She named them "human beings"

I might be done re-reading Sapiens, but I'm not done re-reading other books. One such book forces me to continue the Sapiens thread, briefly, today.

For context, this semester I'm re-reading Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century by Charles King because I assigned it to kick-off my Narratives of Human Evolution course. 

Yes, definitely. This course was named after its inspiration: the book Narratives of Human Evolution by Misia Landau. (To get the idea, read this article she published prior to the book in American Scientist: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27852647?seq=1)

Before digging into three best-selling recent narratives of human evolution [the trade books of David Reich (genetics), Cat Bohannon (biology), and Christine Webb (primatology)], we started the course by reading Gods of the Upper Air because I figured some historical perspective might do us some good. I think it did. For one, it's obvious that we're right now living at the turn of the 20th century in so many ways. Maybe that's because many world leaders were born to parents who lived at that time. The future isn't very futuristic, yet... at least, not in terms of how the science of human biological variation is parlayed into beliefs about human nature and how beliefs of human nature shape the science of human biological variation. 

If you're reminded of what the book Sapiens was up to, then you're not alone. Remember, in a post last month, I wrote about how Harari used the Dinka as an example of humanity's evolved tribalism (or instinctual "us vs. them" psyches) and he seemed to provide evidence for this science-sounding fact based on the following: 

“In the language of the Dinka people of the Sudan, ‘Dinka’ simply means ‘people’. People who are not Dinka are not people."

But I wrote about how hard it is to take Harari's evidence for actual evidence when you know about the following:

In “The Dinka myth: How a South Sudanese ethnic group lost identity,” Mading Peter Angong explains that ‘Dinka’ is a “foreign imposed name that we cannot even define. We are Muonyjang!”

To my revelation via Angong, any reader of Sapiens could respond with something like, okay, but what about the other examples he provides on that page? The Dinka aren't the only ones whose name means "people" or something like it. You haven't taken down his overall point merely by taking down one instance of it. And you certainly haven't disproven the truth of our evolved tribalism.

And, to that imaginary antagonist, I would say that the burden of "proof" is not on the critic of an imaginary human evolutionary tale which is not verifiable, falsifiable, testable against alternative explanations, or knowable. 

And then I would flip to this page in Charles King's Gods of the Upper Air and show them another example of how names of entire peoples are born:

The passage is describing one of Margaret Mead and her partner Reo Fortune's stints in the field, this time in Papua New Guinea, "among a group of people they called the Arapesh." King writes that, "Their name, in fact, was Mead's invention based on the local term for 'human beings.'"

What's in a name? A lot. And a lot more, I'm sure, than is on King's page there. 

But doesn't it bring home how blatantly ignorant or careless that bit of Sapiens is? Doesn't it demonstrate how easy it is to poach "facts" from ethnographic and anthropological research over its brief history and then wield those "facts" against one another and ourselves? It's really infuriating, actually, when you think about how at least some of the people who were out there naming and (inadvertently) shaming the peoples' of the world, like Mead, were doing it to free us from the determinism that still grips the public imagination... which, instead, is validated by the many millions of copies of Sapiens circulating the globe.  This is how the future remains in the past. At least, for now.

Mail Bag: Disproving evolution without learning biology

This week I received the following messages...

DISPROVING EVOLUTION IN ONE PARAGRAPH

Hi someone sent me a book with you as the author. I'm just sharing my thoughts on human evolution with you : A human sperm and a human egg coming together forms a set of human eyes. They didn't evolve. We know exactly how they are formed. It takes nine months. This invalidates any and every article ever written on the evolution of the human eye, including this attached one by the Scientific American. Why make up an imaginary second process that exists only on paper, and can never match the known process we already have? Why make up an imaginary second process in the first place? This puts evolution on a defense it can never get off of, effectively eliminating it as an explanation for our existence, and as a serious topic to be studied. ( Why study the evolution of the human eye, when you can just study the actual process that forms them?) This applies to every other part of our body. There is exactly zero science to support human evolution. Thanks for your time.

DISPROVING EVOLUTION IN ONE PARAGRAPH PART TWO

One sperm and one egg coming together forms an entire person from head to toe. Evolution claims we evolved from a single celled organism. These two different start points, means there has to be two different processes that form a person. Only one ( sperm and egg  ) is known to be real. A sperm and egg coming together forms our eyes- they didn't evolve. A sperm and egg coming together forms our lungs- they didn't evolve. A sperm and egg coming together forms our heart- it didn't evolve either. No part of our body evolved from a single celled organism. A sperm and egg comes from an already existing man and woman. There is no known process that forms a person without a sperm and egg, to explain where the already existing man and woman came from. This leaves a man and a woman standing there with no scientific explanation. We have a nine month process that shows us exactly how a person is formed. We have a known process to compare evolution to. However, since a single celled organism simply cannot do what a sperm and egg does, evolution always has and always will be relegated to a theory, second to creation. Thanks again for your time.

DISPROVING EVOLUTION IN ONE PARAGRAPH PART THREE

A human sperm and a human egg contains everything necessary to form an entire person from head to toe. A sperm and egg comes from an already existing man and woman. If evolution is the explanation for our existence, there has to be a second process that forms a person, without a sperm and egg, to explain where the already existing man and woman came from. No such process exists. This leaves a man and a woman standing there with no scientific explanation. Life as we see it reflects what is written in the Bible. There is exactly zero science to support human. Thanks again for your time, sorry if this comes on strong a little bit. This is just how I chose to word it.

