"anne gilbert" <avgilber-@...> wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/palanthsci/?start=20
> Roger:
> (snip)                                        And she tended
> to believe that space aliens built the pyramids, and in fairies
> and ghosts and such.

Please don't tell me that "Chariot of the Gods" was fabricated!
<very big grin>

Seriously, what dogmatics miss all too often is the allegorical
nature of myth.  If one understands the seven days of creation
as seven stages, then one has the King James Bible as evolutionary
textbook.

The date of the Garden of Eden at 4000 BC isn't too far off,
actually, if you view it as the point of origin of father-
dominated agricultural, settled society leading to modern
technological society growing out of the stabilization of
domestication technology and the final MidEastern transition
from pure hunter gather to the beginnings of civilization.
The Garden of Eden is after all a garden which means agricultural
husbandry.  Very quickly after that we have cities, writing,
and empires.  If one takes it as the social point of origin of
modern western civilization, it more or less works historically.
Adam becomes the first farmer, and as such is the "father" of
man in the modern civilized sense.  Of course his sons still had
to find someone else's daughters to marry, and IIRC the Bible
says so.

Myth hides history in an allegorical setting.  "Yes Alice there
was a Troy."  But did the Trojan wars actually take place on Asia
Minor or was it more of a chronicle of the Mycean attempt to
ursurp Minoan Cretian hegogomy?  The mistake, of course, is the
literal absolutism of much of religous dogma when applied to social
myth.  Ancient Greeks made the same literalistic mistakes with Homer
that Creationists make with the King James Bible. So Socrates drank
hemlock and my ancestors were burned (and did their own burning) for
Christian heresy.

"He that hath ears to hear let him hear."  (Or her, of course)

All this is hardly paleo-anything, although, of course, it is the
setting through which we see the past darkly.

-----Original Message-----
From: Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
To: palanthsci@egroups.com <palanthsci@egroups.com>
Date: 19 February 2000 11:15
Subject: [palanthsci] Re: Odp: evolutionary ambivalence

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Roger Lass <lass@...>

To: <palanthsci@egroups.com>

Sent: Saturday, February 19, 2000 5:39 PM

Subject: [palanthsci] Re: evolutionary ambivalence

 

Delighted to meet you on this list. Greetings from the Poznan School of English.

 

I suspect many (presumably most) humans inhabit several different realities at the same time and feel no need to have a coherent mental map of the universe, one that would unify its many levels and niches. Your doctor obviously doesn't think of himself as sharing a universe with the bacterial populations he knows so much about in his professional capacity. Even if he really understands why bacteria develop resistance, he doesn't feel compelled to apply the same logic to the rest of the living world. He's got no sideways vision, like a blinkered horse. We traditionally expect a scientist to be an intellectual with a consistent personal Weltanshauung, but alas it's perfectly possible to become a first-class expert in one discipline without having the vaguest idea of science in general.

 

Intellectual schizophrenia is an extraordinary thing. One may read a popular book on astrophysics like a piece of fiction -- apparently understanding the text but failing to see that it actually refers to real stars, those that twinkle in the sky at night, or the one that shines in daytime, for that matter. [Anyway, judging from how often Venus is taken for a flying saucer, modern townsfolk seem to be only dimly aware of what the sky really looks like.] I don't quite agree that the mechanism of evolution is so difficult to understand. The real problem is, IMO, that one may read books and articles about the origin of man but fail to integrate their content with loose bits and pieces gleaned from other books. Somehow the motivation is lacking. What we get in this way is well-read people with postmodern hotchpotch in their heads. To them, science is an assortment of texts, and life is life.

 

But Anne's question is also about why some knowledgeable people who accept and understand neo-Darwinian evolution have a problem with human origins. They want to draw a neat boundary between us and our "lower" cousins and ancestors, e.g. by insisting that Homo sapiens owes its special position to some miraculous evolutionary leap. Neanderthals and H. erectus are beyond the pale, of course. Those poor devils had no language, no abstract culture, no symbolic skills, no art, no religion, no soul and no hope of eternal life. Aren't there professional linguists who believe that the language faculty sprang whole from a mysterious and glorious "mutation" which gave us the power of speech and conscious thought at the same time? What's lurking behind this belief? A wish to reserve a place for divine intervention, just in case??

 

Piotr

 

---

 

Roger Lass wrote (among other things)

 

> ...And you'd be surprised the kinds of people who can hold sets of mutually
> contradictory or at least very oddly assorted beliefs. We know a specialist
> physician (= US internist) who is a superb scientific doctor: his knowledge
> of biochemistry is amazing, he is up on drug-resistance and how it's to be
> handled in treating diseases, he even will talk about populations of viruses
> or bacteria developing resistance through non-completed treatment, he knows
> about plasmids and the sharing of resistance genes.
>
> Yet one day, when my wife was in hospital and he was talking to her, she
> elicited accidentally from him the fact that he believes in the literal
> truth of Genesis (and the whole Bible), and was shocked that she was an
> atheist. Apparently (as far as she could get) evolution by natural selection
> is a fact of life in bacterial populations, but God created Adam on the 6th
> day.
>
> He is the third doctor we've met here who is (a) a scientist, and (b) a
> fundamentalist (two Christian, one Jewish--but of course they share
> Genesis). I fail to understand this, but it seems that many humans are built
> that way.

 

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I agree totally with what Ken says (surprisingly), except in matters of
emphasis and differences in cultural style.

1. Absolutely right of course about 'sharing the OT'; what I should have
said is that Anglophone Jews and Christians generally share a tradition of
translation deriving ultimately from Coverdale's 16th-c. version, the
Authorized ('King James') version of 1611, and various offspring. Not
interpretations of course (no Jew would see Melchizedek as a prefiguration
of Christ), but the stories.

2. Many people nowadays (unlike Darwin's readers) do not have the kind of
forensic skills that allow them to follow a chain of argument like the one
Ken so beautifully paraphrases; there was a leisureliness about Victorian
science, and a willingness to read and think that is lacking in 'the young'
today. I think if I were to present Ken's synopsis to UCT first-years, about
half of them would be totally unable to see *why* one thing followed from
another.

A characteristic example: it is very hard to get first and second year
students to see why affirming the consequent is a fallacy. They will acccept
modus ponens:

If p, then q
p
therefore q

But they're equally happy with

If p, then q
q
therefore p

Makes you want to give up.

