another straw man
Alex Duncan (aduncan@mail.utexas.edu)
27 Nov 1995 01:02:49 GMT
In article <898370343wnr@desco.demon.co.uk> Elaine Morgan,
Elaine@desco.demon.co.uk writes:
>It doesn't. It is perfectly permissible for scientists to say : We don't
>know the answer to this question, but we are looking for it. It is less
>permissible to say :"I reject your explanation as implausible; but ha-ha,
>you can't call mine implausible beause I haven't got one, and I intend to
>play safe by never having one, and hoping that the question will now sink
>into oblivion."
You seem to be in the midst of erecting another straw man. First, it was
the savanna hypothesis, now it's "the no hypothesis whatsoever". To
claim that paleoanthropologists don't have ideas or models that deal with
the origin of human features is disingenuous at best, and possibly
dishonest. I have been forthcoming about my ideas about the origins of
bipedalism (to give credit -- modified Tuttle ideas), and there are other
models available. I doubt that you are really unaware of them, which
leaves me with a distasteful conclusion regarding your integrity.
Alex Duncan
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1086
512-471-4206
aduncan@mail.utexas.edu
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