Kicking a dead horse with mammalian feet evolved from ancient mammal-like reptiles that, in turn, evolved from fish.

May 19, 2006 6:53 AM

Evolutionjust won't go away. New evidence suggests the development of the human embryo mirrors our species' course of evolution. This guy seems to be stirring up all kinds of trouble these days. It makes me wonder: does this new information help determine the quality of being human? From the link: "Another supposed vagary produced by the abortion issue is the question as to when the embryo or fetus becomes human. Rivers Singleton, Jr. states in his article in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, that, for some, conception defines the point of being human, whereas, for others, various periods of development suffice to 'distinguish human from non-humans.'"
posted by narwhal (41 comments total)

ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny.
posted by 1-2punch at 6:56 AM on May 19, 2006

Albert Isidro and colleague Teresa Vazquez would disagree. It fascinates me, either way.
posted by narwhal at 7:00 AM on May 19, 2006

I think the focal point of the abortion debate isn't human vs. non-human, but person vs. non-person.
posted by Zozo at 7:02 AM on May 19, 2006

"The idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, that is, that the development of an organism exactly mirrors the evolutionary development of the species, is discredited today. However the phenomena of recapitulation, in which a developing organism will for a time show a similar trait or attribute to that of an ancestral species, only to have it disappear at a later stage is well documented." Yeah, yeah, it's from wiki, but still...
posted by narwhal at 7:02 AM on May 19, 2006

kicking a dead fish
posted by caddis at 7:05 AM on May 19, 2006

Evolution just won't go away

Neither will the heliocentric solar system model. What's your point?

And yeah, the fact that the development of the embryo 'mirrors' evolution is just a coincidence. At no point do we have only a single food/poop hole like lower animals.
posted by delmoi at 7:15 AM on May 19, 2006

I agree that currently the argument does focus on the "person."

Acknowledging, however, that personhood is an extension of humanhood which is itself sketchy in those early days of growth & development could do a lot for the debate. Not that I really expect anything to change. Ever.

A crass thought, but, if we so closely resemble a fish & a rabbit at 4 days in, maybe it's not until we achieve our distinguishible 'in his image' characteristics that god deems us worthy to receive our souls.

You are in a womb. It is warm and pleasant. What would you like to do?

>Get soul

You cannot do that yet.
posted by narwhal at 7:15 AM on May 19, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

delmoi:

My point is: many (not necessarily those in the blue) would like to pretend that evolution is some mean & nasty construct of heathen scientists bent on corrupting the world and destroying the good and faithful society that has been so carefully constructed no thanks to them. Meanwhile, evidence continues to pour in suggesting that at this time, evoution is the best explanation for how we got here in a biological sense. I suppose I could've followed the statement with a helpful [/sarcasm] tag, but I assumed we were all snarky enough to get it.
posted by narwhal at 7:19 AM on May 19, 2006

Meanwhile, evolution gets banned from Canadian schools for a change.
posted by dreamsign at 7:24 AM on May 19, 2006

MY favorite joke : Why did the fish first crawl onto land? His school kept wanting to teach creationism.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 7:28 AM on May 19, 2006

"maybe it's not until we achieve our distinguishible 'in his image' characteristics that god deems us worthy to receive our souls."
according to hebrew tradition, you don't get your soul till you are 30 days out of the womb. Children under 30 days were not counted in census taking. If a man caused a woman to miscarry, he paid a fine rather than being killed (eye for an eye etc) clearly demonstrating that the unborn were property and not people.

this is totally consistant with the rest of the bible as well (biblical consistancy??). Adam did not recieve a soul untill his body was shaped and formed completely.

This makes sense from an atheistic POV as well if one takes a "soul" to mean self awareness, or at the very least patterned activity in the neo cortex. This doesn't happen untill after birth or very late in the last trimester. (there is sporadic neuron firing before hand, but its doesn't bear the mark of patterned thought. Think of how the lungs 'breath' but aren't really supplying any oxygen - just getting ready)
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 7:32 AM on May 19, 2006

posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 7:37 AM on May 19, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Tryptophan:

I'd heard a similar ruling was made by a previous pope some time ago...

Digging around I found this:

'In ancient times, the "delayed ensoulment" belief of Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was widely accepted in Pagan Greece and Rome. He taught that a fetus originally has a vegetable soul. This evolves into an animal soul later in gestation. Finally the fetus is "animated" with a human soul. This latter event, called "ensoulment," was believed to occur at 40 days after conception for male fetuses, and 90 days after conception for female fetuses.' Source

Further on down the page are the Catholic rulings I'd recalled.

