Laelaps

Photo of the Day #409: California sea lion pup

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:35:49 -0500

A California sea lion pup (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
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Book Progress #45

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:36:26 -0500

Another day, another 10 pages. The human evolution chapter now stretches about 40 pages long, and it still requires quite a bit of detail. (It will, of course, balloon again when illustrations are worked out. One particular illustration of the branching tree of hominin evolution will require that I do some digging in the literature to find the best current estimates for the ages of particular genera and species.) Even so, it now presents a more-or-less coherent story, from early discoveries of stone tools in Europe to our strange position as the one surviving variety of human. Now I have to go back to the beginning.

More than any other chapter, this one is full of twists and turns. There is no intellectual "march of progress" from the first discoveries of stone tools to our present conception of human evolution. While I can't say my approach is unique, it is not the standard trope, and I have tried to use changing ideas about humanity as a guide. This has allowed me to bring studies of living primates into the story, from Jane Goodall's work at Gombe to the gesticulations of Koko the gorilla, as they are just as important to our perception of ourselves as fossils.

The trick is telling the story in a sensible fashion without giving too much away too soon. The model of science I grew up with, and to an extent I think is still spoon-fed to us, is that the significance of new discoveries is quickly realized. This is not what I have found in my research. New discoveries influence new ideas which await further confirmation, are ignored, or are rejected. Such is the nature of science, and new hypotheses require a lot of argument and evidence before they can be brought into the bigger picture. It is somewhat like dealing with a particularly difficult puzzle; the next piece you pick up might seem insignificant until you re-arrange a few bits you had mistakenly connected before, and only then does the new bit make sense. Even then, something you find later might shake things up again. It is not as if everything is numbered and you are simply waiting to find the next bit to correctly connect in sequence.

I hope to clean up this chapter quite a bit this weekend. I'm sure I'll be agonizing about edits over the holiday break, as well. Then I'll have another look on the chapters on birds and whales, and once they are in order, I will get my proposal together. I hope to have it ready within the next two weeks. Who knows? Maybe I'll get an agent for Christmas...

Here is the Wordle for the last iteration of the human evolution chapter;

For previous posts dealing with this project, see the "Books" and "Great Book Project" archives.

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Two bits of "Monkeyana"

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:45:58 -0500

"The Lion of the Season," from Mr. Punch's Victorian Era.

As Charles Darwin was readying to release his treatise on evolution by natural selection (which was turned into an abstract rushed into press in 1859), Richard Owen was trying to separate humans from other primates. In 1857 he proposed that we belonged to our own distinct subclass, and it was peculiar structures in our brains that made all the difference.

That our species were more cognitively developed than apes was clear, but did our supposed superiority stem from something anatomical, unique to us alone? Owen thought so, the hippocampus minor being one of several structures found in our brains an not in those of other primates. T.H. Huxley, however, was not convinced, and publicly debated Owen on the issue in 1860.

Several dissections and demonstrations were carried out over the next two years (Huxley's argument presented as the second chapter in Evidences as to Man's Place in Nature), and Huxley was shown to be right. There was no structure that was present in the human brain that was absent in the brains of apes that could be used to sever our relationship to them.

Coincidentally, during this time gorillas were a popular sensation, and the scientific debate about whether they were "monkey or man" dovetailed with concerns about slavery and the onset of the American Civil War. Such political commentary was not as blatant in this satirical poem, which focused on some unappreciated ways in which humans had tried to imitate acts in which apes were superior. It was published in 1862 in The Living Age after originally appearing in Punch;

The Gorilla's Dilemma (To Professors Owen and Huxley)
Say am I a man and a brother,
Or only an anthropoid ape?
Your judgment, be't one way or t'other,
Do put into positive shape.
Must I humbly take rank as quaduman
As Owen maintains that I ought:
Or rise into brotherhood human,
As Huxley has flatt'ringly taught?

