Where does the human mind come from?
As I biologist, I find it puzzling that creatures which were evolved for living out on the savannah perhaps living on seashores, perhaps shouting at each other and gossiping with each other could end up producing our kinds of brain, which can do algebra and invent jumbo jets and much else. It seems odd that a biological brain, by the ordinary processes of evolution, should be able to do so much more than it is required to do. You don’t find that a fish, like a tuna, which developed to swim very fast eventually ends up flying and doing algebra. It is easy to imagine how following an evolutionary instinct can generate a great variety of creatures. The difficult question is: ‘What kind of journey made it possible for inanimate matter to turn into complex creatures like us, with selves, which can look at themselves, think, got to lectures and have their own inner worlds of mind and imagination?’. I would like to focus on answering this, as Ian Stewart and I did in greater depth in Figments
