Darwin is saying that all animals are linked by genealogical ties. The mouse and the elephant share a common ancestor, a small, shrew-like creature, 200million years ago. So is he saying elephants are still mice, just big mice with a funny nose? No, the theory, as the book title suggests, is a theory of origins. Given 10million years descent with modification can come up with something genuinely new. By spreading the necessary changes across millions of generations, descent with modification can even produce genuine novelty without needing a mouse to give birth to an elephant.
Some people look at modern technological civilization and see it as evidence that humans are not apes, but are their own kind of thing, genuinely new. Darwinians accept that sufficient such evidence can prove the point that humans (or maybe post-humans) are not apes, because it is central to Darwin’s theory that some kinds of genuine novelty arise despite (and indeed through) long chains of descent.
Uh, the reason to say “humans are apes” is because doing so turns out to have useful predictive power. That being the actual point of the original quote.
Humans are still apes according to any monophyletic definition of ape, given that bonobos are more closely related to us than to orangutans. (Also, birds are dinosaurs and dogs are wolves.)
Human civilizations are extremely complicated, and defy current attempts to understand them. One indirect approach is to leave humans to one side for the moment and to study bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas first. Where does that get us? There are two competing ideas.
ONE The huge differences between modern human civilizations and the social behaviour of bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas, are a reflection of recent evolution. In the past few million years, since the last common ancestor, human evolution has taken some strange turns, leading to the advanced technological society we see around us. When we study bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas we are looking at creatures without key adaptions and when we try to transfer insights to help us understand human social behaviour we end up mislead.
TWO Once we understand bonobos, chimpanzee, and gorilla behaviour, we have the key to understanding all apes, including humans. Human civilisation may be incomprehensible when we come at it cold, but having warmed up on puzzling out the basis of the simpler social behaviours of other apes, we can expect to start making progress.
Which of these two views is correct? That strikes me as a very hard question. I’m uncomfortable with the words “humans are still apes” because that phrase seems to be used to beg the question. The more conservative formulation “humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago.” dodges giving a premature opinion on a hard question.
Here is a thought experiment to dramatize the issue: A deadly virus escapes from a weapons lab and kills all humans. Now the talking-animal niche on earth is vacant again. Will chimpanzees or gorillas evolve to fill it, building their own technologically advanced civilizations in a few million years time. If you believe view number two, this seems reasonably likely. If you believe view number one, it seems very unlikely. One is much more interested in the idea that the strange turns in human evolution in the past million years are a one in a million freak and are a candidate for the great filter
“humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago.”
More like “any common ancestor of all apes is also an ancestor of all humans”.
(Humans are not apes if you define apes paraphiletically e.g. as ‘the descendants of the most recent common ancestor of bonobos and gibbons, excluding humans’, but then “humans are not apes” becomes a tautology.)
Which of these two views is correct? That strikes me as a very hard question. I’m uncomfortable with the words “humans are still apes” because that phrase seems to be used to beg the question. The more conservative formulation “humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago.” dodges giving a premature opinion on a hard question.
Humans might have adaptations which set us apart from all the other apes behavior-wise, but we share a common ancestor with chimps and bonobos more recently than they share a common ancestor with orangutans. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say we split off from the apes millions of years ago, when we’re still more closely related to some of the apes than those apes are to other species of ape.
Edit: already pointed out in the grandparent, I guess this is what I get for only looking at the local context.
Which of these two views is correct? That strikes me as a very hard question. I’m uncomfortable with the words “humans are still apes” because that phrase seems to be used to beg the question. The more conservative formulation “humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago.” dodges giving a premature opinion on a hard question.
How you define the word “ape” makes no difference to the facts about our relationships with our ancestors and their other descendants.
The fish thing is irrelevant. If what makes bonobos and orangutans apes is that they share a common ancestor, then that also makes us an ape, since that’s our ancestor too. Can’t adapt that argument to fish, because descendants of the ancestor we share with fish are not generally called fish, the way descendants of the ancestor we share with orangutans are generally called apes.
Can’t adapt that argument to fish, because descendants of the ancestor we share with fish are not generally called fish, the way descendants of the ancestor we share with orangutans are generally called apes.
I’m not sure this holds water: a common-ancestry approach would have to take in lobe-finned fishes like the lungfish, who’re more closely related to tetrapods but are called fish on the basis of a morphological similarity derived from a common ancestor. Essentially the same process as for apes. They’re in good company, though: there are plenty of traditional taxonomical groups which turn out to be polyphyletic when you take a cladistic approach, including reptiles.
There would be no point in defining fish monophyletically anyway, as it would then be just a synonym of craniates. (Also note that “apes, i.e. non-human hominoids, do not include humans” is a tautology but “fish, i.e. non-tetrapod craniates, do not include humans” is not.)
(Of course, you could then say “There would be no point in defining apes monophyletically anyway, as it would then be just a synonym of hominoids.” But hominoids is a much uglier word, and hominoids/hominids/hominines/etc. are much harder to remember than apes/great apes/African apes/etc. (plus, my spell checker baulks at some of the former, FWIW). (See this proposal to rename the scientific names of the clades.)
