Evolution: a different view (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 12, 2015, 22:42 (3482 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Exaptation may be a new anatomical part used or unused, per many authors. Further one cannot explain the drop in the larynx, the increasing arch of the palate, the change in tongue muscles, the larger uvula and soft palate adaptations by pointing to any known environmental challenge that would require such changes. They all look teleological in anticipation of speech. Especially in view of the choking danger invented by these changes! Do changes often produce dangerous issues or solve problems. Tell me what was solved early on?-You consistently ignore my argument that evolution is not just a matter of environmental challenges REQUIRING changes. As you yourself keep pointing out, if that were the case, evolution need not have progressed beyond bacteria. There is a drive towards improvement, and that is where the inventive mechanism (as opposed to adaptive) comes into play. The scenario I suggested for the above was that if/when a group of apes descended from the trees, for whatever reason, and began a new way of life, they may have found their language inadequate for their purposes. The desire to produce new sounds may (of course it's all hypothetical) have resulted in the changes you have described - just as the brain may have grown more complex as a result of new tasks our ancestors were setting themselves. Muscles can be made to grow with exercise; we know that many organisms change their structure in order to adapt. I am suggesting that the process you have described followed the same course. And the cell communities involved in the process would have cooperated to avoid the danger of choking. All innovations require cooperation between the cell communities within an organism.