rstuart:

Thanks for kind words, sorry about that lack of appreciation. Philo wants to talk about this stuff like he is expert, with his own theory no less.

Philo:
Separation of our lineage from chimps occurred long ago, about 5.5 million years. That separation could easily be caused by something as straightforward as the more recent horse/zebra/donkey division, *followed* by the sort of normal genetic variation within lineages that you say you don't dispute.

The separation of human and chimp ancestors was very probably driven by otherwise negligible cytogenetic differences and mutations of key genes involved in gametogenesis or embryogenesis that happenned to be incompatible. The vast majority of human-chimp divergence is regarded as being after this separation. Despite this, banding patterns on human and chimp chromosomes are nearly identical except where major translocations have occurred. Hence the p and q arms of human chromosome2 correspond to two separate chromosomes in the great apes. Coding sequences differ in by less than 2%. Non-coding regions of clinical interest by about 2% as well. That is in sequence match, not in number which is very nearly identical.

In other words, there are bugger-all "new" genes of any sort whatsoever "separating" humans and chimps, bugger-all difference in the full set of coding genes and little variation in the sequences that help regulate these genes. Essentially just tweaking.

The few extras (probably in chimps) are awaiting completion of the chimp genome.

Banging away as if you have not heard, you are still asking after a catalogue of all genes differing between humans and "monkeys" *and* the "source" of these genes. They differ by increasing sequence divergence (mutations of existing genes, drifting or under selective pressure), by large scale rearrangements of the existing genomes, and by the occasional addition of new genes by viruses.

Anybody so very hard to please is not being genuine if they don't get down to the library themselves.

I recommend "Molecular Biology of the Gene" by James D Watson, and "Human Molecular Genetics" by Strachan & Read. Both of these are common undergrad texts, frequently updated and quite readable.

Rusty

George,
an abiding regret of mine is that I'm innumerate, at least in higher maths. I remember reading Bertrand Russell's autobiography and realising there was a whole dimension closed to me (do I have the energy to learn it now? I don't think so).
It does seem to me that a lot of academic writing is wilfully abstruse and I'm determined the dissertation I'm working on will be as accessible as I can make it. I haven't come across any of those glaring errors you attribute to Lyotard et al, but I don't doubt it. What I do come across a lot is nearly impenetrable prose, which I would hazard is just as bad as even when meaning is wrested from it, it can only be ambiguous at best.
However I remain sceptical that the hard sciences (and analytic philosophy) are in a position to look down upon the ancestors of the romantics, and I'll be looking for new arguments to test positivism and keep the bastards honest.

George:
>>(I) don't believe in belief.<<
I already reacted to this before. Taken verbatim, this sounds to me as if you said “I am not speaking” or wrote “I am not writing”. One has to have some basic assumptions to start with, e.g. the acceptance (belief in) the rules of logic, or those I listed before."
Yes, but let's not conflate our orientation with the possibility that we can think critically, in the third person as it were. One of the things I'm arguing is just that, that human intellect is, potentially, capable of transcending that orientation, of transcending ourselves via the hypothetical models we construct and test. We seem designed (poor choice of words?) to virtually transcend the limitations incumbent upon our physical being, including the primitive drives. It seems to me that each of us is a biological form and heavily influenced by biological imperatives, but at the same time we are representational beings; we project an idealised version of ourselves and live a double life as it were. The projected sense of self is so far removed from our crude biological being, its thoughts so quixotic, that it seems innately capable of questioning the premises of its own existence. Thus, neither do I believe that this remarkable human capacity, perhaps, to transcend itself, is mere cultural conditioning. And that's the sense in which I think of ideology as cultural rationalising.
Thanks for the engagement, George.

Squeers,
You mention Russell: my favourite joke (about his philosophy, not mathematics) was that I could understand him but did not agree with him, whereas I agreed with Alfred Whitehead but could not understand him. Well, unlike you, I am not a philosopher.

I understand “thinking in the third person” as trying to understand the objective dimension of what our subjective truths are about: seeing both the “finger” (that we are ABLE to “touch”) and the “moon” (that we are UNABLE to “touch”) the finger is pointing to. Actually, I believe in many fingers pointing more or less to the same moon.

I do not think you need to be that proficient in “higher mathematics” to have a better insight into scientists’ (notably cosmologists’ and theoretical physicists’) points of view. I would recommend you read articles in the mentioned book “The Sokal Hoax”, U. of Nebraska 2000, (that includes also Sokal’s parody and his explanation why he did it). There are views you will disagree with, some you will agree with, but I think you will gain an insight into how serious thinkers approach the problem also from the other side. At least that was my experience.

This time I do not see anything in your last long paragraph that I could not agree with. As I understand it, it expresses a position somewhere between the two extremes of “epistemological relativism” (all scientific theories, truth-claims, are only culture-determined and equally valid) and “epistemological absolutism” (we already know the physical world as it is, c.f. the advise given to Max Planck by his teacher not to go into physics, because “in this field, almost everything has already been discovered”).

I probably could not have put it more eloquently. Thus, thanks again.

For those still interested in human evolution, I think this is a very ineresting recent article from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html

CJ Morgan: "I think this is a very ineresting recent article from the New York Times:"

Thanks CJ, it was interesting.

They are rather hampered by the tools they have. The most likely effect of culture is psychological outlook. Like whether we tend to cooperate or fight, how trusting we are of authority, our relative skills at throwing a spear versus pushing a pen. As far as I know, they don't have a clue what genes drive this, yet it is those genes that our cultures put under the most selective pressure.