Daniel, I think you are in serious need of information: archaeology is not the study of evolution. And, what proof do you have that early humans, who lived in small groups, were social in the way that modern humans are - several million humans crammed together in an urban area, totally enmeshed in and dependent on social structures? To imagine early humans you have strip away everything we take for granted - they were animals living in the wild.
I never meant to imply that they were social in the way modern humans are. I meant to suggest that they lived in groups, and therefore, were social and not isolated. I disagreed with the notion of a "pre-social" human, because I didn't know that by "social" you meant "social in the way that modern humans are, which is unable to survive in the wild." I looked back and I see now that point you were trying to make. But even in those early groups, there were social structures in which humans were enmeshed and dependent, but I agree that they were probably more harmonious than the urban rat race.
And even if the brain difference is a throwback, it's still the "new" step if it happens subsequently in time. The context is new.
Archaeology is the study of dug-up things, yes. Fair criticism. I just think that evolution can happen in multiple places if pressures are happening in multiple places. Like, in a spooky-action-at-a-distance way.
"my feeling is that our received ideas about evidence and scientific rationality, which can only detect things after they have already happened" Whoa! Where did you get this? The power of science is that we can make extremely accurate predictions about future events. Detection, whatever you mean by that, not only locates information about past events but records ongoing events. Science is an ongoing process of discovery - not "received ideas". Science isn't dead, it's alive!
What I mean by this is that we can make extremely accurate predictions once we've established a conclusive pattern among a relatively small number of variables--that's what I mean about something that has "already happened". By "received ideas", I am referring to
people who will not entertain new ideas until they have been established and accepted by the scientific community. And there's no such thing as evidence about the future. I will refrain from implying criticism of science itself, because it is indeed alive, and it is an excellent tool for what it does.
"inadequate to perceive the changes that are happening in our world until they are over" was the rest of that sentence, and that was the point. I didn't say that science was "received ideas"--the "received ideas" about science are in the minds of people who only think things if they are established as orthodoxy. I know people like this. They are not Aspies; sorry if I lumped fluid-thinking Aspies in with them! There is science, the tool, and Science, the culture. The culture that exists as a shared way of thinking in the minds of people. In your post, it felt like because you haven't received an idea as conclusive evidence proven by the scientific community, you can't entertain it, and nothing else can be said otherwise. It felt like your argument boiled down to "there's no scientific evidence" and that's that. If that's not representative of you, I apologize.
Where did I get this? As I mentioned--I got it from Marshall McLuhan. Few people have actually read his work, fewer have understood it. But he was one of those visionaries who saw potential in weird, disparate things that were happening in his time.
My whole point with this is I feel that the future will be brighter for autistic people, even though the present is not so bright and the past hasn't been either. I'll try to stick with that!
