Science, Evolution, and the Human Brain

To twhitehead:

When I said the "neurologist were puzzled" that was
the way I remembered the idea of the article because
I did not have it in front of me at the time. One of the
statements that gave me this idea that they were
puzzled was from the following quoted sentence.

"Two tantalizing questions are now bugging medical science:
Can man learn to take more knowledge for his province by
putting more of his brain to active use?

And yes, it was on another thread you called me dishonest,
I forgot.

I guess I should take your word for it that the question is flawed.
But, I still don't know for sure.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
I suggest this because I vaguely remember I once saw a documentary about somebody that lost half of his brain but then learned to make-do with just his other half And do so surprisingly well.

The article does include an example of this.

Originally posted by twhitehead
The article does include an example of this.

I was not referring here to the article that he has already given but the article that he says exists but has yet to re-find -Sorry for not making that clear.

Originally posted by RJHinds
To twhitehead:

When I said the "neurologist were puzzled" that was
the way I remembered the idea of the article because
I did not have it in front of me at the time. One of the
statements that gave me this idea that they were
puzzled was from the following quoted sentence.

"Two tantalizing questions are now bugging medical science:
Can man learn ...[text shortened]... should take your word for it that the question is flawed.
But, I still don't know for sure.

RJ,
this is really a confusion of the two jobs our brain does - one is to act as a controller for many of our bodies functions; the other is to seat our conscious thought.
Our brain is fully utilised as a controller - there are no 'unused' bits, whether that be 90%, 50%, or 1%. Every part of it is active in this sense.
As for our conscious thought? It may be that we only use 10% or 50% or some small chunk in the activity of thinking and feeling and communicating and so on. But I would suggest this is because that's all this function requires, and that's all it can use.
Can we better utilise our memory and processing power and abstract reasoning and thought? Absolutely. Try doing some sudoku problems, or reading some Shakespeare, or playing with some Lego, to get these things working harder.
Are we using only a part of our brains? Definitely not.

To Andrew Hamilton:

The article you linked on how to stimulate the right
brain is a start. But I don't think that is exactly what
the neurologist were getting at because they already
knew how to use therapy to rehabilitate someone
with brain damage. I got the impression from reading
the article that they believed, at the time, that there was
much of the brain going unused. Especially, since in the
first example about Francis Bacon the following statement
was made:
"But among the many things that Bacon did not know
was that despite his encyclopedic knowledge and the
amazing breath and power of his intellect, he was using
little more than half his brain."

Another statement was:
" A newborn infant who has suffered severe damage to
the left side of the brain may have almost half of his brain
removed and grow up intellectually normal: the right
hemisphere learns to do most of the things that a whole
brain can do."

I could have misunderstood the purpose of the article.

RJHinds

Originally posted by RJHinds
I guess I should take your word for it that the question is flawed.
But, I still don't know for sure.

Well considering that there is so far no reason whatsoever for thinking the question is valid, I think you should consider the question flawed by default.
The article does not support the question - it says the exact opposite. And no other source has been cited that suggests the question might be valid - instead a number of sources, examples and simple logic have been given that clearly show it is not valid.
The only possible reason you have left for thinking it might be valid is because you think it might be some benefit to you if it were valid.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Well considering that there is so far no reason whatsoever for thinking the question is valid, I think you should consider the question flawed by default.
The article does not support the question - it says the exact opposite. And no other source has been cited that suggests the question might be valid - instead a number of sources, examples and simple l ...[text shortened]... hinking it might be valid is because you think it might be some benefit to you if it were valid.

Yes, that seems what the article was saying that if
we could learn to use more of our brain, we could
be better than Francis Bacon.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Yes, that seems what the article was saying that if
we could learn to use more of our brain, we could
be better than Francis Bacon.

The article says a lot of things including:
1. We use all of our brain.
2. The brain is flexible and can change its use.
3. It suggests we might be able to deliberately re-purpose some of our brain for more intellectual use than current usage.

At no point does it say:
1. That we only use half our brain.
2. That scientists in neurology are puzzled by 1.
3. That evolution cannot explain 1.

Originally posted by twhitehead
The article says a lot of things including:
1. We use all of our brain.
2. The brain is flexible and can change its use.
3. It suggests we might be able to deliberately re-purpose some of our brain for more intellectual use than current usage.

At no point does it say:
1. That we only use half our brain.
2. That scientists in neurology are puzzled by 1.
3. That evolution cannot explain 1.

I didn't see where it said we use "all" our brain.
That does't make sense from the Title of the article.
It says Francis Bacon "was using little more than
half his brain". It said this was "bugging medical science".
"Bugging" is a slang term, that I took to mean "puzzled"
as to how to answer the question. What dictionary word
would you use to better describe what is meant by that
slang word? The article did not mention evolution as a
way to explain anything.

