Did our brains evolve to understand quantum mechanics?

[arunshanker]

Lawrence Krauss says that
We evolved as human beings a few million years ago on the Savanna in Africa and we evolved to escape tigers, or lions, or predators. You know, how to throw a rock or a spear or how to find a cave and we didn't evolve to understand quantum mechanics.
How correct is the statement

I feel that that evolution is a continuous process and brain evolves to understand the threats faced
Please give your opinions

 

[Simon Bridge]

Lawrence Krauss says that

... where? citation please: context is everything.

We evolved as human beings a few million years ago on the Savanna in Africa and we evolved to escape tigers, or lions, or predators. You know, how to throw a rock or a spear or how to find a cave and we didn’t evolve to understand quantum mechanics.
How correct is the statement

It's pretty good, up to a point ... QM is very recent and there is no record of noticeable changes to human biology in response.

OTOH: we did evolve to understand the World around us, and to improve that understanding.
Our understanding of QM is one result of that process. It's just not a major contributing factor to our speciation.

...we also have to be careful about the word "purpose" when we are talking about adaptations.

I suspect he's speaking off the cuff, and just wants to give an idea as to why QM is so counter-intuitive. Its just not the sort of thing that would be life-or-death back when our brain structure was being laid down.

I feel that that evolution is a continuous process and brain evolves to understand the threats faced

Depends what you are calling "continuous". It takes a while to get the hang of how evolution happens. Have a look at the role prions play in biodiversity for eg.

Please give your opinions

That's just asking for trouble! Instead, ask for the science, and pointers to finding out more.
Certainly you don't want empty opinions.

 

[phinds]

What he means is we don't live at the quantum level so we have no direct experience of it and so it seems weird. The same is true of things on a cosmological scale. The very very large and the very very small are just not in direct human experience and so our "intuition" and "common sense" often fail completely at those scales.

 

[bhobba]

You know, how to throw a rock or a spear or how to find a cave and we didn’t evolve to understand quantum mechanics.

Don't know about you, but I have zero idea how to do any of those things, well maybe throw a rock, but that's pretty trivial, and I certainly understand QM a LOT better than a zero idea.

The human brain is a pretty versatile thing - its just, as seems quite obvious, as civilization grows we require different skills to be successful. Civilization developed from the exercise of that 'brain power', its hardly surprising the very thing that set us on that path should now take on a greater significance.

Regarding our understanding of QM, it's not quite as mysterious as it once was:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0101012.pdf

It looks like even that succumbed to our relentless probing.

I am pretty sure he was simply alluding to the obvious - our hunter gather background has not equipped us to understand QM - but neither has it equipped us to understand stochastic finance, which, interestingly, and merely as an aside, has mathematical parallels.

Its just the human condition - nothing really Earth shattering about it.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Simon Bridge]

Quantum Mechanics is an un-intended consequence...

... "un-intended"?
I would have thought that every result is "un-intended", otherwise certain persons may infer that you mean there is a designer (or Designer) who is doing the intending. It's probably useful to avoid the looser terminology around evolution and adaptations - and a good exercise: can you rephrase the idea without implying an intelligent agency?

People confused on this issue may benifit from this TED-Ed animation ... though it still manages to continue the impression that evolution is a linear step-by-step process.

 

[Pythagorean]

I think the basic point of the OP quote is just that determinism and continuity (concepts of classical physics) are extremely intuitive to humans, and have (arguably) been selected for as part of motion prediction and spatial navigation. There probably aren't many predator or prey that behave like quantum particles.

 

[Simon Bridge]

@arunshankar: time for feedback - any of this any use to you?

 

[Annihilator]

In biological terms, the brain is mostly the result of sexual selection of optimal foraging. Different brains in different organisms can be measured much like an intel processor, in terms of Mhz. However we need to go in deeper and ask why behaviour at all.

"Evolutionary Psychology" and "Ethology" deal with this.

This can be demonstrated through mapping neural correlates of consciousness in humans and understanding animal behaviour (Humans are animals). Basically gene/brain/action correlates. Then trying to understand the environmental influences on the phenotype.

It is especially useful for understanding how humans cope with shaping their environment so quickly. For example, many of us have fears of things which don't even exist in our environment, but maybe in others. Snakes, spiders, reptiles, etc. Yet statistically the things which kill us the most in the developed world (overdoses, car crashes) are things we seem to have no natural inhibition against. There is an evolutionary explanation for this, however something else is happening. Namely behavior is a phenotype from an expressed genotype. This means our ability to catch a ball in our hand, all of that coordination has basically been trial and error throughout its evolutionary history via natural selection. So our brains are very much adapted for survival in the environment it is found in. However given we can shape our environment so quickly, we are now faced with new environments where our brains are less adapted. This can include comprehending new frontiers (the mental environment of say quantum mechanic theory) which our brains are not suited for, however oddly enough, the theory of evolution is saying nothing is stopping selection from modifying brains to be better at QM, if it confers a fitness advantage. I.e - People who understand QM can only reproduce. Those who are fitter reproduce more. Incremental changes over long periods of time.

 

[Evo]

In biological terms, the brain is mostly the result of sexual selection of optimal foraging. Different brains in different organisms can be measured much like an intel processor, in terms of Mhz. However we need to go in deeper and ask why behaviour at all.

"Evolutionary Psychology" and "Ethology" deal with this.

This can be demonstrated through mapping neural correlates of consciousness in humans and understanding animal behaviour (Humans are animals). Basically gene/brain/action correlates. Then trying to understand the environmental influences on the phenotype.

It is especially useful for understanding how humans cope with shaping their environment so quickly. For example, many of us have fears of things which don't even exist in our environment, but maybe in others. Snakes, spiders, reptiles, etc. Yet statistically the things which kill us the most in the developed world (overdoses, car crashes) are things we seem to have no natural inhibition against. There is an evolutionary explanation for this, however something else is happening. Namely behavior is a phenotype from an expressed genotype. This means our ability to catch a ball in our hand, all of that coordination has basically been trial and error throughout its evolutionary history via natural selection. So our brains are very much adapted for survival in the environment it is found in. However given we can shape our environment so quickly, we are now faced with new environments where our brains are less adapted. This can include comprehending new frontiers (the mental environment of say quantum mechanic theory) which our brains are not suited for, however oddly enough, the theory of evolution is saying nothing is stopping selection from modifying brains to be better at QM, if it confers a fitness advantage. I.e - People who understand QM can only reproduce. Those who are fitter reproduce more. Incremental changes over long periods of time.

