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A review by socraticgadfly
Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind by Kermit Pattison
5.0
Very good overall. The book has had lots of reviews, so I'm just adding a few thoughts.
First, this is a great book, including the feuds between scientists.
Getting them down in detail is important. The scientific method is the best means of insight into our world we have. BUT? Contra people in the scientism world, it’s not infallible, it’s practiced by preening bipedal apes with agendas, and while it usually seems to be self-correcting, per Max Planck’s bon mot, sometimes that takes a few deaths for it to happen.
Second, I do think Tim White and his crew have correctly reconstructed Ardi. That said?
White is wrong on being a clumper, and a “hard” one at that, not a splitter, on the bush not tree of hominid evolution, or rather, the web. (And the author has a lacuna; what does White think about cross-species reproduction? I’m sure White would hand-wave, but why didn’t Pattison directly ask him?) As part of this, I think White is also as likely to be wrong as right on some of his genera reconstruction claims.
White IS a hypocrite, for among other things, having talked about open access then amending that to say “when we’ve finalized our work.” Reminded me immediately of the original generation of Dead Sea Scrolls scholars. Like them, White surely knows that with the wait, “I establish my interpretation as THE narrative” and others have to swim upstream. The fact that other paleoarchaeologists have done similar doesn’t justify it, nor does it remove the stain of hypocrisy from White. And, as a biblical quasi-scholar, I don’t make this statement lightly. Nor do I make it metaphorically. Pattison hints at the idea of "narrative control" being involved.
Owen Lovejoy may know articulation of skeletons, but he is most likely wrong on why human birth is problematic. Alex Bezzerides notes that women “maxing out” their biology at 9 months is more likely; they just can't carry a baby longer without detriment to their own metabolism. And, after accusing ev psychers of “just so stories,” Lovejoy’s own just so story about the decline in human smelling sensitivity is laughable. Rather, it’s probably that, with the female birth canal possibly being a partial restriction on fetal development, and the maxed-out biology being an even bigger one, there’s just so much a human brain can do, and trimming back olfactory abilities was a trade-off. In any case, we don’t know, and we’ve got plenty of unknown unknowns about this, and that’s the biggest reason a just-so story like this tees me off.
First, this is a great book, including the feuds between scientists.
Getting them down in detail is important. The scientific method is the best means of insight into our world we have. BUT? Contra people in the scientism world, it’s not infallible, it’s practiced by preening bipedal apes with agendas, and while it usually seems to be self-correcting, per Max Planck’s bon mot, sometimes that takes a few deaths for it to happen.
Second, I do think Tim White and his crew have correctly reconstructed Ardi. That said?
White is wrong on being a clumper, and a “hard” one at that, not a splitter, on the bush not tree of hominid evolution, or rather, the web. (And the author has a lacuna; what does White think about cross-species reproduction? I’m sure White would hand-wave, but why didn’t Pattison directly ask him?) As part of this, I think White is also as likely to be wrong as right on some of his genera reconstruction claims.
White IS a hypocrite, for among other things, having talked about open access then amending that to say “when we’ve finalized our work.” Reminded me immediately of the original generation of Dead Sea Scrolls scholars. Like them, White surely knows that with the wait, “I establish my interpretation as THE narrative” and others have to swim upstream. The fact that other paleoarchaeologists have done similar doesn’t justify it, nor does it remove the stain of hypocrisy from White. And, as a biblical quasi-scholar, I don’t make this statement lightly. Nor do I make it metaphorically. Pattison hints at the idea of "narrative control" being involved.
Owen Lovejoy may know articulation of skeletons, but he is most likely wrong on why human birth is problematic. Alex Bezzerides notes that women “maxing out” their biology at 9 months is more likely; they just can't carry a baby longer without detriment to their own metabolism. And, after accusing ev psychers of “just so stories,” Lovejoy’s own just so story about the decline in human smelling sensitivity is laughable. Rather, it’s probably that, with the female birth canal possibly being a partial restriction on fetal development, and the maxed-out biology being an even bigger one, there’s just so much a human brain can do, and trimming back olfactory abilities was a trade-off. In any case, we don’t know, and we’ve got plenty of unknown unknowns about this, and that’s the biggest reason a just-so story like this tees me off.