Re: Ears under pressure. Was Re: Aquatic ape theory

H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
30 Oct 1995 00:16:10 -0500

n8010095@cc.wwu.edu (Phillip Bigelow) writes:

> I think we are presently in the process of destroying our earth
>environment. We are mining the hell out of the earth, destroying our
>precious top-soil, polluting our groundwater, and over-breeding. Most of
>the above-mentioned transgressions are a result of having a large brain. We

We went off track.

I'll summarize. In the nonliving world, disorder increases; we
call it growth of entropy.

Living organisms display increasing order and entropy. The order
and complexity increases with higher levels of evolution.

WE are it right now.

No amount of damage we may have done, no matter what the survival
skills of cockroaches, no matter how many of the various species
of insects outnumber us, the facts still stand.

>million years. The jury is still out on whether we will survive.
> The dinosaurs were a good land vertebrate sucess story in the
>history of the world. They lived for 150 million years. Frogs have been
>more successful: 180 million years. The greatest land
>ANIMAL success story would be the bacteria.

No matter how great your admiration for bacteria, no matter
how long dinosaurs ruled the earth, and no matter how long
frogs have croaked, if we don't survive (as we are today)
it won't be the dinosaurs that take over.

There will those that come after us, even smarter. And they
will be the highest on the evolutionary scale.

>and you get humbled very quickly. Besides, bacteria and dinosaurs didn't

No matter how arrogant I am or how humble you are the evolutionary
scale, the human intelligence and complexity remain.

Should I continue to answer your non sequoitors or give up.

>pollute themselves out of business.
>The best yardstick for measuring evolutionary "succuss" is to look at
>temporal range of an organism.

High up the evolutionary scale!!!!! not "success"..

>Big brains don't necessarily mean longevity. We

High on the evolutionary scale, not "longevity"....

>lab-rats haven't been around long enough. And, no...I DON'T subscribe to
>the ego-centric diatribe in Genesis, that suggests we were put here to
>subdue the earth and everything on it.
> <pb>

Whether we will subdue everything on earth or will not or whether
we were meant to is not the issue. I took a side show to see how
people who are always talking about "nature" and how animals
compete and tell us we are animals start to get confused and
begin to babble when told humans compete sucessfully.

Besides, I first tried something completely unconnect to
all this competetetion business. The retort was about how
I know about complexity and evolutionary scale.

Are you guys for real ?

-- 





				Regards, Mark

				http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey