July 28, 2019 Sunday
Bedtime Story
Creating Gaps
Let us consider a specific case of us apes
and one or two “transitional forms” fossils that have been found and then I
shall enlighten the problem of gaps that is conjured out of thin air by
True-Believers which never exists in the first place.
Consider the fossil that was discovered by
Donald Johanson in 1973 in Eastern Africa which is calculated to be about 3.2
million years old.
It has been classified by the taxonomists
under the order Primate and family Hominidae.
The specimen is regarded to be ancestral to
the genus Homo and transitional between ancestral apes and humans and has been
classified under the genus Australopithecus.
Then there are fossils which very much
resemble to those of Australopithecus but with the brain size 20% larger and
possessing a different kind of dentition.
The fossils were also associated with tool
making and hence it was placed in the genus Homo and species habilis.
Homo habilis is a strong candidate for the
earliest pre human/human species though of course it is debatable who should be
placed under the genus homo and who not or which specimen should be treated as
the earliest human ape.
Yet whatever said and done there is a
definite gradient of change from Australopithecus to Homo habilis with the
later resembling modern human apes more than the former.
Yet this will not satisfy the True-Believer
for he will raise the problem of gap and demand the missing link between the
two.
Just imagine for sake of argument that some
paleontologist does find fossilized remains of crushed skull that falls
something in between these two species of extinct ape creatures.
In that case the true Believers will demand
not for one but for two missing links and thereby much to their delight the
problem of gaps will not only persist but be exaggerated.
But it is natural that we will never have
the complete gradient of fossils displaying slow and gradual changes that we
would desire to and these gaps will have to be necessarily filled up creatively
either through the help of artists or even better using computer imagery and
algorithms.
Dawkins asserts that such a large absentee
of various life forms in our contemporary earth saves not only the field of
zoological taxonomy from awkward ambiguity but also human ethics and law.
This allows for our “discontinuous minds”
to neatly classify the living world into units and compartmentalize them into
discontinuous species which is very convenient for everybody.
Let me quote the way Dawkins enlightens
this point:
“The director of a zoo in entitled to “put
down” a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that
he might be “put down” a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted
with howls of incredulous outrage.
The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo.”
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment