MOre Verbiage

H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
9 Oct 1995 00:19:44 -0400

Alex Duncan <aduncan@mail.utexas.edu> writes:

>If you were familiar with any of the literature, you would know that
>there is in fact a "tree-climbing meter". I refer you to recent work by
>Kevin Hunt and by Diane Doran, who both have spent a lot of time in the
>field quantifying exactly how frequently apes climb trees, why they climb
>trees, what they do in the trees, etc.

If you had thought carefully you'd know that this is not as germane
as you'd want people to believe.

The assumption is that if they can, they do. So if the apes are actually
climbing trees (and via analogy) if their feet resemble (!) humanoids
then the must have been climbing them.

For sure this is not correct. For one thing, their feet didn't become
like ours when (and if) they fell into the water or started to walk.
It always will take time for morphology to change. Even if they had
been completely bipedal and never climbed trees around that time
it doesn't mean that their feet would have had to look just like
ours. They could have been aquatic, or landlubbers without their
feet yet having assumed the shape that modern humans have.

So just as I suspected the whole thing is insignificant.

Since australopithecines (early
>relatives of humans) are no longer extant (no longer living) we can't
>make the same kinds of observations. However, we can note correlations
>between morphology and behavior, and use those to develop models for
>australopithecine positional behavior. And no, I won't summarize the
>literature for you.

You don't have to. The idea is to argue analogically. There's
not mystery and I already said that it's done. In other words,
if the analogical argument is used with respect to bones, that's
what I called bone-eyeballing and someone else called bone-gazing.

Now despite your attempts to shut people up with your insults, all
you've shown is your own lack of knowledge. All I can see is that
you repeat things you memorized and are only unconsciously and dimly
aware of the big issues involved.

Case closed: inconclusive. Repeating what we already know with
more verbiage and attempts to cover up with appeals to authority
by quoting names of peoples is not the way to convince people.
If anything, you and your cronies can go extinct while you are
still making noises.

-- 





				Regards, Mark

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