Please post the peer reviewed research on all of this, you know the rules.

 

[zoobyshoe]

This guy, Kraus, is not a biologist. He's a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, and it seems he's a pal of Richard Dawkins, and on the same bandwagon as Dawkins to squelch mystical thinking. That's fine, but it can lead to generating a lot of edgy, meme-ful quotes that are probably more controversial than enlightning:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1410.Lawrence_M_Krauss

 

[Annihilator]

Please post the peer reviewed research on all of this, you know the rules.

Brain evolution through sexual selection and optimal foraging in Life History are not just peer-review, they are textbook concept learned in Evolution 101. Very simple basic stuff.

Evolutionary psychology and the brain, Bradley Duchaine author, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby in Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

Information and its use by animals in evolutionary ecology Sasha Dall in Trends in Eco & Evo.

The handbook of evolutionary psychology by Kaplan covers it in Life History Theory and Evolutionary Psychology (50+ citations).

However if u are new to biology and asking what all this stuff is the best way to learn this stuff is to try 1st year biology textbooks on Life History.

 

[zoobyshoe]

... where? citation please: context is everything.

I believe the OP must be referring to this video I found:



Having watched it, I think Kraus is wrong to say we didn't evolve to understand QM, due to what he says later about us enjoying puzzle solving so much. Clearly there's been selection in favor of puzzle solvers, and QM is just another puzzle. Figuring things out is what we do, and it's not an activity limited to humans. A lot of animals are puzzle solvers, to the best of their ability.

 

[Pythagorean]

Can you show any evidence to back of the claim that "clearly there's been selection in favor of puzzle solvers" that's specific enough to pertain to something like QM?

 

[Annihilator]

Pythagorean - all the peer review papers above I listed contain puzzle solving related material. Zoobyeshoe is right.

Remember, as kids we can't solve some things adults can. This is because developmentally we haven't grown the parts we need, irrespective of how much environmental influence (teaching) we receive. This means there is an organic bases to problem solving.

Same with different animals with different brain sizes and complexity. They problem solve differently because of this.

Selection must happen where there is genetic variation to confer a fitness advantage. Obviously there must be something to brain size/complexity. This is covered also under something called body/brain ratios! :)

 

[Pythagorean]

Pythagorean - all the peer review papers above I listed contain puzzle solving related material. Zoobyeshoe is right.

You're required to post links to your peer review research in this forum. It's also a common courtesy to quote the paragraph that makes your point.

I saw you mentioned evolutionary psychology... but evolutionary psychology has experience a lot of criticism from traditional evolutionary fields. There's no method I know of that can verify a claim like "puzzle solving was selected for". And this is one of the main criticisms of evolutionary psychology: in traditional evolutionary literature, molecular evidence is favored, but there is no molecular evidence available for claims made in evolutionary psychology.

 

[Annihilator]

There's no method I know of that can verify a claim like "puzzle solving was selected for". And this is one of the main criticisms of evolutionary psychology: in traditional evolutionary literature, molecular evidence is favored, but there is no molecular evidence available for claims made in evolutionary psychology.

That's an argument from incredulity.

In evolutionary biology lots of lines of evidence, not just molecular, is favoured.

Evolutionary psychology also apples to other organisms. Ethology has a history of testing things like peck responses and this is MEASURED by fitness, sometimes they use even inclusive fitness models. This include genetic analysis. Since genes produce proteins, there you have a molecular bases.

Why not actually just have a look at the handbook I quoted. I can't post to full peer-review as that is paid for, but the handbook stuff I mentioned is available and very well referenced.BTW - Evolutionary psychology has no more or less criticism than any other field in evolutionary biology. I think maybe you are talking about some problems between Wilson and other Harvard biologists. What they are arguing against is genetic/biological determinism. Of course no one is saying any such thing.

P.S.S - You aren't going to capture brain evolution in a few quotes. You need a full paper or better yet a manual/textbook that covers it, as per above.

 

[Pythagorean]

I'm not making an argument; I'm questioning an assertion that's already been made and asking for a specific argument with citations and quotes rather than a list of literature on a whole subject.

The argument may be right, I don't know... but I'm not going to believe it under the pretense that it's somewhere in the millions of words you cited as evidence.

 

[Annihilator]

I can't provide a peer review paper which says ""clearly there's been selection in favor of puzzle solvers that's specific enough to pertain to something like QM?"

That's not going to happen. All I can do is show the various linking disciplines (and its only a few things I referenced there) and how they integrate to explain such a massive question like "How did the brain evolve" let alone "How did the brain evolve to do QM". Also we are talking about brains (plural among living things) and also developmental biology (growth).

I have had to read lots of papers on here from people to understand something like the different interpretations of QM etc. Sometimes its going to take more than just a quote and this is one of them. However if someone can do better than I, then have at it. :)

 

[Annihilator]

I feel that that evolution is a continuous process and brain evolves to understand the threats faced
Please give your opinions

If you have genetic variation, reproduction and the struggle for survival, evolution MUST occur by definition. However there are models of evolution, like neutral selection, where no adaptive evolution occurs but the genome changes. In the real world, stasis is almost unheard of, although evolution can occur very slowly.

 

[Evo]

Brain evolution through sexual selection and optimal foraging in Life History are not just peer-review, they are textbook concept learned in Evolution 101. Very simple basic stuff.

Evolutionary psychology and the brain, Bradley Duchaine author, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby in Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

Information and its use by animals in evolutionary ecology Sasha Dall in Trends in Eco & Evo.

The handbook of evolutionary psychology by Kaplan covers it in Life History Theory and Evolutionary Psychology (50+ citations).

However if u are new to biology and asking what all this stuff is the best way to learn this stuff is to try 1st year biology textbooks on Life History.

Annihilator, it's a rule that when you make claims that you post the valid scientific sources, I am not asking for me, I am advising you that you must provide them.

Now, please post acceptable exerpts from these books showing page and paragraph information that specifically backs up what you posted.

