Rethink Ashley Johnson Commentary

The Drawers - Ashley Johnson - Primal Commentary by Ashley Johnson

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RETHINK

Over the centuries Western society has postulated a relationship between humanity and animals that sees humans as superior. The original perceptions derive from religious dogma but Charles Darwin's 19th century Theory of Evolution has added the linear idea of natural selection. Environmental circumstances were supposed to have favoured certain genetic predispositions through chance, thus eclipsing life forms less suited. It translated to the survival of the fittest paradigm, which was obviously humanity according to the common sense. The misleading image of hunched apes gradually transforming into the upright human has long graced our classroom psyche.

This painting uses August Rodin's famous statue, The Thinker, liberated from its pedestal and combined with a hamadryas baboon head reminiscent of those ubiquitous Albert Einstein photographs. The Chimpanzee in the background 'apes' the Thinker's pose. Bonobos are complex animals that use sex as currency for social interactions. The female sex organ is external and very prominent. Their society is matriarchal, benign and very tolerant of diversity.

Neo Darwinists state that humanity shares a common ancestor with bonobos and chimps. The implication is that genetic mutations took the lines in different directions, but the fossil evidence has not been very conclusive. There are examples like Australopithecus, which are closer to chimps, and ancient humans like Neanderthal but nothing in between. It is tempting to make the evidence suit the hypothesis.
The question arises whether our current theory of evolution is entirely correct and also, if it were not, would we accommodate an alternative theory? John A. Davison, a professor of Biology at Vermont University wrote a manifesto called An Evolutionary Manifesto: A New Hypothesis for Organic Change, which essentially calls into question the Neo Darwinist version of events. http://www.uvm.edu/~jdavison/davison-manifesto.html.

Davison defers to theorists like Richard B. Goldschmidt and William Bateson whose ideas were current when Darwin's theory first became prominent but were ignored. In essence, Davison's focus is on the chromosomes, not the genes, and he suggests that evolution took place at the first meiotic division through irreversible breaks in the chromosomes, centromeres and centrioles. He concludes that the second meiotic division or sex developed as a conservative measure to limit evolution. He predicts that no further evolution will take place.

It is interesting how ideas take root and how difficult it is to dislodge them. Richard Dawkins, the arch Neo Darwinist, is currently promoting his book, 'The God Delusion'. It will be amusing if he turns out to be equally deluded. It is clear though that we need to rethink our relationship with animals. Current social biology studies are revealing that many of our cultural and altruistic attributes are present in other ape societies too. It is important for our own survival to recognize that humanity is not the pinnacle of evolutionary success.