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"Looking at the SETI project from a biologist's point of view in Essay 4, I demonstrate that each step leading to the evolution of intelligent life on earth was highly improbable and that the evolution of the human species was the result of a sequence of thousands of these highly improbable steps. It is a miracle that man ever happened, and it would be an even greater miracle if such a sequence of improbabilities had been repeated anywhere else." (Mayr E. [Emeritus Professor of Zoology, Harvard University], "Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist," Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1988, p5).
[top]"Finally, if you will accept my argument that contingency is not only resolvable and important, but also fascinating in a special sort of way, then the Burgess not only reverses our general ideas about the source of pattern-it also fills us with a new kind of amazement (also a frisson for the improbability of the event) at the fact that humans ever evolved at all. We came this close (put your thumb about a millimeter away from your index finger), thousands and thousands of times, to erasure by the veering of history down another sensible channel. Replay the tape a million times from a Burgess beginning, and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again. It is, indeed, a wonderful life." (Gould, Stephen J. [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University], "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History," [1989], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.289. Emphasis Gould's).
[top]"The question that we have to ask is if the earth was hit by an asteroid tomorrow and everything but simple microbes were destroyed and we came back in another 3 or 4 billion years, would we expect to find homo sapiens here again. Well, of course not. RD: Of course we wouldn't! PD: No, of course not. But the question is would we expect to find any intelligent life and I think most biologists would say no. McK: Richard Dawkins, I know you're bursting to say something there. RD: Yes. It is not in my view sensible to invoke fundamental laws of physical improvement for the biological improvement of complexity or running speed or anything else. If you wiped our life and started again-no, you would not get homo sapiens. I tell you what you would get, you would probably get a great diversity of living form . You'd probably get plants, animals, you'd probably get parasites, you'd probably get predators, you'd probably get large predators, small predators. You might well get flight, you might well get sight. There are all sorts of things that you can guess that you might get. You would certainly not get a re-run of what we've got." (McKew M., "The Origin of the Universe," Interview with Richard Dawkins [Zoologist and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University], & Paul Davies [Physicist and Professor of Natural Philosophy, University of Adelaide], Lateline, Australian Broadcasting Commission, 19 June 1996, in Australian Rationalist, No. 41, Spring 1996, pp.72-73)
[top]"Given the general pattern of changelessness that characterizes the bulk of the Paleolithic archaeological record, then, it is hard not to conclude that there was but one truly great leap (forward?) in human evolution: the one that gave rise to our own species, Homo sapiens. If you'd been around at any earlier stage of human evolution, with some knowledge of the past, you might have been able to predict with reasonable accuracy what might be coming up next. Homo sapiens, however, is emphatically not an organism that does what its predecessors did, only a little better; it's something very-and potentially very dangerously-different. Something extraordinary, if totally fortuitous, happened with the birth of our species. And although the human biological past stretches back over five million poorly known years or more, it is the nature of that very recent yet still obscure happening that poses the true enigma of human evolution." (Tattersall, Ian [Head of the Anthropology Department at the American Museum of Natural History], "The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know about Human Evolution," Oxford University Press: New York NY, 1995, p.246).
[top]"Considering the very close genetic relationship that has been established by comparison of biochemical properties of blood proteins, protein structure and DNA and immunological responses, the differences between a man and a chimpanzee are more astonishing than the resemblances. They include structural differences in the skeleton, the muscles, the skin, and the brain; differences in posture associated with a unique method of locomotion; differences in social organization; and finally the acquisition of speech and tool-using, together with the dramatic increase in intellectual ability which has led scientists to name their own species Homo sapiens sapiens - wise wise man. During the period when these remarkable evolutionary changes were taking place, other closely related ape-like species changed only very slowly, and with far less remarkable results. It is hard to resist the conclusion that something must have happened to the ancestors of Homo sapiens which did not happen to the ancestors of gorillas and chimpanzees." (Morgan, Elaine [writer], "The Aquatic Ape: A Theory of Human Evolution," [1982], Souvenir Press: London, 1989, reprint, pp.17- 18).
[top]"The present state of play may be summarised as follows. Four of the most outstanding mysteries about humans are: (1) why do they walk on two legs? (2) why have they lost their fur? (3) why have they developed such large brains? (4) why did they learn to speak? The orthodox answers to these questions are: (1) 'We do not yet know'; (2) 'We do not yet know'; (3) 'We do not yet know', and (4) 'We do not yet know'. The list of questions could be considerably lengthened without affecting the monotony of the answers. (Morgan, Elaine [writer], "The Scars of Evolution", Souvenir Press: London, 1990, p.5).