Also, text speak is not allowed on this forum.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Can you show any evidence to back of the claim that "clearly there's been selection in favor of puzzle solvers" that's specific enough to pertain to something like QM?

Why are you even asking? Do you doubt better puzzle solving skills represent an advantage? The opposite assertion, "It's clear those with the poorer puzzle solving skills are better at finding food and shelter, and escaping from traps and dangerous situations, and therefore live longer to pass their genes down," would be a ridiculous assertion.

And I didn't even imply such selection was specifically aimed at QM. I characterized QM as a puzzle, like any other.

 

[phinds]

And I didn't even imply such selection was specifically aimed at QM. I characterized QM as a puzzle, like any other.

Yes, but QM is NOT a puzzle like any other. It involves concepts that are so far outside our day to day experiences that I don't think your logic follows. Our puzzle solving ability evolved to deal with experiences in what we would commonly think of as our "real world day to day experiences" and QM does not fall in that domain at all.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Humans came about because of evolution. Some humans understand quantum mechanics. Therefore, evolution must have enabled us to attain the intelligence to understand QM.

One thing that I think that Krauss gets wrong in his quote is his statement (from the OP) that "you know how to throw a rock or a spear or how to find a cave." While it might make sense for behaviors and patterns of thinking be hardwired into our brains, they are not. None of these behaviors are instinctual. Like understanding QM, all of these behaviors are learned.

Indeed, while there is some large-scale organization to the brain that evolution has hard-wired, most of the connections in our brain form in response to experiences that occur to us throughout our lives. While this means that we are born with very few instinctual behaviors (and as a result human babies cannot survive without a caretaker), this wiring strategy allows our brains to adapt to new situations and gives humans an unparallelled ability to learn. A striking example of this plasticity is experiments done on perceptual adaptation. For example, if an individual wears a pair of reversing glasses that inverts one's field of view such that up is down and down is up, the brain can eventually adapt and the wearer will begin to see the world right side up despite the fact that the wearer's vision remains inverted.

The human brain has evolved a great deal of plasticity, and it is this ability to adapt to new circumstances that allows humans to learn such complicated ideas as quantum mechanics.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Yes, but QM is NOT a puzzle like any other. It involves concepts that are so far outside our day to day experiences that I don't think your logic follows. Our puzzle solving ability evolved to deal with experiences in what we would commonly think of as our "real world day to day experiences" and QM does not fall in that domain at all.

I like Ygggdrasil's answer, and I will add that all of physics up to QM was, at first, completely outside our "real world day to day experiences". It took from the dawn of man till Galileo before we understood and articulated the first law of motion correctly, despite the fact we're constantly surrounded by motion. I would argue that QM only seems like the most baffling possible puzzle because it's the current one.

 

[Pythagorean]

Yes, evolution must have enabled us to attain the intelligence to understand QM. That can be said about any subject. But was the intuition to understand QM selected for? Of course not. It's easy to wiggle something like "puzzle-solving" into selection since it's a vague concept and I think it strays from the OP's topic anyway to talk about puzzle-solving in general.

The intuition we (and most mammals) start with allowed us to track prey and avoid predators, to know our bodies position in space, to predict trajectories, to judge depth so we don't walk off cliffs. We have great spatial intuition in the classical physics sense. These are readily available for throwing a rock or spear (I don't agree with finding a cave... that would be more of a Bayesian process for a caveman.. still not QM though).

But it's really not surprising... we framed classical physics in language and concepts that were intuitive to us from what we could observe. With better technology and advanced concepts, we were able to predict and observe things beyond what our senses could naturally observe and (still using abstractions like space) we formulated QM.

QM concepts like nonlocality, indistinguishability, superposition of states... intuition for such concepts wouldn't have had any usefulness in reproduction in the 99.9% of human history. So it's not surprising that humans don't readily grasp them.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Yes, evolution must have enabled us to attain the intelligence to understand QM. That can be said about any subject. But was the intuition to understand QM selected for? Of course not. It's easy to wiggle something like "puzzle-solving" into selection since it's a vague concept and I think it strays from the OP's topic anyway to talk about puzzle-solving in general.

QM is not intuitive. "Puzzle solving" includes, among other things, the all important ability to explore counter-intuitive solutions. To the extent we have any traction on QM it's due to a lot of counter-intuitive puzzle solving, not intuition. The same is true for physics in general.

Of course there was never any specific selection to understand QM in particular. But there had to have been selection for solving puzzles, problems, mysteries, enigmas, etc. Example: I saw an interview with a Japanese soldier who was sent to Burma in WWII. They got lost in the jungle with no food. Surrounded by strange, foreign plants, they had no idea what was edible and what might be poisonous. Then someone had the idea, "Lets watch what the monkeys eat!" They ended up eating well and lived to go home, marry, and have kids, naturally selected by the ability to solve the puzzle of what was edible.

As I said to Phinds, I think it's mere shortsightedness to suppose QM is some completely new kind of puzzle we've never encountered before and have no skills to tackle. You Pythagoreans were thrown into a much worse state of confusion and alarm by the discovery of irrational numbers, a couple thousand years ago. Every new, counter-intuitive thing threatens to shatter our sense of reality. QM is the current puzzle and I think we are applying skills to it that were originally selected for their life saving advantages.

 

[atyy]

Humans came about because of evolution. Some humans understand quantum mechanics. Therefore, evolution must have enabled us to attain the intelligence to understand QM.

One thing that I think that Krauss gets wrong in his quote is his statement (from the OP) that "you know how to throw a rock or a spear or how to find a cave." While it might make sense for behaviors and patterns of thinking be hardwired into our brains, they are not. None of these behaviors are instinctual. Like understanding QM, all of these behaviors are learned.

Indeed, while there is some large-scale organization to the brain that evolution has hard-wired, most of the connections in our brain form in response to experiences that occur to us throughout our lives. While this means that we are born with very few instinctual behaviors (and as a result human babies cannot survive without a caretaker), this wiring strategy allows our brains to adapt to new situations and gives humans an unparallelled ability to learn. A striking example of this plasticity is experiments done on perceptual adaptation. For example, if an individual wears a pair of reversing glasses that inverts one's field of view such that up is down and down is up, the brain can eventually adapt and the wearer will begin to see the world right side up despite the fact that the wearer's vision remains inverted.