RL
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Jacobs <jacobsk@...>
To: palanthsci@egroups.com <palanthsci@egroups.com>
Date: 19 February 2000 08:48
Subject: [palanthsci] Re: Re:Bible & ease of explaining
evolution/wasevolutionary ambivalence


>
>
>Greenwich wrote:
>>
>> See:
>> http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/bible-a.htm (Bible quotes of
>> interest)
>
>I have been to the above site and it is an interesting compilation of
>facts, opionion, and links. Bob Fink is to be congratulated. But my
>comments go more to Roger's note which I missed the first time around.
>
>First, the notion that the three doctors (two Christian, one Jewish) all
>share Genesis: On the surface this is true, but one need only compare
>any Christian Bible's translation of Genesis to, for example, the most
>recent Jewish Publication Society translation of the Masoretic Texts to
>see that there are significant semantic differences between them.
>Granted all versions derive from stories carried back at the end of the
>Babylonian Exile [ca. 539 BCE; see S.D. Sperling, 1998 "The Original
>Torah: the political intent of the Bible's writers" NYU Press], but the
>use to which these stories were put varied widely. Pre-Christian Jewish
>exegesis of the Flood story stressed that the event essentially "cleaned
>the slate" as regards "Original Sin," a view carried on into
>Mishnaic/Talmudic times [2nd-7th c. CE] and thence to the present.
>Christianity of course took a different interpretation, one requiring
>the death and resurrection of Jesus. I realize this is a not a Bible
>list, but the distinct texts and divergent interpretations are important
>to understand why very many Christians reacted (and continue to react)
>so vehemently against Darwin, his ideas, and those of his successors,
>while major leaders in the Jewish community were either indifferent or
>supportive, one 19th c. rabbi going so far as to say that the theory was
>presaged in the Jewish Bible.
>
>Second, I would disagree with Roger about the ease of explaining
>evolution. When Darwin presented his ideas, the vast majority was poorly
>educated, ignorant for the most part of fossils, and certainly wholly
>ignorant [as was Darwin himself] of genes. Yet he managed to convince
>most of these people through a very simple logical progression,
>verifiable by the life experiences of most people:
>    1.  There is an enormous variability of behavior and physical
>features within any given species;
>    2.  There is a competition for resources both within and among
>species for the essentials of life (food, shelter, etc.);
>    3.  This competition is exacerbated by the fact that more offspring
>are produced than can possibly survive on the available resources
>(Darwin's famous borrowing from the writings of the Rev. Malthus);
>    4.  Those who survive this competition will have more offspring,
>passing their heritable features in a disproportionate fashion onto the
>next generation;
>    5.  Thus, over the course of time (which timespan Lyell & others
>were conveniently providing), there may be a sufficient accumulation of
>the average behavioral and physical features of descendent generations
>that ultimately a species-level difference would have to be recognized
>between ancestor and descendant.
>
>None of these can be refuted individually and when you string them
>together, as did Darwin in several differnet places in his "On the
>Origin of Species," they lead inevitability to the possibility of the
>transformation of life forms. No a priori need for an understanding of
>fossils or genes, althought the Darwinian view certainly predicts the
>former and benefits from our current knowledge of the latter as the
>mechanism of heritability.
>
>-Ken Jacobs UdeMontreal
>> ================================================
>> Roger Lass wrote:
>> >
>> > There's a lot to this issue, I think. One thing is that unless you have
some
>> > basic science, some knowledge of what exists in the world, and do some
>> > *thinking* (rather than living on soundbites), the arguments for
evolution
>> > are not that easy. Think of someone who is poorly educated (the normal
>> > output of state schools in the US, UK, Austria or SA), doesn't know
what
>> > genes are, and has no idea that change exists, has never seen a fossil
>> > ... snip
>> > Apparently...evolution by natural selection is a fact of life in
>> > bacterial populations, but God created Adam on the 6th day.
>> > He is the third doctor we've met here who is (a) a scientist, and (b)
>> > a fundamentalist (two Christian, one Jewish--but of course they share
>> > Genesis). I fail to understand this, but it seems that many humans are
>> > built that way.
>> ============================================
>> Bob Fink
>> 516 Avenue K South
>> Saskatoon, Saskatchewan., Canada S7M 2E2
>> E-Mail: green@...
>> Fax: 306-244-0795 / Voice: 306-244-0679
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>

The classic one of these is Chomsky (who reminds me in this respect of
Alfred Russell Wallace): anything can evolve, but not the *paradigmatically
human*.

There's an elegant rebuttal of Chomsky's position in Pinker & Bloom, Natural
language and natural selection, repr. in Barkow, Cosmides & Tooby, The
adapted Mind.  Chomsky, for all his insistence on language as a 'mental
organ', and on innateness, has always shown a distinct hostility to
evolutionary argument and psycholinguistic experimentation; he often goes
out of his way to formulate things in such a way that they're untestable by
any external evidence.

RL
-----Original Message-----
From: Anne Gilbert <avgilbert@...>
To: palanthsci@egroups.com <palanthsci@egroups.com>
Date: 20 February 2000 12:04
Subject: [palanthsci] Re: Odp: evolutionary ambivalence


>
>Aren't there professional linguists who believe that the language faculty
>sprang whole from a mysterious and glorious "mutation" which gave us the
>power of speech and conscious thought at the same time? What's lurking
>behind this belief? A wish to reserve a place for divine intervention, just
>in case??
>
>Piotr:
>
>There is such a theory.  Richard Klein advanced it in "The Human Career",
>among other places.  He still seems to hold with the idea(for which there
is
>absolutely no proof)that some sort of mysterious "brain mutation" took
place
>among "modern" humans ---- and only "modern"
>humans ---- about 50 kyr ago, which allowed them to talk and think better
>than those poor, benighted Neandertals and their "archaic" kin.  And this
>allowed the "moderns" to take over the world.  This *does* sound like a
>secular version of "special creation" to me.
>Anne G
>
>
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>
>

Yes, a sort of cognitive dissonance. Curiously, it doesn't make us trust him
any less as a doctor, because he keeps the partitions in place. though I'm
tempted in my more demonic moods to show him Margie Profet's paper on the
evolutionary origins of morning sickness, just to see how he'd react.

