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