The human brain has evolved a great deal of plasticity, and it is this ability to adapt to new circumstances that allows humans to learn such complicated ideas as quantum mechanics.

I agree with these points. Just wanted to note that some aspects of the specific example of inverting glasses have been challenged. These authors report that their subjects adapted their actions, but their percept remained inverted.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10664787

 

[Simon Bridge]

Do you doubt better puzzle solving skills represent an advantage?

But is the claim that is it supported by evidence? A particular person may have no doubt at all and still be wrong. We like to think that intelligence and the associated big brains are advantageous basically because we have them. Well, we have the latter and like to think we have the former.

The ability to solve puzzles need not be any particular net advantage so long as it is not a fatal disadvantage the traits supporting this can still get passed on.

There is support for sexual selection for big brains appearing in the literature.
i.e. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000062
... the authors suggest that monogamy, in particular, selects for larger brains by requiring more processing power to handle deceit - creating an arms race of sorts.

... it could be like elaborate plumage in some birds - which can actually be a hinderance to the individual - oversized brains could fit as an energy drain: conspicvuous consumption - look at me I'm healthy and have good genes because I'm successful enough to be able to carry this huge cool person of energy-guzzling meat around. But how to show it off?

But but butbutbutbut... shouldn;t we be hearing from OP by now?

 

[zoobyshoe]

But is the claim that is it supported by evidence?

How can you even ask? The evidence is overwhelming. I'd feel like I was talking down to people here if I had to explain that stone age man was killing animals many times larger and more aggressive than himself through the use of flint tipped spears, etc. etc. etc. Doesn't everyone know all this? We didn't end up wearing bear skins by evolving larger, stronger bodies and bigger claws than bears. We evolved the intelligence it took to make tools to kill them with.

From the discovery of the club to the space station: all puzzle solving.



That's the point Kubrick makes in this brilliant, abrupt cut in 2001, from the discovery of the tool to it's ultimate manifestation in the blink of an eye. The tribe of hominids that first got the idea of using clubs against their rivals prevailed, becoming Homo Habilis, tool using man, and on to becoming modern technological man.

Our ability to solve problems is many orders of magnitude greater than any other species. We completely dominate the planet.

 

[Pythagorean]

I just think "puzzle solving" is vague and you can say anything is puzzle solving. It's just a little more specific than saying being able to survive is selected for. and if hunting mammoth and scientific disciplines are both included as puzzle solving than I don't feel I've gained anything useful from such a broad statement.

 

[atyy]

But is the claim that is it supported by evidence? A particular person may have no doubt at all and still be wrong. We like to think that intelligence and the associated big brains are advantageous basically because we have them. Well, we have the latter and like to think we have the former.

The ability to solve puzzles need not be any particular net advantage so long as it is not a fatal disadvantage the traits supporting this can still get passed on.

There is support for sexual selection for big brains appearing in the literature.
i.e. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000062
... the authors suggest that monogamy, in particular, selects for larger brains by requiring more processing power to handle deceit - creating an arms race of sorts.

... it could be like elaborate plumage in some birds - which can actually be a hinderance to the individual - oversized brains could fit as an energy drain: conspicvuous consumption - look at me I'm healthy and have good genes because I'm successful enough to be able to carry this huge cool person of energy-guzzling meat around. But how to show it off?

But but butbutbutbut... shouldn;t we be hearing from OP by now?

There seems to be some pertinent discussion here

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20445094
Colloquium paper: the cognitive niche: coevolution of intelligence, sociality, and language.
Pinker S.
"Although Darwin insisted that human intelligence could be fully explained by the theory of evolution, the codiscoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, claimed that abstract intelligence was of no use to ancestral humans and could only be explained by intelligent design. Wallace's apparent paradox can be dissolved with two hypotheses about human cognition. One is that intelligence is an adaptation to a knowledge-using, socially interdependent lifestyle, the "cognitive niche." This embraces the ability to overcome the evolutionary fixed defenses of plants and animals by applications of reasoning, including weapons, traps, coordinated driving of game, and detoxification of plants. Such reasoning exploits intuitive theories about different aspects of the world, such as objects, forces, paths, places, states, substances, and other people's beliefs and desires. The theory explains many zoologically unusual traits in Homo sapiens, including our complex toolkit, wide range of habitats and diets, extended childhoods and long lives, hypersociality, complex mating, division into cultures, and language (which multiplies the benefit of knowledge because know-how is useful not only for its practical benefits but as a trade good with others, enhancing the evolution of cooperation). The second hypothesis is that humans possesses an ability of metaphorical abstraction, which allows them to coopt faculties that originally evolved for physical problem-solving and social coordination, apply them to abstract subject matter, and combine them productively. These abilities can help explain the emergence of abstract cognition without supernatural or exotic evolutionary forces and are in principle testable by analyses of statistical signs of selection in the human genome."

The article by Spelke also seems interesting:
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/pdfs/DanaSpelke.pdf
"Geometric map-making is even more recent, and the formal unification of number and geometry is less than 400 years old (see Dehaene, 1997, for discussion). Thus, the human brain cannot have been shaped, by natural selection, to perform symbolic mathematics. When children learn mathematics, they harness brain systems that evolved for other purposes.

What are those systems and purposes?"

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Yes, evolution must have enabled us to attain the intelligence to understand QM. That can be said about any subject. But was the intuition to understand QM selected for? Of course not. It's easy to wiggle something like "puzzle-solving" into selection since it's a vague concept and I think it strays from the OP's topic anyway to talk about puzzle-solving in general.

The intuition we (and most mammals) start with allowed us to track prey and avoid predators, to know our bodies position in space, to predict trajectories, to judge depth so we don't walk off cliffs. We have great spatial intuition in the classical physics sense. These are readily available for throwing a rock or spear (I don't agree with finding a cave... that would be more of a Bayesian process for a caveman.. still not QM though).

But it's really not surprising... we framed classical physics in language and concepts that were intuitive to us from what we could observe. With better technology and advanced concepts, we were able to predict and observe things beyond what our senses could naturally observe and (still using abstractions like space) we formulated QM.

