the evolving mind

As I argued in the post, Fun Science Fact: An Upside to Down Syndrome, sometimes (often?) a genetic abnormality brings some good with the bad. Research recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry has found that gene variants associated with schizophrenia — bad — provide a diminished cancer risk — good.

People who inherit a specific form of a gene that puts them on a road to schizophrenia may be protected against some forms of cancer, according to a new study by scientists at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. [source]

Interesting. It should be noted that the research itself seemed solid. Kudos for that. For example:

The authors were able to replicate their findings in a second sample of 107 patients and 112 healthy volunteers. “The results add to the growing evidence suggesting an intriguing relationship between cancer-related genes and schizophrenia susceptibility,” the scientists wrote. [bold added]

The numbers aren’t great, but the replication part is a big plus.

As I pointed out in A Link Between Creativity and Insanity there may also be another benefit, a social “sunny-side” that partly balances the individual darkness that those suffering from schizophrenia face, to the disorder.

To me the above is yet more evidence that the theory of evolution nicely explains what we are discovering about the tangled web of life. Why is there schizophrenia? Why haven’t the gene variants for full-blow cases been trimmed from existence by natural selection? It may be that those variants, in particular combinations or in association with other factors, aren’t all bad. And they may even bring some good.

Try to explain the above with a Creationist perspective and it is difficult not to conclude that not only did/does the Creator have a mean streak (Down Syndrome and schizophrenia — why include those in creation?), but he does sloppy work as well. Mixing the good and bad together like that . . . .

Of course, Creationists could argue the schizophrenia finding away in one of two ways: 1) the science is wrong, schizophrenia is actually caused by sin and satan, and/or 2) Gawd creates in mysterious ways, and we just don’t understand the intelligence of a design for humans that includes a significant proportion of the population being afflicted by a very troubling mental illness.

Science is fascinating and powerful. But don’t look to it for simple answers. Try religion instead.

Technorati Links: creationism, evolution, schizophrenia

A major quibble? Clearly I am confused. But that is where I must start, though in future posts I will be sharing the many admirable things about Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. I feel forced into placing my single significant criticism up front, for that is where he, somewhat puzzlingly, places what I consider to be the most contentious point. Up front.

In the preface Dawkins writes:

“This book is my personal summary of the evidence that the ‘theory’ of evolution is actually a fact — as incontrovertible a fact as any in science.”

Wow. Incontrovertible means “absolutely certain and cannot be shown to be wrong.” As any in science. I’m jumping ahead of myself here, but it seems the argument — by those who should really know better — that evolution is indeed a fact is a rhetorical tactic. Evolution is a fact, case closed. If you can’t see the fact, you’re blind. I feel this kind of argument miseducates as much as it might, might, make a valid point. How does it miseducate? Two ways. 1) It stretches the definition of fact too far. 2) It places the emphasis on a conclusion and not on the essential and supremely solid scientific reasoning that gets us there.

Dawkins’ very first chapter is titled, “Only a Theory?” In it he argues that evolution should be considered a fact. Why not present the overwhelming evidence first, thus making the acceptance of the “fact” status more sensible? This ordering seemed illogical to me.

As for the meat to my major quibble, on page 8 Dawkins writes,

“Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact.”

I, for one, am sane and informed but would disagree. And it all hinges upon the definition of fact.

Continue Reading »

Technorati Links: critical thinking, evolution

If you needed more convincing that human beings are 100%, naturally evolved animals, here’s a very interesting finding generated by a controlled experiment: Men who sniffed the t-shirts of women rated the shirts of ovulating women more pleasant. Not only that, they also experienced an increase in their testosterone level. [source]

Cool.

The details are so interesting I’ve included a block quote of them below the fold (“continue reading”).

The news release of the finding began with this sentence:

Women around the world spend billions of dollars each year on exotic smelling perfumes and lotions in the hopes of attracting a mate.

Now this is just one man’s recollected perceptions (fallibility alert!), but I’ve always considered the smell of perfume to be the olfactory equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. Too loud and largely unpleasant. But maybe, as person with sensitivities to airborne allergens, my system is responding “wrong.”

What I do recall enjoying the scent of is a naked neck. Particularly my wife’s. From up close. I can’t describe the scent, and it’s almost like there is none. Yet some part of my brain like’s it and I feel the desire to stay close, even move closer, and hold on.

Then again, maybe I’ve simply been classically conditioned by a number of pleasant slow-dancing experiences. I don’t know. And so I turn to science for more objective information.

And objectively speaking, man are clearly apes. As are women.