RL
-----Original Message-----
From: Anne Gilbert <avgilbert@...>
To: palanthsci@egroups.com <palanthsci@egroups.com>
Date: 19 February 2000 09:19
Subject: [palanthsci] Re: evolutionary ambivalence


>Roger:
>
>
>> And you'd be surprised the kinds of people who can hold sets of mutually
>> contradictory or at least very oddly assorted beliefs. We know a
>specialist
>> physician (= US internist) who is a superb scientific doctor: his
>knowledge
>> of biochemistry is amazing, he is up on drug-resistance and how it's to
be
>> handled in treating diseases, he even will talk about populations of
>viruses
>> or bacteria developing resistance through non-completed treatment, he
>knows
>> about plasmids and the sharing of resistance genes.
>
>OK.  I once knew a woman kind of like this.  She was very smart, but not
all
>that well-educated in some ways.  She firmly believe that you could get
AIDS
>by being near a breathing HIV-positive person.  And she tended to believe
>that space aliens built the pyramids, and in fairies and ghosts and such.
>And there was absolutely no arguing with her on any of these things.  Yet
>she was well-read and much of what she learned she had taught herself(in
>somewhat the same way I taught myself what I know, which I admit isn't
>much)about human evolution and wolves.  So people with these kinds of weird
>(to us, anyway), ideas are all around.  You just may not notice them unless
>the circumstances are right.
>
>> He is the third doctor we've met here who is (a) a scientist, and (b) a
>> fundamentalist (two Christian, one Jewish--but of course they share
>> Genesis). I fail to understand this, but it seems that many humans are
>built
>> that way.
>
>I fail to understand it too, but there's a name for it in psychology:
>"cognitive dissonance" and "cognitive consistency".  In other words, all of
>us hold beliefs about the world, which we organize in various ways.
>Sometimes, if we have certain very strong beliefs, we may reject that which
>appears to contradict them.  Thus, if you have encountered Jewish and
>Christian "fundamentalists", these folks may well be able to assimilate
>certain kinds of scientific information quite well, but when something
>contradicts their deeply-held beliefs, they will either reject it outright
>or else they will try to explain it in accordance with their beliefs(and
>this is where things can get *really* irrational).  This kind of thing,
>incidentally, goes on all the time in paleoanthropology, too.  This is one
>of the reasons the debate between the MRE and OoA people is so contentious.
>Anne G
>
>
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Aren't there professional linguists who believe that the language faculty
sprang whole from a mysterious and glorious "mutation" which gave us the
power of speech and conscious thought at the same time? What's lurking
behind this belief? A wish to reserve a place for divine intervention, just
in case??

Piotr:

There is such a theory.  Richard Klein advanced it in "The Human Career",
among other places.  He still seems to hold with the idea(for which there is
absolutely no proof)that some sort of mysterious "brain mutation" took place
among "modern" humans ---- and only "modern"
humans ---- about 50 kyr ago, which allowed them to talk and think better
than those poor, benighted Neandertals and their "archaic" kin.  And this
allowed the "moderns" to take over the world.  This *does* sound like a
secular version of "special creation" to me.
Anne G

----- Original Message -----
From: Greenwich <green@...>
To: <palanthsci@egroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2000 3:28 AM
Subject: [palanthsci] terms meanings


> What are the "MRE and OoA" people and what do they hold to be so
> contentious??
> Bob Fink (the bonehead)

Bob:

"MRE" stands for "multiregionionalsim" or "regional continuity"; the idea
that "modern humans" have a long history(beginning in Africa about 2 myr ago
and involving more or less separate but closely related populations
exchanging genes to evolve into "moderns", mostly in a "mosaic" fashion.
"OoA" stands for "Out of Africa"; the idea that modern humans evolved
*recently*(the current estimate is about 150 kyr ago)from a small, *single*
population and spread with little or no intermixing between "archaic" and
"modern" types, into the population we have today.  This latter scenario
would exclude Neandertals and other "archaic" populations from having made
any major contributions to human ancestry.  The views tend to be contentious
because they involve different methods of looking at the same sets of
evidence.  This is where "cognitive consistency" and "cognitive dissonance"
come into play.
Anne G

What are the "MRE and OoA" people and what do they hold to be so
contentious??
Bob Fink (the bonehead)

http://www.mg.co.za/mg/news/2000feb2/18feb-evolution.html

Roger:


> And you'd be surprised the kinds of people who can hold sets of mutually
> contradictory or at least very oddly assorted beliefs. We know a
specialist
> physician (= US internist) who is a superb scientific doctor: his
knowledge
> of biochemistry is amazing, he is up on drug-resistance and how it's to be
> handled in treating diseases, he even will talk about populations of
viruses
> or bacteria developing resistance through non-completed treatment, he
knows
> about plasmids and the sharing of resistance genes.

OK.  I once knew a woman kind of like this.  She was very smart, but not all
that well-educated in some ways.  She firmly believe that you could get AIDS
by being near a breathing HIV-positive person.  And she tended to believe
that space aliens built the pyramids, and in fairies and ghosts and such.
And there was absolutely no arguing with her on any of these things.  Yet
she was well-read and much of what she learned she had taught herself(in
somewhat the same way I taught myself what I know, which I admit isn't
much)about human evolution and wolves.  So people with these kinds of weird
(to us, anyway), ideas are all around.  You just may not notice them unless
the circumstances are right.

> He is the third doctor we've met here who is (a) a scientist, and (b) a
> fundamentalist (two Christian, one Jewish--but of course they share
> Genesis). I fail to understand this, but it seems that many humans are
built
> that way.

I fail to understand it too, but there's a name for it in psychology:
"cognitive dissonance" and "cognitive consistency".  In other words, all of
us hold beliefs about the world, which we organize in various ways.
Sometimes, if we have certain very strong beliefs, we may reject that which
appears to contradict them.  Thus, if you have encountered Jewish and
Christian "fundamentalists", these folks may well be able to assimilate
certain kinds of scientific information quite well, but when something
contradicts their deeply-held beliefs, they will either reject it outright
or else they will try to explain it in accordance with their beliefs(and
this is where things can get *really* irrational).  This kind of thing,
incidentally, goes on all the time in paleoanthropology, too.  This is one
of the reasons the debate between the MRE and OoA people is so contentious.
Anne G

----- Original Message -----
From: Dale Hoogeveen <dutch@...>

> So most Americans expend their study in areas with more immediacy
> in their day to day lives and simply subscribe to one formula or
> another in other areas.  The formula approach works just fine with
> such necessary items as food (supermarket), transportation (cars),
> communication (telecom and PCs), which most of us couldn't repair
> or even maintain on our own;  it is the main approach that most of
> us use to deal with more esoteric topics like specialized intellectual
> subjects.  Human evolution is simply another of those subjects.  Most
> humans (even creationsists) have little more interest than they do in
> why plant breeders have to hire high school kids to cut the tassels
> off corn in seed corn fields.  The anti-evolutionary feelings don't
> really run anywhere near as high as the professional creationists
> would have you believe, else they wouldn't have to use end runs, back
> doors and outright subtrifuge.

Dale:

I don't think "most people" spend a lot of time thinking about "evolution",
either.  But one worrisome aspect of this is that when creationists make a
noise, people are likely to believe them, due to the prevalent beliefs that
(a)"where there's smoke there's fire" and (b) "the squeaky wheel gets the
grease".  In other words, a lot of attention is paid to their claims, which
are duly dismissed by the science world, but because a lot of people don't
really "understand" science, they think the creationists may be right after
all, or it may tap into beliefs they grew up with(e.g. as Wayne Neighbors
said of his wife).
Anne G

Piotr:

>
> He didn't. He entered Cracow University in 1491 and spent
> four years there as an undergraduate student of the liberal
> arts.

Oh.  The things I *don't* know!

Thanks anyway,
Anne G

Greenwich wrote:
>
> See:
> http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/bible-a.htm (Bible quotes of
> interest)

I have been to the above site and it is an interesting compilation of
facts, opionion, and links. Bob Fink is to be congratulated. But my
comments go more to Roger's note which I missed the first time around.

First, the notion that the three doctors (two Christian, one Jewish) all
share Genesis: On the surface this is true, but one need only compare
any Christian Bible's translation of Genesis to, for example, the most
recent Jewish Publication Society translation of the Masoretic Texts to
see that there are significant semantic differences between them.
Granted all versions derive from stories carried back at the end of the
Babylonian Exile [ca. 539 BCE; see S.D. Sperling, 1998 "The Original
Torah: the political intent of the Bible's writers" NYU Press], but the
use to which these stories were put varied widely. Pre-Christian Jewish
exegesis of the Flood story stressed that the event essentially "cleaned
the slate" as regards "Original Sin," a view carried on into
Mishnaic/Talmudic times [2nd-7th c. CE] and thence to the present.
Christianity of course took a different interpretation, one requiring
the death and resurrection of Jesus. I realize this is a not a Bible
list, but the distinct texts and divergent interpretations are important
to understand why very many Christians reacted (and continue to react)
so vehemently against Darwin, his ideas, and those of his successors,
while major leaders in the Jewish community were either indifferent or
supportive, one 19th c. rabbi going so far as to say that the theory was
presaged in the Jewish Bible.

Second, I would disagree with Roger about the ease of explaining
evolution. When Darwin presented his ideas, the vast majority was poorly
educated, ignorant for the most part of fossils, and certainly wholly
ignorant [as was Darwin himself] of genes. Yet he managed to convince
most of these people through a very simple logical progression,
verifiable by the life experiences of most people:
     1.  There is an enormous variability of behavior and physical
features within any given species;
     2.  There is a competition for resources both within and among
species for the essentials of life (food, shelter, etc.);
     3.  This competition is exacerbated by the fact that more offspring
are produced than can possibly survive on the available resources
(Darwin's famous borrowing from the writings of the Rev. Malthus);
     4.  Those who survive this competition will have more offspring,
passing their heritable features in a disproportionate fashion onto the
next generation;
     5.  Thus, over the course of time (which timespan Lyell & others
were conveniently providing), there may be a sufficient accumulation of
the average behavioral and physical features of descendent generations
that ultimately a species-level difference would have to be recognized
between ancestor and descendant.

None of these can be refuted individually and when you string them
together, as did Darwin in several differnet places in his "On the
Origin of Species," they lead inevitability to the possibility of the
transformation of life forms. No a priori need for an understanding of
fossils or genes, althought the Darwinian view certainly predicts the
former and benefits from our current knowledge of the latter as the
mechanism of heritability.

-Ken Jacobs UdeMontreal
> ================================================
> Roger Lass wrote:
> >
> > There's a lot to this issue, I think. One thing is that unless you have some
> > basic science, some knowledge of what exists in the world, and do some
> > *thinking* (rather than living on soundbites), the arguments for evolution
> > are not that easy. Think of someone who is poorly educated (the normal
> > output of state schools in the US, UK, Austria or SA), doesn't know what
> > genes are, and has no idea that change exists, has never seen a fossil
> > ... snip
> > Apparently...evolution by natural selection is a fact of life in
> > bacterial populations, but God created Adam on the 6th day.
> > He is the third doctor we've met here who is (a) a scientist, and (b)
> > a fundamentalist (two Christian, one Jewish--but of course they share
> > Genesis). I fail to understand this, but it seems that many humans are
> > built that way.
> ============================================
> Bob Fink
> 516 Avenue K South
> Saskatoon, Saskatchewan., Canada S7M 2E2
> E-Mail: green@...
> Fax: 306-244-0795 / Voice: 306-244-0679

See:
http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/bible-a.htm (Bible quotes of
interest)
================================================
Roger Lass wrote:
>
> There's a lot to this issue, I think. One thing is that unless you have some
> basic science, some knowledge of what exists in the world, and do some
> *thinking* (rather than living on soundbites), the arguments for evolution
> are not that easy. Think of someone who is poorly educated (the normal
> output of state schools in the US, UK, Austria or SA), doesn't know what
> genes are, and has no idea that change exists, has never seen a fossil
> ... snip
> Apparently...evolution by natural selection is a fact of life in
> bacterial populations, but God created Adam on the 6th day.
> He is the third doctor we've met here who is (a) a scientist, and (b)
> a fundamentalist (two Christian, one Jewish--but of course they share
> Genesis). I fail to understand this, but it seems that many humans are
> built that way.
============================================
Bob Fink
516 Avenue K South
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan., Canada S7M 2E2
E-Mail: green@...
Fax: 306-244-0795 / Voice: 306-244-0679

There's a lot to this issue, I think. One thing is that unless you have some
basic science, some knowledge of what exists in the world, and do some
*thinking* (rather than living on soundbites), the arguments for evolution
are not that easy. Think of someone who is poorly educated (the normal
output of state schools in the US, UK, Austria or SA), doesn't know what
genes are, and has no idea that change exists, has never seen a fossil ...

Then try to mount a Malthusian argument so it would be understood. People in
general have the most extraordinary resistances to rational argument:
there's a famous experiment by the psychologist Aaron Tversky, where he
asked a whole bunch of people, including doctors (!) which their preference
would be, in the way of new experimental drugs for some disease:

Drug A: 90% of the patients die of the disease.

Drug B: there's a 10% survival rate from the disease.

The majority of people chose Drug B.