QM concepts like nonlocality, indistinguishability, superposition of states... intuition for such concepts wouldn't have had any usefulness in reproduction in the 99.9% of human history. So it's not surprising that humans don't readily grasp them.

I think that intuition is learned, and therefore it cannot be subject to selection. The reason why QM seems so counterintuitive yet classical mechanics does not is that in our everyday experience, we encounter objects that obey the laws of classical mechanics, but we do not commonly experience objects that behave quantum mechanically. Therefore, these experiences wire our brain to be able to process and predict the motion of objects subject to classical mechanics. This wiring, however, is not predetermined by genetics (which is what you seem to be arguing).

For example, if you were to take some kids (or even an adults) with no experience at ball sports, then tell them to go catch fly balls in the outfield of a baseball park, I would expect that nearly all would find the task difficult. There is no innate ability to judge the flight of the ball even though it's behavior is fairly predictable from classical mechanics. Only by watching others, learning from coaches, and practicing themselves do they develop the intuition needed to very easily position themselves perfectly to receive the fly ball.

I'm reminded here also of cultures that use relative directions (i.e. left/right, forward/back) versus those that do not and instead refer only to cardinal directions (i.e. north, west, south, east). To those who grew up in cultures using relative directions, referring only to cardinal directions for everyday tasks (raise your left arm versus raise your east arm) seems very counterintuitive. Yet to those who grew up in cultures that do not use relative directions can easily and naturally get by using only cardinal directions. Again, the lesson is clear; our brains and our initutions are wired in response to the environments we experience.

So, in a sense, Krauss and others in this thread are correct to say that our brains generally are not wired to understand quantum mechanics. However, this wiring is a result of learning, not something that is heritable. Furthermore, through practice thinking about abstract ideas like QM, we can rewire our brains to develop the necessary intuition to understand these concepts.

 

[Pythagorean]

What are those systems and purposes?"

Besides the obvious role of the occipital lobe in visual processing, I think the posterior parietal complex* has a lot do with it. It's essentially where we map our position in space from and infer positions of other objects through visual input[1][2]. And we observe that mathematicians generally have increased gray matter in the inferior parietal lobe [3].

*Though some research points at the temporal lobes.[4]

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7126325
[2] http://jn.physiology.org/content/80/5/2657.short
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17921236

[4]
"Unlike the monkey brain, spatial awareness in humans is a function largely confined to the right superior temporal cortex, a location topographically reminiscent of that for language on the left"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6840/abs/411950a0.html

 

[Pythagorean]

I think that intuition is learned, and therefore it cannot be subject to selection. The reason why QM seems so counterintuitive yet classical mechanics does not is that in our everyday experience, we encounter objects that obey the laws of classical mechanics, but we do not commonly experience objects that behave quantum mechanically. Therefore, these experiences wire our brain to be able to process and predict the motion of objects subject to classical mechanics. This wiring, however, is not predetermined by genetics (which is what you seem to be arguing).

For example, if you were to take some kids (or even an adults) with no experience at ball sports, then tell them to go catch fly balls in the outfield of a baseball park, I would expect that nearly all would find the task difficult. There is no innate ability to judge the flight of the ball even though it's behavior is fairly predictable from classical mechanics. Only by watching others, learning from coaches, and practicing themselves do they develop the intuition needed to very easily position themselves perfectly to receive the fly ball.

I'm reminded here also of cultures that use relative directions (i.e. left/right, forward/back) versus those that do not and instead refer only to cardinal directions (i.e. north, west, south, east). To those who grew up in cultures using relative directions, referring only to cardinal directions for everyday tasks (raise your left arm versus raise your east arm) seems very counterintuitive. Yet to those who grew up in cultures that do not use relative directions can easily and naturally get by using only cardinal directions. Again, the lesson is clear; our brains and our initutions are wired in response to the environments we experience.

So, in a sense, Krauss and others in this thread are correct to say that our brains generally are not wired to understand quantum mechanics. However, this wiring is a result of learning, not something that is heritable. Furthermore, through practice thinking about abstract ideas like QM, we can rewire our brains to develop the necessary intuition to understand these concepts.

Specific things like throwing spears or catching fly balls wouldn't be what was selected for. Coordinate frames don't matter either... what the cultures, spear throwers, ball-players, etc, have in common is that they can construct an n-particle coordinate system in euclidian space, they all do it through the same part of brain (whether it's parietal or temporal. It seems to be parietal in monkey, temporal in humans according to reference 4 in my last post).

Is it an adaptation or a side-effect? I don't know, I will spend more time looking for sources when I have time; obviously I suspect it was an adaptation. Navigating and tracking seems indispensable in hunting for food and avoiding predators. Visuospatial navigations seems to have a clear advantage over chemotaxic navigation for large animals. Wouldn't it have been selected for a while ago in mammalian (or even vertebrate) evolutionary history as our olfactory system diminished and our visual system began to dominate?

 

[Pythagorean]

It looks like most of the selection-based research is on temporal lobes (specifically the hippocampus) even in lower vertibrates. Admittedly, I've only read titles and abstracts here and my molecular and evolutionary background is lacking, but it seems in line with my thinking.

Spatial reasoning is selected for

"Natural selection, sexual selection and artificial selection have resulted in an increase in the size of the hippocampus in a remarkably diverse group of animals that rely on spatial abilities to solve ecologically important problems."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016622369290080R

"Hippocampal size is known to correlate positively with [...] selective pressure for spatial memory among passerine bird species."

http://www.pnas.org/content/87/16/6349

"We analyze here recent data indicating a close functional similarity between spatial cognition mechanisms in different groups of vertebrates, mammals, birds, reptiles, and teleost fish, and we show in addition that they rely on homologous neural mechanisms."

http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/12937346/reload=0;jsessionid=wkOr9UZf7m88bA5u5O3H.4

" The hypothesis that gathering-specific spatial adaptations exist in the human mind is further supported by our finding that spatial memory is preferentially engaged for resources with higher nutritional quality (e.g. caloric density). "

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17711835

" in the avian telencephalon, there is a separation of visual motion and spatial-pattern perception as there is in the mammalian telencephalon. However, this separation of function is in the targets of the tectofugal pathway in pigeons rather than in the thalamofugal pathway as described in mammals."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15163688spatial reasoning underlies abstract reasoning

This, I think, is why we so commonly use concept of space in the sciences, we even take non-spatial variables and plot them against each other and call it phase space in order to get better idea of what a system is doing. Every time we plot a variable, we're translating that variable to space. We assume all the properties of space for most classical variables (continuity, smoothness, deterministic trajectories in Euclidian space). Here's more research about using spatial reasoning for thinking about other things:

musical pitch:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027705000260

numbers:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/135467996387552#.UrJAGPRDuMM

time:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01094.x/abstract;jsessionid=7867474264EC5E729B9863EF5DE600E8.f02t04

Conflict with QM

Spatial reasoning relies on continuity, smoothness, and locality. The unintuitive concepts in QM are exactly the ones that conflict with these: nonlocality, discretization, uncertainty. Particles can't have a precisely defined position and momentum, a particles can exist in a superposition of states.

