Thea

Hmm...good question, of course. My baliwick is sociology, so I can't hazard an informed "scientific" answer in any detail--BUT! As a sociologist, I can offer maybe an avenue to pursue for consideration: memory. It occurs to me that we humans (despite any quibbles about omniscience) have pretty good memories, not merely for individual datum, or collections of data, but for patterns and processes (which introduces a temporal aspect, which is not necessarily only linear). If you have enough memory for a virtually unlimited reiterative/recursive process (never mind a whole BUNCH of them that are interrelated), then how much data can you slam into that process before it begins to take on "a life of its own," in which the results you get cannot be completely accounted for by simply summing up the data? I don't think it can be completely successfully argued that human beings are the only animal that developed learning skill--many other higher mammals (so far as we're able to tell), for instance, exhibit behaviors that indicate at least a limited ability to learn (as opposed to being dependent solely on pre-programmed instinct). So, there's potential there (if it hasn't already been done) for research on the effect of memory vs learning skill. Even within our human population, we can see that differing levels of ability to "memorize" deliver different levels of ability for learning (and no, I have no intention of engaging in the question of ethics this observation immediately poses--at least not here). Too, quantum physics begins to suggest (to me, anyway) that there may be more to being human than being human--at least insofar as we may have a particular (neurological?) relationship that is physiological, genetic AND may have to do with, for lack of a better way of describing it, an ongoing desire to learn, with our environment (ah, which environment includes each other) that is not shared, or only partially shared, by other entities or creatures. What the history of this relationship might be, if it does indeed exist, is likely unknown at this point. That help? Lol!