And you'd be surprised the kinds of people who can hold sets of mutually
contradictory or at least very oddly assorted beliefs. We know a specialist
physician (= US internist) who is a superb scientific doctor: his knowledge
of biochemistry is amazing, he is up on drug-resistance and how it's to be
handled in treating diseases, he even will talk about populations of viruses
or bacteria developing resistance through non-completed treatment, he knows
about plasmids and the sharing of resistance genes.

Yet one day, when my wife was in hospital and he was talking to her, she
elicited accidentally from him the fact that he believes in the literal
truth of Genesis (and the whole Bible), and was shocked that she was an
atheist. Apparently (as far as she could get) evolution by natural selection
is a fact of life in bacterial populations, but God created Adam on the 6th
day.

He is the third doctor we've met here who is (a) a scientist, and (b) a
fundamentalist (two Christian, one Jewish--but of course they share
Genesis). I fail to understand this, but it seems that many humans are built
that way.

RL
-----Original Message-----
From: Dale Hoogeveen <dutch@...>
To: palanthsci@eGroups.com <palanthsci@eGroups.com>
Date: 19 February 2000 02:25
Subject: [palanthsci] Re: evolutionary ambivalence


>"anne gilbert" <avgilber-@...> wrote:
>original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/palanthsci/?start=8
>> My question is this:  My reading of the literature, both popular and
>> scientific, seems to suggest that many people are deeply ambivalent
>> about human evolution and its implications. What do you think?  Ideas
>> anyone?
>> Anne G
>>
>Hi Anne,
>
>There is so much information available that most people are
>ambivalent on most subjects.  None of us can go in depth into
>everything.  What is important that is missing in regard to
>evolution, especially in the United States, is a good basic
>understanding, which is difficult in human evolution, because
>even the experts can't agree on the basics.  And very few can
>explain anything in this field in less than $20 words, which
>doesn't make it any less intimidating.
>
>So most Americans expend their study in areas with more immediacy
>in their day to day lives and simply subscribe to one formula or
>another in other areas.  The formula approach works just fine with
>such necessary items as food (supermarket), transportation (cars),
>communication (telecom and PCs), which most of us couldn't repair
>or even maintain on our own;  it is the main approach that most of
>us use to deal with more esoteric topics like specialized intellectual
>subjects.  Human evolution is simply another of those subjects.  Most
>humans (even creationsists) have little more interest than they do in
>why plant breeders have to hire high school kids to cut the tassels
>off corn in seed corn fields.  The anti-evolutionary feelings don't
>really run anywhere near as high as the professional creationists
>would have you believe, else they wouldn't have to use end runs, back
>doors and outright subtrifuge.
>
>Peace,
>Dale
>dutch@...
>
>
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>

"anne gilbert" <avgilber-@...> wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/palanthsci/?start=8
> My question is this:  My reading of the literature, both popular and
> scientific, seems to suggest that many people are deeply ambivalent
> about human evolution and its implications. What do you think?  Ideas
> anyone?
> Anne G
>
Hi Anne,

There is so much information available that most people are
ambivalent on most subjects.  None of us can go in depth into
everything.  What is important that is missing in regard to
evolution, especially in the United States, is a good basic
understanding, which is difficult in human evolution, because
even the experts can't agree on the basics.  And very few can
explain anything in this field in less than $20 words, which
doesn't make it any less intimidating.

So most Americans expend their study in areas with more immediacy
in their day to day lives and simply subscribe to one formula or
another in other areas.  The formula approach works just fine with
such necessary items as food (supermarket), transportation (cars),
communication (telecom and PCs), which most of us couldn't repair
or even maintain on our own;  it is the main approach that most of
us use to deal with more esoteric topics like specialized intellectual
subjects.  Human evolution is simply another of those subjects.  Most
humans (even creationsists) have little more interest than they do in
why plant breeders have to hire high school kids to cut the tassels
off corn in seed corn fields.  The anti-evolutionary feelings don't
really run anywhere near as high as the professional creationists
would have you believe, else they wouldn't have to use end runs, back
doors and outright subtrifuge.

Peace,
Dale
dutch@...

----- Original Message -----
From: Anne Gilbert <avgilbert@...>
To: <palanthsci@egroups.com>
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2000 9:43 PM
Subject: [palanthsci] Re: Odp: evolutionary ambivalence


> Piotr wrote: ... Cracow
> (Copernicus' varsity)
>
> >Ann wrote: I didn't know (although I probably should
have), that Copernicus taught at
> >Cracow.  Good for him!

He didn't. He entered Cracow University in 1491 and spent
four years there as an undergraduate student of the liberal
arts.

Cheers,
Piotr

Piotr:

The current Pope has quite a few friends who are serious scientists, and as
far as I know he takes an interest in the natural sciences.

I don't know about the current Pope and his scientific friends, but,
whatever his other faults, he is, at least, not hostile to science.

  I know of one Catholic bishop in Poland who has studied and taught
evolutionary biology (and no, not Teilhardian evolutionism) at a university,
and another priest who's a professor of cosmology and has written a popular
book on things like the Big Bang, mentioning religion only in the final
chapter. The Pope himself was once an academic chaplain at Cracow
(Copernicus' varsity)

I didn't know(although I probably should have), that Copernicus taught at
Cracow.  Good for him!

  My wife's Catholic, and Polish Catholics are supposed to be conservative,
but somehow evolution is not taboo in this country (or in my family).

I get the impression(mainly from news reports), that Poland has changed
drastically in some ways, in the last 50 years or so.  For better or worse.
This probably affects the way Poles relate to the Catholic Church, their
views, if any, on evolution, etc.

  We talk about it pretty often; my children are interested in palaeontology
and I'm interested in making sure that they learn about it from reliable
sources. Embarrassing ambivalence about evolution seems to be mainly an
American phenomenon, stemming from the tradition of Protestant
fundamentalism, especially in the Bible Belt. I suppose our Catholics do not
know the Old Testament well enough :).

I don't know about this, but I do know that religious conservatism of a
particularly narrow kind has strong roots here in the US.  And it can be
very influential at times.  This is one of them, as the Kansas State Board
of Education decision on evolution seems to suggest.  This is one of the
reasons I brought up the "ambivalence" issue.

But lest you should think Poland is a pure oasis of good sense, I know
people who either refuse to believe that evolution is something more than a
mere hypothesis or interpret human evolution in ways that I find curious:
"Yes, I know we're descended from primates, but of course we ARE NOT
primates. We are no longer ANIMALS, are we?"

