| Science journals have featured countless stories | | | | pessimism in the study of human origins. Science |
| about the evolution of the human brain. Scientists are | | | | reporter James Randerson of Britain's Guardian |
| puzzled since humans have much bigger brains than | | | | newspaper was even more brunt, saying, "We know |
| any other species. Their suggested explanations have | | | | nothing about brain evolution." Randerson went on to |
| often been mutually exclusive. For instance, the old | | | | summarise Lewontin's reasons for pessimism. "The |
| text book explanation relied on eating meat but a | | | | handful of hominid fossils stretching back 4m years |
| few years ago an article in New Scientist, a popular | | | | or so" cannot tell us whether any of them were our |
| science magazine, suggested that eating starch was | | | | ancestors. We "do not have the have the faintest |
| the secret of brain growth. But both explanations fail | | | | idea what the cranial capacity [of a fossil hominid] |
| to answer why other meat or starch eating species | | | | means". Moreover, we do not even know which |
| do not have big brains. | | | | hominids walked upright and which did not. |
| At the recent AAAS (American Association for the | | | | Lewontin is well-known for his outspokenness. In |
| Advancement of Science) annual meeting in Boston, | | | | 1997 he wrote in The New York Review of Books |
| Richard Lewontin, a distinguished biology professor at | | | | that scientists often choose to make up |
| Harvard University, acknowledged that stories about | | | | "unsubstantiated just-so stories" because they "have |
| human brain evolution have not been based on facts. | | | | a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism... |
| Reporting on the meeting for the journal Science, | | | | Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we |
| Michael Balter quoted Lewontin as saying, "We are | | | | cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." |
| missing the fossil record of human cognition, so we | | | | Obviously, the scientific community cannot ignore |
| make up stories." The title of Balter's article seems to | | | | Lewinton's recent conclusions. If the ruling paradigm |
| be an admission of sorts: "How Human Intelligence | | | | (naturalism or the view that nature is all there is) |
| Evolved--Is It Science or 'Paleofantasy'?" | | | | leads us into a blind alley, might there be something |
| According to professor Lewontin, it is fantasy. | | | | wrong with it? |
| Lewontin suggests that there is much cause for | | | | |