RE: [asa] fun- an evolution test question ... a hint (was "riddle")

Schwarzwald is getting really hot... he said:

"One would be to argue that cars/machines in general are just another kind of offspring of humans. That could arguably put them in the evolutionary chain, at which point you just have to draw the lines of descent back to the common ancestor between them."

According to evolution (using Dawkins' terms), how are cars the "offspring" of humans, since cars don't have genes, and "offspring" usually inherit the genes of their ancestors (for biological systems, anyway)? You're super close!

...Bernie

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From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Schwarzwald
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 1:00 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] fun- an evolution test question ... a hint (was "riddle")

I'm not sure if anyone gave this answer yet, but I can think of two possibilities.

One would be to argue that cars/machines in general are just another kind of offspring of humans. That could arguably put them in the evolutionary chain, at which point you just have to draw the lines of descent back to the common ancestor between them.

Another way would be to argue that they're both the result artificial selection by humans. Pigs have been successively bred to have certain features, cars have been made to have certain features, therefore another link is that they're both human-guided 'artificial' products of a descent line.

I can think of other ways to justify as much, which alone probably highlights some problems with the whole evolutionary debate.
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On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com> wrote:
As I think about it more- maybe "riddle" was a bad word, because it implies a play on words or some kind of trick.  Actually, I'm thinking this could be on an actual exam if Richard Dawkins was teaching a class on evolution.

And yes- it should say 'evolutionarily' not 'evolutionary.'

Here's a further hint:

If it was a picture of a mother big and a baby pig, you'd say "that is easy- the baby is the offspring, descended from, the mother."  If I gave a picture of a fish and a human, you'd say "that's easy- they are 'cousins' because they have a common ancestor.  All mammals directly descended from some kind of fish."  This is expanding the range- can you see the evolutionary link, as proposed by Dawkins?

...Bernie

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Received on Sat Jan 10 16:17:53 2009