Continue Reading »

Technorati Links: olfaction, sex, testosterone

“When relations between human societies are bad, they are worse than between chimps, but when they are good, they are better than between bonobos.”
- Franz de Waal (27)

Human beings are not “just” another, albeit naked, chimpanzee-like primate. We’ve got cognitive abilities and social habits that, if not fully unique to our kind, then are at least developed to a degree well beyond that of chimps and bonobos. Perhaps the flexibility/variability of our behavior is the most startling and important divergence of all.

As Paul Ehrlich described the situation, there seems to be greater variation among human group and human group (and individual/individual) than there is between any two primate species.(28) Of course, my skeptical self wonders just how sensitive/perceptive we are to the many-hued spectrum of animal behavior, particularly that are beyond the most visible part of the spectrum — to us.

Many human intellectuals (is there such a thing as a chimp, bonobo or orangutan intellectual?) have claimed that what separates us from the relatively slacking pack of the rest of the animal kingdom is language. No other species, after all, spends as much time thinking up lyrics to a song on this theme: “Oh baby, I really, really want you.”

Kidding aside — the use of fire, at least when viewed from a distance, ranks somewhere high on the list of special, and truly unique, human behaviors. Fire allows for the cooking of food, and cooked foodstuffs tend to be much more digestible than raw.(29) An added benefit would be burning away infectious microbes. Equipped with fire, our kind can not only digest more of the food we collect, but we can also expand our pantry, so to speak, to include otherwise less-edible foods.

“Because cooking caused the diet to be softer and more readily digested, it can readily account for the reduction in tooth area and gut size, as well as the increased energy needed for fueling a larger brain.” (30)

The use of fire for cooking is certainly a hallmark of the human. How else might we be distinctly different? (Beyond language and tool use.)

What about this class of behaviors as a potentially defining hallmark of humanity: insubordination? Yes, insubordination. No species is so good at circumventing and even toppling authority than our own.

As Christopher Boehm has discussed at length in his book, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, we are an uppity lot. As I will more completely explore in the next series of posts for my Almighty Alpha project (chapter title: “The Egalitarian Ape: All for All and None for One”), humans are cleverly capable coalition-builders. By acting collectively, the lessers can rise in power and/or reduce the power of others.(31)

Call it teamwork. That might just be the sine qua non of human uniqueness.

Continue Reading »

Technorati Links: evolutionary psychology, primates

Over the holidays I have been reading Richard Dawkins’ latest book: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. I will be sharing my thoughts about it here in coming days.

Can I be objective? I am, after all, someone who accepts evolutionary theory with a very high degree of confidence. And I hold Dawkins in high esteem. How can I then be capable of spotting and sharing any “bad” I find among the good of his book (if there is any)?

If I am truly a 360 degree skeptic, it shouldn’t be that difficult. For I most value not the popularity of individuals I admire, nor the bald allure of what they say and write. When it comes to works of non-fiction what matters to me is the veracity of an argument. In my opinion, the movement towards truth — towards a more accurate understanding of the universe — is always the best course to take. At least in the long term.

Preliminary comment: When I first held the 400+ page book in my hands I admired the cover design and the many pages of full-color illustrations. Good start. Will any bad follow? Stay tuned.

Technorati Links: book review, Dawkins, evolution

Shrimp plants (Justicia brandegeana) are currently blooming in our Florida yard. Or at least they were. I am now in the north country, where I will be spending my holidays. I just returned from a hike through snowy woods where I encountered not a single plant in bloom.

Why don’t flowers blossom in the snow (sure, there are probably a few tundra species that do). I imagine part of it has to do with what inner ice crystals would do to the fragile tissues of flowers. There are likely a number of sensible, biological reasons for the lack of blossoms in winter.

Are there any sensible, theological reasons why flowers don’t unfurl during blizzards and cold snaps? If a priest could find one in a “holy book”, or make one up, should it be taught alongside the biological reasons for things in school science classrooms?

Of course not.

Keep religion out of science. Because science it isn’t.

Technorati Links: biology, creationism, education

Last week I wrote a post about a newly discovered clue into the evolution of language. That clue had to do with the action of a gene. Today I share yet another clue — or a piece to the puzzle, if you prefer. The title to the news release reads,

Words, Gestures Are Translated By Same Brain Regions

Frankly, the title just about tells it all. But here’s more detail:

In a study published in this week’s Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers have shown that the brain regions that have long been recognized as a center in which spoken or written words are decoded are also important in interpreting wordless gestures. The findings suggest that these brain regions may play a much broader role in the interpretation of symbols than researchers have thought and, for this reason, could be the evolutionary starting point from which language originated.

