Gunār,

Excuse my sarcasm, but are you related to Ivars Godmanis? He too has a propensity for not answering the question that he is actually asked.

You wrote- “But on the descent of man, of our species, Darwin’s account is no longer taken seriously, not that it ever was taken seriously. And that’s the truth, like it or not.”

I asked you to substantiate that statement. Please do. Any/every serious biology text (those with out creationist stickers) refer to Darwinian evolution as the standard explanation. Please enlighten me as to where I go wrong in this.

Tom

The descent of man formed a large, and culminating, part of Darwin’s work, but his argumentation was not accepted as readily as that of the earlier ‘Origin’. Should you feel that I am mistaken, and the descent of man does form a significant part of present day Darwinism, then I would appreciate appropriate references. This is not to suggest that human descent is ignored completely, but rather that it is mixed in with the descent of the primates generally.

Gunars

Gunār,

I will do a bit of legwork tomorrow and find some cites.

In the meantime it seems that you made an assertion, and it is “on” the person who made the statement to provide some kind of support.

Funny tom, it’s called passing the buck. Perhaps Gunārs doesn’t feel confident that he can argue his case. But, I am willing to give him some benefit of doubt even though generalizations without a cause to support the effect don’t usually have a light at the end of the tunnel.

Thomas Kuhn, author of “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” comments: ”Darwin, in a particularly perceptive passage at the end of his “Origin of Species,” wrote: ‘Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume…, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. … But I look with confidence to the future, - to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.”

In support of Darwin’s view, dealing with mindsets, we have Max Planck’s often quoted remark: ”…a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Furthermore, Thomas Kuhn notes that, ”For many men the abolition of that teleological kind of evolution was the most significant and least palatable of Darwin’s suggestions.”

Cheers, Ivars

Tom

I don’t know what support I could provide, except perhaps by explaining the problem with Darwin’s account of the descent of man as I see it.

The idea that we have descended from earlier species (instead of all the species having been created simultaneously) was not proposed by Darwin. It had been around earlier, but the idea of simultaneous creation had not been universally abandoned by the time Darwin began his work. For example, the philosopher Hegel still believed in simultaneous creation, as had Kant before him.

Anyway, Darwin’s contribution was the idea of evolution by natural selection. For example, in certain towns in England, before the advent of the industrial revolution, the buildings had been light coloured,
the colour of the local stone. In the towns there were butterflies (or was it moths?), with wings the same colour as the buildings, which made it more difficult for predators (birds) to spot them. But then the industrial evolution took place, the black smoke from the chimneys of the steam power plants soon altered the colour of the buildings to a darker shade, which made the butterflies more visible. By natural selection, butterflies with darker wings being less visible, the colour of all the butterflies had soon changed to a darker shade, to match the colour of the buildings. But more recently, with the old-fashioned steam engines with the smoking chimneys gone and the colour of the buildings restored to their previous, lighter, shade, a reversal of the natural selection process took place, the colour of the butterfly wings following accordingly.

That’s natural selection, but what advantage could there be in having moral inhibitions in a conflict with an uninhibited savage? In the context of the evolutionary descent of our species, such considerations led Darwin to propose his theory of Selection in Relation to Sex, which is based on the idea of female choice among competing males. But this assumes that the females had a choice, which would not have been the case of social structures headed by dominant males. I am under the impression that Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’ does not play a major role in contemporary understanding, if any role at all

Gunars

Gunār,

You made a statement about the general acceptance of the Darwinian explanation of “descent of man.” Then you give an explanation, not about evidence of acceptance or lack,  but about your understanding of its lacks. That does not make sense. Your statement was not about you, but about a more general acceptance.

Your explanation about changes in butterfly wing colouring suggests that you do not understand natural selection. More accurately you should have framed these changes by saying that groups that mutated/evolved the coloured wings that conveyed advantage were more likely to survive, and so came to dominate the population.

Tom

I do understand the term ‘mutation’, and assumed that those likely to read my message would also know what I am talking about. And so, if I am to be pulled up for not explaining the obvious, then, I feel, its time to quit this particular exchange of views.

With best wishes

Gunars

Gunār,

I’m sorry that you are leaving.

I would also suggest that there is some misunderstanding about natural selection being an individual process. Your question about the selective advantage conveyed by moral inhibition might be better understood if we see natural selection as selecting for group (more correctly gene pool) survival. many curious traits have much more relevance to group advantage or selection than they do individual advantage or survival. Moral inhibitions or morals in general select for group survival because they allow for cooperation, which does lead to survival. A prime example of this is the gene for sickle cell. While it is terrible for individual survival it conveys reproduction advantage to people where malaria is abundant. People with sickle cell are less likely to get malaria, they reproduce and die, but only after reproducing. People who do not have the gene and don’t get sickle cell anemia are more likely to die of malaria, which generally kills them before age of reproduction.