[top]"Another part of Lovejoy's argument is that, because so drastic an anatomical rebuilding is required to transform a quadruped into a biped, an animal in which the evolutionary change is still incomplete would be an inefficient biped. `During this period, a reproductive advantage must have fallen to those in each generation that walked more frequently in bipedal posture despite their lack of efficiency,' he reasoned." (Leakey, Richard [paleoanthropologist] & Lewin, Roger [biochemist and former editor of New Scientist and science writer], "Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human," [1992], Abacus: London, 1993, reprint, p.87. Emphasis in original).
[top]"Ironically enough, science, which can show us the flints and the broken skulls of our dead fathers, has yet to explain how we have come so far so fast, nor has it any completely satisfactory answer to the question asked by Wallace long ago. Those who would revile us by pointing to an ape at the foot of our family tree grasp little of the awe with which the modern scientist now puzzles over man's lonely and supreme ascent. As one great student of paleoneurology, Dr. Tilly Edinger, recently remarked, "If man has passed through a Pithecanthropus phase, the evolution of his brain has been unique, not only in its result but also in its tempo.... Enlargement of the cerebral hemispheres by 50 per cent seems to have taken place, speaking geologically, within an instant, and without having been accompanied by any major increase in body size." The true secret of Piltdown, though thought by the public to be merely the revelation of an unscrupulous forgery, lies in the fact that it has forced science to reexamine carefully the history of the most remarkable creation in the world-the human brain." (Eiseley, Loren C. [Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania], "The Real Secret of Piltdown," in "The Immense Journey," [1946], Vintage: New York NY, 1957, reprint, pp.93-94. Ellipses Eiseley's).
[top]"Second Corollary-Too Much Perfection. Darwin formulated this himself in the first edition of The Origin of Species: `Natural selection tends only to make each being as perfect as, or slightly more perfect than, the other inhabitants of the same area.'. Eiseley reports that in 1869, after only ten years, it was brushed aside by no less a person than Alfred Russel Wallace, co-inventor with Darwin of the doctrine of natural selection. Perceiving that the gap between the brain of the ape and that of the lowest savage was too big, Wallace announced a heresy: "An instrument has been developed in advance of the needs of its possessor." He challenged the whole Darwinian position by insisting that artistic, mathematical, and musical abilities could not be explained on the basis of natural selection and the struggle for existence. Something else, he contended, some unknown spiritual element, must have been at work in the elaboration of the human brain." (Macbeth, Norman [Harvard- trained lawyer], "Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason," Gambit: Boston MA, 1971, pp.102-103).
[top]"If, as follows from the foregoing, it is the fact of being 'reflective' which constitutes the strictly 'intelligent' being, can we seriously doubt that intelligence is the evolutionary lot proper to man and to man only? If not, can we, under the influence of some false modesty, hesitate to admit that man's possession of it constitutes a radical advance on all forms of life that have gone before him? Admittedly the animal knows. But it cannot know that it knows: that is quite certain. If it could, it would long ago have multiplied its inventions and developed a system of internal constructions that could not have escaped our observation. In consequence it is denied access to a whole domain of reality in which we can move freely. We are separated by a chasm-or a threshold- which it cannot cross. Because we are reflective we are not only different but quite another. It is not merely a matter of change of degree, but of a change of nature, resulting from a change of state." (Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, [French Jesuit priest and paleontologist], "The Phenomenon of Man," [1955], Fontana: London, 1967, Fifth Impression, pp.183-184. Emphasis in original).
[top]"Gradualists and saltationists alike are completely incapable of giving a convincing explanation of the quasi-simultaneous emergence of a number of biological systems that distinguish human beings from the higher primates: bipedalism, with the concomitant modification of the pelvis, and, without a doubt, the cerebellum, a much more dexterous hand, with fingerprints conferring an especially fine tactile sense; the modifications of the pharynx which permits phonation; the modification of the central nervous system, notably at the level of the temporal lobes, permitting the specific recognition of speech. From the point of view of embryogenesis, these anatomical systems are completely different from one another. Each modification constitutes a gift, a bequest from a primate family to its descendants. It is astonishing that these gifts should have developed simultaneously. Some biologists speak of a predisposition of the genome. Can anyone actually recover the predisposition, supposing that it actually existed? Was it present in the first of the fish? The reality is that we are confronted with total conceptual bankruptcy." (Schutzenberger M-P., in "The Miracles of Darwinism: Interview with Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger," Origins & Design, Vol. 17, No. 2, Spring 1996, pp.10-15. http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od172/schutz172.htm).
[top]* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists.
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Created: 27 December, 1999. Updated: 11 July, 2003.