For though you may deem a Gorilla
Don't think much of his rank in creation,
If of feeling one have a scintilla,
It flows to know "who's one's relation" -
Apes and monkeys (now crowding by dozens
Their kinship with us to have proved),
Or an Owen and Huxley for cousins,
Though, it may be, a little removed.

If you ask me my private opinion
(Which humbly through Punch is submitted),
For which sphere of nature's dominion
I seem to myself to be fitted:
To speak with decision I'm funky,
Nature's field when I selfishly scan,
For in some points if man's above monkey,
In some monkey's far above man.

My ignorance needs no apologies-
With anatomy naught I've to do -
This with all the appurtenant "ologies"
I leave, my professors, to you.
But the points wherein I say that man
Must perforce monkey own his superior,
Are where man apes the apes all he can,
And yet to the apes is inferior.

Thus, in power of jaw apes beat fellows
Of your own scientific societies;
The P.R. they outrival in "bellow,"
In gymnastics your first notorieties.
What's Blondin to every chimpanzee,
Or Leotard great in trapeze?
If their feats rouse the public to frenzy,
What rapture a gibbon should raise!

You've low comedy actors consummate
In gagging, grimacing, and chaff;
But in many who'd Buckstone look glum at
The monkey-cage wakens a laugh.
What are "Cures," Nigger-dances, and jibes
To the black spider-monkey's contortions?
Before preacher-monkeys by tribes
How small seem on Spurgeon's proportions!

One distinction alleged, I must say
Betwixt man and monkey is hollow -
Where monkey or man shows the way,
Other men, other monkeys will follow.
But from all points of difference on turns
To this crowning divergence to come,
Not one man in a thousand e'er learns
To keep silent - all monkeys are dumb!

For distinctions of brain - cerebellum -
Posterior lobe - hippocampus -
I leave you to cut down or swell 'em,
They are scarce the distinctions to stamp us.
Now this way, now that, without end,
I'm swayed by the pros and the cons,
As I feel man and monkey contend
Which in nature's domain are the dons.

Then help me, professors, I pray;
For English opinion I value;
(You can't think how I suffered when Gray
So pitched into me through Du Chaillu.)
Anatomy out of the question,
Had I better be monkey or man,
By enlightened self-interest's suggestion?
Say you - for hang me, if I can.

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Photo of the Day #408: Thompson's gazelles

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:08:51 -0500

Thompson's gazelles (Eudorcas thomsoni), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
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The Boneyard 26 is coming up...

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:42:01 -0500

... and Traumador, it's host, has something special in mind;

So my thinking for this themed boneyard is for anyone and everyone out on the innerweb to put up a post about their favourite museum... it doesn't have to be a really "smart" or sciencey one, cause afterall it's me the archosaur without enough grey matter to fill a walnut running the show! rather i'd like to get to know other museums of the world through the eyes and words of other palaeo lovers who have been to them.

Other posts about paleo will be accepted, of course, but it would be fun if everyone could contribute something within the theme. The carnival will be going up on December 2nd, so that gives you about a week and a half to whip up something. You can send your submissions to me (evogeek AT gmail DOT com) or to Traumador at your earliest convenience.

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Photo of the Day #407: Grizzly bear

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:39:52 -0500

A grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

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Taking the "Expelled Challenge"

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:26:22 -0500

Earlier this year, intelligent design advocates were trumpeting the forthcoming "fall of Darwinism" with the release of the propaganda film Expelled. The film stirred up some controversy, had a modest (at best) showing, and generally preached to the choir, but it didn't seem to have as momentous a reception as the filmmakers were hoping for.

I was curious about what the entire film was like, but I wasn't about to support the people behind it by seeing it in theaters or purchasing a DVD. Last week, however, I noticed that Netflix has added Expelled to a list of movies subscribers can watch for free online.

I will probably watch the film tonight or tomorrow, but before I do, I wanted to ask if anyone else has seen it. What did you think of it? Did it offer anything new, or was it just a rehash of the same century-old arguments we are all so familiar with?

