That’s not what the evidence indicates. “Seeing” is a very gradual process. Seeing is gathering useful information from electromagnetic radiation, normally in the visible spectrum. So even if you are blind, your skin is sensitive to light to a small degree.
Yes, but this is a senstity to heat and not actually “seeing the light” so to speak. In other words, we’re talking about how a
tactile sense eventually became a
visual sense, something which
synesthetes have difficulty with in our modern era.
The scorpian is a
awesome example of a tactile sense becoming a visual sense. They sense their way around using sensory hairs and slit organs on the legs, pedipalps and body that pick up vibrations and scents (mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors). They also have special organs on the underside of the body called pectines, which pick up ground textures and scents. Ground vibrations caused by moving prey are sensed both by slit-like tarsal sensory organs on the scorpion’s legs and vibration sensitive tarsal hairs.
If you doubt this, close your eyes and walk from shade to sunlight on a cloudless summer day. Almost all other organisms are similarly sensitive. A dark pigmented spot would increase sensitivity, just as wearing a black t-shirt would increase yours in the above thought experiment. More sensory nerves would be even better. And if the sensory capsules were slightly changed to be more sensitive to certain wavelengths, so much the better. And that is a primitive retina. And so on.
I have no doubt the a direction sense can be garnered from a sensitivity to heat sources, like the sunlight example you gave above. One could also determine the directions up and down from their sense of equilibrium too, so another “direction sense” could be picked up from this and added to the fora of senses to build upward toward a more accurate awareness of their surroundings.
However, having stated this, there is no “knock down” theory as to exactly how the tactile sense and sense of balance eventually became something which could “see” light in the detail that the human now sees.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened. I think Collins in his book
Language of God gives a good general outline of how such a thing “could have” happened.
But I will stress that “could have” does not necessarilly mean “must have”. At this point in time we simply don’t know if this really happened or not-- although people are allowed to “believe” this if they so choose.
Examples of all such stages are still to be found in living things, and all of them are beneficial (which means that the process is open to Darwinian evolution). The depression of such a spot to limit the light that can touch it (and therefore providing useful information about the direction of light) isn’t much of a change, something that can happen randomly, but would be favored when it happened.
Yes, there are all potential example of what “could have” happened-- which is a matter of faith in my opinion.
We see the process underway in the infrared band, in snakes, with the pythons least adapted, and the pit vipers most evolved.
Me personally, I think we’re seeing the emergence of a totally new species right
here– but this is only my own opinion.
In other words, I think that with enough time, a new species will emerge from the interaction of the two different species. This is a “co-operative” nature of evolution that I think is rarely addressed precisely because people seem to be fixated on natural selection and mutation.
Intentionality plays a part in the evolution of species, even on the lower orders of species, no matter how much “secular evolutionists” would attempt to claim our consciousness is merely an illusion frabricated by a mind that cannot conceive of itself in this way.
I’m fairly sure that most women who have experienced pregancy will tell you that they have had odd cravings too, cravings which left when they gave birth and were often later seen to be a personality traits of the child they bore.
