From Michael Elson:
Re: “Language gene” alters mouse squeaks (May 28): I see that in your article on ‘Language Gene alters Mouse Squeaks’, references are made to ‘our own history’, ‘our split from chimpanzees’, etc. still to this very day believing that we are closely ‘related’ to the apes. Basic evolutionary theories state that evolution from one stage to the next replaces the initial stage by a more advanced stage, etc. ad infinitum. If that theory holds water (it is actually filled with holes... ) then how is it that apes still abound on the planet? They should have disappeared altogether. Please respond to this, since I have posed this question so many times in other letters I have written - not necessarily to World Science.
Again I have to point out that merely because we are different in our so-called ‘intelligence’, we appear (to us at least) to be so very superior to other animal life. I think this is insolent and lacking in the proper recognition for those other forms of life. We are the single most solitary form of life on this planet with every natural physical faculty that is far inferior to any other form of life from insects to sperm whales. We can only exist by making all the junk we have to drag about with us in order to survive. Watches, phones, clothes, pen and paper, GPS, knives, guns etc. etc. and we have to make our transportation means from the basic bicycle to fancy cars, aeroplanes and ships.
What a true marvel it is that every other form of life has easily survived without any of that artificial junk encumbering them. One has only to study the cockroach, the ant, the bees, the termites, the beetles and all other animals to see the ease and facility with which they can move about their environment hunting, tracking, climbing, navigating, carrying monumentally heavy items, running, flying, jumping, swimming, building homes and castles, fighting, and many of them are fearfully well armed and armoured - but carry nothing with them. Hundreds - probably thousands of insects have ‘built-in’ radar, night vision, barometric sensors, vibration detectors, range finders, UV sensors and maybe even infrared sensors - and - they are for the most part far, far stronger than even our strongest men. You name it - they’ve got it. They don’t need microscopes to examine the detail of whatever is being peered at; everything they examine is done with what they are equipped with in their heads and bodies. Their antennae, tongues and feet are highly sensitive and are capable of discovering much vital information as to what is inside seed pods for example, and anything else that piques their curiosity.
If we were to drag all that around with us, we’d bogged down with such weight that we’d be very hard pressed to even walk - and not very far at that. Yet we are so infatuated with ourselves that other life forms pale into insignificance. That is a serious indictment.
The 1899 Italian Fiat isn’t ‘related’ to the German 2009 Mercedes Benz. They both still have similar basic components and perform the same basic requirements. Both have humble beginnings. Apes have practically identical basic components to us human beings, but just as the Mercedes has far superior performance to the Fiat, there’s no way that their respective ‘DNA’ can be remotely compared. I’ve seen it stated that chimpanzee’s DNA has 98% similarity to ours. I don’t know how that is evaluated. When I look at a chimpanzee and watch his movements and listen to his unintelligible noises, I’m damned if I can see a 2% difference between him and me. In fact I evaluate 98% for me and 2% for the chimpanzee...
If ever there was even the remotest possibility of a link between us and the apes, it should surely by now have been discovered considering that apes are tree dwellers which limits the geographical parameters to equatorial latitudes. The fact that ‘cave men’ remains and fossils have been discovered certainly does not relate them to apes either, as science is so keen to theorize - in their desperate wish to be proven ape-related. I’d opt for extraterrestrial genetic engineering any day.
2 Comments:
Animals may SURVIVE without all the gadgets we use; but, SURVIVE is by no means all there is to life. There's also productivity, and, by that, I mean far, far more than the production of consumer goods. Specifically, I'm talking about the personal satisfaction and joy which comes from knowing one has produced something which reduces the misery of one's own kind. I'm talking about: (1) producing advances in genetics which (a) allow us to produce enough food to dimish world starvation and (b) to cure diseases; (2) advances in engineering which allow us to produce prosthetic devices which allow the maimed to have replacement arms and legs; (3) advances in electronics which allow us to communicate so much more effectively that those working at reducing human misery can co-operate much more effectively; (4) advances in hygiene which allow us to dispose of human waste in a manner which greatly reduces exposure to disease; etc., etc., etc.. Rather than do much of anything to reduce the misery of their kind, animals, poop and urinate all over the place and, thereby, do their utmost to kill one another with all kinds of diseases. The human species is far more prolific than any other precisely because animals come nowhere close to helping one another the way humans do. Oh, yes! There are destructive humans; but, the efforts of their opposites to control the destructive humans are just another illustration of just how much more humans do for one another than animals do, and the reason they are able to do so is because of all the fancy gadgets we carry around --- particularly those which allow us to use DNA to prove who did or did not commit such-and-such a crime.
Certainly like the open-mindedness of your comments.
Restrictive thinking has no place in the world of science; free thinking,"what if" and "aha" moments are what make life worthwhile. I wrote a small peice abou tevolution on www.1000opinions.blog.com, "Darwin...
As fasr as the inclusive DNA betwen Chimps and Homo Sapiens, if you believe in evolution, our DNA has the very same strand-somewhere- that the first amoeba carried.
Be humble, it's worth our time.
Post a Comment
<< Home