Re: Savannah strawman

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In article <31DC5FD1.1284@flmhh.ufl.edu>, Mike Muller
<muller@flmhh.ufl.edu> wrote:

> This messeage is not from Mike Muller.
> Re: Holloway and Shreeve

---


>           Studying morphology alone is no longer enough.  Other fields 

> have moved forward and let go off the old dogma of the last fifty years  

> Only paleoanthropology seems to be clinging to it with its last dying 

> breaths. 


Unfortunately, we don't yet know how to correctly quantize character or

biochemical changes to estimate the probability of various evolutionary

trees. See the continuing discussions on sci.bio.systematics. Hominine and

hominid evolution are particularly messy. So studying morphology is not

enough: until we have quantifiable models of character/biochemical

evolution that hold up when exposed to real data, we remain in a position

very similar to that of neuroscientists studying the mind--we don't know

what questions to ask, let alone what the answers are.


-- 

Harry Erwin Internet: herwin@gmu.edu

Web Page: http://osf1.gmu.edu/~herwin

49 year old PhD student in comp neuroscience (how bats do it) and adjunct lecturer for CS 211 (advanced C++)






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