Michael Arbib, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, notes that humans have created “a material and mental world of ever increasing complexity”—and yet whether a child is born into a world with the steam train or one with the iPhone, he or she can master some part of it without alterations in biology.
Michael Arbib, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, notes that humans have created “a material and mental world of ever increasing complexity”—and yet whether a child is born into a world with the steam train or one with the iPhone, he or she can master some part of it without alterations in biology. “As far as we know,” Arbib says, “the only type of brain on earth that can do that is the human brain.” He emphasizes, however, that the brain is just one part of a complex system, which includes the body: “If dolphins had hands, maybe they could have evolved that world.”