Actually, although this position is not fully articulated in the US, I have
the feeling that much of the way people approach evolution issues, including
human evolution, stems from an ambivalence about who "we" are.  Evolution
makes many of us uncomfortable, because it suggests we evolved from some
lower life form.  Humans evolved from some apelike ancestor.  This doesn't
bother people too much if they are talking about, say australopithecines,
but it gets to be a major shouting match if you try to suggest to a lot of
people that some "archaic" humans such as Neandertals, were as "human"
behaviorally, as we, even if they didn't "look" like "us".  Worse, it tends
to parallel some "racial" ideas which were recently held by a good many
people(at least in the US),and are still held by some.  So there are
uncomfortable convergences of ideas, some fueled by evolutionary research,
which float just below the surface of a lot of people's consciousnesses.
This is what I was getting at when I posed the "ambivalence" question.

So people buy pseudoscience instead. Pseudoscience takes a short cut across
technical problems and voila! you've got all the answers from a single
author, even those that evil scientists have conspired to hide from you. We
are not descended from apes: aliens from Syrius created us. The world is not
billions of years old: there is incontrovertible evidence (ignored by
orthodox science) that the dinosaurs were killed by a great flood a few
thousand years ago. There are human footprints in Devonian rocks -- a hard
scientific fact proving that evolution is a hoax.

Oh yes, there are lots of people who don't consider themselves "religious"
in any sense, who believe theories like these.  And they are the same kinds
of people who tend to believe space aliens built the Pyramids.  I know a few
of these, too.

My warm regards (also to Ann and all the members of this new list!),

Thank you, Piotr.  Glad you joined.  To all:  invite any friends or
colleagues  you think may share an interest!
Anne G

Wayne(and everybody else):

> My experience in over a half decade leads me to believe that the
> background that forms the opinions of many will often discourage
> enquiring further than a family genealogy of recent generations. And
> many have not the desire or energy to do even that.

I partially agree with you.  I have the advantage, FWIW, of having at least
*some* background in anthropology to draw upon.  When I started writing my
novel, I at least knew which section of the library to start looking in.
Few people are as lucky or unlucky in that respect, as I am.


> A notable exception - which even among some of my Catholic friends is
> not well known - would be the current Pope's earlier pronouncements
> reaffirming a position taken by another Pope over 50 years ago, when
> he spoke and said that evolution is not a theory but science.

YOu're probably right about this, although I don't have the specifics.
However most Catholics of my acquaintance don't pay much attention to *any*
pope on this issue.

> And others would simply avoid the subject to err on the side of not
> causing an argument among friends (similar to the "politics and
> religion can make enemies of friends" approach to keeping their lives
> out of interpersonal conflicts).

Again, I can understand this.  I mostly try to avoid such subjects myself,
because I was brought up to avoid talking about politics, religion, or
money.
> The origins of humankind, at least in my experience, is a volatile
> topic for general discussion.

For people with no real background in science, and who have certain kinds of
strongly "religious" backgrounds, it is indeed.  However, what I was getting
at was something slightly different.

>
> And, as in the sentence at the top, "ambivalent" well describes many.
> It takes energy and interest to read and become involved in a topic
> that is likely for some to cause them to be alienated in their own
> communities?

AGain, there is some sense to this, at least in smaller communities where
material may simply not be easily available.
>
> 2) On the flip side of the coin, it can be a very technical subject.
> It is a subject which is far from clear

True.

> There are proponents with vastly differing theories. The shelves of
> libraries a littered with books espousing one or another views. Just
> finding and sorting into some order - so that one could judge for
> themselves - is a daunting task.

Again, true, but the "ambivalence" I was talking about may show up in the
way some theories are popularized at some periods, and the way they are
accepted.
>
> If one does not study "evolution" as a serious avocational or
> professional career, or at least intentionally to inform themselves,
> with which book(s) are they to begin, if a casual reader?

As I said, I was lucky, in some ways, to have a background in anthropology,
and, because of my continuing interest in wolves, I had learned enough about
related subjects to kind of wade my way through the growing piles of
literature on the subject.

> But no matter when (chronologically) in the history of modern science
> that may have begun - they find that one author say "A" and another
> says "B" and some say all the others are wrong. And, if one attempts
> to read for a few decades, it can be a bit frustrating to find after
> one begin to accept "B" rather than "A", that "C" has now entered the
> picture and disputes all of the former. For a casual reader, this may
> quickly lead to frustration.

If you're talking about paleoanthropological quarrels about which branch of
prehistoric humans led to "us", yes, paleoanthropologists loudly trumpet one
theory or another and claim all others are dead wrong.  This has led to a
perception, whether true or not, that paleoanthropology is a *very*
quarrelsome profession.  This "turns off" a lot of people.  Just a note
here:  it might be helpful in this regard, to read Deborah Tannen's book
"The Argument Culture".  She doesn't talk specifically about
paleoanthropology, but her description of the Western cultural tendency to
lump various viewpoints into polar opposites would be very useful for anyone
trying to wade their way through the mass of paleoanthropological
controversies that litter the field.
>
> Certainly, one should expect to accommodate changes, but for the
> "general public" it is a reality that they would rather have
> consistent "facts" - if they believe they are reading "science" - and
> "facts" that do not change with each new "discovery" or "theory."

Few people "on the street" understand how science works, unfortunately.

> 3) As for this list.
>
> I am pleased both the instructions for posting - and getting off the
> list  - now appear to be appended to each message!  Bravo for Anne.

Thanks.

Also, BTW, if anyone wants to discuss various theories about the peopling of
the Americas, this is welcome too, as are discussions of such things as
Kennewick Man and the various rights and responsibilities of different
groups(the NAGPRA v. scientific inquiry, for example).

We await your return.  Let us know if there was anything interesting at the
conference, or your thoughts, or whatever.

Anne G

--> many people are deeply ambivalent
--> about human evolution and its implications ?

Let us assume the above is an accurate statement.

Later we can consider the other side of the coin.

My experience in over a half decade leads me to believe that the
background that forms the opinions of many will often discourage
enquiring further than a family genealogy of recent generations. And
many have not the desire or energy to do even that.

Some are put off due to specific religious beliefs.

A notable exception - which even among some of my Catholic friends is
not well known - would be the current Pope's earlier pronouncements
reaffirming a position taken by another Pope over 50 years ago, when
he spoke and said that evolution is not a theory but science. And to
continue, he stated that one would have to accept that the Hand of God
guided each step. Among those that do research into evolution and
happened to be Catholic, this was a dilemma - so he cleared the air
for them.  I have no problems with that position.

Others simply have no background or interests, possibly due to "gaps"
in education, but that may be too broad a brush?

