Genes, brains, minds: The human complex

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).