I just started reading Soul Made Flesh, a book about the discovery of the brain written by Carl Zimmer. It starts you off with ancient Greeks suffering a distinct disadvantage; for cultural reasons they wouldn't dissect humans, so there were all sorts of misconceptions about what the brain looked like. Zimmer cites an example: a doctor in the 1500s discovered that over 200 of the anatomical descriptions laid out by one of those Greek docs were actually based on animal organs rather than those of humans. It's an interesting study, and it has a wonderful cast of characters, from Aristotle through Descartes and beyond.
Elsewhere on the intelligence front, meet Rico. Rico is a border collie, and his ability to grasp new words is borderline human.
The researchers decided to test whether Rico's ability was based on understanding and if he could learn and remember new words. They placed a new toy among his favourites and asked Rico to fetch it, using the unfamiliar name. The dog nearly always did.Read that story; the statistics boggle the (human) mind. In one experiment, he was asked to fetch two toys from a different room twenty different times; he got the right ones in 37 out of 40 attempts. That might be better than I'd do, given my attention span. Posted by Linkmeister at June 10, 2004 03:09 PM
You might be interested in what Steve Den Beste has to say on the subject. You both seem to be thinking about the same things at the same time.
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/06/WhatamI.shtml
Posted by: Pixelshim at June 11, 2004 05:11 AMI nominate Rico for the Next President Of The United States.
Sounds like he will do a good job of obeying orders like everyone else...