Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

192 I HOW THE MIND WORKSwalked a frisky cocker spaniel as it explores the invisible phantasmagoriaon a sidewalk knows that it lives in an olfactory world beyond our understanding.Here is an exaggerated way of stating the difference. Ratherthan living in a three-dimensional coordinate space hung with movableobjects, standard mammals live in a two-dimensional flatland which theyexplore through a zero-dimensional peephole. Edwin Abbott's Flatland, amathematical novel about the denizens of a plane, showed that a twodimensionalworld differs from our own in ways other than just lackingone third of the usual dimensions. Many geometric arrangements are simplyimpossible. A full-faced human figure has no way of getting food intohis mouth, and a profiled one would be divided into two pieces by hisdigestive tract. Simple devices like tubes, knots, and wheels with axles areunbuildable. If most mammals think in a cognitive flatland, they wouldlack the mental models of movable solid objects in 3-D spatial andmechanical relationships that became so essential to our mental life.A second possible prerequisite, this one found in the common ancestorof humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, is group living. Most apes andmonkeys are gregarious, though most mammals are not. Living togetherhas advantages. A cluster of animals is not much more detectable to apredator than a single animal, and if it is detected, the likelihood thatany individual will be picked off is diluted. (Drivers feel less vulnerablespeeding when they are in a group of speeders, because chances! are thetraffic cop will stop someone else.) There are more eyes, ears, and nosesto detect a predator, and the attacker can sometimes be mobbed. A secondadvantage is in foraging efficiency. The advantage is most obvious incooperative hunting of large animals, such as in wolves and lions, but italso helps in sharing and defending other ephemeral food resources toobig to be consumed by the individual who found it, such as a tree ladenwith ripe fruit. Primates that depend on fruit, and primates that spendtime on the ground (where they are more vulnerable to predators), tendto hang out in groups.Group living could have set the stage for the evolution of humanlikeintelligence in two ways. With a group already in place, the value of havingbetter information is multiplied, because information is the one coiinmoditythat can be given away and kept at the same time. Therefore a smdrter animalliving in a group enjoys a double advantage: the benefit of the knowledgeand the benefit of whatever it can get in trade for the knowledge.The other way in which a group can be a crucible of intelligence isthat group living itself poses new cognitive challenges. There are also dis-