New book on climate and human evolution 10 Mar 2010 I hope this works and WordPress doesn’t strip out the HTML code [later note: It did]. This looks like an interesting book, although its evolutionary tree is a bit old fashioned, almost Haeckelian. Biology Evolution Species and systematics
Evolution New Companion to Philosophy of History 20 Feb 2008 From The Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series comes A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography edited by Aviezer Tucker. It looks fascinating, especially essay 36 on Darwin… Read More
Biology Does life exist? 11 Jan 2014 Life, I believe, is what physics does on one particular planet on a Wednesday. More exactly, it is a series of chemical and physical dynamics that occurs between 3.85 billion years ago and now on this planet. Ferris Jabr, an editor at the Scientific American site, has a piece entitled “Why… Read More
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Morality and Evolution 1: The Milvian Bridge 29 Apr 201422 May 2014 [Morality and Evolution 1 2 3 4 5 6 7] A while back I gave a talk to a group of theologians on the question of Darwinian accidents. It had no ethics content. The first question I was asked was “If you are an atheist, how can you have moral rules?” Like many others who talk… Read More
Interesting. You don’t really see diagrams that take the “tree” metaphor so far any more. I wonder if they just did this for purely nostalgic reasons. The pdf ought to make for good spring break reading…….Ah, who am I kidding. I’ll have more work during spring break than I do when school is in session. :-/
It’s been suggested previously that climate/vegetation played an important role in human evolution, but our time interval precision has been too fluffy to provide anything definitive. It is certainly reasonable to assume a role for climate and vegetation (the increase in grass over trees for example) but the reality is that it’s probably a mess of factors interacting at various levels. Biology is meesy like that.
Not quite as clunky as the weird spinal cord that ran with Ardipithecus last year. But, similar in a way with all of that fake data and chart junk. I blame g.g. simpson. Just kidding. No I’m not. Yeah, I am.
are there really data supporting those side branches that went extinct? I count three each on the bonobo and chimpanzee branches in the pleistocene, and numerous others throughout.
No direct data as far as I know, but evolutionary theory predicts that there would be such branches. Their particular placement is just arbitrary, as far as I can tell. The only extinct side branch on the chart supported by data, that I know of, is paranthropus.
Is there are problem with this style of depicting evolving species? I realise that we shouldn’t read it as ascent to some pre-planned outcome or with progress. However, it is accurate in respect of time and putative branching isn’t it? Is it considered old fashion and not now done because some fear people may see it as ascent?
the short side branches that imply extinctions are probably not accurate or based on real fossil data, but as Wes said, the theory predicts extinctions, so it appears those branches were added arbitrarily to show that. I don’t think this tree necessarily implies some kind of directional progress though.
Thanks Paul, It was the comment made by our host although its evolutionary tree is a bit old fashioned, almost Haeckelian. , as well as the note by Wes You don’t really see diagrams that take the “tree” metaphor so far any more. I wonder if they just did this for purely nostalgic reasons. that had me somewhat at a loss and wondering what is wrong with the diagram, if anything.
I can’t see very much wrong with your tree – but JW was *probably* hoping for a few more indications of “horizontal” gene transfer.