Evolution quotes # 50

Stephen Jay Gould; teacher of biology, geology and history of science at Harvard University:

"Science...is supposed to be an objective enterprise, with common criteria of procedure and standards of evidence that should lead all people of good will to accept a documented conclusion...

But I would reject any claim that personal preference, the root of aesthetic judgment, does not play a key role in science...our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective 'scientific method,' with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology. Historians and philosophers of science often make a distinction between the logic and psychologic of a scientific conclusion-or 'context of justification' and 'context of discovery' in the jargon…

The myth of a separate mode based on rigorous objectivity and arcane, largely mathematical knowledge, vouchsafed only to the initiated, may provide some immediate benefits in bamboozling a public to regard us as a new priesthood, but must ultimately prove harmful in erecting barriers to truly friendly understanding and in falsely persuading so many students that science lies beyond their capabilities...the myth of an arcane and enlightened priesthood of scientists....

T.S. Kuhn referred to the shared worldview of scientists as a paradigm (see his classic 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Such paradigms, in Kuhn's view, are so constraining, and so unbreakable in their own terms, that fundamentally new theories must be imported from elsewhere (insights of other disciplines, conscious radicalism of young rebels within a field) and must then triumph by rapid replacement (scientific revolution), rather than by incremental advance."

Stephen Jay Gould, "In the Mind of the Beholder," Natural History, 103(2): 14, Feb. 1994, pp. 14-16

Evolution quotes #49

Today being April 1st, which in the USA is “April Fool’s Day,” it seemed quite relevant to present the following, quotation from Do-While Jones, “Death and Taxonomy,” Science Against Evolution website:

“…evolutionists believe that because the bobcat, cheetah, domestic cat, jaguar, leopard, lion, lynx, ocelot, puma, and tiger are so similar, they all must have evolved from an extinct common ancestor (the missing cat link).
They also believe that the missing cat ancestor, and the missing bear ancestor, and the missing dog ancestor all evolved from a missing carnivore ancestor.
The missing carnivore ancestor and the missing rodent ancestor, and the missing ancestors of the other 16 orders, all evolved from a missing mammal ancestor.
The missing mammal ancestor, the missing fish ancestor, the missing amphibian ancestor, the missing bird ancestor, and the missing reptile ancestor, all evolved from the missing vertebrate ancestor.
(Or, perhaps, the missing bird ancestor evolved from a reptile ancestor.)
And all these missing vertebrate ancestors either evolved from an unknown invertebrate, or evolved from the missing common ancestor of vertebrates and invertebrates.”

Evolution quotes #48

Le Gros Clark "'Probably nothing has done more to introduce confusion into the
story of human evolution than the reckless propensity for inventing new (and
sometimes unnecessarily complicated) names for fragmentary fossil relics that
turn out eventually to belong to genera or species previously known.' Instead of
filling gaps in the story of human ancestry, this habit tended 'to produce gaps
that did not exist.'[1]
This problem has in some part been eased in the
half-century since Hooton made his pithy remarks. But it remains inescapably
true that applying the correct label is astonishingly difficult, not least
because such labels are in a sense arbitrary abstractions, and especially so
when the material on which the analysis is being done ins fragmentary and
eroded. 'It is one so difficult that I think it would be legitimate to despair
that one could ever turn into a science.'"[2]

[1] Man-Apes or Ape-Men, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967, p. 9

[2] Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 27 citing "Choose Your Ancestors," lecture at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Sep. 1974

Evolution quotes #47

"If all this were not bad enough, Hooton warns that 'in addition to the
frailties inseparable from the enactment of the role of original describer, one
must also discount the author's previous commitments on the subject of fossil
man, the ghosts of earlier opinions which rise to haunt him in the
interpretation of new evidence.' A dispassionate analysis of new fossil evidence
is possible, he says, 'only when one awaits the reworking of the material by
persons not emotionally identified with the specimen.' Even then, an independent
analyst, while not potentially blinded by emotional attachment to a fossil, will
still have a particular set of preconceptions against which he will judge it. So
dispassionate it may be, but totally objective it can never be."

Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), pp. 26-27

Evolution quotes #46

"But [Earnest] Hooton identifies an even greater danger. This is 'the
psychological conflict in which the discoverer or describer is torn between his
desire to find primitive, unique, or anthropoidal features which will allow him
to place his specimen nearer to the apes than any previously recorded, and his
equally powerful urge to demonstrate the direct and central position of his new
type in the ancestry of modern man.'
When the former impulse is in the
ascendancy, says, Hooton, 'the author is likely to blow the dust off his Greek
and Latin dictionaries and perpetrate some horrid neologism in creating a new
zoological species, genus or even family, thereby committing simultaneously
mortal sins in both philology and taxonomy.' When the latter impulse succeeds,
the describer 'may seize upon metrically or morphologically insignificant
features common to both [modern man and the fossil under study] as evidence of
their genetic relationship.'
In other words, on the one hand you exaggerate
the difference between your fossil and modern humans, thus getting for yourself
a nice, ancient, discrete ancestor. And on the other, you overlook the
differences and exaggerate the similarities, thus setting your fossil on the
threshold of the noble Homo sapiens."

Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 26

Evolution quotes #45

"The individual lucky enough to have first access to a particular specimen is
therefore likely to 'leave no bone unturned in his effort to find new and
striking peculiarities which he can interpret functionally or genealogically,
Unless he is very experienced, he is prone to discover new features which are
partially the creations of his own concentrated imagination.'"

Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 26

Evolution quotes #44

"With the emotional elements of adventure, sacrifice and reward all compounded
in the discovery of a new fossil, together with the soul-stirring aspects of
ancestor worship, it might seem that the odds are heavily stacked against an
objective analysis by the individual who by custom has the right of first
pronouncement. Earnest Hooton, a prominent Harvard anthropologist of the 1930s
and '40s, recognized this trap as 'the psychology of the individual discoverer
and describer.' He wrote that 'The tendency towards aggrandizement of a rare or
unique specimen on the part of its finder or the person to whom its initial
scientific description has been entrusted, springs naturally from human egoism
and is almost ineradicable.'"

Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), pp. 25-26 citing Apes, Men and Morons, published by Putman, 1937, p. 112

Evolution quotes #43

Michael Day anatomist, "Nine-tenths of your importance in this field comes from
your finds…There is a tremendous bias towards finders. And with this goes an
unwarranted weight on their opinions…I can easily be accused of sour grapes,"[1]
which he states because he is not a finder.

[1] Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 25 citing an interview with the author, London, 11 June 1985

Evolution quotes #42

"Richard [Leakey] ran an expedition and as joint leader and main operator of the
practical side he felt that he had a right to loyalty from the expedition
members. Inevitably that meant agreement with him on all important factors
associated with the expedition..if you did not agree on important issues you
could either back down or leave. Most of us backed down a few times and then
eventually left…Despite this, my own preference would be to work for an
expedition run by Richard."[1]
Donald Johanson, "acknowledges that the search
is often spiced by hopes that are not always strictly scientific. 'We have a
passion to find the oldest, the most complete, the biggest-brained, the most
enigmatic fossil,' he recently told an audience at a public lecture at the
American Museum of Natural History in New York.[2] Many anthropologists feel
like this, but few are candid enough to express it publicly."[3]

[1] Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 250 citing a letter, Findlater to author, 1 Feb. 1985
[2]. "Four Million Years of Humanity," lecture at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, 9 April 1984
[3] Lewin, p. 23

Evolution quotes #41

"The character of the KBS Tuff controversy was in large part colored by the
combination of these two factors: Fitch and Miller's solid adherence to their
original figure, despite their inability to replicate it adequately; and
Leakey's unswerving loyalty to these two men and their contentions. Each party
had very good reasons for acting the way it did. In addition, Leakey clearly had
a vested interest in the older date, if for nothing else that because the claim
for the oldest Homo, oldest stone tools, and so on was good for
fund-raising."

Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 195

Evolution quotes #40

"An unfortunate tendency has developed of late," Bernard Campbell observed, "for
anthropologists who are mainly engaged in university teaching, rather than in
actual field studies, to start lengthy discussions and criticism on the basis of
preliminary reports, often without even viewing the original specimens, or casts
thereof. This sort of controversy, often accompanied by dogmatic pronouncements,
must be deplored."

Epilogue in Adam and Ape, edited by L. S. B. Leakey and Kack and Stephanie Prost, published by Schenkman Publishing Co., 1971

Evolution quotes #39

Regarding various descriptions of Ramapithecus' anatomy and habits:

"Here then, was a very complete picture of an animal-not just what it looked like, but also how it lived. And all based on a few fragments of upper and lower jaw and teeth…
'What we saw in the fossils was the small canines, and the rest followed, all linked together somehow. The Darwinian picture has a long tradition, and it was very powerful,'"[1]
"Pilbeam and Simmons managed to maintain their support of Ramapithecus [as a hominid], however, mainly by adjusting their lines of argument in concert with the shifting evidence,"[2]
"Pilbeam began to realize that the fossil material then available simply wasn't adequate to support the kinds of sweeping conclusions that had been made,"[3] "before the decade was out Rama's ape would be just that-an ape."[4]

[1] Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 95 citing an interview with the author, Harvard University, 23 Oct. 1984
[2] Ibid., p. 98
[3] Ibid., p. 103
[4] Ibid., p. 98

Evolution quotes #38

"Some people even admitted that they were giving their fossil a new genus and species name so as to call attention to how important they thought it was. Everyone who had a fossil come into their hands for description wanted it to be something new-perhaps consciously, perhaps unconsciously-for the purposes of self-aggrandizement."

Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 91 citing an interview with the author, Duke University, 25 Sep. 1985

related resources:
The rise and fall of Skull 1470
Homo erectus 'to' modern man
15 questions responses 2

Evolution quotes #37

Ales Hrdlicka is the founder of the American Society of Physical Anthropology and for many years was the editor of the society's journal, "from which positioned wielded substantial power over what was acceptable to the establishment and what was not…Hrdlicka, he [G. Edward Lewis] says, 'thought he was the anointed and elect prophet who had been foreordained and chosen to make such discoveries and demolish the work of anyone else.'"[1] Lewis had interpreted Ramapithecus as a hominid but Hrdlicka believed it to be just an ape and so he "tore into Lewis's work,"[2] although "Hrdlicka's paper was somewhat self-contradictory, and, says Simmons, 'scattered with blunders and naïvete that a really good professional simply would not have made.'"[3]

"Even a causal examination of this paper is sufficient to show that it bears all the evidence of being a controversial and non-objective contribution,"[4] "amateurish,"[5] "It looked to me like someone coming into something he didn't know much about, with preconceived ideas."[6] Lewis wrote a rebuttal to Hrdlicka's criticism's of his work but the editors of the American Journal of Science refused to publish it, "because they said Hrdlicka was an important man, and I was a young man."[7]

Hrdlicka had attempted to discredit Lewis' position based on the evolutionary concepts of the time whereby "To have the first hominids appearing in the eastern part of the Old World was therefore simply unacceptable. 'So he did a hatchet job on Lewis' work,'[8] says Spencer." Lewis had discovered Ramapithecus but not long after this clash with the authority of the time he "left Yale and never really made another important contribution to paleoanthropology."[9]

[1] Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 88 citing a letter, Lewis to author, 31 Oct. 1985

[2] Ibid., p. 88

[3] Ibid., p. 88 citing an interview with the author, Duke University, 25 Sep. 1985

[4] "The Phyletic Position of Ramapithecus," Postilla, Yale Peabody Museum, p. 374 (1961)

[5] "A Source for Dental Comparison of Ramapithecus with Australopithecus and Homo," in South African Journal of Science, Feb. 1968, p. 97

[6] Ibid., p. 88 citing an interview with the author, Duke University, 25 Sep. 1985

[7] Ibid., p. 88 citing a letter, Lewis to author, 31 Oct. 1985

[8] Ibid., p. 88 citing an interview with the author, New York, 13 Dec. 1985

[9] Ibid., p. 89

related resources:

Is there really evidence that man descended from the apes?
 
Finding the real 'missing link'

The Piltdown Man Fraud

Evolution quotes #36

Regarding the Taung fossil:

"Lacking large segments of the anatomical jigsaw puzzle, Smith Woodward had to make some guesses as to how the pieces he had might relate to each other. Apparently misidentifying some minor anatomical landmarks on the interior of the cranium, he assembled a skull that not only was erroneously small (just over 1,000 cubic centimeters) but also appeared to have certain primitive anatomical features. This reconstruction deeply impressed Elliot Smith. Sir Arthur Keith, however, challenged the accuracy of the reconstruction and did one of his own, eschewing the errors Smith Woodward had committed. Keith's version not only was much bigger (about 1,500 cubic centimeters), but also lacked the primitive features erroneously present in Smith Woodward's…

'Why did not [Keith's] correction immediately raise suspicions of the authenticity of the Piltdown fossils?' asked Le Gros Clark. 'Because of its personal nature the controversy [between Keith and Smith] certainly clouded the issues and befogged the atmosphere of scientific discussion…
In his day Elliot Smith's authority carried great weight (and rightly so, for he was a very eminent anatomist), so that not only did he persuade himself that his original interpretation of the skull and endocranial cast had been fundamentally right, he also seems to have persuaded biologists in general that this was so.'[1] But in spite of their differences of opinion, both Keith and Elliot Smith continued to accept Piltdown Man as a vindication of their own ideas, each for his own different reasons. Keith, who viewed the skull as essentially modern in form, saw it as a confirmation of the antiquity of modern types of man. At the same time, Elliot Smith claimed the cranium to be distinctly primitive in form."[2]

[1] "The Exposure of the Piltdown Fraud," lecture at the Royal Institution, London, 20 May 1955
[2] Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), pp. 74-75

related resources:
The Piltdown Man Fraud

The Taung Skull: 'missing link'?

