From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Jun 04 2003 - 23:33:03 MDT
At 01:59 PM 6/4/03 -0700, Robert wrote:
>In a rather stunning turn about, it looks like scientists
>are willing to settle on a number of genes in the human
>genome at 21,000 (for now). ...
>So those of you out there feeling that they are at the top of the
>evolutionary spectrum -- a reexamination may be in order.
Robert is being wry, but I think this is profoundly wrong for several
reasons, and maybe it's worth saying so again.
Anyone thinking there's a top of the evolutionary spectrum (or tree, or
best-fitness scale) is wrong anyway. But I can't see how the raw number of
genes can have the slightest bearing on our own magnificence. We *know* how
cool humans are (by human standards), and if it turned out that we were
constructed by only 1000 genes we wouldn't suddenly turn into slime molds.
How many kinds of stone and timber etc did it take to build Chartres
cathedral? How many elements, for that matter? How many varieties of quarks
and leptons and exchange particles? How many letters did it take to write
Shakespeare's plays? How many different structural grammatical principles?
Sorry if I'm being absurdly solemn about this, but I hear such comments now
and then from people who seem to take comfort from the idea that this
genetic frugality must mean we are inhabited by supernatural ghosties,
because otherwise we're, like, *not complicated enough* to be richly
spiritual humans, dude.
Damien Broderick
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