William Calvin's Brain Evolution Books
As I write this, William Calvin is primarily concerned with climate. Well, so am I, but fixing is better than worrying. Understanding how brains (and the people containing them) work is a key to designing server sky, which enables alternatives to high consumption of terrrestrial mass and energy. So, the following is notes about his older books:
The Throwing Madonna
Essays on the Brain
PSU QP376.C33 1983
- clever essays, some not read
- p xviii insidious superficial reductionism by physicists
- p xviii recommends "Programs of the Brain" by J.Z. Young PSU QP376.Y69
- p xx of the 10 billion neurons comprising the brain, 100 billion are granule cell neurons in the cerebellum.
p xxi 18th century Dutchman who cut Rembrandt's Night Watchman to fit a smaller room
p 3 Throwing Madonna; heart is in center of chest, but left side is louder. Mothers hold infants with their left arm as a pacifier, and throw and make tools with the right arm.
- p 5 handwriting: 0.34% ambidextrous, 10.6% left handed, 89% right handed (left brain rapid sequencers)
- p14 domesticated cats mimic infants
- p20 Books of science essays don't sell (Harold Morowitz), counterexample "Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
- p21 mimic cookbook, sex manual, or cat book
- p24 chimps find termite collection sticks in advance of need
- p25 chimps and hammer rocks for Panda and Coula nuts, most tool users are females
- p33 sequential movements lateralized to left brain, strokes there cause sequence problems
- p48 prisoner's dilemma tit-for-tat requires recognizing individuals
- p50 don't eat favorite food when catching flu, or it will spoil taste forever
- p86 many neurons are analog (like in the eyes), pulses are for long distance signalling
- p102 left/right brain, the new phrenology
- p111 tic douloureux trgeminal neuralgia, artery compresses nerve roots, "poach" nerve with needle
- p117 Woodrow Wilson stroke, brain problems, "more suspicious, secretive, egocentric"
- stroke at 1919 peace conference, became secretive and paranoid, went from conciliatory to punitive towards Germany
SoS Lansing asked physician CT Grayson for certificate of disability, refused. Gene Smith, When the Cheering Stopped
p175 temporal tipof frontal lobe helps judge relative timing
- p184 Cherokee creator, baked human figures, first underdone (Whites), second richly browned (Indians), third neglected and burned (Blacks)
- p185 4.5 Mya, split with gorillas and chimps, 400 cc brains
p219 throwing, 4 meters → 5.6 ms, 8 meters → 0.7 ms, 8 fold narrower, harumph, should be 4 fold I say
- (2x) halved fraction of the arc, so release time window halved
- (2x) twice as far, twice as fast to arrive in the same travel time, release time window halved again
- I've argued with WHC about this ... the other 2x is curve fit, based on hip turn providing some of the velocity
- Perhaps another 2x is visual assessment of rabbit trajectory, deciding where to aim
- So, 8x = sqrt( 64x neuron noise), 4x = sqrt( 16x neuron noise), either way a powerful driver
The Ascent of Mind
Ice Age Climates and the Evolution of Intelligence
Central 573.2 C168a