Mean Mr. Bucket: =D

dreamsign: I'd be much more upset as an Inuit having my belief system diluted to such an extent that I could be haphazardly compared to Pentecostals--who also despise evolution!
posted by narwhal at 7:42 AM on May 19, 2006

Evolution just won't go away.

And that gravity thing... are the kids still into that too?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:44 AM on May 19, 2006

As soon as those activist judges stop legislating from the bench and concede that gravity is unconstitutional, W (PBUH) will repeal that law faster'n a cowboy could hog-tie a calf.
posted by narwhal at 7:51 AM on May 19, 2006

...And don't tell me that's not how legislation works. My gut tells me that's how it'd get done. God bless America.
posted by narwhal at 7:52 AM on May 19, 2006

The only difference between human and non-humans is our ability to understand nature and science.
Otherwise, I urge someone to find another difference.
Western religion stresses that man is superior to beast, and if you cannot go beyond that, it's hard to accept Evolution.
posted by rinaface at 8:09 AM on May 19, 2006

A crass thought

Not crass as much as sorely outdated. The big conflict now isnt whether or not to teach evolution in school (hello 1920s) its how badly the monotheistic traditions and religious communities have handled evolution. The attempt to bury it failed and now the quaint idea of immediate creation by a supernatual being is more unconvincing than usual. I don't think this will negatively affect any religion as much as just cause another popular interpretation to settle with the new 'common sense.'
posted by skallas at 8:21 AM on May 19, 2006

Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan attempted to write an essay on when a human becomes a human from a compasionate AND scientific standpoint.

“Abortion: Is it Possible to be both “Pro-life” and “Pro-Choice”?”

from the book Billions and Billions
posted by clunkyrobot at 8:46 AM on May 19, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

skallas: I wholeheartedly agree. The heliocentric model of our solar system didn't topple the church. The church resisted, but eventually conceded and adjusted. I'm positive religion will once again concede and adjust (all the while claiming it was on-board all along but just didn't want to confuse the un-enlightened by agreeing to loudly and tossing their followers' poor world-view assunder).

It's amazing to me, how often the church adjusts its positions (no more purgatory!) and yet simultaneously hard-lines the infallibility & immutability of god & his words. And all the believers just follow along, like goldfish with no memory repeatedly discovering their little plastic castle for the first time. Except that the little plastic castle keeps changing and they remember how it's always been exactly like it is right now.
posted by narwhal at 8:50 AM on May 19, 2006

It's amazing to me, how often the church adjusts its positions (no more purgatory!) and yet simultaneously hard-lines the infallibility & immutability of god & his words.

I think you're mixing the Catholic Church with (primarily American) Protestant churches. The CC doesn't have a problem with evolution and says the Bible shouldn't be taken literally as a history (and it was the one that had Purgatory).
posted by MikeKD at 8:56 AM on May 19, 2006

I only skimmed the article, but what 1-2punch said pretty much ends the whole argument.

Ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny.

This was beaten into my head as an undergrad anthro. student. I don't know how any anthropologist could not be aware of this and think that there is "new" evidence that shows that embryonic development mirrors our evolutionary path. . . or additionally believe that there is a preset path to evolution. This is just another example of bad science reporting.
posted by anansi at 9:00 AM on May 19, 2006

MikeKD: That particular comment was aimed at christianity in general with an example ("pulled from the headlines" as it were) that does happen to be specific to Catholicism. I stand by my assertion that higher ups in the church (be they popes, cardinals, priests, pastors, ministers, deacons, or other) have, for the history of christianity tinkered and tooled and adjusted their religion while simultaneously insisting that a personal interpretation that disagrees is incorrect. Even when later on, that interpretation is adopted and distributed. And that bothers me.
posted by narwhal at 9:01 AM on May 19, 2006

anansi: Not to be a dick, but this might bear repeating: "The phenomena of recapitulation, in which a developing organism will for a time show a similar trait or attribute to that of an ancestral species, only to have it disappear at a later stage is well documented." I believe that's what the article is stressing. If my choice of words in the post belie my own ignorance about all of this, it's my fault and not the researchers.

Or they could be hacks.

