Re: Why large brains was Re: tree-climbing hominids
Phillip Bigelow (n8010095@cc.wwu.edu)
14 Nov 1995 16:28:57 -0800
>hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey) wrote:
>>Sooner or later there'd be large brain animals.
Lorenzo Love <lllove@snowcrest.net> responded:
>WHY?
Because Hubey is falsely assuming that large braininess (e.g. "smartness",
with it's resultant technology) is a character trait of "high evolutionary
'grade'" (to use his rhetoric). Compared to Aves, humans are primitive in
every other way except for intelligence.
Aves is presently the furthestly-derived of the vertebrates...in the
history of the world. Most cladists would rank humans as primitive to
intermediate in evolutionary characteristics.
Hubey is also making the claim based on knowledge after-the-fact. Since
we know that large brained animals exist, then, by Hubey's logic, it was in
the cards (or in the stars, to be more mystical) that they would evolve. By
Hubey's reasoning, evolution is somehow "driven" toward something.
Frankly, I think he is delving more into the field of religion than into
science.
<pb>
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