As quoted in Genius Talk : Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries (1995) by Denis Brian ISBN 0306450895
“The brain is a complex system, but that doesn’t mean it’s incomprehensible. Our neural circuits were carved by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species’ evolutionary history. Your brain has been molded by evolutionary pressures just as your spleen and eyes have been. And so has your consciousness. Consciousness developed because it was advantageous, but advantageous only in limited amounts.”
Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain
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David Eagleman 9
neuroscientist and author 1971Related quotes
Source: 1960s, Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), p. 3
Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 9, “Knowledge is Our Destiny: Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Intelligence” (pp. 242-243)
“We’ll rack our brains and either solve your problem or come up come up with new and better ones.”
Section 3 (p. 172)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)
"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)
The World in Six Songs (2008)
Context: Creative brains became more attractive during centuries of sexual selection because they could solve a wider range of unanticipatable problems.... Humans who just happened to find creativity attractive may have hitched their reproductive wagons to musicians and artists, and... conferred a survival advantage on their offspring.
Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 348
The Cosmic Game - Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness (1997), ISBN 0-7914-3876-7, p. 219.