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Photo of the Day #406: Red-eared slider

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:24:51 -0500

A red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

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Book Progress #44

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:58:52 -0500

Lately it has been difficult to work up the motivation to work on the book. My free time is so fragmented that I rarely have the ability to sit down and concentrate on what I'm doing for more than an hour or so. The fact that it gets dark by about 4:30 does not help, either, as it makes me feel that the day is essentially over even though I have a few hours (depending on the day) to work. I really do hate autumn and the winter here.

My wife does not let me get away with moping around the apartment, though, and at her behest I worked for about two hours last night. I honestly do not think that I would be able to work on this project without her support and encouragement. Knowing myself (and what I have done in the past), I would probably write about about 2 chapters, decide that it was all rubbish, and give up if not for her insitence that I am capable of writing something worthwhile.

Indeed, there is nothing so disrupting for me than a fall college semester. I am constantly running in and out of the apartment, eating meals when I can fit them in at odd hours, working three full days a week, and generally feel run down at the end of the day despite a lack of any real physical effort. The near future is not giving me much reason to hope that things will be better, either. I'm going to have to take a year's worth of physics during the summer to finish my degree, and once I graduate I don't know what I'm going to do. I can't imagine any graduate program that would take me at this point, and should I find a job it will probably be another temporary job that wears me down. There are more closed doors than open ones.

This project is more than a hobby or something I simply enjoy doing during my free time. I have been working at it, even agonizing over it, for so long because it holds some small opportunity to help me do what I want to do with my life. I have not had a conventional education by any means, and it is difficult for me to escape the mistakes I made, but I am desperately trying to overcome my own past. I can't go backward, only forward, and this book has the potential to get me headed in a better direction. The hard part is pushing through the self-doubt and finishing it.

Here is the Wordle for the last iteration of the human evolution chapter;

For previous posts dealing with this project, see the "Books" and "Great Book Project" archives.

[Like what you see here? Then vote for me in the 3rd Annual Blogging Scholarship contest!]

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Evolution of an unthreatening sort

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:11:17 -0500

For nearly 150 years, various critics and authorities have been predicting the death-knell of "Darwinism." It is a crumbling ideological edifice, they say, and it will soon collapse. Just as predictions about Armageddon have turned out to be invariably wrong, so too has the wailing and whining of many of Darwin's critics, but there was a time when evolution by natural selection was being eclipsed.

As I have said before, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection served to stir debate rather than resolve how evolution occurred once and for all. It was widely appreciated as a coherent attempt to identify an evolutionary mechanism, but appreciation was not necessarily equal agreement. Many researchers thought they could do better, and some thought they had discovered other mechanisms that had to be considered.

The idea that evolution made jumps was a popular alternate explanation, and this was not for scientific reasons alone. For some it meshed better with religious concepts, particularly if evolution was driven by internal forces rather than by the capricious hand of natural selection. The 1907 apologetics handbook The Bible Under Trial appealed to just this variety of evolution to protect scripture from science.

The area in which evolution by saltation was of most interest involved, not surprisingly, humans. The views of Darwin and Haeckel required a "brute creation" for man, the author asserted, but no savage transitional stage would be needed if humans were produced approximating their present form. This view appeared to be more consistent with the Bible, at least according to this particular author, and was therefore preferred;

It is obvious that if this new theory of
"SALTATORY" OR "MUTATIONAL" EVOLUTION

is accepted it does away at a stroke with nearly all the difficulties connected with the origin of man. It involves a revolution in the way of conceiving the evolutionary process at once as regards the time required, the nature of the forces employed, and the need of supposing minute gradations between the lower and higher forms. In man's case there is no longer need for supposing a slow and gradual ascent from ape to true man ; the " leap," when the proper time comes, may be taken with all the suddenness needed to introduce the new being, with his distinctive attributes, upon the scene. Neither is there any need for picturing man, on his first appearance, as a semi-animal, the subject of brute impulse and unregulated passion ; his nature may have been internally harmonious, with possibilities of sinless development, which only his own free act annulled. Room is given on this view for

A DOCTRINE OF SIN --

both individual and racial -- such as Scripture affirms and requires as the basis of its doctrine of redemption, and as experience so abundantly ratines.

