In a message dated 10/7/1999 your wrote:
<< At 06:42 AM 10/07/1999 EDT, RDehaan237@aol.com wrote:
>Glenn,
>
>You didn't answer George's question. You described the putative selection
>process at comes after increase in brain size. Autocatalysis, however,
>refers to the internal biological process that produces variability.
I thought I did answer the question. INtelligence is in general correlated
to brain size (when considering mammals as a whole not people alone). So
the selection does not start AFTER the brain has already increased in size.
>>
Well, you still didn't answer George's question. Speaking of autocatalysis,
he asked "But does the word here mean anything more than 'we don't know the
mechanism'?" The answer to that question is, we don't know the mechanism
that produced increase in brain size, and using the word "autocatalysis" as
the mechanism is merely a speculative hypothesis.
Do you know of any biological mechanism that produced increase in brain
size? It can't be selection. Obviously, selection is not a biological
mechanisms. Despite what you say, selection DOES COME AFTER there is
something to select for, in this case increasing brain size.
Bob