SCIENTIFIC MEANING OF MEANINGS - QUESTS FOR DISCOVERIES CONCERNING OUR CULTURAL ILLS

This paper outlines pioneering concepts of fundamental physical and em otional features of the human brain which served as primary operators. These have developed during the past 10,000 years, giving rise to our present global megacultures and their various ancestral culture proge nitors. Essential points are these: (1) Biological evolution endowed t he human brain (quite inadvertently and unintentionally) with enormous latent powers for complex and sophisticated abstract ratiocinations. (2) Magnitudes of these latent powers grew exponentially with linear e nlargements of brain size during the evolution of the genetic ancestor s of Homo sapiens sapiens (Hss) during the past 3 million years, but t hese latent powers never materialized in utilized forms within the env ironmental contexts in which they evolved. (3) These sophisticated, ab stract ratiocinations, both latent powers and operative forms in today 's Hss brain, are divided between two major categories: utilitarian th inking and nonutilitarian thinking. (4) These two different types of t hinking processes are carried out within separate, different regional combinations of neuronal biochemical entities within the same individu al brain. (5) Sensitivities of abstract, sophisticated ratiocination p rocesses within the human brain to influences from communication inter actions with other human brains are exponentially greater in compariso n with any other species of central nervous system in the earth's bios phere. This makes the brain population density the utmost critical fac tor, and determines the character of human thought within interacting populations of brains at a given time and place within a particular cu lture. (6) Abrupt increases of sedentary brain population densities, u nnaturally greater by orders of magnitude than those that existed prev iously in biological evolutionary contexts, were engendered by the ina uguration of agricultural practices 10,000 years ago. This enabled lat ent powers of the human brain used for complex and sophisticated abstr act ratiocinations to become manifest in materialized forms of usage w ithin relatively large groups of humans living in certain regions of t he earth. (7) Thinking processes of the utilitarian category within br ains living in such regions guided and dominated the development of so phisticated and complex social hierarchies and institutions, forms of communication, technologies, and cultures since that time. This domina ting factor relegated thinking processes within the nonutilitarian cat egories of those brains to subservient roles during those developments . (8) Nonutilitarian abstract ratiocinations possess a potential for p roper adjudication and guidance of utilitarian abstract ratiocinations in the latter's development of culture. However, lack of the former's proper role in cultural developments since the beginning of the Holoc ene interglacial era has resulted in the imprisonment of Hss as aliens in an intellectual hell on a foreign planet. (C) 1998 Academic Press.