Ode to learning

Obviously, without learning, none of this would be possible... learning is necessary, but (imo) insufficient to explain our readily available grasp of spatial reasoning. It's interesting that how we learn is influenced by spatial concepts, so in some sense, the adaptation of learning itself may be closely tied to spatial reasoning.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Conflict with QM

Spatial reasoning relies on continuity, smoothness, and locality. The unintuitive concepts in QM are exactly the ones that conflict with these: nonlocality, discretization, uncertainty. Particles can't have a precisely defined position and momentum, a particles can exist in a superposition of states.

Ode to learning

Obviously, without learning, none of this would be possible... learning is necessary, but (imo) insufficient to explain our readily available grasp of spatial reasoning. It's interesting that how we learn is influenced by spatial concepts, so in some sense, the adaptation of learning itself may be closely tied to spatial reasoning.

So, was our ability to learn 'selected' for the advantage it gave us, or are you asserting it's neither here nor there in regards to our survival?

 

[Pythagorean]

When I say adaptation of learning, I refer to selection (that learning was selected for*), but that was only part of a side point. The main point was that learning classical physics (by interacting with the world) is only part of why it's so intuitive to us. The other part, I think, is due to selection.

Oh yeah, place cells. I forgot about those. We (mammals, at least) even have a neural encoding process dedicated to locality in Euclidean space. I've never heard of any other function for place cells beside navigation. The encoding process may be used elsewhere, but I've never heard of it. (They are also in the hippocampus).


*and I don't really know that, it's just an assumption that seemed self-evident to me.

 

[zoobyshoe]

When I say adaptation of learning, I refer to selection (that learning was selected for*), but that was only part of a side point. The main point was that learning classical physics (by interacting with the world) is only part of why it's so intuitive to us.

Classical physics is not intuitive to us at all! Example: Galileo spent most of his life trying to explain things like, no, we won't be thrown off the Earth if it's revolving, which was the intuitive belief, and that a heavier object will not fall faster than a lighter one. It makes complete intuitive sense to suppose the heavier object will fall faster, and it was like pulling teeth for him to get people to believe otherwise. Mark Twain said something like, "Common sense is the ability to look around you and see with your own eyes the world is flat."All humanity started out intuiting the world was flat. Columbus had a hard time getting a crew because so many sailors believed that if you went too far out to sea you'd come to the edge of the world and fall off. Just about every bit of classical mechanics was shocking to people at first. How is it you don't know that, before Galileo, people didn't realize bodies in motion were brought to rest by outside forces? Aren't you aware of all the crackpot notions Aristotle propagated that held supremacy for 2000 years?

We've been solving excruciatingly counter-intuitive puzzles from day one, amigo: √2

 

[atyy]

Conflict with QM

Spatial reasoning relies on continuity, smoothness, and locality. The unintuitive concepts in QM are exactly the ones that conflict with these: nonlocality, discretization, uncertainty. Particles can't have a precisely defined position and momentum, a particles can exist in a superposition of states.

Classical physics is not intuitive to us at all! Example: Galileo spent most of his life trying to explain things like, no, we won't be thrown off the Earth if it's revolving, which was the intuitive belief, and that a heavier object will not fall faster than a lighter one. It makes complete intuitive sense to suppose the heavier object will fall faster, and it was like pulling teeth for him to get people to believe otherwise. Mark Twain said something like, "Common sense is the ability to look around you and see with your own eyes the world is flat."All humanity started out intuiting the world was flat. Columbus had a hard time getting a crew because so many sailors believed that if you went too far out to sea you'd come to the edge of the world and fall off. Just about every bit of classical mechanics was shocking to people at first. How is it you don't know that, before Galileo, people didn't realize bodies in motion were brought to rest by outside forces? Aren't you aware of all the crackpot notions Aristotle propagated that held supremacy for 2000 years?

We've been solving excruciatingly counter-intuitive puzzles from day one, amigo: √2

A question along the lines of zoobyshoe's thought: isn't Newtonian physics nonlocal?

 

[Pythagorean]

I agree not all of classical physics is intuitive. (Though being thrown off the Earth revolving indicates that someone is exercising their intuition about centripetal force).

What's intuitive about classical physics is the framework, whereas the framework of QM is not intuitive. Klauss isn't talking about doing advanced physics problems, either. Just how particles move through (and exist in) space and time. It's really quit simple to predict a thrown spear's motion because you can count on continuity and locality.

Anyway, even infants know many of the fundamental concepts of classical physics:

" The evidence supports the view that certain core principles
about these domains are present as early as we can test for them and the nature
of the underlying representation is best characterized as primitive initial concepts
that are elaborated and refined through learning and experience"
Physics for infants: characterizing the origins of knowledge about objects, substances, and number
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcs.157/pdf

@atty:

I refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_nonlocality

specifically, I was thinking that you can simultaneously define the position and momentum of a classical particle (or a person), it is localized in space. Not so with a quantum particle. It exists as a probability distribution in space.

addendum:

I agree that the classically nonlocal concept electromagnetism is extremely unintuitive, too. Not so much gravity. Gravity serves as a constant asymmetry in our spatial coordinate system, and I wager you could find obvious adaptations involving it in all species in all kinds of different ways.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Specific things like throwing spears or catching fly balls wouldn't be what was selected for. Coordinate frames don't matter either... what the cultures, spear throwers, ball-players, etc, have in common is that they can construct an n-particle coordinate system in euclidian space, they all do it through the same part of brain (whether it's parietal or temporal. It seems to be parietal in monkey, temporal in humans according to reference 4 in my last post).