Hello [Evolution Disprover],

The only time I’ve ever written to someone who is more of an expert than me to tell them they’re mistaken  (from my place of ignorance!) was when I was very very stressed out and massively depressed and all I can guess is that I was taking it out on them. 

If you don’t know how to think evolutionarily, then it can be tough to imagine how it could be true. 

The fact that a person is  similar but also different from their parents, siblings, and offspring is evolution. It’s happening every generation. 

Evolution is the only way biology happens. 

And so, since we know that rocks and fossils go back billions of years and contain a record of evolution, all we have to do is take what we know about our own families and extrapolate that constant change over deep time. That “all we have to do” was playful sarcasm. No one’s imagination can grasp deep time! But we can rationally account for its truth. We evolved from different earlier forms the same as we were made by our parents. 

The bible doesn’t say evolution isn’t true. 

Peace,

Holly

Hey I apreciate your response, however similar, and different looking people, does not explain where they came from in the first place. Also, nothing you said shows a second process that forms a person without a sperm and egg, to explain where the already existing man and woman came from. This process is necessary if evolution is the explanation for our existence. 

It’s one lineage of parents all the way back to the beginning of life on Earth. If you could see them all, at some point as you looked back, you’d stop recognizing them as man and woman and think they looked more like monkeys… then further back, fish.  It’s in the fossil record, or I should say that is the fossil record. 

Holly, with all due respect, we have a nine month process that shows us exactly how a person is formed. We have a known process to compare evolution to. In response to this you mentioned fossils...and time. Not a shred of biology. Fossils and time are used to support evolution in lieu of an actual process. Actual process > fossils and time. 

Biology only happens with generational change. Nothing ever stays the same. That’s all evolution is. Biology. Life. Nature.

Philip Ball’s How Life Works might be your best way into it. 

https://www.amazon.com/How-Life-Works-author/dp/1529096006

Thank you i will reach out to him also. One last thing, why study the evolution of the human eye, when you can just study the actual process that forms them?

Read his book.

Thanks again for your time Holly. 

You’re welcome.

Mail Bag: For the love of storms

Recently, I received a lovely question from someone asking if (perhaps? ... maybe?...) their love of thunderstorms could be explained by evolution, like how (perhaps? ... maybe?) the comforting feeling they feel during storms, especially at night, comes (perhaps? ... maybe?) from a time when our ancestors were given a safe reprieve from predation?

Here's the answer I dashed off to them...

Dear [Evolutionary Wonderer],

I share your love of science and how enjoyable and even thrilling it feels to relate to our hominin (a.k.a. past human) ancestors. I think your love of science is probably why you say about your question that “it’s probably a dumb idea that has no bearing on reality”. I take this to mean that you sense that there is a possibility that your imagination about our ancestors during storms having something to do with how you feel during storms may only be that: your imagination and not science. What I mean is, I think your question is probably, actually, “Is this science?” Well, let’s think about how we could investigate your idea with science.  

Bones and teeth and stone tools and fire pits and all of what little preserves of the ancient past is not going to help us at all. Even if everything preserved, that complete material record of the past would not tell us if our ancestors felt as you wonder they felt during storms, and for reasons you’ve imagined (instead of, say, because they can stop worrying about clean drinking water thanks to all this new clean drinking water, or because it sounds a lot like when they were fetuses and that was a safe worry-free time in their lives, etc.). 

So, maybe we would be tempted to look to other animals to see if any of them share your feelings and for reasons you imagine our ancestors might. But no matter what we find out there among other species, like other primates (note: Jane Goodall recounts chimpanzee “rain dances” that you might want to look into!), no matter how many other species are also comforted by storms (if a scientist could elucidate such a feeling), let alone because they mean a temporary time-out from predation (if a scientist could elucidate such a reason), that’s still not evidence of how our hominin ancestors felt, let alone why they felt the way they felt. 

So it’s impossible to know if what you’re experiencing is also what our ancestors experienced. If they did, it’s impossible to know if it’s for reasons you imagine. And then, to top it all off (here’s the kicker), it’s impossible to know if what you’re experiencing is due to that experience being innately carried into the future from our ancestral past. It’s been a mistake in the (relatively short, so far) history of science to assume that everything we share with animals is innate. They develop in context just like we do. As scientists increasingly appreciate, animals are more brilliant and developmentally complex than our scientific forebears assumed. “Instinct” is an outdated term now because it assumes too much without evidence. Defaulting to the belief that specific feelings and the behaviors that ensue could be inherited from our ancestors isn’t really very typical among scientists. What you’ve rightly sensed as a challenging question for science is why the field of evolutionary psychology is so criticized (though you wouldn’t know it from pop culture where it is embraced enthusiastically).  

Nature brings on what some people call the “numinous” which is often used to describe religious or spiritual feelings but works just as well, I think, for describing how nature, like storms, can tap us directly into our very real physical connection across space-time to everything that is alive now and that ever lived. I live for that numinous feeling! Our understanding of science can give us that feeling and be part of the satisfaction we find in making meaning of our lives as earthlings, but that does not make that feeling or those imaginings, themselves, science. We should all feel free to keep reveling in those connections, to keep relating to our ancestors, like you do… while also valuing and doing science, which is something else entirely … even if its discoveries feed those feelings! For fueling your imagination and keeping you linked to nature across space-time, especially to our ancestors, I highly recommend novels like Claire Cameron’s called The Last Neanderthal.

Thanks for your question. I enjoyed imagining along with you,

Holly