Modest Mouse, lyrics Isaac Brock
I don’t see why this got downvoted. It’s making “humans are still apes, despite their pretensions” into a memorable image.
“Humans are still apes” is un-Darwinian.
Darwin is saying that all animals are linked by genealogical ties. The mouse and the elephant share a common ancestor, a small, shrew-like creature, 200million years ago. So is he saying elephants are still mice, just big mice with a funny nose? No, the theory, as the book title suggests, is a theory of origins. Given 10million years descent with modification can come up with something genuinely new. By spreading the necessary changes across millions of generations, descent with modification can even produce genuine novelty without needing a mouse to give birth to an elephant.
Some people look at modern technological civilization and see it as evidence that humans are not apes, but are their own kind of thing, genuinely new. Darwinians accept that sufficient such evidence can prove the point that humans (or maybe post-humans) are not apes, because it is central to Darwin’s theory that some kinds of genuine novelty arise despite (and indeed through) long chains of descent.
Uh, the reason to say “humans are apes” is because doing so turns out to have useful predictive power. That being the actual point of the original quote.
Humans are still apes according to any monophyletic definition of ape, given that bonobos are more closely related to us than to orangutans. (Also, birds are dinosaurs and dogs are wolves.)
“Birds are dinosaurs” is becoming commonplace. Even the Wikipedia article on dinosaurs has given up and gone present tense.
Human civilizations are extremely complicated, and defy current attempts to understand them. One indirect approach is to leave humans to one side for the moment and to study bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas first. Where does that get us? There are two competing ideas.
ONE The huge differences between modern human civilizations and the social behaviour of bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas, are a reflection of recent evolution. In the past few million years, since the last common ancestor, human evolution has taken some strange turns, leading to the advanced technological society we see around us. When we study bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas we are looking at creatures without key adaptions and when we try to transfer insights to help us understand human social behaviour we end up mislead.
TWO Once we understand bonobos, chimpanzee, and gorilla behaviour, we have the key to understanding all apes, including humans. Human civilisation may be incomprehensible when we come at it cold, but having warmed up on puzzling out the basis of the simpler social behaviours of other apes, we can expect to start making progress.
Which of these two views is correct? That strikes me as a very hard question. I’m uncomfortable with the words “humans are still apes” because that phrase seems to be used to beg the question. The more conservative formulation “humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago.” dodges giving a premature opinion on a hard question.
Here is a thought experiment to dramatize the issue: A deadly virus escapes from a weapons lab and kills all humans. Now the talking-animal niche on earth is vacant again. Will chimpanzees or gorillas evolve to fill it, building their own technologically advanced civilizations in a few million years time. If you believe view number two, this seems reasonably likely. If you believe view number one, it seems very unlikely. One is much more interested in the idea that the strange turns in human evolution in the past million years are a one in a million freak and are a candidate for the great filter
More like “any common ancestor of all apes is also an ancestor of all humans”.
(Humans are not apes if you define apes paraphiletically e.g. as ‘the descendants of the most recent common ancestor of bonobos and gibbons, excluding humans’, but then “humans are not apes” becomes a tautology.)
Humans might have adaptations which set us apart from all the other apes behavior-wise, but we share a common ancestor with chimps and bonobos more recently than they share a common ancestor with orangutans. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say we split off from the apes millions of years ago, when we’re still more closely related to some of the apes than those apes are to other species of ape.
Edit: already pointed out in the grandparent, I guess this is what I get for only looking at the local context.
How you define the word “ape” makes no difference to the facts about our relationships with our ancestors and their other descendants.
I don’t see why being monophyletic is the most relevant property of definitions.
Also, are you also going to attempt to argue that humans are fish?
The fish thing is irrelevant. If what makes bonobos and orangutans apes is that they share a common ancestor, then that also makes us an ape, since that’s our ancestor too. Can’t adapt that argument to fish, because descendants of the ancestor we share with fish are not generally called fish, the way descendants of the ancestor we share with orangutans are generally called apes.
I’m not sure this holds water: a common-ancestry approach would have to take in lobe-finned fishes like the lungfish, who’re more closely related to tetrapods but are called fish on the basis of a morphological similarity derived from a common ancestor. Essentially the same process as for apes. They’re in good company, though: there are plenty of traditional taxonomical groups which turn out to be polyphyletic when you take a cladistic approach, including reptiles.
There would be no point in defining fish monophyletically anyway, as it would then be just a synonym of craniates. (Also note that “apes, i.e. non-human hominoids, do not include humans” is a tautology but “fish, i.e. non-tetrapod craniates, do not include humans” is not.)
(Of course, you could then say “There would be no point in defining apes monophyletically anyway, as it would then be just a synonym of hominoids.” But hominoids is a much uglier word, and hominoids/hominids/hominines/etc. are much harder to remember than apes/great apes/African apes/etc. (plus, my spell checker baulks at some of the former, FWIW). (See this proposal to rename the scientific names of the clades.)
Bad spelling and bad punctuation would suffice.