brain size
gregladen | June 10, 2012The term "Dunbar's Number" refers to a particular hypothesis by primatologist Robin Dunbar. It is a very simple idea with rather complex implications, and it is one of those simple ideas that gets more complicated than ideal as we look into it more and more. Eventually, the idea is required by many who contemplate it to do more work than was ever intended, and in this way seems to fail, though it really doesn't. I personally think Dunbar's number is useful if it is properly understood, so I want you to give it a chance, and to help you do that I'd like to use an analogy.
I'm thinking of a…
ddobbs | March 29, 2010
Early homind skulls, from A Kansan's Guide to Science (seriously)
A couple weeks ago, the Guardian ran an article in which Oxford neurobiologist Colin Blakemore described "how the human got bigger by accident and not through evolution." Though I didn't get to it at the time, I thought that an odd headline, since evolution actually occurs when genetic accidents -- those mutation things -- grant an advantage. Now John Hawks has written a post addressing what he says is a pretty big muckup by Blakemore:
Thanks to Jerry Coyne, I encountered an interview in the Guardian with Colin Blakemore…