Stephen E. Jones

Creation/Evolution Quotes: Humans #2:
Humans are different in kind from animals

[Quotes main page] [Humans, #1]

Humans are different in kind from animals

1. Human mental capacity
• "On psychological instead of ... morphological traits, man would have to be considered a separate phylum or even kingdom"
• "The human capacity to understand the what and the why of things"
• "With respect to this faculty, man is different in kind from animals, not in degree
2. Human ethical capacity
• "It is the differences between animal and man, not the similarities, which concern us..."
3. Not merely a distinction in degree
• "No distinction in kind rather than degree between ourselves and the chimps?"
4. Recency of humans
• "Fifty thousand years or so"
• Helps to explain why human races show relatively small genetic differences
5. Descended from apes?
• "no fossil hominid species can be established as our direct ancestor"
• "We have not the faintest idea of which of these species ... is in the direct line of human descent"
• "existing phylogenetic hypotheses about human evolution are unlikely to be reliable"

Humans are different in kind from animals

1. Human mental capacity
• "On psychological instead of ... morphological traits, man would have to be considered a separate phylum or even kingdom"

"Man's structural peculiarities only suffice to place him in a monotypic zoological family, with a single living species. His mental abilities are far more distinctive. If the zoological classification were based on psychological instead of mainly morphological traits, man would have to be considered a separate phylum or even kingdom." (Dobzhansky, Theodosius [late Professor of Genetics, University of California, Davis], "Chance and Creativity in Evolution," Ayala F.J. & Dobzhansky T., ed., "Studies in the Philosophy of Biology," University of California Press: Los Angeles & Berkeley, 1974, p.333, in Augros R. & Stanciu G., "The New Biology: Discovering the Wisdom in Nature," New Science Library, Shambhala: Boston MA, 1987, p.222). [top]

• "The human capacity to understand the what and the why of things"
• "With respect to this faculty, man is different in kind from animals, not in degree"

"Animals are clearly not machines, but neither are they slightly diminished human beings. Intellectual understanding is not found in any degree in any animal but man. The human capacity to understand the what and the why of things is unique in the animal kingdom. With respect to this faculty, man is different in kind from animals, not in degree. The difference between apes and other animals is one of degree, since they possess the same kinds of powers to a greater or less extent. But a greater gap separates man from ape than that which separates any two other natural creatures. (Augros, Robert [philosopher] & Stanciu, George [physicist], "The New Biology: Discovering the Wisdom in Nature", New Science Library, Shambhala: Boston, MA, 1987, p.82. Emphasis in original). [top]

2. Human ethical capacity
• "It is the differences between animal and man, not the similarities, which concern us..."

"It was not only Darwin among the natural scientists who failed to pass Chain's religious scrutiny. Another was Konrad Lorenz, of whom he spoke in a speech-day address to Jews' College in London in 1972. `It is easy to draw analogies between the behaviour of apes and man, and draw conclusions from the behaviour of birds and fishes on human ethical behaviour but all these analogies are superficial and have no general significance. Of course there are similarities between all living matter, but this fact does not allow the development of ethical guidelines for human behaviour. All attempts to do this, such as Lorenz' studies on aggression in animals suffer from the failure to take into account the all-important fact of man's capability to think and to be able to control his passions, and are therefore doomed to failure right from the beginning. It is the differences between animal and man, not the similarities, which concern us...the various speculations on cosmogony which are advanced from time to time, are nothing more than an amusing pastime for those proposing them.'" (Clark R.W., "The Life of Ernst Chain [Nobel Prize for Physiology & Medicine, 1945]: Penicillin and Beyond," Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 1985, p.148). [top]

