Humans Vs. The World

[xXxAuroraxXx]

What made Humans, humans? Why are we evolved more than say, the Hippo, or a Wasp? What makes us different? Was it a change in our enviorment? Was it just random "mutations" that made us this way? Or maybe, the only thing that seperates us from every other animal is the ability to imagine? Imagination is the biggest thing seperating us from other animals. Well, maybe . And if this is true, how did we develop this ability? Again, was it a random "mutation"?

 

 

Again, I take a part out of Micheal Crichtons "The Lost World" (I reffer to this book a lot)

 

 

"If you believe the current theory, then all the wonderful complexity of life is nothing but the accumulation of chance events- a bunch of genetic accidents strung together. Yet when we look closely at animals, it appears as if many elements must have evolved simultaneously. Take bats, which have echolocation- they navigate by sound. To do that, many things must evolve. Bats need specialized apparatus to make sounds, the need specialized ears to hear echoes, the need specialized brains to interpret the sounds, all these tings don't evllve cimultaneously, there's no advantage. And to image all these things happen happen purley by chance is like imagining that a tornado can hit a junkyard and assemble the parts into a working 747 airplane. It's very hard to believe."

 

Now, I could have seperated the two subjects, what seperates us from other animals, and the evolution theory, but I didn't . Just don't reply to one and forget the other one.

 

Thanks

Phil

[Sayonara]

How do you mean by "more evolved"? Certainly we aren't better adapted to amphibious life than the hippo, or better at flying than wasps. I'll assume you mean something along the lines of "more evolved in terms of societal behaviour" since that can more or less be interpreted to cover everything humans are good at

 

I haven't studied much anthropology but I'm guessing that the development of imagination and abstract thought processes would be directly linked to the development of language. As one becomes more sophisticated; so does the other.

 

There's a significant survival advantage in being able to plan and co-ordinate everything from hunts to locating a new community, so abstract thought processes would have put significant selective pressure on early man to develop those abilities or be left by the wayside (that's actually kinda backwards but it's easier explaining it that way).

 

 

I wouldn't put too much stock into the theory as told by a character in a fictional novel. As much as I trust Crichton has a firm understanding of evolutionary processes, you have to remember that the characters in his story are all serving their own agendas and will never be truly objective (otherwise they wouldn't be characters).

 

The current model is easy to abuse. The anti-evolutionist claims that life is nothing but the accumulation of chance events, because this makes it sound less plausible. It's also a misinterpretation of the model.

The accumulation of chance in this case is not linear; that is to say that the diversity and complexity of life is not due to a series of unlikely events stacked on top of each other. Some events will make others more likely, or even inevitable.

[Skye]

A series of probabilities has an increasingly low probability of occurring as the size of the series increases. Clearly you can't use this to justify things occurring, or not, as over a long enough time scale practically nothing would occur at at all.

[Sayonara]

My point was that evolution is not just a series of probabilities.

 

This is of course approaching the problem with the advantage of hindsight, but there are plenty of examples of pure chance determining the next course for an evolutionary chain, while making the next significant step in the chain an absolute certainty.

 

Obviously this does not make the entire chain a certainty, rather than a mitigated probability, but it definitely invalidates the "house of cards" argument against evolution being a process that requires no external co-ordination.

[Radical Edward]

an improved brain. evolved because it made us the best organism in our niche.

 

your 747 analogy is terrible by the way. I hope you haven't taken Chrichton in context, because if you have, he needs a slap. I suggest you obtain your knowledge from science books in the future.

[Sayonara]

It's not Crichton verbatim - it's one of the characters from The Lost World doing the "I'll get us through this" precursor speech. I forget who.

[Radical Edward]

My point was that evolution is not just a series of probabilities.

but it is though....

This is of course approaching the problem with the advantage of hindsight' date=' but there are plenty of examples of pure chance determining the next course for an evolutionary chain, while making the next significant step in the chain an absolute certainty.

[/quote']

the only step of absolute certainty I can think of is extinction. can you think of any others? remember that the environment itself is dynamic, so the fitness peaks are always free to change.

[Radical Edward]

It's not Crichton verbatim - it's one of the characters from The Lost World doing the "I'll get us through this" precursor speech. I forget who.

 

I guessed, I should have made myself clearer, if that is what he believes then he needs a slap. quoting from fiction is usually a bad idea.

[Sayonara]

but it is though....

Well ok, 1 is still a probability.

 

the only step of absolute certainty I can think of is extinction. can you think of any others? remember that the environment itself is dynamic, so the fitness peaks are always free to change.

For instance (this is a horribly macroscopic example but right atm I can't go gallivanting around doing research) the evolutionary events bringing about the migration of a species or family from sea to land would most likely be transitory and a simple matter of chance. However they will necessitate future changes in physiology. Such changes are not due to evolutionary chance, but to selective pressure.

[Sayonara]

Perhaps "inevitable" is a better choice of word than "certainty".

[iglak]

There's a significant survival advantage in being able to plan and co-ordinate everything from hunts to locating a new community, so abstract thought processes would have put significant selective pressure on early man to develop those abilities or be left by the wayside (that's actually kinda backwards but it's easier explaining it that way).

ah yes... because animals could easily run away, humans would need good leaders to organize an attack. they would get very little food otherwize. it's also possible that the best leaders got the most mates.

 

and i just thought of something somewhat off topic, but relevant to human evolution.

most, if not all, of the animals humans hunted migrated, right? all migration paths in africa include crossing a river at some point (almost all, if not all). almost all rivers are inhabited by crocidiles. humans would probably have to cross these rivers quite often. i would imagine the slowest swimmer would get eaten by crocidiles (the easiest one to catch), and the stupid humans would walk up to the river's edge without identifying crocidiles nearby and get eaten (on average). that could be one factor in our intelligence (maybe, maybe not though), but mostly that could explain the AAH (aquatic ape hypothesis)

yeah yeah, somewhat offtopic... but thanks for that mini-revelation

[MishMish]

Sayonara:

 

"I haven't studied much anthropology but I'm guessing that the development of imagination and abstract thought processes would be directly linked to the development of language."

 

I would disagree. Language is descriptive. Before one can can talk about a concept, the concept itself must exist

 

Sayonara:

 

"There's a significant survival advantage in being able to plan and co-ordinate everything from hunts to locating a new community, so abstract thought processes would have put significant selective pressure on early man to develop those abilities or be left by the wayside (that's actually kinda backwards but it's easier explaining it that way)."

 

This I would agree with, though do not consider it "backwards" but related to consciousness (and not meaning by that to restrict consciousness to social animals, the ability to evaluate options and plan would be useful to a more solitary species as well)

[Sayonara]

I would disagree. Language is descriptive. Before one can can talk about a concept, the concept itself must exist

I didn't specify any direction of causality, I just said they were linked. What are you disagreeing with?

 

This I would agree with, though do not consider it "backwards" but related to consciousness (and not meaning by that to restrict consciousness to social animals, the ability to evaluate options and plan would be useful to a more solitary species as well)

I meant backwards with regards to the mechanism of selection; it's just I realised it was backwards after proof-reading it and was too lazy to do it again

[Dov]

xxxAuroraxxx's openning posting :

 

"What made Humans, humans? Why are we evolved more than say, the Hippo, or a Wasp? What makes us different? Was it a change in our enviorment? Was it just random "mutations" that made us this way? Or maybe, the only thing that seperates us from every other animal is the ability to imagine? Imagination is the biggest thing seperating us from other animals. Well, maybe . And if this is true, how did we develop this ability? Again, was it a random "mutation"? "

 

Repeating what I wrote elsewhere, with slightly further elaboration:

 

The first revolutionary evolution of life on earth was the celling of early genes and their entourages. The second, recent, revolutionary evolution has been initiated, in a similar vein, by the primates that adapted from life in semi- or tropical circumstances to life on plains. Humans’ uniqueness on Earth was initiated by a stimulus in a zone in the brain of some of them when challenged by needs for new manipulations, and for new capabilities of analysis and assessments of wider vistas open to them, when changing posture to erect due to change of environment from forests to plains. The new demands employed existing brain cells in one half of their brain, overtaxed its capabilities and led to compensation by overworking the symmetrically located cells in the second half of the split brain, and this in turn led again to compensation in the first half thus causing contralaterallization that is still evolving now.

 

As their changed living posture led to modified perceptive/adaptive capabilities Humans have gradually replaced adaptation to changed circumstances with self-evolving cultures/civilizations for control and modification of much of their circumstances. This is essentially similar to Life's earlier "celling" evolution, but with culture serving for Humans for changing/controling their circumstances in lieu of protein toolings that serve in-cell genomes for adapting their physiology to changing circumstances

[Latios]

I think what make us different from other organisms is the fact that we have the ability to create goals and tries to achieve them by using existing methods and trial and error.

 

On the other hand, other organisms' goals are mainly to ensure their survival.

 

To conclude, what make us human is the fact that we have IQ to do things other than to make sure we survive.

 

Just a thought......

[admiral_ju00]

Imagination is the biggest thing seperating us from other animals.

