Good catch

Thevillageatheist - 22 February 2013 11:55 AM

The theory goes that as the grasslands spread our ancestors were forced out of the forests and into the savannahs and evolution took hold, favoring a more upright posture because we could see further and so on.  Being upright wasn’t really an advantage in the forests because the lousy trees blocked line of sight.  The two developed at more or less the same time.  Makes sense.

The problem with her theory is that she failed to take into account that a bipedal species had already been found in the forestlands. It was Ardipithicus Ramidus. The remains date to 4.4 million years BCE although some paleoanthroplogists speculate that the area was mixed grassland and forest. And just when something makes sense. Science, go figure!

http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/ardipithecus-ramidus

Cap’t Jack

That’s what I like about science; throw out a hypothesis based on the evidence at hand then along comes new evidence to knock it off it’s pedestal. This is a fascinating subject that so far leads back over 6 million years and counting! Oh to be 30 again.

Cap’t Jack

Thevillageatheist - 27 February 2013 08:02 PM

That’s what I like about science; throw out a hypothesis based on the evidence at hand then along comes new evidence to knock it off it’s pedestal.

I just read an interesting book called The Half-Life of Facts, where the author Samuel Arbesman explains why and how our knowledge changes all the time. What’s most striking, is that you can actually apply a formula to how fast what we know changes.

I just read a review of the book George and am putting it on my reading list. It seems to dovetail into the idea that the “facts” change when new information is uncovered. No planet status for Pluto! And my armillary sphere is now innacurate. But it does make a good conversation piece. Does the book include neuroscience or how facts are altered by new evidence only?

Cap’t Jack

Jack, read it only if you have nothing else on your list. It’s okay, but the whole book is much longer than it needed to be. And I don’t recall anything specific on neuroscience, but it does cover the evolution of our medical knowledge. IIRC, in medicine it takes about ninety years for the yearly contributions to double. In genetics it was about thirty years, one third of the time when compared to medicine.

Oh, I misunderstood your question, Jack. No, it doesn’t talk about how we evolve to interpret new knowledge (if that’s what you meant by neuroscience), bur rather it discusses the “science of science.” And, of course, Galton is the hero in the book—letting you know just in case you are as much of Galton’s fan as I am. Francis Galton is my god, and a part of the holy trinity along with Darwin and Aristotle. I worship all three of them.