Forget what you think you know about the supremacy of human beings.
Mark Changizi, a speaker at Duke's first neurohumanities seminar last week, thinks the human brain doesn't have the "special sauce" we all assume it does. And by "no special sauce," he explained he means that the human brain isn't much different from an ape's.
In his newly-released book Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man, Changizi describes how the human concepts of music, language and writing are not revolutionary human inventions, but rather an adaptation of forms and sounds found in nature.
"Cultural evolution [shaped] language to harness brain regions specialized for ancient, non-language functions," Changizi wrote in an email.
He explained how the "no special sauce" theory replaces the prominent theory about specialized brain regions for language. You might have read about Broca's Area and Wernicke's area in your psychology or neuroscience classes, but these labels are just theory.
"Languages have evolved so that words look like natural objects when written and sound like natural events when spoken," Changizi wrote in his book.
Modern human language, Changizi said, is an amalgamation of what's around us in nature, and shaped by the capabilities of our brains into what we know today. It is not, he added, proof that man is innately superior to other beasts. He acknowledged that man has more "brain power" than apes, but it's just "more of the same."
Changizi's new theory is a bold departure from the commonly-accepted assumption that humanity is innately superior to all the beasts and lower life-forms on the planet. Whether you realize it or not, you have acted under the assumption that humans are awesome—much more so than dogs and chimpanzees, of course. And whether you noticed or not, this shaped your actions in a certain way.
"I'm suggesting there's no special sauce. And that ought to be the baseline hypothesis that other theories should argue against," Changizi wrote.
This new hypothesis—the "no special sauce" theory—could change the way we think about not only our brainpower, but also our relationship with the rest of the planet. Ecology is at stake here: once we accept that humans are just animals (mind you, really smart animals), this could knock down ourhuman egotism and open our minds to a world where the Earth isn't meant for homo sapiens conquest.
Who knows where it could take us?
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