 

the biggest thing that separates us from all the other animals is our ability to understand, process and use Symbols

 

there are 3 fundamental signs - signs, indexes and symbols. we can do all 3 where all other animals have limited ability to use the 1st 2.

 

hence our extremely sophisticated means of communications - aka language

 

 

can we say we are better adapter then some other animals, probably no. but then again, that would depend on to what are you trying to compare us to.

 

as for our reasons to evolve to what we are today or heck even other animals i like the theory of the self developing genome as oposed to pure darwinism.

[admiral_ju00]

an improved brain.

 

right-amundo. if you for a second ignore the gaps in our fossil records, there are still organisms that can be said to be transistory which shows the pattern.

 

but as a generelization

when looking at the fossil evidence of Australopithecus afarensis > Australopithecus africunus > Paranthropus boisei > Paranthropus robustus > Homo sapiens (there's a bunch more ofcourse,but i had these stuck in my head now for a very long time)

there clearly is a decrease of robust characteristics (eg: neandertals) and a transition to more gracile characteristics, change in dentition and increase in brain mass/size

 

 

 

ps. too tired to worry about spelling at this time, you can flame me later

 

I think what make us different from other organisms is the fact that we have the ability to create goals and tries to achieve them by using existing methods and trial and error.

 

that would be due to our Symbolic needs/abilities.

[Latios]

What about the fact that we have emotions? I believe that alone separate humans from other known animals, since unless I am wrong, emotions are not programs in other animals' brains. Why's that I do not know.

[admiral_ju00]

What about the fact that we have emotions? I believe that alone separate humans from other known animals, since unless I am wrong, emotions are not programs in other animals' brains. Why's that I do not know.

 

this again is strictly due to our symbolic abilities.

a plausible explanation will take me a few minutes to conjure so bear with me

[admiral_ju00]

emotions also go quite happily along the same symbolic significances. the implications of this are mainly philosophical and symbolic - aka: abstractions, and our increased information processing capacity and it(they) are defined by a society. only we have them.

 

for example: i can say "i'm hot" w/o actually being 'hot' - temp-wise.

here's a question for you that i think has bearings on this question of yours:

 

let's define 'murder' in these cases and the reasons behind it: accident, done on purpose, war.

 

"we convict the (willful) murderers, we acquit the accident clauses - lets say a diabetic who's blood sugar dropped way below the norm and she/he fell asleep behind the wheel, struck and killed a pedestrian. we pin a medal on a soldier for killing the enemy". these are subject to change from society to society. for example, in us, and most other 'civilized' societies, sexual relations with a 13 year old is almost always an automatic jail sentence, because that particular society deems this behavior 'devious'. this is not true with some Hunter and Gatherer societies/tribes, in some, such behavior is actually encouraged. Symbols are negotiated and renegotiated by the society and the prevalent ideology at the time

 

as opposed to:

when an animal kills something else, none of the above examples bear any significances. it does it either for food or for it's survival/competition. It does not care for things that hold sentimental values or may pay off in the future, etc.

[Radical Edward]

What about the fact that we have emotions? I believe that alone separate humans from other known animals, since unless I am wrong, emotions are not programs in other animals' brains. Why's that I do not know.

 

any evidence that animals don't have emotions? They seem to express fear, love, jealousy anger and all the other emotions we are accustomed to. The reason perhaps we don't think they do is because our brains are tuned in to understanding human expressions, and interpreting other animals' feelings is inevitably going to be a difficult task (assuming they even have feelings). You cannot simply apply human thinking to animals' functions. The closest I suppose we can understand is the great apes, where we can do a reasonably good job of understanding them because their faces are so close to ours.

[admiral_ju00]

any evidence that animals don't have emotions? They seem to express fear, love, jealousy anger and all the other emotions we are accustomed to. The reason perhaps we don't think they do is because our brains are tuned in to understanding human expressions, and interpreting other animals' feelings is inevitably going to be a difficult task (assuming they even have feelings). You cannot simply apply human thinking to animals' functions. The closest I suppose we can understand is the great apes, where we can do a reasonably good job of understanding them because their faces are so close to ours.

 

this is all very debatable.

for instance:

They seem to express fear

if the animal(human or otherwise) is bigger, then it's a mere instincts at play

love

dependency for food and support and nurture

 

jealousy - anger and all the other emotions we are accustomed to.

jealousy of what? anger of what and why? and what are all these other emotions you're refering about?

do these emotions pertain to All the animals or just certain kinds? what behaviours are we to look to that will help us understand these other behaviors, and explain them? you're right, using strictly human approach maybe a flawed way, however, isn't this how we solve most if not all of our other problems concerning the world?