That quote!

Evolution quotes #35

"When American anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka asked in 1927, 'What is the actual, precise, evidence for human evolution that science now possesses, and upon which it bases far-reaching conclusions?' (my emphasis [Lewin's]),[1] he was in fact posing a question that has no answer. Not because there is no evidence for human evolution, but because3 no science works that way. No science-least of all paleoanthropology-is as objecting as Hrdlicka implies here or as is often portrayed in the philosophers' idealized view of science…
preconceived ideas shape the progress of all sciences, but nowhere else to the degree that occurs in the search for human origins. And yes, personalities are important in the flow of all sciences, but, again, in the science of man emphatically so. Le Gros has an answer: 'Undoubtedly, one of the main factors responsible of the frequency with which polemics enters into controversies on matters of paleoanthropology is purely an emotional one. It is a fact (which it were well to recognize) that it is extraordinarily difficult to view with complete objectivity the evidence for our own evolutionary origin, no doubt because the problem is such a very personal one.' Ernst Mayr, one of this generation's most prominent evolutionary biologists, concurs: 'Human beings seem quite incapable of speaking about themselves and their history without becoming emotional in one way or another.'"[2]

[1] Smithsonian Report for 1927, pp. 417-32
[2] Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), pp. 20-21

related resources:
Is there really evidence that man descended from the apes?

Human Evolution Stories

Bones Overthrown

Evolution quotes #34

Referring to Lord Solly Zuckerman:

"His Lordship's scorn for the level of competence he sees displayed by paleoanthropologists is legendary, exceeded only by the force of his dismissal of the australopithecines as having anything at all to do with human evolution. 'They are just bloody apes,' he is reputed to have observed on examining the australopithecine remains in South Africa."

Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), pp. 164-165

related resources:


The African 'Ape-Men'


That New Missing Link


Lucy-atheism-science

Evolution quotes #33

With regards to Skull 1470:

"One point of uncertainty was the angle at which the face attached to the cranium. Alan Walker remembers an occasion when he, Michael Day, and Richard Leakey were studying the two sections of the skull. 'You could hold the maxilla forward, and give it a long face, or you could tuck it in, making the fact short,'[1] he recalls.
'How you held it really depended on your preconceptions. It was very interesting watching what people did with it.'
Leakey remembers the incident too: 'Yes. If you held it one way, it looked like one thing; if you held it another, it looked like something else. But there was never any doubt that it was different. The question was, was it sufficiently different from everything else to warrant being called something new?'"[2]

[1] Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 160 citing an interview with the author, Potomac, Maryland, 5 Aug. 1984
[2] Ibid., p. 160 citing an interview with the author, Nairobi, 21 Jan. 1985

related resources:




The rise and fall of Skull 1470


Skull wars


Evolutionists 'go ape'

Evolution quotes #32

"Even as recently as the 1970s, professional anthropologists would assume, on the flimsiest of evidence or more usually on no evidence at all, that the australopithecines' bipedalism was an ungainly, energetically inefficient 'stagger'…In fact, proper anatomical analysis has shown australopithecines' locomotion to have been perhaps even more efficient than that of Homo sapiens. Here again was an example of that old problem of differences being exaggerated while similarities were minimized."

Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 83

related resources:


Sediba revisited


Lucy was a knuckle walker


Homo erectus 'to' modern man: evolution or human variability?

Evolution quotes #31

"The real interest of Piltdown, however, is not so much where on the family tree-or bush-it was hung, but how those who believed in the fossil saw in it what they wanted to see. Remember, that cranial parts were those of modern man…
And the jaw is that of a modern orangutan, chemically treated to make it look like a fossil and with cheek teeth filed down to make them look humanlike. Given this mischievous chimera, this is what was said of them.
'The Piltdown skull, when properly reconstructed, is found to possess strongly simian peculiarities,' noted Elliot Smith. 'In respect of these features it harmonizes completely with the jaw, the simian form of which has not only been admitted, but also exaggerated by most writers.'[1]
In other words, Elliot Smith was able to see signs of humanity in the orang jaw and features of an ape in the human cranium.' That the jaw and cranial fragments…belonged to the same creature there has never been any doubt on the part of those who have seriously studied the matter.'"[2]

[1] Human History, published by Jonathan Cape, 1934, p. 84
[2] Roger Lewin (noted science journalist), Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 73 citing "The Controversies Concerning the Interpretation and Meaning of the Remains of the Dawn Man Found Near Piltdown," in Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, vol. 59, p. IX, 31 Mar. 1914

Related resources:


The Piltdown Man Fraud


Piltdown Prankster finally fingered?


Not another ape-man!