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``Apes, Men and Morons"
Ed Conrad (edconrad@sunlink.net)
Fri, 17 Jan 1997 12:54:01 GMT
On 12 Jan 1997, jsterl7511@aol.com (JSterl7511) wrote to
sci.anthro.paleontology:
>One of my intellectual passions is the study of human evolution (I had
>previously been a grad student in biological anthropology twenty years
>ago). However, my job and other commitments preclude me from following
>the field as closely as I would like to. Has there been a review article
>recently published, either in the scientific or lay press, that summarizes
>the current state of knowledge of human evolution covering the period from
>about 6 million years ago to the present and which catalogs and summarizes
>the major fossil finds (human ancestral and human). Thanks.
>
>John Sterling
>JSterl7511@aol.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John, FYI, a multitude of review articles about human evolution has
been published recently in the scientific and lay press.
Unfortunately, stacked together -- a height of approximately 17-feet,
6 3/4 inches -- they fail to contain half as much truth as is found in
the following two eye-opening paragraphs which appear in the yellowed
pages of the book, ``Apes, Men and Morons," written by the late Dr.
Earnest A. Hooton, longtime professor of anthropology at Harvard
University:
> ``I am also convinced that science
> pursues a foolish and possibly
> fatal policy when it tries to keep up
> its bluff of omniscience in matters
> of which it is still woefully ignorant.
> Sooner or later the intelligent public
> is going to call that bluff."
-- and --
> ``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."
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