Enigma in Human Form

by Carl Grant
Standard evolutionary theory, by which I mean naturalistic Darwinism (ND),faces an enigma in human form. ND works mostly through a random search for improved reproductive performance, where slight modifications that produce improved fitness are preserved through natural selection. The human in a state of nature has no tools, clothing, or mechanical weapons. In looking at him, one wonders what lucky modifications produced the following attributes:
1. Children, produced mostly one at a time, with the longest, highly vulnerable infancy, followed by the longest childhood of any mammal.
2. No organic weapons such as antlers or claws, The teeth being uniquely small and even, with no muzzle are not much of a weapon, except in the hands of a true expert such as Mike Tyson.
3. His bipedal locomotion makes him much slower than any predator over a short distance, while making him particularly vulnerable to injury after a fall. Comparing him to his closest relative, the chimp, his climbing ability is pathetic. The chimp has been variously estimated to be from four to seven times as strong. The chimps bones are thicker, the skin is thicker and stronger, and the chimp has a coat of fur to insulate and protect.

The converse is also enigmatic. Humans have many capabilities which would seem to be of little value in the survival reproduction race. There are numerous examples of this. I'll give two of them in some depth. The first is the way some of us are able to go beyond speech in the use of the voice. When I first took a singing lesson the instructor told me to match a pitch from the piano. I was very surprised when I found I could do this the first time, pedestrian example, but I was impressed. I am far from a great singer(although I think my voice is much better then it sounds), but when I have attempted to imitate professionals, such as Bing Crosby, it does sound somewhat like him, and is certainly better quality then my normal voice. I'm not sure how incremental improvements in this arena would be of much aid in survival, except perhaps in front of a live audience. I've noticed that some performers are able to imitate an incredible variety of sounds. Here is a partial list of some I have heard. All of the following were somewhere between adequate and astounding. A few of them required amplification. People can imitate most musical instruments including the flute, trumpet, sax, clarinet, French horn(the French call it a German horn), banjo, bass, harp, violin, and various drums. I've also heard good imitations of hot rods, Mercedes, gunfire, bottles being opened, bird songs, whale songs, running and dripping water, helicopters, creaking floors and doors, various alarms, packages being opened etc. My second set of examples involves the use of that most incredible all purpose tool, the human hand.

As a high school student I took beginning typing. Every Friday we took a test. We typed furiously and at the end counted the number of words. We then counted our mistakes and subtracted 5 words for each mistake, a very unfair ratio, I thought. On a bad day I would owe them words. Inept as I was, I did have flashes of mediocrity. I could rattle along pretty well; I just made too many mistakes. Still the speed and dexterity, with each finger working independently and hitting the right key over 50% of the time is an achievement beyond the reach of even a highly motivated chimp. There was one girl in our class who could type a disturbing seventy three words per minute. She was no beginner. I'm sure her parents started teaching her to type when she was a fetus. Our teacher told us that a top professional typist could type about 200 words per minute. Where did this ability come from? A somewhat similar skill is required of a pianist. What a skilled pianist can do requires speed, dexterity, touch, flexibility, and hand and eye coordination that seems magical. We usually take the hands for granted. Since there were few pianos around 50 million years ago what caused this latent capability to be developed? The materialist calls this a pre-adaptation, but details are not forthcoming. Impressive in a different way are the skilled use of the hands by a sleight of hand magician. To make playing cards appear or disappear she will use a back palm. To do this yourself take a number of cards, grasp one corner of the short edges with the 2nd and 3rd fingers, curl them around the backs of the third and 4th fingers to grasp the other corner holding your hand naturally so that from the front the hand looks empty. Next you simply rotate one of the cards around grasping it with the thumb and index finger so it blocks the audience's view of the remaining cards. Next you throw away the newly produced card, while simultaneously rotating the rest of the cards back behind your hand. Sounds easy enough doesn't it? Continue in this fashion until all the cards have been produced. To make the cards vanish just reverse the process. There are many more moves involving equal amazing but different skills in manipulating cards. Then there are slights with ropes, balls, coins and innumerable other objects. Perhaps our distant ancestor could increase her chance of survival by making her companions bananas disappear, if she didn't get caught.