And others would simply avoid the subject to err on the side of not
causing an argument among friends (similar to the "politics and
religion can make enemies of friends" approach to keeping their lives
out of interpersonal conflicts).

Having been married over 33 years to a wonderful wife, "evolution" is
*not* a topic my wife would welcome - smile.

Yes, she has several advanced degrees, but somewhere along the line it
was ingrained in her thinking that it was certain that she "did not
evolve from a monkey."  I am not sure anyone ever did suggest that to
her, but it was something she read early in life. And it is the basis
for her rejection of even reading the literature of evolution.
Therefore, to attempt to discuss anything about "evolution" with her
would be unwise on my part. This attitude (hardly a reasoning process)
was inculcated into her long before we met. She is aware of my
reading, teaching, and such, but just would rather not hear it - if it
includes the word "evolution." She is not unlike many in the world
today. Hello, Board of Education of Kansas (and others) - still there?

The origins of humankind, at least in my experience, is a volatile
topic for general discussion.

And, as in the sentence at the top, "ambivalent" well describes many.
It takes energy and interest to read and become involved in a topic
that is likely for some to cause them to be alienated in their own
communities?

And there are many road blocks in *my* part of the world to hinder
those that initially have such an interest - at least in the
society/culture in which I live.

2) On the flip side of the coin, it can be a very technical subject.
It is a subject which is far from clear. It is also a subject where
one has to hunt in widely published sources for a "thread" within
current research, not to mention an attempt at gaining an historical
perspective to the subject as it has been published.

There are proponents with vastly differing theories. The shelves of
libraries a littered with books espousing one or another views. Just
finding and sorting into some order - so that one could judge for
themselves - is a daunting task.

If one does not study "evolution" as a serious avocational or
professional career, or at least intentionally to inform themselves,
with which book(s) are they to begin, if a casual reader? So conflict
leads to disinterest and perhaps eventually "ambivalence" for some,
even many?

One might wish to begin - at first.

But no matter when (chronologically) in the history of modern science
that may have begun - they find that one author say "A" and another
says "B" and some say all the others are wrong. And, if one attempts
to read for a few decades, it can be a bit frustrating to find after
one begin to accept "B" rather than "A", that "C" has now entered the
picture and disputes all of the former. For a casual reader, this may
quickly lead to frustration.

Certainly, one should expect to accommodate changes, but for the
"general public" it is a reality that they would rather have
consistent "facts" - if they believe they are reading "science" - and
"facts" that do not change with each new "discovery" or "theory."

So could they become "ambivalent"? Yes, they can become that very
easily - or always have been that.

3) As for this list.

I am pleased both the instructions for posting - and getting off the
list  - now appear to be appended to each message!  Bravo for Anne.

Tomorrow I am off to a symposium about early man in N. and S. America.
The following evening I have the opportunity to listen to an address
by one who is an archaeologist involved with Monte Verde (Chile).
Hardly the "origins" of mankind, but at least one or more of the steps
in the peopling of the Americas.

I will sing off now and check email again in a few days.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wayne Neighbors, Ph.D.
President, Vee Ring Ltd
neighbors@...
http://anthro.org/index.htm
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/seusarch
http://homepages.msn.com/Terminus/asscinc/index.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


-----Original Message-----
From: Anne Gilbert [mailto:avgilbert@...]
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2000 3:30 PM
To: palanthsci@eGroups.com
Subject: [palanthsci] evolutionary ambivalence


To all:

Since nobody has posted a subject yet, I guess I will plunge in and
begin.  I'm a writer, as some of you know.  I write science fiction.
Therefore, just to see how other science fiction writers write, from
time to time I read some on my own.  I'm in the midst of reading a
book
called "The Ancient Enemy", by Christopher Rowley.  It seems to be
about a species of primate that inabits a woplanet(I'm not quite clear
on this), that has evolved into being very civilized.  Then there are
human beings on another part of this world that are "civilized" but
have a barbaric dictatorship that is highly hierarchical and women are
kept apart.  The humans journey to the place where the primates live
and start slaughtering them, because the humans have all been told
that
the primates are unintelligent and have no civilization, etc., etc.
This, of course is standard science fiction stuff.  You might say it
is
right out of "Planet of the Apes."  The cover shows an apelike
humanoid
with hair all over his head, except for his face, wielding a sword.
What interests me here is that I wonder if both the cover art and the
story don't represent some kind of ambivalence about human evolution.
For example, although the primates are called "monkeys" in the book,
they are most certainly not monkeys.  They might somehow represent
some
evolution of some great ape, although to others they might also
represent evolved later hominids like H.erectus or Neandertals.
Indeed, the way the story is set up recalls some of the debates
between
various factions in paleoanthropology.

My question is this:  My reading of the literature, both popular and
scientific, seems to suggest that many people are deeply ambivalent
about human evolution and its implications. What do you think?  Ideas
anyone?
Anne G


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To all:

Since nobody has posted a subject yet, I guess I will plunge in and
begin.  I'm a writer, as some of you know.  I write science fiction.
Therefore, just to see how other science fiction writers write, from
time to time I read some on my own.  I'm in the midst of reading a book
called "The Ancient Enemy", by Christopher Rowley.  It seems to be
about a species of primate that inabits a woplanet(I'm not quite clear
on this), that has evolved into being very civilized.  Then there are
human beings on another part of this world that are "civilized" but
have a barbaric dictatorship that is highly hierarchical and women are
kept apart.  The humans journey to the place where the primates live
and start slaughtering them, because the humans have all been told that
the primates are unintelligent and have no civilization, etc., etc.
This, of course is standard science fiction stuff.  You might say it is
right out of "Planet of the Apes."  The cover shows an apelike humanoid
with hair all over his head, except for his face, wielding a sword.
What interests me here is that I wonder if both the cover art and the
story don't represent some kind of ambivalence about human evolution.
For example, although the primates are called "monkeys" in the book,
they are most certainly not monkeys.  They might somehow represent some
evolution of some great ape, although to others they might also
represent evolved later hominids like H.erectus or Neandertals.
Indeed, the way the story is set up recalls some of the debates between
various factions in paleoanthropology.

My question is this:  My reading of the literature, both popular and
scientific, seems to suggest that many people are deeply ambivalent
about human evolution and its implications. What do you think?  Ideas
anyone?
Anne G

test

Hello, everyone.  For those who may not know me well, my name is Anne
Gilbert, and I am the moderator of this group.  It is open to all who
are interested in discussing paleoanthropology and society, and related
topics.  For those of you who may not have seen the introductory
remarks on an earlier post, I'd just like to remind everybody:  no
flaming, racism, off-topic posts, "odd" theories(except as they relate
to the way people view paleoanthropology) or creationism(same as
above).  This group is currently not moderated, as I am not a natural
dictator.  However, if any of the above occurs, I will not hesitate to
take action.  Please feel free to e-mail me in private if you think any
of the above is occurring or getting out of hand.

