Reciprocal causation between mind and brain entails that our brains may
well be different from those of our ancestors. It is a matter of use and
structure. If people switch from swimming to weight-lifting, the new
exercise develops different muscles and the enhanced muscles make them
better at the new activity. Everything we know about the brain suggests
that it is similar to our muscles. Maguire et al. (2000) found that the
brains of the best and most experienced London taxi-drivers had an
enlarged hippocampus, which is the brain area used for navigating
three-dimensional space. Here we see one area of the brain being
developed without comparable development of other areas in response to a
specialized cognitive activity. It may well be that when we do
"Raven's-type" problems certain centers of our brain are active that
used to get little exercise; or it may be that we increase the
efficiency of synaptic connections throughout the brain. If we could
scan the brains of people in 1900, who can say what differences we would
see?
Do huge IQ gains mean we are more intelligent than our ancestors? If the question is "Do we have better brain potential at conception, or were our ancestors too stupid to deal with the concrete world of everyday life," the answer is no. If the question is "Do we live in a time that poses a wider range of cognitive problems than our ancestors encountered, and have we developed new cognitive skills and the kind of brain that can deal with these problems?," the answer is yes. Once we understand what has happened, we can communicate with one another even if some prefer the label "more intelligent" and others prefer "different." To care passionately about which label we use is to surrender to the tyranny of words. I suspect most readers ask the second question, and if so, they can say we are "smarter" than our ancestors. But it would probably be better to say that we are more modern, which is hardly surprising!
- Excerpts from Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century, by James R. Flynn
Do huge IQ gains mean we are more intelligent than our ancestors? If the question is "Do we have better brain potential at conception, or were our ancestors too stupid to deal with the concrete world of everyday life," the answer is no. If the question is "Do we live in a time that poses a wider range of cognitive problems than our ancestors encountered, and have we developed new cognitive skills and the kind of brain that can deal with these problems?," the answer is yes. Once we understand what has happened, we can communicate with one another even if some prefer the label "more intelligent" and others prefer "different." To care passionately about which label we use is to surrender to the tyranny of words. I suspect most readers ask the second question, and if so, they can say we are "smarter" than our ancestors. But it would probably be better to say that we are more modern, which is hardly surprising!
- Excerpts from Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century, by James R. Flynn
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