How such saltations occurred (and from what creature produced the first human) apparently was of little concern. That such large-scale changes were said to have occurred was enough. Even so, evolution by natural selection was enough of a threat for the author to include additional criticisms involving the fossil record. It remains the same today. Creationists (of whatever variety) are far less prone to carrying out investigations to support their claims than yammering about the "gaps in evolution." Such cowardice probably pays better, anyway.

[Image: "Joe and Sallie at home. A chimpanzee couple from Edwards' Zoological Exhibition." From The Rise of Man, 2nd ed (1917)]

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Photo of the Day #405: Polar bear

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:06:33 -0500

A polar bear (Ursus maritimus), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

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How many Origins?

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:33:59 -0500

"The Young Monkey," from Funny People, or the True Origin of Species

When I refer to a book with the phrase Origin of Species in the title, it is generally understood that I am talking about the volume by Charles Darwin, published in 1859, that was so important that we are still avidly discussing it almost 150 years after it was published. Like any popular hit, however, there were other tomes that tried to capitalize on the fame of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

Earlier this year I mentioned one such title; a print version of some of T.H. Huxley's popular lectures published (with his consent) under the title On the Origin of Species. Given that Huxley's role in producing this book was minimal, it cannot be said that he co-opted his friend's title (although I am curious what he thought about the final product).

Other authors appear to have wanted to attract attention to their works as critiques or expansions on Darwin's book. In 1860 Theophilus Parsons, professor of law at Harvard, published the paper (later reproduced as a pamphlet) On the Origin of Species in which he took issue with Darwin's gradualist mechanism. It was saltation that allowed evolution to produce so many different creatures;

My position therefore is precisely this. It is always possible that offspring may be born, differing as much from their parents and kindred in the way of gain, of advantage, and of improvement, as we know that offspring have differed in the way of loss, of hindrance and of degradation ; and therefore when I speak of extreme aberration I shall mean by it variation carried to this extent.

Another "Origin" book was published by the physician H. Freke in 1861. Called On the Origin of Species by Means of Organic Affinity, Freke states that he had independently put forward views similar to Darwin's a decade earlier. They went unnoticed and he did not have time to further develop his ideas;

In a somewhat extended series of papers on " the Pathology of Inflammation and Fever' published by me in The Dublin Medical Press, during the years 1851, 1852, and 1853, and diffused through several volumes of that Journal, I incidentally introduced my views "on the origin of species by means of organic affinity." I did so, however, in such manner as was least likely to obtain for them much notice. Views thus put forward, in connexion with a subject towards which they may appear to have had but little relation, and coming before readers who for the most part took extremely little interest in the question, I did not, or indeed could not, expect would attract much attention. Other pursuits have since prevented me from submitting those opinions to the public in a detached form.
The interest created by Mr. Darwin's recently published work on the same question, connected with the fact of that distinguished naturalist having reached a conclusion identical with one I had myself attempted to establish, has led me to believe that the present would be a favourable opportunity for me to reproduce my own views, and now for the first time to submit those views to the judgment of the public in a distinct and separate form.

The "view" in question was that all life from from a single "primordial germ." Freke was not making a claim to natural selection, only to one of the consequences of Darwin's evolutionary mechanism and derived by a different line of investigation, at that. Indeed, Freke's evolutionary ideas involved a kind of progression towards a particular point rather than Darwin's branching phylogenetic trees, and his ideas were closer to some of Lamarck's than Darwin's.

A later work was A New Theory of the Origin of Species published by Benjamin G. Ferris in 1883. In the book, Ferris attempted to find a sort of middle road between evolution and religion; evolution was merely the progressive creation of new types from pre-existing forms. If it really was unguided evolution, and evolution was re-played in the womb, then "why do not female dogs occasionally give birth to reptiles? Or a human mother to a gibbon?" Thus, in Ferris' view, evolution had to be progressive and better understood as a series of special creations.

