AndrewKrause

Dr. Carl Sagan stands at the forefront of the popular scientific field. As scientist, philospher, and raconteur, he is responsible perhaps more than any other scientist in the 20th century for inspiring Joe Public to think beyond the mundanities of everyday life, and ponder the great mysteries of the universe. Whereas some scientists use science to preempt God, Sagan saw science as a greater understanding of Gods works.

I was reading “The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence” (2004, Tess Press, ISBN: 1-57912-431-3), when I came across something very profound. Now when you read the kind of books I do, profound becomes the normative. It`s a great think to know that no matter how much you learn, there`s always a concept around the corner which triggers the endorphine cascade which we primates express verbally as “wow”. Says Sagan:

“So far as I know, childbirth is generally painful in only one of the milions of species on Earth: human beings. This must be a consequence of the recent and continuing inrease in cranial volume. Modern men and women have braincases twice the volume of Homo habilis`. Childbirth is painful because the evolution of the human skull has been spectacularly fast and recent. The American anatomist C. Judson Herrick described the development of the neocortex in the following terms: “Its explosive growth late in phylogeny is one of the most dramatic cases of evolutionary transformation known to comparative anatomy.” The incomplete closure of the skull at birth, the fontanelle, is very likely an imperfect accommodation to this recent brain evolution.”

The connection between the evolution of intelligence and the pain of childbirth seems unexpectedly to be made in the Book of Genesis. In punishment for eating the fruit fo the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God says to Eve¹, “in pain shalt thou bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16). It is interesting that it is not the getting of any sort of knowledge that God has forbidden, but, specifically, the knowledge of the difference between good and evil — that is, abstract and moral judgements, which, if they reside anywhere, reside in the neocortex. Even at the time that the Eden story was written, the development of cognitive skills was seen as endowing man with godlike power and awesome responsibilities. God says: “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth this hand, and take also the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22), they must be driven out of the Garden. God places cherubim with a flaming sword east of Eden to guard the Tree of Life from the ambitions of man.²

1. ^{God`s judgement on the serpent is that henceforth “upon thy belly shalt thou go” — implying that previously reptiles traveled by an alternative mode of locomotion. This is, of course, precisely true: snakes have evolved from four-legged reptilian ancestors resembling dragons. Many snakes still retain anatomical vestiges of the limbs of their ancestors.}
2. ^{Cherubim is plural; Genesis 3:24 specifiies one flaming sword. Presumably flaming swords were in short supply.}

^{What a refreshing viewpoint of Genesis; that the pain of childbirth is not a punishment levied by a vengeful and mysogynistic God, but rather a consequence of mankinds increasing in intelligence. (The Bible never actually says that it is punishment. Indeed, the original Hebrew text doesn`t even indicate that it is Gods will.)}

^{The development and growth of the neocortex is precisely what has defined humans - homo sapiens sapiens, or thinking man - from all other forms of life.}