Is it an adaptation or a side-effect? I don't know, I will spend more time looking for sources when I have time; obviously I suspect it was an adaptation. Navigating and tracking seems indispensable in hunting for food and avoiding predators. Visuospatial navigations seems to have a clear advantage over chemotaxic navigation for large animals. Wouldn't it have been selected for a while ago in mammalian (or even vertebrate) evolutionary history as our olfactory system diminished and our visual system began to dominate?

I agree with you here that it is probably true that evolution has led humans to develop greater capacities for visual and spatial reasoning. What I think is less clear is that there is a hereditary reason why spatial reasoning underlies abstract thinking. Again, I think that we learn to think about abstract notions spatially, and that such associations are not innate. For example, it was once thought that the concept of the number line (a clear example of using spatial reasoning to address abstract concepts) was something that was genetically programmed into the brain. New research suggests that this view is wrong:

Results suggest that cardinal number concepts can exist independently from number line representations. They also suggest that the number line mapping, although ubiquitous in the modern world, is not universally spontaneous, but rather seems to be learned through — and continually reinforced by — specific cultural practices.

(Núñez et al. 2012. Number Concepts without Number Lines in an Indigenous Group of Papua New Guinea. PLoS ONE 7: e35662. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0035662)

Although you cite a number of studies pointing to spatial reasoning underlying other types of abstract thinking, it's worth noting that these types of psychological and behavioral studies have a very hard time distinguishing effects that are innate and effects that are learned. Indeed, many have criticized psychological studies for studying how people in the Western world think then claiming that these modes represent the entire human population (see for example Henrich et al. 2010. The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33: 61. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0999152X). Indeed, the article singles out visual perception and spatial reasoning as areas in which the broader human population exhibits much greater variation than in modern societies:

Human societies vary in their linguistic tools for, and cultural practices associated with, representing and communicating directions in physical space, the color spectrum, and integer amounts. There is some evidence that each of these differences in cultural content may influence some aspects of nonlinguistic cognitive processes. Here we focus on spatial cognition, for which the evidence is most provocative. As above, it appears that industrialized societies are at the extreme end of the continuum in spatial cognition. Human populations show differences in how they think about spatial orientation and deal with directions, and these differences may be influenced by linguistically based spatial reference systems.

I think, when looking at research into human behavior, we must take great care in not mistaking the limitations of our culture for the limitations of our species.

 

[atyy]

Wow, k-means clustering is intuitive :p

 

[zoobyshoe]

What's intuitive about classical physics is the framework, whereas the framework of QM is not intuitive. Klauss isn't talking about doing advanced physics problems, either. Just how particles move through (and exist in) space and time. It's really quit simple to predict a thrown spear's motion because you can count on continuity and locality.

If you've never seen a boomerang before, you going to predict it's motion?

 

[Pythagorean]

Yggg, that's fair. I can appreciate the caution with psychology, but I feel your last quote is inline with my thinking (it actually sounds like the weak Sapir Whorf hypothesis). We all have a vestibular system. We may come up with different ways to describe the sensation imparted by physics onto our vestibular system but they're all consistent with continuity and locality.

That paper is interesting though, I love things like this:

Speakers of English and other Indo-European
languages favor the use of an egocentric (relative) system
to represent the location of objects – that is, relative to
the self (e.g., “the man is on the right side of the flagpole”).
In contrast, many if not most languages favor an allocentric
frame, which comes in two flavors. Some allocentric
languages such as Guugu Yimithirr (an Australian
language) and Tzeltal (a Mayan language) favor a geocentric
system in which absolute reference is based on
cardinal directions (“the man is west of the house”). The
other allocentric frame is an object-centered (intrinsic)
approach that locates objects in space, relative to some
coordinate system anchored to the object (“the man is
behind the house”). When languages possesses systems for
encoding all of these spatial reference frames, they often
privilege one at the expense of the others. However, the
fact that some languages lack one or more of the reference
systems suggests that the accretion of all three systems into
most contemporary languages may be a product of longterm
cumulative cultural evolution.

All that really changes here, though, is where the origin is defined in the coordinate system which is still completely in line with the classical framework. In fact, you could find the same kind of differences between the homework solution of two different physics students: one will choose the particle to be at the origin, one will choose an absolute origin.. and in different cases one will be easier to solve (less math) but both are perfectly valid.

 

[atyy]

specifically, I was thinking that you can simultaneously define the position and momentum of a classical particle (or a person), it is localized in space. Not so with a quantum particle. It exists as a probability distribution in space.

But classical waves also do not have a definite position.

I agree that the classically nonlocal concept electromagnetism is extremely unintuitive, too. Not so much gravity. Gravity serves as a constant asymmetry in our spatial coordinate system, and I wager you could find obvious adaptations involving it in all species in all kinds of different ways.

I was reminded of http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24077562 "neural correlates of an internal model that has been proposed to compensate for Einstein's equivalence principle" :)

This, I think, is why we so commonly use concept of space in the sciences, we even take non-spatial variables and plot them against each other and call it phase space in order to get better idea of what a system is doing. Every time we plot a variable, we're translating that variable to space. We assume all the properties of space for most classical variables (continuity, smoothness, deterministic trajectories in Euclidian space). Here's more research about using spatial reasoning for thinking about other things:

musical pitch:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027705000260

numbers:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/135467996387552#.UrJAGPRDuMM

time:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01094.x/abstract;jsessionid=7867474264EC5E729B9863EF5DE600E8.f02t04

Conflict with QM

Spatial reasoning relies on continuity, smoothness, and locality. The unintuitive concepts in QM are exactly the ones that conflict with these: nonlocality, discretization, uncertainty. Particles can't have a precisely defined position and momentum, a particles can exist in a superposition of states.

Ode to learning

Obviously, without learning, none of this would be possible... learning is necessary, but (imo) insufficient to explain our readily available grasp of spatial reasoning. It's interesting that how we learn is influenced by spatial concepts, so in some sense, the adaptation of learning itself may be closely tied to spatial reasoning.

