished after 32 million years.



Enjoy!