Re: Are we "special"?

Phillip Bigelow (bh162@scn.org)
Fri, 13 Dec 1996 20:45:13 -0800

Someone wrote:

> > >> From this I would conclude that Darwin recognized something special
> > >> about humans.

I would not conclude that at all. I would come to the
opposite conclusion: that Darwin's _Descent of Man_ recognised
the interconnectedness and similarities that humans have with
the rest of the animal kingdom, particularly with that of other
apes. Darwin recognized that humans are a part of nature, not
separate from it.
From your response, I would guess that you haven't read Darwin's
_Descent of Man_, or you have forgotten what you read.

Thomas Clark wrote:
> > I still think man is unique among animals, though.

Typed-in as Tom glances over at his handy pocket version of
The Book of Genesis.

There is nothing unique about human anatomy. It is only
a matter of degree of morphological adaptation; it is not
one of a radical new evolutionary concept.
Humans are morphologically rather generalized animals, with
only two exceptions that could be classified as "major"
derivations:
1) Rearranged hip structure, and 2) large
frontal lobes of the cortex. Both evolutionary precursors to
our rearranged hips and our large frontal lobes were already
well-developed in our primate ancestors, so the derived condition
seen in our species is not particularly surprising if one
analyzes the phylogeny of our group as a whole and notes the
polarity of change.
Most of the rest of human anatomy is rather mundane
and unremarkable (for a member of the Mammalia).
Darwin wrote this over a century ago. It is quite sad that Darwin's
point still has to be reaffirmed from time to time on a
science newsgroup such as this one.
<pb>