Having gotten the "rules" out of the way, let me tell you something
about myself.  I am currently writing a science fiction novel, set in
the near future, that features Neandertals.  Before I started writing
about them, I didn't know anything m ore about Neandertals(or human
evolution in general)than I'd read in "Clan of the Cave Bear", which
book turned out, IMHO, to be extraordinarily inaccurate in some ways.
My background, such as it is, consisted of a long-ago major in
anthropology before my hair turned gray, and a continuing interest in
wolves.  Because wolves often live in environments that resemble the
world during glacial periods, I got interested in the Ice Ages, then
kind of stumbled on to Neandertals as a result, and slowly began
building a novel around them, which eventually would become "Song of
the Forest".  I also learned a great deal about evolution in general
and human evolution in particular, in the process.  Anyway, after
various adventures, many of them in cyberspace, I ended up being
invited to start this group.  I urge each and every one of you to
participate, let your hair down, etc., etc.  This is not a stuffy,
academic group, and was not meant to be, although I will do my best to
keep things "scientific".  For those of you who may have been on
palanth-l or some other "academic" venue, I especially invite you to
ask questions, post something, or join in the conversations.  I would
also like to invite any "academic" people who wish, to join also, and
invite any interested students to join as well.  I want to keep the
conversation lively, varied, interesting, and above all, friendly and
civil.  I also hope you will all learn something in the process.

Again welcome, all of you,

PS:  For those interested, the "backstory" to my Great Science Fiction
Masterpiece can be found at:
http://www.geocities.com/molodova/kebara.html

I am also constantly adding links to other sites which may be of
interest, and creating a bibliography and book reviews of
paleoanthropology-related books on this site.
Anne G
Anne G

----- Original Message -----
From: Dale Hoogeveen <dutch@...>
To: <palanthsci@eGroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 8:59 AM
Subject: [palanthsci] A tip


> Hi Anne and all,
>
> Thanks for the invitation to join.
>
> A quick tip that I had overlooked until just recently.  For those that
> need
> to conserve on-line time, but do not wish to receive an immense number
> of
> messages or large digests:
>
> Use the FORWARD button on the top of the page to Email yourself
> individual
> messages for off-line consideration and response.  You can then select
> individual threads or correspondants on-line, consider and draft
> comments
> at your leisure and simply Email them back.
>
> This is probably obvious to most, but it is a very nice feature at
> Egroups
> for people like myself who have older, somewhat less than state of the
> art
> computers and a limited amount of subscription time with my ISP.
>
> Thanks, Anne.  I am looking forward to this.
>
Dal:

Thanks for the tip.  It's probably a good one for a lot of people who
haven't upgraded things yet.

And I'm looking forward to your contributions.
Anne G

Hi Anne and all,

Thanks for the invitation to join.

A quick tip that I had overlooked until just recently.  For those that
need
to conserve on-line time, but do not wish to receive an immense number
of
messages or large digests:

Use the FORWARD button on the top of the page to Email yourself
individual
messages for off-line consideration and response.  You can then select
individual threads or correspondants on-line, consider and draft
comments
at your leisure and simply Email them back.

This is probably obvious to most, but it is a very nice feature at
Egroups
for people like myself who have older, somewhat less than state of the
art
computers and a limited amount of subscription time with my ISP.

Thanks, Anne.  I am looking forward to this.

Peace and happy Gaming.

Dale Hoogeveen

----- Original Message -----
From: Wayne Neighbors <neighbors@...>
To: LIST palanthsci <palanthsci@egroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 6:29 PM
Subject: [palanthsci] 1 of 1 is "unique" ?


> Hello cyberspace (a void?),
>
> Being 1 of 1 (about 9:30 pm EST) on palanthsci (by invitation) makes
> one unique?
>
> So I will discuss "unique" once someone else joins - smile.

Wayne:

It means you're Number One.  And you can discuss anything you like, unique
or not.

Welcome,
Anne G

Hello cyberspace (a void?),

Being 1 of 1 (about 9:30 pm EST) on palanthsci (by invitation) makes
one unique?

So I will discuss "unique" once someone else joins - smile.

Warm regards,

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wayne Neighbors, Ph.D.
President, Vee Ring Ltd
neighbors@...
http://anthro.org/index.htm
http://anthro.org/fourstar.htm
http://anthro.org/paleo/index.html  (new - limited content)
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/seusarch
http://homepages.msn.com/Terminus/asscinc/index.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Welcome to the e-list, "Paleoanthropology, Science, and Society".  This
list was formed in response to more a need for a fuller discussion of
all aspects of paleoanthropology, prehistory, science, and society,
than a strictly "academic" or "scientific" e-group will allow.  This
e-group is dedicated to discussion of all aspects of paleoanthropology,
archaeology, prehistory, and the disciplines related to them, and their
impact on society and culture.  Both academic and lay perspectives are
welcomed, as are all "schools" of paleoanthropology and archaeology.
This group is open to all, and not moderated; however, this e-group
will not tolerate expressions of racism, creationism, "odd" theories of
evolution, or "flaming".  Those who indulge in such tactics will be
warned and then terminated.  However, I am not here to threaten anyone,
and I would like to see myself as a kind of guide to discussions rather
than some nasty wielding a cyber-whip.  I would like to see this group
as a place where friendly, freewheeling discussions can take place,
about all aspects of paleoanthropology and its related disciplines, and
their possible effect on the wider culture.

Hence, there are some possible topics to start things off with:

How do discoveries of prehistoric human fossils affect the society at
large?
How do we view such sciences?
Do you think the view of Neandertals in popular culture is changing?
If so, how?  How do the latest scientific discoveries affect this
What effect do you think creationists have on the teaching of
evolution, and what do we do about it?
Where do you think these disciplines will go in the future?  Will we
become more knowledgeable about our ancestors?

These are just a few of the possible questions one could ask.  No one
need to confine themselves to these, and new topics are encouraged and
welcomed.  So if you have a burning desire to ask a question about
australopithecines, please feel free to do so. I will try to answer
such questions if I can; if not, I am sure there will be "experts" who
can.

Most of all, relax and enjoy yourselves, have fun, and don't take
anything too seriously.
Anne G