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Is the birth canal the limit to human evolution?

GrafwritahGrafwritah 4,184 Posts
edited November 2005 in Strut Central
In *The Universe In a Nutshell* by Stephen Hawking, he advances the theory that humans are limited in regards to intellectual evolution because only a certain size brain will fit through the birth canal, and humans already have a hard enough time squeezing those watermelon headed babies out as it is.What are your thoughts?
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  • canonicalcanonical 2,100 Posts
    I thought this was already established. For example, in apes I believe they are in the womb for like 22 months (something way longer than 9months) and this way when they come out they are not so helpless like baby humans. However, if we did that we wouldn't fit through the legs. So I believe evolution has already solved part of that problem.

    However, I think that humans will become smart enough to bypass natural evolution and we'll be on some gattaca shit having tube babies and the whole reproductive system will be pointless
  • GambleGamble 844 Posts
    I was just having this conversation with someone earlier today! They thought my theories were pea-brained... i wish i had known that stephen hawking was on my side...

    Ill take it one step further though,...

    I plan on *forcing* my future wife to have a c-section - I dont want my kids soft, malleable skull being squeezed through an opening 1/8 of its size. I was a C-section baby myself, and I attribute my C+ GPA almost entirely to this fact. I shudder to think what my report card would have looked like had my puny brain been strained through tight-fitting meat curtains on day one, YaoMizzle?
  • canonicalcanonical 2,100 Posts

    I plan on *forcing* my future wife to have a c-section - I dont want my kids soft, malleable skull being squeezed through an opening 1/8 of its size. I was a C-section baby myself, and I attribute my C+ GPA almost entirely to this fact. I shudder to think what my report card would have looked like had my puny brain been strained through tight-fitting meat curtains on day one, YaoMizzle?
    When my sister had her baby (through the vag-hole) I was on some "yo, your kid is a straight coner" tip. It was disgusting. Babies are disgusting unles they're your own. So yeah, I hear you.
  • mandrewmandrew 2,720 Posts
    i agree with hawking, but that's just one of many constraints on human evolution...



    you could say that another is that we are not equipped with wings and sonar navigation. or we can't run 40 mph like some cats can...



    really, our brains are already supersized... 3 times bigger than a generic monkey or ape of our body size. if our bodies reflected the size of our brains, we'd be 10 feet tall. because of this, the brain takes up an extraordinary amount of energy (blood flow)... supposing the birth canal were a bit larger and our skulls could fit larger brains, there would definitely be a compromise from another part of our already weak (in great ape terms) bodies. one of the negative effects of having such a powerful and explosive brain is the rest of our body suffers.



    the moral of the story is we are perfect just the way we are... we have our little niche of inventing technologies to help us fend off - and now dominate - the rest of the animal kingdom, and for that, we miss out on the niches like copulating with flowers, having fangs, navigating in darkness, and so on.
  • GambleGamble 844 Posts
    we miss out on the niches like copulating with flowers

    Apparently you dont spend your nights perusing the same websites that i do....
  • mandrewmandrew 2,720 Posts
    we miss out on the niches like copulating with flowers

    Apparently you dont spend your nights perusing the same websites that i do....




    oh yeah, you like that don't you, you naughty little honey sucker
  • mandrewmandrew 2,720 Posts
    i just weirded myself out
  • NachoManCandySandwichNachoManCandySandwich 409 Posts
    I guess most babies that would have super-sized brains or something would by-default have to be delivered by C-section, therefor surviving and perhaps eventually breeding, passing their hugemongous domes onto their freak babies. Who would then, too, have to be cut out of their mothers' insufficient wombz.

    So in that sense we would have to "bypass natural evolution."
    But we pretty much have already done this. I mean the deaf-born or even color-blind (if due to an inheritable trait) shouldn't be as prominent in our population if it were truly up to 'natural' selection.

    But we'll all have wireless, external harddrive, cyber brains in not too long so keep squeezing em out!
  • Hotsauce84Hotsauce84 8,450 Posts
    we miss out on the niches like copulating with Flower.

    Apparently you dont spend your nights perusing the same websites that i do....
  • GambleGamble 844 Posts

  • mandrewmandrew 2,720 Posts


    from stephen hawking and evolution to flower sex to porn... we should be ashamed
    get back on track!
  • ZekeZeke 221 Posts
    I plan on *forcing* my future wife to have a c-section - I dont want my kids soft, malleable skull being squeezed through an opening 1/8 of its size. I was a C-section baby myself, and I attribute my C+ GPA almost entirely to this fact. I shudder to think what my report card would have looked like had my puny brain been strained through tight-fitting meat curtains on day one, YaoMizzle?

    It's too early in the morning for me to get too deep into this, but there are a lot of theories out there that in fact human babies born via C-section are less-equipped at a young age because they do not recieve the same huge shot of chemicals from Momma at birth. Not necessarily ill-equipped, but it's the same reason some people opt for drugless, "natural" births. Who knows if it's true. I tend to believe that millions of years of organic evolution can't be wrong, but I also have to claim that I have a somewhat tendentious distrust of pharmaceutical companies and the medical industry in general.



    I've never read stats, don't know if they even exist, but it's something to think about perhaps.
  • NewLifeTrioNewLifeTrio 271 Posts
    we miss out on the niches like copulating with flowers

    Apparently you dont spend your nights perusing the same websites that i do....

  • FlomotionFlomotion 2,391 Posts
    Of the 5.5 billion people in the world I'd guess about 0.000000001% or less were C-section births. It's only in the US that there's this strange obsession with caesarians, the rest of the world does it as nature intended.
  • leisurebanditleisurebandit 1,006 Posts
    In *The Universe In a Nutshell* by Stephen Hawking, he advances the theory that humans are limited in regards to intellectual evolution because only a certain size brain will fit through the birth canal, and humans already have a hard enough time squeezing those watermelon headed babies out as it is.

    What are your thoughts?

    of course Hawking has a point, but our species has evolved other strategies to bypass, to some extent, this limitation. Specifically, this is why, as someone else said above, human babies, relative to other species, are so helpless. More of our post-natal development is devoted to brain growth, which occurs at some ridiculous rate after birth. So the limitation of the size of the birth canal is compensated for by [evolutionary] adjustment in our ontogeny.
  • SooksSooks 714 Posts
    In *The Universe In a Nutshell* by Stephen Hawking, he advances the theory that humans are limited in regards to intellectual evolution because only a certain size brain will fit through the birth canal, and humans already have a hard enough time squeezing those watermelon headed babies out as it is.

    What are your thoughts?

    of course Hawking has a point, but our species has evolved other strategies to bypass, to some extent, this limitation. Specifically, this is why, as someone else said above, human babies, relative to other species, are so helpless. More of our post-natal development is devoted to brain growth, which occurs at some ridiculous rate after birth. So the limitation of the size of the birth canal is compensated for by [evolutionary] adjustment in our ontogeny.

    Yeah, Stephen Jay Gould (I think) makes this point in one of his books - compared to many animals, human babies are exceptionally helpless, for a really long time after birth, and it may be because the brain development that would usually happen in the womb happens outside of it.
  • TwoturntablesTwoturntables 58 Posts
    It is said that Einstein used only 6% of his brain. I think others could use a bit more of theirs also. Unless and until we use more of the hat rack we won't necessarily need to evolve.
  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,905 Posts
    Hawking's has been down since day one...







  • DongerDonger 854 Posts
    It is said that Einstein used only 6% of his brain. I think others could use a bit more of theirs also. Unless and until we use more of the hat rack we won't necessarily need to evolve.

    I was thinking the same thing.

    Good thread btw.
  • Garcia_VegaGarcia_Vega 2,428 Posts
    Do physical anthropologists write about physics and the unvierse? No, then why is Stephan Hawking writing about evolution. I don't care how smart he is supposed to be, he shouldn't be advancing theories in an area outside his expertise. To say that birthing through the birth canal limits the evolution of the mind is a fallicy. As someone else has already pointed out, our brains develop outside the womb, not inside. Regardless, if you have studied human evolution, one clearly sees brain development, all of this resulting in light of vaginal birth. To say that cranial capacity is correlated with intelligence is so 1800s. People's association with evolution and the concept of progress has got to go, evolution is complex and does not work in a linear fashion, its not supposed to make you better, smarter, or faster, sometimes evolution works to make you worse, dumber, or slower.
  • CrystalMachineCrystalMachine 2 Posts
    The entire universe is inside of each our skulls.
  • JuniorJunior 4,853 Posts
    Of the 5.5 billion people in the world I'd guess about 0.000000001% or less were C-section births. It's only in the US that there's this strange obsession with caesarians, the rest of the world does it as nature intended.



    Actually these days, in the West at least, the figure for c-section births is more like 1 in 10
  • SensiRiderSensiRider 97 Posts
    Do physical anthropologists write about physics and the unvierse? No, then why is Stephan Hawking writing about evolution. I don't care how smart he is supposed to be, he shouldn't be advancing theories in an area outside his expertise. To say that birthing through the birth canal limits the evolution of the mind is a fallicy. As someone else has already pointed out, our brains develop outside the womb, not inside. Regardless, if you have studied human evolution, one clearly sees brain development, all of this resulting in light of vaginal birth. To say that cranial capacity is correlated with intelligence is so 1800s. People's association with evolution and the concept of progress has got to go, evolution is complex and does not work in a linear fashion, its not supposed to make you better, smarter, or faster, sometimes evolution works to make you worse, dumber, or slower.

    Thank you.

    And as far as that business about "If only we'd use more of our brain we could fly or move things with our minds" or however you want to phrase it, that shit is bunk.

    The idea that we've got a big mass of brain that's just sitting dormant waiting for us to tap into it is untrue. Whether we're maximizing our mental capacity is a slightly different question, but your whole physical brain is active (sometimes) and serves a function. There's certainly redundancy such that brain damage or inactivation at a local level can be compensated for but there's no secret "genius" section of the brain that's just waiting for us to switch it on.
  • TwoturntablesTwoturntables 58 Posts
    www.mchawking.com

    No kidding this is stephen hawking on the mic! A must must see!

    I could go crazy with the greamlins but decided against. Peace.

  • mandrewmandrew 2,720 Posts
    To say that birthing through the birth canal limits the evolution of the mind is a fallicy. As someone else has already pointed out, our brains develop outside the womb, not inside. Regardless, if you have studied human evolution, one clearly sees brain development, all of this resulting in light of vaginal birth. To say that cranial capacity is correlated with intelligence is so 1800s.

    the wonder canal doesn't limit the evolution of our species but throughout the ages, it has created a limit on the size of our skulls. and while "intelligence" and the size/density of one's brain and skull are not related on any 1:1 scale, there is a correlation between the functioning capability of the mind and the size of the brain. for example, amongst the animal kingdom, primates developed a spectacular ability for sight. this is reflected in our "enlarged" and complex visual cortex. at the same time, our sense of smell is shite compared to many other species so the area of the brain that processes olfactory sensations is compartitively small.
    also, please note that our brains develop greatly both before and after birth.


    on a somewhat different note, this...
    People's association with evolution and the concept of progress has got to go, evolution is complex and does not work in a linear fashion, its not supposed to make you better, smarter, or faster,[/b] sometimes evolution works to make you worse, dumber, or slower.

    is very true

    ps - spelling phallacy like fallicy is a phallacy

  • funky16cornersfunky16corners 7,175 Posts


    ps - spelling phallacy like fallicy is a phallacy



    Actually....

    Main Entry: fal??la??cy [/b]
    Pronunciation: 'fa-l&-sE
    Function: noun
    Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
    Etymology: Latin fallacia, from fallac-, fallax deceitful, from fallere to deceive
    1 a obsolete : GUILE, TRICKERY b : deceptive appearance : DECEPTION
    2 a : a false or mistaken idea b : erroneous character : ERRONEOUSNESS
    3 : an often plausible argument using false or invalid inference

    ...spelling
  • mandrewmandrew 2,720 Posts
  • Sun_FortuneSun_Fortune 1,374 Posts
    I like this, good points made by all.

    I understand consciousness and thus intellectual capabilities to be like the foam on a wave. The wave moves the way it does due to the physical rules that guide it. It takes the whole wave to produce the little bit of foam on top. The idea that mind can animate matter is at best wishful thinking. Hawking is right, I believe, in asserting that our intellectual capabilities are limited due to our brain size. However, the atoms that make up our brains are part of the grander universe, with electrons tunnelling from distant quasars faster than the flash. So we do have the capability to be like Buddha, and be one with the universe.

    We humans will not be the last life form to inhabit this planet.
  • SwayzeSwayze 14,705 Posts


    on a somewhat different note, this...
    People's association with evolution and the concept of progress has got to go, evolution is complex and does not work in a linear fashion, its not supposed to make you better, smarter, or faster,[/b] sometimes evolution works to make you worse, dumber, or slower.


    no doubt, that gattaca shit is some phallusy.

    in other news:



    i'd tap
  • CaMKIIaCaMKIIa 269 Posts
    It is said that Einstein used only 6% of his brain. I think others could use a bit more of theirs also. Unless and until we use more of the hat rack we won't necessarily need to evolve.

    yeah, this is basically an old-wives tale.

    pretty much every part of your brain is being used at any given point, to what degree just depends on the task at hand.

    i'm not sure where this myth of "we only use 10% of our brain" comes from, but it's entirely false.
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