DELINEATION OF SEPARATE BRAIN-REGIONS USED FOR SCIENTIFIC VERSUS ENGINEERING-MODES OF THINKING

Powerful, latent abilities for extreme sophistication in abstract rati onalization as potential biological adaptive behavioral responses were installed entirely through accident and inadvertence by biological ev olution in the Home sapiens sapiens species of brain. These potentials were never used, either in precursor species as factors in evolutiona ry increase in hominid brain mass, nor in less sophisticated forms wit hin social environments characterized by Hss tribal brain population d ensities. Those latent abilities for unnatural biological adaptive beh avior were forced to become manifest in various ways by growths in sop histication of communication interactions engendered by large growths in brain population densities brought on by developments in agricultur e at the onset of the Holocene. It is proposed that differences probab ly exist between regions of the Hss brain involved in utilitarian, eng ineering types of problem conceptualization-solving versus regions of the brain involved in nonutilitarian, artistic-scientific types of pro blem conceptualization-solving. Populations isolated on separate conti nents from diffusive contact and influence on cultural developments, a nd selected for comparison of developments during equivalent stages of technological and social sophistication in matching 4000 year periods , show, at the ends of those periods, marked differences in aesthetic attributes expressed in cosmogonies, music, and writing (nonutilitaria n thinking related to science and art). On the other hand the two cult ures show virtually identical developments in three major stages of me tallurgical technologies (utilitarian thinking related to engineering) . Such archaeological data suggest that utilitarian modes of thought m ay utilize combinations of neuronal circuits in brain regions that are conserved among tribal populations territorially separated from each other for tens of thousands of years. Such conservation may not be tru e for neuronal circuits involved in nonutilitarian modes of thought. I t is postulated that neuronal circuits involved in nonutilitarian mode s of thought are located in specific regions of the brain that are div ergent features between populations that have been territorially separ ated for tens of thousands of years. Anatomical PET and NMRI studies o f brains of modern descendants of these cultures are proposed that wou ld seek to define these inferred differences through proper protocols of stimulation devised by those investigators.