3. Not merely a distinction in degree
• "No distinction in kind rather than degree between ourselves and the chimps?"

"No distinction in kind rather than degree between ourselves and the chimps? No distinction? Seriously, folks? Here is a simple operational test: The chimpanzees invariably are the ones behind the bars of their cages. There they sit, solemnly munching bananas, searching for lice, aimlessly loping around, baring their gums, waiting for the experiments to begin. ... No distinction? No species in the animal world organizes itself in the complex, dense, difficult fashion that is typical of human societies. ... in all of history no animal has stood staring at the night sky in baffled and respectful amazement. The chimpanzees are static creatures solemnly poking for grubs with their sticks, inspecting one another for fleas. ... One may insist, of course, that all this represents difference merely of degree. Very well. Only a difference of degree separates man from the Canadian Goose. Individuals of both species are capable of entering the air unaided and landing some distance from where they started. (Berlinski, David [mathematician and philosopher], "Good as Gould," in "Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic, Luck," Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: Boston MA, Second Edition, 1988, pp.293-295). [top]

4. Recency of humans
• "Fifty thousand years or so"
• Helps to explain why human races show relatively small genetic differences

"The simplest interpretation of these conclusions today would envision a relatively small group starting to spread not long after modern man appeared. With the spreading, groups became separated and isolated. Racial differentiation followed. Fifty thousand years or so is a short time in evolutionary terms, and this may help to explain why, genetically speaking, human races show relatively small differences. Future discoveries may of course alter these conclusions. It should also be noted that there are fossils of manlike primates that are a great deal more than 60,000 years old. Indeed, some of these fossils may be three million years old. All of them, however, are quite distinct from the fossils of modern man. (Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi L. [Professor of Genetics Emeritus, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA], "The Genetics of Human Populations", Scientific American, Vol. 231, pp.81-89, September 1974, p.89). [top]

5. Descended from apes?
• "no fossil hominid species can be established as our direct ancestor"

"When we consider the remote past, before the origin of the actual species Homo sapiens, we are faced with a fragmentary and disconnected fossil record. Despite the excited and optimistic claims that have been made by some paleontologists, no fossil hominid species can be established as our direct ancestor...The earliest forms that are recognized as being hominid are the famous fossils, associated with primitive stone tools, that were found by Mary and Louis Leakey in the Olduvai gorge and elsewhere in Africa. These fossil hominids lived more than 1.5 million years ago and had brains half the size of ours. They were certainly not members of our own species, and we have no idea whether they were even in our direct ancestral line or only in a parallel line of descent resembling our direct ancestor." (Lewontin, Richard C. [Professor of Zoology and Biology, Harvard University], "Human Diversity," Scientific American Library: New York NY, 1995, p.163). [top]

• "We have not the faintest idea of which of these species ... is in the direct line of human descent"

"Assertions that we are descended either from a large, vegetarian, apelike ancestor (Australopithecus robustus) or from a smaller, carnivorous one (Australopithecus africanus) and that we owe our present natures to the eating habits of these early "ancestors" are totally without merit. We have not the faintest idea of which of these species-if either-is in the direct line of human descent. .... A major problem in reconstructing human evolution is that we have no close living relatives. The chimpanzee and the gorilla were connected to us by a common ancestor at least 7 million years ago, so that more than 14 million years of independent evolution must be traversed in tracing up from these apes to that common ancestor and then back down to us." (Lewontin, Richard C. [Professor of Zoology and Biology, Harvard University], "Human Diversity," Scientific American Library: New York NY, 1995, p.164) [top]

• "existing phylogenetic hypotheses about human evolution are unlikely to be reliable"

"Cladistic analysis of cranial and dental evidence has been widely used to generate phylogenetic hypotheses about humans and their fossil relatives. However, the reliability of these hypotheses has never been subjected to external validation. To rectify this, we applied identical methods to equivalent evidence from two groups of extant higher primates for whom reliable molecular phylogenies are available, the hominoids and papionins. We found that the phylogenetic hypotheses based on the craniodental data were incompatible with the molecular phylogenies for the groups. Given the robustness of the molecular phylogenies, these results indicate that little confidence can be placed in phylogenies generated solely from higher primate craniodental evidence. The corollary of this is that existing phylogenetic hypotheses about human evolution are unlikely to be reliable. Accordingly, new approaches are required to address the problem of hominin phylogeny." (Collard M. & Wood B., "How reliable are human phylogenetic hypotheses?," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 97, No. 9, April 25, 2000, pp.5003-5006. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/9/5003) [top]

* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists.