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Genes, Brains, Minds: The Human Complex

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Soul, Psyche, Brain: New Directions in the Study of Religion and Brain-Mind Science

Abstract

Earth is the planet where the most complex creativity of which we are aware has taken place; and on this Earth, the most complex creative thing known to us is the human mind. John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry analyze “the major transitions in evolution” with the resulting complexity, asking, “how and why this complexity has increased in the course of evolution.” “Our thesis is that the increase has depended on a small number of major transitions in the way in which genetic information is transmitted between generations.” Critical innovations have included “the origin of the genetic code itself,” “the origin of eukaryotes from prokaryotes,” “meiotic sex,” “multicellular life,” “animal societies,” and especially “the emergence of human language with a universal grammar and unlimited semantic representation,” this last innovation making possible human culture (1995, pp. 3, 14).

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Authors
  1. Holmes Rolston III
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Kelly Bulkeley (Visiting Scholar)

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© 2005 Kelly Bulkeley

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Rolston, H. (2005). Genes, Brains, Minds: The Human Complex. In: Bulkeley, K. (eds) Soul, Psyche, Brain: New Directions in the Study of Religion and Brain-Mind Science. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979230_2

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