Ultimately, every scientific claim will have it's counter and that counter will have its supporters and those supporters will post comments about how a single sentence sums up the aforementioned scientific claim's wrongness. That's science. =D I'm certainly not here to say which viewpoint is right or wrong... just passing something along that seemed kind of neat.
posted by narwhal at 9:07 AM on May 19, 2006

There is an argument that it is not until 14 days that it becomes clear (that is, before this time it cannot be predicted) whether any human embryo will be a single foetus, or twins, and therefore, before 14 days, it cannot be considered "a human" in the sense of an individual (not to mention not separate from its mother, of course).
posted by Rumple at 9:53 AM on May 19, 2006

Jon Stewart summed the abortion debtate up nicely yesterday: Do you condone rape, or murder?
posted by blue_beetle at 9:54 AM on May 19, 2006

Rumple: Iiiiiinteresting. So the life (human/person/souled) at conception crowd would therefore believe that: 1. twins share a soul? 2. a soul can asexually reproduce if the physical body demands it? 3. something else?

blue_beetle: ahaha.
posted by narwhal at 11:14 AM on May 19, 2006

I agree with 1-2punch and anansi.

This "ontogeny mirrors phylogeny" argument is decades old and decades discredited.

It is only fodder for creationists to zap voraciously, thereby thinking they have "disproved" evolution.

Evolutionary anthropology is bunk anyway.
posted by whimsicalnymph at 11:25 AM on May 19, 2006

narwhal: I don't do abortion debates, but, my money is on "3. something else", probably manifested as the Invisible Sky Wizard Waves a Magic Wand
posted by Rumple at 11:43 AM on May 19, 2006

Obviously, God knows that those fresh zygotes are eventually going to split, and thus endows them with two souls. I mean, duh.
posted by Zozo at 11:51 AM on May 19, 2006

'This "ontogeny mirrors phylogeny" argument is decades old and decades discredited.' - whimsicalnymph

I think it's unfair to dismiss the findings of these anthropologists out of hand since they're only citing specific aspects of ontology that resemble theorized phylogeny:

'The fact that the literal form of recapitulation theory is rejected by modern biologists has sometimes been used as an argument against evolution by some creationists. The argument is: "Haeckel's hypothesis was presented as supporting evidence for evolution, Haeckel's theory is wrong, therefore evolution has less support". This argument is not only an oversimplification but misleading because modern biology does recognize numerous connections between ontogeny and phylogeny, explains them using evolutionary theory without recourse to Haeckel's specific views, and considers them as supporting evidence for that theory.' wiki, emphasis mine.

Rumple: I like your style.
Zozo: Guh. Yeah, that should've been option 1.
posted by narwhal at 12:01 PM on May 19, 2006

Ontogeny does occasionally partly recapitulate phylogeny, and for completely sensible reasons. (Look at the eyes of flatfishes, baleen whale and bird teeth, etc). The Discovery News article had some nice new examples.

Haeckel's theory was bunk, but the "ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny" people above should realize that this is not about Haeckel's theory.
posted by martinrebas at 12:45 PM on May 19, 2006

Jon Stewart summed the abortion debtate up nicely yesterday: Do you condone rape, or murder?

Well, what if you do a c-section? Then it's not "rape".

Anyway, given a choice between being raped and being murdered, I think most people would chose being raped.
posted by delmoi at 2:05 PM on May 19, 2006

New evidence suggests the development of the human embryo mirrors our species' course of evolution.

New evidence? I remember being told that in grade school - and that's a long time ago. But then again, I went to grade school in a place that has no problem with evolution.
posted by spazzm at 3:00 PM on May 19, 2006

I like the recent claim that our ancestors branched away from chimps, then proceeded to mate with chimps, thus kind of messing up the family tree.
posted by pracowity at 3:56 PM on May 19, 2006

(But let's remember that ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny was a GOOD argument for reconstructing those phylogenies. And it's still at least a little bit useful alongside molecular methods.)
posted by metaculpa at 4:02 PM on May 19, 2006

"Argument" = "tool" might be better.
posted by metaculpa at 4:02 PM on May 19, 2006

kicking a dead fish

E's not dead, e's jus' restin'!
posted by five fresh fish at 4:10 PM on May 19, 2006

Meanwhile, evolution gets banned from Canadian schools for a change.

Oh, ffs. I thought we were immune to that stupid bullshit up here.

I wonder if a letter penned in BC would make any difference to a N.Que. school board. I suspect not, what with Quebec seeming quite hostile to the rest of the country anyway. Sigh.

Any Canucks got an idea what to do about this?
posted by five fresh fish at 4:14 PM on May 19, 2006

Embrace you inner fish.
posted by homunculus at 7:43 PM on May 19, 2006

Nice. Embrace your phallic, more like.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:08 PM on May 19, 2006