NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/rec/motorcyc/40049

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-22 | 3.2 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!pipex!warwick!uknet!edcastle!cam
From: [e-mail] (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: rec.motorcycles
Subject: Darwinian selection (was HELMETS)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Nov 92 00:27:34 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 53

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jonathan E. Quist) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John S. Morris) writes:

>>>selection, Darwin WAS right, you know.

>>Darwin has never been proven to be right in his most important theory -
>>that human beings are animals at the end of the natural selection process
>>rather than an independent evolutionary chain. He never found the "missing
>>link.

Check back over the last few years of Scientific American for a
summary of the latest state of play. Note also that in those cases
where a "missing link" existed, one is unlikely ever to find it, since
it is by definition a small scale transitory phenomenon. Most
evolutionary scientists consider that the divergence between human
stock and chimpanzee/ape stock happened several million years ago.
None dount that it happened. The disagreement is about exactly when
and where, and whether once or many times.

>Personally, I'd argue that we're not the end - maybe a temporary stopping
>point...

Evolution is always happening so long as some kinds of people are more
likely to die than others, especially before reproducing. Since
murder, suicide, and traffic deaths are the three largest killers of
young people in the industrial West, we are clearly engaged in
evolving people who are better at avoiding these deaths. There is
clearly very strong selective pressure working against squids.

>>In case you haven't read his biography, Darwin's inability to prove this theory
>>drove him insane. He couldn't converse with people, he could no longer listen
>>to music or read poetry (long favorite pastimes of his). He died in miserable
>>solitude.

I don't think you have read his biography very carefully. He did not
consider that his theory was unproved at all. He was upset by the
fierce and ignorant vilification he got at the hands of those whose
religious beliefs made it impossible for them to accept his case. He
spent so long at it not because he thought his theory needed that much
support, but simply because he knew what a hornet's nest of religious
disapproval he would disturb, and so tried to present the strongest
case he could develop. Such long gestation of a novel theory in order
to present it in the most complete form was not unusual in those days.
But this was not what caused his mental malady either. In his own
opinion it was simply that the intellectual strain of so long and
concentrated a work had somehow broken his mind. There are, however,
quite a number of age-related degradations of brain function, of which
Alzheimer's disease is currently topical, and he may well have been
suffering from one of these conditions.
--
Chris Malcolm    [e-mail]          [phone]
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205