re: Chris Brochu (was: Re: AAT)
Alex Duncan (aduncan@mail.utexas.edu)
26 Sep 1995 00:39:04 GMT
In article <hubey.811974187@pegasus.montclair.edu> H. M. Hubey,
hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu writes:
>Better yet, how about some numbers, like "the drop in the
>heart rate for humans whose faces were immersed in cold water
>as x percent"... etc etc.
>
>I assume it's cold water, and not warm water, so we'd really
>need to know the temperature of the water. Furthermore
>we don't know if this is in response to the cold, so we'd need
>to know the ambient temperature. Furthermore we'd need to know
>if similar responses occur for dunking feet or arms in cold water.
>
>How about the effect of putting an icebag on the belly. It's
>only in the relative effects of these for various animals some
>of which are furry and some hairless and some aquatic that do
>numbers of this type make sense, and so far nobody has
>provided the numbers. After the numbers are in one can then
>run a correlation-regression program to see if there's some
>kind of a fit to something reasonable.
Since there apparently isn't much data available on this particular
subject yet, perhaps the AAT folks should stop citing it as evidence that
supports the AAT.
BTW, this seems to be typical of AAT "thinking": pick out a human feature
that might be adaptive in an aquatic environment, and then claim that's
exactly what it's for, without ever bothering to check whether or not the
trait is present in other primates.
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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