As before, I'm not sure QM is more unintuitive than classical mechanics, especially after Bohm. Nonetheless, your comments reminded me also of

http://clm.utexas.edu/fietelab/Papers/WidloskiFiete_bookchapter_13.pdf
"In this chapter we have focused on exploring how the brain's navigational circuit solves the problems of map-building and self-localization in novel environments. Despite this focus, it bears emphasizing that the hippocampus does not likely exist solely or even primarily to serve this function. ... To understand the elevation of the spatial variable, we might build on the analogy. The full record kept by the librarian includes a title, author names, a summary, a publication date, a publisher, number of copies in the library, and importantly, a call number. The call number is a privileged indexing variable: one author can have multiple books and multiple books may share a title, etc., but each book has a unique call number, and this number further specifies where on the shelves to find the book. On the shelves, books placed near each other address related topics, and thus the call number conveys semantic meaning that goes beyond simply providing a unique identier. Similarly, whereas the full record of an episode consists of a place, a time, context, valence, reward contingency, and landmarks, the place or location index is privileged. It is an efficient locator of a memory, and, in general, records with similar spatial labels will tend to have important relationships to each other because of the spatiotemporal continuity of the world."

 

[zoobyshoe]

What's intuitive about classical physics is the framework, whereas the framework of QM is not intuitive. Klauss isn't talking about doing advanced physics problems, either. Just how particles move through (and exist in) space and time. It's really quit simple to predict a thrown spear's motion because you can count on continuity and locality.

Anyway, even infants know many of the fundamental concepts of classical physics:

" The evidence supports the view that certain core principles
about these domains are present as early as we can test for them and the nature
of the underlying representation is best characterized as primitive initial concepts
that are elaborated and refined through learning and experience"
Physics for infants: characterizing the origins of knowledge about objects, substances, and number
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcs.157/pdf

Overall you're making a very logical case that classical physics should be more intuitive than QM. Your argument makes complete sense. The only flaw I can find in it is that it's wrong.

It's wrong because it bears no resemblance to the reality of the history of physics. Again, I refer you to the writings of Galileo and historical accounts of the difficulties he encountered getting people to accept ideas which you feel are intuitive. It's a good theory in that it's logical, but it isn't supported by the naturally occurring experiments that have taken place throughout history by which, we can see, it is tested.

Modern man has existed for something like 40,000 years, but in all that time, despite whatever "intuitive physics" infants develop, we simply did not grasp the first law of motion. It took 40,000 years for that to sink in. By contrast, QM, which started with Planck, was sketched out in 20-30 years. Yes, it's a completely different frame, but our experience in working out the classical frame, our long history of counter-intuitive puzzle solving, allowed for the adaption to the new kind of problem to happen quite fast. We got traction on it remarkably quickly compared to classical physics.

I agree not all of classical physics is intuitive. (Though being thrown off the Earth revolving indicates that someone is exercising their intuition about centripetal force).

Yeah, erroneously, which supports my case. The fact people automatically conflate motion and acceleration is a good example of the considerable limits of "intuitive" physics.

The fact classical physics has to be taught at all is an argument against the notion it's intuitive. How can we call that which has to be laboriously taught, intuitive?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Anyway, even infants know many of the fundamental concepts of classical physics:

Just to be clear, this was a whimsical remark, right?

 

[Pythagorean]

You seem to be thinking me (or Klauss?) is making an argument for all classical physics, which is not the case. The argument I'm making is that classical physics is more intuitive than QM (you said it yourself in #46) not that all of classical physics is intuitive (the strawman you also raised in #46, #43, etc).

Again, it's the framework that's intuitive, not the whole science (it makes learning the whole science easier though) and remember the context: it's in comparison to QM. Most importantly, continuity and locality in Euclidian space are what's intuitive in classical physics and their violations in QM are what's unintuitive about QM.

For examples (and this is one example from the infant study) we don't expect balls to go through walls. In QM, tunneling is possible (thanks to nonlocality) and that's weird to us (and to infants). The point isn't that you are born knowing how to find solutions to Navier Stokes, it's that your systems are tuned to a world with spatial continuity and particle locality because that's the world they developed in.

And, by the way, intuition for centripetal force is intuition for Newton's First law.

 

[Pythagorean]

Also, here's opinions and summaries from the authors of the infant physics study in case you don't want to read the study:

In the MU Developmental Cognition Lab, we study infant knowledge of the world by measuring a child’s gaze when presented with different scenarios,” said Kristy vanMarle, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science. “We believe that infants are born with expectations about the objects around them, even though that knowledge is a skill that’s never been taught. As the child develops, this knowledge is refined and eventually leads to the abilities we use as adults.”

In a review of related scientific literature from the past 30 years, vanMarle and Susan Hespos of Northwestern University found that the evidence for intuitive physics occurs in infants as young as two months – the earliest age at which testing can occur. At that age, infants show an understanding that unsupported objects will fall and that hidden objects do not cease to exist. Scientific testing also has shown that by five months, infants have an expectation that non-cohesive substances like sand or water are not solid. In a previous publication, vanMarle found that children as young as 10 months consistently choose larger amounts when presented with two different amounts of food substance.

“We believe that infants are born with the ability to form expectations and they use these expectations basically to predict the future,” vanMarle said. “Intuitive physics include skills that adults use all the time. For example, when a glass of milk falls off the table, a person might try to catch the cup, but they are not likely to try to catch the milk that spills out. The person doesn’t have to consciously think about what to do because the brain processes the information and the person simply reacts. The majority of an adult’s everyday interactions with the world are automatic, and we believe infants have the same ability to form expectations, predicting the behavior of objects and substances with which they interact.”

While the intuitive physics knowledge is believed to be present at birth, vanMarle believes parents can assist skill development through normal interaction, such as playing and talking with the child and encouraging him/her to interact with objects.

http://munews.missouri.edu/news-rel...uitive-physics”-knowledge-says-mu-researcher/

 

[atyy]

Also, here's opinions and summaries from the authors of the infant physics study in case you don't want to read the study:



http://munews.missouri.edu/news-rel...uitive-physics”-knowledge-says-mu-researcher/

Do the present evidence that these expectations were not learnt?