Re: [asa] Scientist's Study Of Brain Genes Sparks a Backlash

In a message dated 6/16/2006 1:19:49 PM Eastern Standard Time,
janmatch@earthlink.net writes:
Scientist's Study Of Brain Genes Sparks a Backlash
Wall Street Journal ^ | June 16, 2006 | Antonio Regalado
Posted on 06/16/2006 12:32:09 PM EDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1650599/posts [refresh browser]
Thanks for this interesting post. Here is a description of the studies. If it
is correct, civilization/culture and human evolution act synergistically. The
reason it is not PC is that this would suggest that some populations are more
evolved than others and this destroys the notion, not of equal opportunity,
but of equal phenotypic capability across all populations. It would then
suggest some cultures are more adaptive than others, which D.S. Wilson also suggests
in Darwin's Cathedral. He writes:

“Most possible cultures are not adaptive, and we should hope for our own
sakes that a process exists for winnowing among the many possibilities, leaving a
subset that are at least somewhat well adapted to their environments.”

At the link below, a sentence reads:

"Lahn emphasized that it would not be correct to interpret the findings as
indicating that one ethnic group is more "evolved" than another."

http://www.hhmi.org/news/lahn4.html

[snip]

Human Brain Is Still Evolving
Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers who have analyzed sequence
variations in two genes that regulate brain size in human populations have found
evidence that the human brain is still evolving.
They speculate that if the human species continues to survive, the human
brain may continue to evolve, driven by the pressures of natural selection. Their
data suggest that major variants in these genes arose at roughly the same
times as the origin of culture in human populations as well as the advent of
agriculture and written language.

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Received on Fri Jun 16 14:05:20 2006