From: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>consistently had short and brutish life spans. That some of those
>communities existed for 1000's of years and the theory of natural selection
>(note still called a theory) had plenty of time to develop decent teeth as
a
>life support to longevity. That once those genes had evolved ?, they have
>had plenty of time to integrate themselves into the general population.
Evolution is science. Evolution can be demonstrated in real world
(e.g., drug-resistant bacteria). The only real competition for
evolution is creationism (God did it all in 6 days).
The natural selection of a certain innovation depends upon whether
or not that feature leads to the propagation of genes for that
innovation. Obviously, this is easily seen in drug-resistant bacteria.
Nothing that happens to you after you are past your reproductive years
(rotten teeth in old age) can influence your reproductive activity.
People need to be able to recognize science when they see it: science
is empirical. Empiricism is what separates soap opera from science.
Jay
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Here are some evolution web references:
Evolution is the complex of processes by which living organisms
originated on earth and have been diversified and modified
through sustained changes in form and function. The earliest
known fossil organisms are single-celled forms resembling modern
bacteria; they date from about 3.4 billion years ago. Many of the
evolving organisms have become extinct (e.g., the dinosaurs), but
some have developed into the present fauna and flora of the
world. Extinction and diversification continue today.
Charles Darwin's ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES (1859), is a landmark in
human understanding of nature. Darwin noted that while offspring
inherit a resemblance to their parents, they are not identical
to them. He further noted that some of the differences between
offspring and parents were not due solely to the environment but
were themselves often inheritable.
The new and emerging field of "evolutionary psychology" looks at
the mind as "it," asks "how does it work?", and discovers organic
design and functional purpose. Evolutionary psychologists seek
to understand the human mind by understanding the evolutionary
process that designed it. To do this, they engage in a kind of
reverse-engineering, trying to piece together how the minds we
have today evolved little by little through the process of
natural selection. They are not interested in the competition
between species, but rather the competition between genes within
the human species.
Natural selection creates new traits and adaptations in a species
by putting genes through a process of trial and error. New genes
arise in an individual organism by chance mutation. If a new
gene produces a trait that decreases the organism's chances of
reproduction, that gene, and the trait it produces, will not be
passed on. This is the fate of the vast majority of genetic
mutations.
However, if a new gene produces a trait that makes the host
organism more effective in reproduction, this gene will be
"selected," that is, passed on to the next generation. In this
manner, highly successful genes and traits spread throughout the
species, gradually overtaking "competing" genes and eventually
becoming "species-typical" traits.
The fundamental theorem upon which evolutionary psychology is
based is that behavior (just like anatomy and physiology) is in
large part inherited and that every organism acts (consciously
or not) to enhance its inclusive fitness -- to increase the
frequency and distribution of its selfish genes in future
generations. And those genes exist not only in the individual but
also in his or her identical twin (100%), siblings (on average,
50%), and cousins (on average, 25%) and so on down the kinship
line. (Thus, aid to and feelings for relatives makes evolutionary
sense.)
One of the most important points to keep in mind in thinking
about evolutionary psychology is that all mental mechanisms were
evolved in and designed for a specific social and environmental
setting -- small bands of hunter-gatherer families who roamed
the savanna planes of the Pleistocene era, 2 million to 10,000
years ago. The mental mechanisms we inherit from our ancestors
are therefore not necessarily adaptive to today's environment.
The modern two-year-old who recoils in fear from a moth will
blindly run into on-coming traffic. Fear of insects is automatic,
but parents have to work hard to teach their children to avoid
speeding cars because that threat didn't exist in our
evolutionary past.
This revision and extension of Darwinian evolution, from
"survival of the fittest" to inclusive fitness, was worked out
primarily by George Williams (in the US) and by William Hamilton
and John Maynard Smith (in the UK) in the 1960s, with some clever
twists added by Robert Trivers (in the US) in the 1970s.
[ Much of the foregoing was just cut and paste from:
http://www.skeptic.com/04.1.miele-immoral.html
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dlane/evomed.html ]
People, like all animals, were optimized by evolution to put
their genes into the next generation. Those strains of humans
that were not so optimized are no longer here.
Three of the most important social characteristics that allow
people to put their genes into the next generation are
exploitation (making the best use of something -- including
other people), lying (I love you, so let's go to bed), and
self-deception. Exploitation and lying contributed to human
survival for millions of years, self-deception for at least
40,000 years.
"Humans have existed as a separate evolutionary line for some
five million years... biologically modern humans did not appear
until sometime in the last 120,000 years... behaviorally modern
humans probably appeared sometime in the last 120,000, and
certainly by 40,000 years ago." [ p. 355, Kelly, 1995 ]
Self-deception contributes to survival by making us better liars!
In love, business, and politics, sincerity is everything. If you
can fake that, you've got it made.
[ http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.htm
http://www.clark.net/pub/wright/toc.htm
http://www.a3.com/myself/ravenpap.htm ]
