Thank you for your comments. This is my first attempt to put my gut instincts into print. Thus, I need the feedback. I am aware of the use of “populations” and do need to understand this. At this point, I like the older description of the human species being different in kind from an animal species. However, I never write in stone.
Yeah, one needs to understand population thinking to address the current topic in an informed manner. Personally, I found Ernst Mayr to write clearly on species and populations.
Darwin held that the mind of man differs in
degree from the mind of higher animals and anthropoid apes. A number of prominent neo-Darwinians hold that the mind of man differs in
kind. However, their difference in kind is a
superficial difference in kind and not a
radical difference in kind. That is, these neo-Darwinians believe there is an underlying continuum between man an higher animals that reaches a threshold at which human consciousness arises.
The threshold refers basically to the sophistication of brain development, which neo-Darwinians assume to be a
sufficient condition for the human mind.
To the contrary, I maintain that brain development and a relative integrity of the brain is only a
necessary condition for the human intellect, but not sufficient in itself.
I’ve noticed that the concept of epiphenomenon is common.
It is a common materialist philosophical explanation of human psychic activity.
If someone could do a time line, it would be possible to determine a time frame for favorable conditions which would make it possible for two fully complete humans to live and procreate.
If these primal humans were Assyrians, like myself, they could procreate under any conceivable conditions.
I’ve seen some pictures of those first tools. I can imagine a man asking where the electric cord was!
Seriously, I would have to see the “scientific evidence” you mentioned. I am very comfortable with the concept of sentience in animals so true rationality would need quite a bit of evidence.
It really takes a close look at the evidence, and a lot of thought. Sentient knowledge gets fairly sophisticated in higher animals, who can use objects as tools. Evidence of rational thought needs to be seen in the kind of primitive tools made, how they were supposedly made, and the conditions under which they were found. There are animal bones with the markings of tools used to strip the meat and so on. What does this imply. It’s all fascinating. What level of cognitive ability is required to shape a stone with a particular angel for a particular use?
This sounds like the philosophy of relativism. Maybe not. Regardless of how “species” is understood or what the problems are, the key issue is that the human person is not a member of the brute animal kingdom.
Darwin’s concept of the biological continuum relieves man of being above the animal kingdom in sense of his mind no longer being
radically different in kind. We can all be
brute animals now, instead of the traditional *rational *animal. That was the Darwinian revolution. Yippee kay yeh!
In the Darwinian continuum, species disappears into the twilight of a gray flux. The basis for the distinctions the human mind makes has disappeared. The idea of species as just being well defined variations seems to be supported by the idea of genetic swamping. However, I think genetic swamping is capable of a better interpretation than the one given to it by evolutionists.
We can’t talk specifically about man being other than a brute animal unless we deal with the species problem. Darwin wrestled with the notion of species and he came up with an incredible number of definitions, but the notion was made meaningless by his particular theory of the biological continuum.
Louis Agassiz took aim at this problem soon after the publication of the
Origin of Species. Agassiz said, “If species do not exist at all, as the supporters of the transmutation theory maintain, how can they vary? And if individuals alone exist, how can the differences which may be observed among them prove the variability of species?” (L. Agassiz, “On the Origin of Species,” *American Journal of Science and Arts, *30 (July 1860), p. 143).
Scientists use a practical or usable definition of species involving reproductive isolation, but this does not address the genuine and persistent problem voiced by Agassiz. It’s not that Agassiz had deep metaphysical insight, but the problem centers around the existence of universals versus the nominalist and often materialist view of reality.
The scientific theory of evolution has its philosophical and theological implications that need to be properly explained. It is an over-extension of biological evolution theory to presume that it can be applied to man in the same way that it is applied to other animals and plants.
Such a phenomena is common in the history of intellectual culture. Someone gains some truth and insight and then overextends the insight to cover more of reality than it is capable of. Perhaps another good example is Newtonian mechanics or physics which does not do as well on the cosmological level as it does on the terrestrial.
