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From: al@gtx.com (Alan Filipski)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Humans caused by EBE's?
Message-ID: <1370@gtx.com>
Date: 17 Oct 90 15:12:15 GMT
References: <1990Oct12.160443.18953@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> <3610098@hp-ptp.HP.COM>
Reply-To: al@gtx.UUCP (Alan Filipski)
Organization: GTX Corporation, Phoenix
Lines: 46

In article <3610098@hp-ptp.HP.COM> davew@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Dave_Waller) writes:
>In article <1097@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke) writes:
>}So, the idea that humans were just plopped here, a la Douglas Adams, is 
>}pretty unlikely.  Even if this planet were started from scratch and 
>}evolution happened again, the chances that it would produce anything 
>}remotely like a human being are vanishingly small.  It might produce 
>}intelligence and empathy and things like that, but the creature that 
>}posessed those qualities wouldn't look much like us.
>
>Why not? It seems to me that starting completely over would produce
>creatures generally similar to the ones on the planet today. After all,
>most of our gross features are extremely refined adaptations to the
>environment around us, and leaving that alone, it seems probable to me
>that similar creatures would evolve. I don't buy the "intelligent

Well, on a topic as speculative as this, everyone is entitled to an
opinion, but I'd suggest S.J. Gould's "Wonderful Life", which argues
for the first view above.  If I understand him correctly, he says that
the evolutionary process has had episodes of radiation (prolific
speciation) followed by a rapid decimation (reduction in variety) and
that this process has a large almost random or chaotic component to
it.

The particular course taken depends upon what the particular genetic
coding allows, and upon random events in small populations, or the
precise state of the gene pool when some catastrophe or global change
occurs.


I hope I'm not putting words in Gould's mouth, but that was the
impression I got from reading the book a few months ago.  Comments?


[I'll throw this into rec.arts.books, too, just to say that Gould is
the  best science writer I know, and my small collection of desert
island books would certainly include a collection of his essays.  If
you like science, you've probably read things by him, if you don't
think you like science, get one of his collections of essays-- you may
be surprised.]

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