Mechanics, surgeons, painters and a host of others make extraordinary use of their hands. The enigma then results from a combination of facts. We aren't strong, swift, or well protected. We do not reproduce rapidly, and when we do our young are extremely vulnerable for an exceptionally long period of time. However, none of this matters once we have civilization going for us. Our infants have little to fear from predators once they are safely ensconced in their cribs inside the house and mom and dad have weapons at their disposal. So did nature know this was going to happen? If so, she would not have to waste time on these seeming weaknesses, but could busy herself pre-adapting us for the above mentioned skills. It seems we had anatomical structures and developmental tendencies in place long before the abilities became operative. Many of the apparent weaknesses resulted in structures that later came together harmoniously to allow our latent abilities to flourish.

Bipedal locomotion frees the forelimbs for tool use. It also allows us to carry things without using the mouth, which in turn is freed up for the development of speech. It is also more efficient in in terms of respiration. Most mammal's breathing is tied to locomotion. This is in part caused by having to support the head in front of the body, adding to energy expenditure. Since the human head is lined up over the center of gravity of the whole body, which in turn is directly over the feet our breathing is decoupled from standing, walking, or running, This is a big aid to speech. Our relative hairlessness also aids in speech. Most mammals have to pant to cool down. Humans' lack of fur combined with their uniquely efficient sweat glands allow them to forego panting. We can also take a cold shower. The reason our teeth are not good weapons is that they are small, all of about the same height, very close together, and we have no muzzle. The mouth is relatively small, which makes the voice more resonant. The structure and positioning of the dentition allows clear enunciation. Our long infancy allows language to develop. We have time to become educated. It allows time for closer ties to develop between family and community. It also allows time for the continued growth of the brain. Humans are the only creature in which the brain grows significantly after birth.

All this suggests some sort of purposive or directive factor. What that factor is cannot be inferred from this type of evidence. Whether it involves a deistic, pantheistic, or theistic God, or perhaps an elan vital or vital force, or super aliens, or something totally novel must be adjudicated in other arenas. The objection might be raised that this solves nothing. It just pushes the problem back to another entity or force that must be explained. That is true, but realizing the nature of the problem, and discarding unproductive approaches, e.g. materialistic naturalism, is well worth the effort. If we landed on some distant planet and found structures clearly evidencing purpose, we shouldn't spend all our resources looking for "natural" causes. If an aborigine found a Geiger counter she would infer that it wasn't a product of random forces, even though she might have no idea what created it or explain how that entity came to be.

A series of experiments over the last 120 years demonstrate some remarkable human visual abilities which present difficulties for neodarwinian theory. I'll consider only one series of experiments (published in Psychological Issues, Vol. III, no.4 monograph 12. The Formation and Transformation of the Perceptual World by Ivo Kohler International University Press, New York, N.Y. 1964.) Ivo Kohler Phd., is head of the Department of Psychology, Institute for Experimental Psychology, Innsbruck Austria. In 1962-1963 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. Using specially designed spectacles or goggles to invert the image sent to the subject eyes The world appeared upside down, but this changed over the next few days and more and more images appeared rightside up. The subject was able to function normally and was tested for motor coordination. He was able to ride a bicycle and engage in fencing and was able to parry an opponents blows. When the goggles were removed after nine days the world appeared upside down for a few days and then his vision returned to normal. These experiments have been replicated by at least two other qualified researchers. Trying to imagine how this capacity arose through a series of fortuitous mutations, preserved through natural selection is not easy. However I know that Darwinism is an incredibly flexible theory, whose advocates will surely rise to the challenge. I will submit my own thoughts on how it might have occurred. If it has some trifling defects at least it might provide food for thought. I picture our hominid ancestors wandering around in the forest primeval wearing inversion goggles.

One can easily imagine one of these hominids having been born with a mutation causing his field of vision to be rotated 75 degrees from the norm. This would enable him to view things in about their normal (pre-goggle) form by tilting his neck 105 degrees around his shoulder. Thank God for those yoga classes. Now he would be able to realize that that yellow blob hanging down from the ground is a tiger. This would allow him to rush off in the general direction of someplace else. This would place his unmutated companions at a disadvantage in the survival sweepstakes. First to attain the equivalent view they would need to do a handstand. Second they would either have to right themselves, or make their get-away walking on their hands. Their only hope would be that the tiger was so bemused by their antics that he would forget to give chase. Some might argue that hominids not wearing goggles would have a big edge over our hero. This is nonsense, since we can presume that like current teenagers, the hominids would all affect the same look.