This finding dovetails with a long known curiosity of early language development. Children progress through a number of stages before being able to use fully-functional language. They coo, they babble, and they progress from there. The interesting thing is that even deaf children who later go on to use sign language will first babble. But not with their larynx, tongues and mouth. Instead, they “babble” with their hands.

Cool. When was the last time you “spoke” with your hands? Perhaps you pointed an index finger at someone, palm facing up, then curled that finger back towards you, repeatedly. Come hither. Or maybe you used another finger, pushing it straight up with your fist otherwise balled-up, knuckles facing away from you. You sent a message to another person: this is what I think about you! And if the person saw it, the message was certainly understood.

Although we can “say” so much with gestures, we seem to have specialized in words. Unless, of course, we are deaf. They we can readily specialize in gestures.

Technorati Links: evolution, language

Isn’t it odd? It seems this universe was perfectly created for us. If I’m hungry, I can simply venture outside and grab a stalk of the dwarf papyrus growing out of our ornamental pond and munch on it. Free lunch! I hardly need clothing, and I could sleep out under the stars with just a thin sheet to keep the dew off me.

Yah, right. The truth: Were I to eat the plant photographed above, I’d get a severe stomach ache. And although neither the heat nor AC is running at this moment — outside it is a fairly friendly 64 degrees out — without electricity-dependent indoor climate-control, there would be many times I’d be more tempted to curse the weather on this planet than to compliment it.

If you find yourself under the spell of the anthropic principle (that the universe seems oddly suited for us — so how could there not be a great reason for our existence) I suggest taking a boat to Antarctica and spending a month camping there. Good luck feeding yourself.

Sure, we human beings have found and created cushy niches for ourselves. But if we take a wider view and bear in mind the niches completely inhospitable to us and the many millions of our kind that have died trying to get well fed and comfortable — it seems to me that evolution better accounts for what exists today.

Wow! What persists, persists! Must have been meant to be!

I doubt it.

Technorati Links: anthropic principle, evolution, photography

The good news: a new clue in the case of the evolution of human language has been discovered. The bad: It’s less like a full-bodied suspect with blood on her hands, more like a solitary fingerprint on a doorknob.

An article published yesterday in the online journal Nature shared findings about this clue: A specific gene that differs in humans and chimpanzees.

The research demonstrates that mutations believed to be important to FOXP2′s evolution in humans change how the gene functions, resulting in different gene targets being switched on or off in human and chimp brains. [source]

Okay, it’s just a clue, and maybe not a sexy one at that. But the bulk of the work scientists do is like this. Laying the groundwork for the big breakthrough.

What lead did the investigators follow? It seems that when mutated, the FOXP2 gene causes disrupted speech in humans.

There are many mysteries about human evolution still to be solved: The why/how of bipedalism, the origin of language (tied to tool use and physical gesturing or a relatively mere elaboration of guttural barks?), etc. For those who love mysteries, who welcome the state of being puzzled but not clue-less, it’s a good thing. I pity the citizens of an imaged far-distance future who know everything. How boring that would be.

Technorati Links: evolution, language

Any observer of nature will have noticed that many of the males are so colorfully “dressed” they seem ready to enter a gay pride parade. Or something. It was originally assumed that males do this largely to impress the ladies. And maybe by broadcasting their extreme manliness, to scare off competing males.

Recent research has discovered another reason for the secondary sexual characteristics that result in bright male coloration and exaggerated physical traits. And, surprise, it is not about sexual selection, about signaling health and fertility to the opposite sex. Rather, there is some male-to-male signaling going on. But here’s the wonderfully strange and new element: It seems by being brightly colored, males of one species are sending signals to males of another species.

Huh? But wait, before you conclude something kinky is going on, check out what researchers Gregory Grether and Christopher Anderson concluded from their study:

We found that male Hetaerina damselflies use species differences in wing coloration to distinguish between intruders of their own species and intruders of other damselfly species, but only at sites where the two species naturally occur together,” he said. “This provides one of the clearest demonstrations yet of an evolutionary process that is probably very prevalent in nature but which has largely been overlooked.

Well that make sense. A male wouldn’t want to waste its time and energy fighting off another male of a different species. For that male poses no real threat to its sexual reproduction.

Will their finding hold up for other species? The authors speculate about birds -

The cost of attacking the wrong type of male and of being attacked by the wrong type of male favors the rich diversity of coloration and of birdsong and chemical cues, such as odors, to identify rivals.

Makes sense. But is it true? Stay tuned. Thanks to science, we may soon find out.

Technorati Links: biology, evolution