THESE days you can be sure that whenever a scientist discovers a new wrinkle
in the way the human mind works, some sort of Darwinian explanation will not be
far behind.
Take the research reported last month by psychologists at the University of
Texas in Austin. It showed that while people find it easy to remember the
direction of objects moving towards them or away from them, they have little
recall for the spin direction of rotating objects
(New Scientist, 5 February, p 15).
And the explanation? Easy. Natural selection never had cause to
equip us with such a…