Originally posted by rvsakhadeo
Please permit RJHinds to hypothesize. Why jump the gun and kill him off? I must add that I also did read in a coffee table book called" Mysteries of the Universe"some time back that Humans have a far bigger brain than they need and its overcapacity has been a puzzle to evolutionists.

"Why jump the gun and kill him off?"

LMFAO

Dont you know by now?... that's twiteheads anylitic, no nonsense style. He is the king of this demeanour rivalled by only by Lord Shark and Proper Knob at times. Hahahahaha 😀

Originally posted by RJHinds
To twhitehead:

I really don't know how much of my brain I use,
but it probably isn't very much. Ha, Ha.
Anyway, of what little I do use, I was thinking
if what these scientist say is true, then why?
Since, I believe in God, and God is the creator of
all the universe and everything that is in it, why
would he create man with more brain than he needs? ...[text shortened]... Maybe, that is why these scientists
are so puzzled. Do you have any ideas why?

RJHinds

I'll tell you why. We have developped bigger brains so that we may become "christ concious" and follow in the footsteps of the great ones that have preceeded us. Follow them to Nirvana.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I didn't see where it said we use "all" our brain.

If you read the whole article, you would see that a large part of it is about strokes and clearly says that whatever part of the brain is affected by a stroke, there is always some loss of function.

That does't make sense from the Title of the article.
You are misunderstanding the title. We do not use all our brain for conscious thought (or for any single function for that matter). The title is speculating that we might be able to retrain more of our brain for a preferred function for example the encyclopedic knowledge of Francis Bacon.

It says Francis Bacon "was using little more than half his brain".
If you read it carefully you will realize that they are referring to his use of his brain for encyclopedic knowledge
and not implying that the rest of his brain lies dormant.

It said this was "bugging medical science".
No it didn't. It lists two other questions that are "bugging medical science".
1. Can we use more of our brain for storing knowledge.
2. What do the various parts of our brain do.

You really need to work on your comprehension skills.

The article did not mention evolution as a way to explain anything.
Yes, I know that, yet you felt free to speculate:

It also, doesn't seem to fit well with the theory of evolution as I
understand it; because Darwin's idea of natural
selection would not need to produce more brain
than is needed. Maybe, that is why these scientists
are so puzzled.

Despite there being no indication in the article that this was the case.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Well, it did not get through to twhitehead. Perhaps a
little more detail would be helpful.

Oh gosh! Silly me, I've just gone through this thread and it seems it's not on here after all. I have a rendezvous to attend to. I'll have to find that answer later. I cant even remember how it went off the top of my head at the moment. Sorry. Will get back to ya...

Originally posted by twhitehead
[b]If you read the whole article, you would see that a large part of it is about strokes and clearly says that whatever part of the brain is affected by a stroke, there is always some loss of function.

The article says "If medical scientist had to rely on the study of
healthy people to find out how the brain works, they would know
even less about it than they do." ..."Medicine can only rely on
whatever self-healing capacity the damaged brain area has--or
find some way to stimulate another part of the brain to take
over the functions of the damaged brain."
One of my earlier questions was if this other part of the brain
was being used for other functions, then what happens to them?
This article says medical scientist knows little about the brain; you
imply they know everything or almost everything about.

The article goes on to say, "But man's brain differs from animals'
in having a huge neocortex... Animals do not speak,write, or think
abstractly, and presumably both halves of their brains are equally
active." The number one question that is "bugging medical science",
is can man learn to put "more of his brain to active use". You never
did say what word you would use to replace the slang term "bugging".
What does "bugging" mean to you?

Maybe we could both use some work on our comprehensive skills.

The article does imply that for most people the right hemisphere of
our brains is mostly inactive. And the whole idea of my original
post was to get people to speculate on it.

Originally posted by RJHinds
One of my earlier questions was if this other part of the brain
was being used for other functions, then what happens to them?

At a guess, I would say that they suffer as a result.

This article says medical scientist knows little about the brain; you
imply they know everything or almost everything about.
As has already been pointed out to you, the article is from 1963.

The article goes on to say, "But man's brain differs from animals'
in having a huge neocortex... Animals do not speak,write, or think
abstractly, and presumably both halves of their brains are equally
active."
Pure speculation on their part that has been proven false since that time.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7287327

The number one question that is "bugging medical science",
is can man learn to put "more of his brain to active use". You never
did say what word you would use to replace the slang term "bugging".
What does "bugging" mean to you?
I saw no need to say what it means to me as I think we generally agree on its meaning in this context.
What I dispute is what they mean by "active use".

Maybe we could both use some work on our comprehensive skills.
I am sure we could, nevertheless you have clearly not understood much of the article in question - or are deliberately refusing to understand it.

The article does imply that for most people the right hemisphere of
our brains is mostly inactive.
Please tell me where in the article that is implied.

And the whole idea of my original post was to get people to speculate on it.
And getting people to speculate on the implications of something that is clearly not true seems to be rather silly don't you think? Especially when you are strongly suggesting that it might be true.