Barbara Brown in her book Supermind makes reference to the relatively rapid evolution of complex animal life as compared to the slow rate of evolution of simpler animal forms.⁴... Higher animals have experienced a dramatic increase in brain size over the past several millions of years. The horse, for example, Eohippus, had a brain volume of 25 cc 50 million years ago. It is considerably larger in the present-day horse.⁵...

There has been a rapid increase in primate brain size over the past six million years, again demonstrating a non-linear accelerated growth rate. Australopithecus africanus, dating back to six million years ago, had an endocranial (E.C.) volume of 430 to 600 cc The E.C. volume increased to 500 to 800 cc in Homo habilis by 3.7 million B.C., to 750 to 1250 cc in Homo erectus by 1.5 million B.C., and to 1100 to 2200 cc in Homo sapiens by 200,000 B.C..⁶

About nine billion brain cells were added during those years, which averages approximately 150,000 per generation.⁷

Judith Hooper and Dick Teresi make reference to the exponential increase in the number of neural cells and their interconnections in animals with near-infinite bits, and near-infinite choices in their brains.⁸...Hooper and Teresi seem to be intuitively recognizing this non-linear process. Richard E. Leaky also makes reference to "the apparent acceleration of human evolution over the past four million years, and particularly the last one million....".⁹

Richard M. Restak in his book The Brain makes the following statement: "The exponential growth of the human brain during the last 250,000 years is unique in the history of evolution. Even today we lack a satisfactory explanation how it came about.".¹⁰...He recognizes an explosive growth of the human brain that he intuitively sees as being non-linear.

Even though the evolution of intelligence has unquestionably been occurring at an accelerated non-linear rate since life began, it has yet to be determined whether this rate is exponential, quadratic, cubic or based on some other logarithmic function. One way to judge the rate of the evolutionary process is to estimate the minimum information content contained in an organism's genetic material. For example, a typical DNA molecule in a human is composed of approximately five billion pairs of nucleotides. Since the information content of any message can be calculated in terms of bits (binary digits) and since there are four different kinds of nucleotides, the number of bits of information in human DNA can be calculated by multiplying four times five billion nucleotide pairs. This calculates to be 20 billion bits. In similar fashion, the number of bits of information can likewise be calculated for other more simple organisms as well.

The number of bits of genetic information can then be plotted onto a graph against the estimated time of origin of each organism. A similar graph can be constructed by plotting an approximate estimate of the amount of information contained within the brains and nervous systems of the same organisms. Both curves are definitely non-linear, reflecting a continuously accelerating rate of increasing information content.¹¹...(See Figure 2 in Chapter Six.) The graph curves could be exponential, cubic or of some other log function. Neither curve is precise enough to indicate with certainty the exact rate of the evolution of information. However, if one argues that information content is directly proportional to level of intelligence, there can be no question that intelligence has evolved at a continuously accelerating rate.

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