Perhaps the most blatant attempt to co-opt Darwin's title, however, was under taken by John Crawfurd in his 1868 book On the Theory of the Origin of Species by Natural Selection in the Struggle for Life. It was a little more straightforward in its critique, and the author opens the book with his objection to Darwin's theory;

I propose in this Paper to state, in so far as concerns the natural history of Man, such objections to the Darwinian theory as have occurred to me, and which oblige me to refuse my belief in opinions which have received the assent of many eminent men of science.

One of the first criticisms was one that had been around since the time of Cuvier, and that Huxley was trying to resolved through his concept of persistent types (i.e. that most of evolution occurred during "non-geologic time" and the fossil recorded the little modified descendants of those older forms);

Authentic history certainly affords no evidence in favour of the theory of beneficial mutation by natural selection. The wild and even the domestic animals of Egypt have undergone no change in times of an antiquity which has been variously estimated at from 5,000 up to 10,000 years. In the Egyptian catacombs have been found mummies of the ibis and the kestrel hawk, not differing in a feather, or the spot of a feather, from these birds of Egypt of the present day. The ox, the ass, the dog, and the goose represented on the Egyptian monuments of equal antiquity, are the same varieties which exist now. If, then, thousands of years have produced no change at all, it is reasonable to believe that, except in dreams, millions would be equally inoperative.

Crawfurd's privately-printed critique only runs about 16 pages. The rest of the book consists of other papers on races of people.

I did stumble upon one book, however, that was not so much a critique of Darwin's ideas as a fanciful reinterpretation of "the origin of species." In Punch's 1882 Almanack, there was a now-famous illustration of evolution from worm to human, with Darwin seated in the middle of it all. The humor book Funny People, or the True Origin of Species carried on this theme, imagining the "evolution" of different people from different animals. Different personalities (or vices, as the case may be) are traced back to different animal ancestors, and the "animal within" seems to have been a major theme in the cartoons in the book.

I'm sure there were other articles, books, and cartoons that I have not yet seen that tried to gain attention through using the phrase "Origin of Species" somewhere in the title. What is curious, though, is that many of the titles were written to either add to or tear down Darwin's original work. These were not books in support of evolution by natural selection or non-technical summaries of the concept, but books that were probably (to varying degrees) meant to gain the authors more attention than their ideas alone merited. (Huxley's lectures being an exception due to the way it was produced.)

Even though I only had time to skim each title, they are worthy of more investigation. It is commonly assumed that the moment Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published, the entire world was in agreement and that the only criticisms were made by religious zealots. This, of course, if patently false, and even if the scientific content of these "other Origins" is wrong, they can still teach us quite a bit about the history of evolution as an idea.

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Photo of the Day #404: Red ruffed lemur

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:37:55 -0500

A red ruffed lemur (Varecia rubra), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

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Evolved to shop?

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:29:14 -0500

During the past few weeks I have tried to step back from adding new material to my book to gain a better perspective on how I'm telling the story I want to convey. Much of what I'm writing concerns recent discoveries to explain how we know what we say we know about evolution, but the framework from which all that hangs is a combination of historical and scientific narrative.

Nowhere is it more important to be conscious of this than in the chapter on human evolution. I have done my best to avoid illustrating evolution as development towards a given point, that our species in particular was destined to exist, but the relative poverty of my language doesn't make this easy. It has been traditional to employ terms like "higher" and "lower" to give species a place in the grand evolutionary scheme, but that is not my goal at all.

Reading popular summaries of human evolution and watching documentaries have helped me to identify different narratives (as well as how to avoid certain pitfalls in my own work). Another resource I have just stumbled across is the episode "The Meat Eating Ape" from Desmond Morris' The Human Animal, which is simultaneously interesting, amusingly outdated, and bewildering. I have included it below;

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Photo of the Day #403: American bison

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 08:51:25 -0500

An American bison (Bison bison), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

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