Re: LUCY: ``Yes, we have no bananas!"

Ed Conrad (edconrad@prolog.net)
Mon, 11 Nov 1996 10:56:03 GMT

edconrad@prolog.net (Ed Conrad) wrote:

>Newsgroup question:

>> Is Lucy a Monkey?

>Damn right it is!
>``Lucy" is nothing more than a member of the ``monkey" family,
>with no connection -- none whatsoever -- to early man . . .

>To put it rather bluntly, ``Lucy" is a mockery of scientific
>integrity (if some still exits in the field of physical anthropology,
>which I sort of doubt)).

Okay, smartass, when it comes to rating various professions for
respectibility, where do you place physical anthropologists on a
scale of 1 to 10.

Uh, well, let's see, uh, okayl . . . How's a minus-2?

Bank robbers, art thieves and pickpockets are a minus-1.

To my mind, the ONLY physical anthropologist who possessed scientific
integrity in a search for honest answers to legitimate questions about
man's origin and ancestry was the late Dr. Earnest A. Hooton, longtime
professor of anthropology at Harvard University.

It says a lot about the man's integrity and intestinal fortitude when
he could write a book, appropriately titled ``Apes, Men and Morons."

Two quotes in his book stand out like beacons:

> ``I can point to many anatomical features of man
> in which the known courses of evolution can be
> explained plausibly by the theory of natural
> selection, but I do not know of one in which
> it can be proved."

> +++++++

> ``I am also convinced that science pursues
> a foolish and fatal policy when it tries to keep up
> its bluff of omniscience in matters of which it is sitill
> woefully ignorant. Sooner or later the intelligent
> public is going to call that bluff."