This guy is a complete nut...somebody shut him down please

Dear George,

I don’t think recognising a child’s membership in a group by maternal descent has anything to do with ancient knowledge of the mechanics of reproduction. It merely recognises that we can be more certain of the identity of a baby’s mother than of its father.

The knowledge of the mechanics of reproduction came fairly recently in history. Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) was the first to see sperm through a microscope and to recognise that organisms were composed of cells. Linnaeus (1707-1778) was accused of being dirty minded when he maintained that flowers were the sexual organs of plants. Until then most scientists regarded them as having to do with nutrition. Many beekeeping books of the seventeenth and eighteenth century wrote of the largest bee in the hive as the king bee. The role of the queen bee was only recognised in the nineteenth century. It was only toward the close of the eighteenth century that the mammalian ovum was recognised as a single cell, and the knowledge of the union of sperm and ovum to form a new individual was not recognised until the nineteenth century.

I am now reading “Origins of Sex” by Margulis and Sagan. It has 13 chapters, and the book does not get around to the origin of gender, the differentiation into male and female, until chapter 12. They regard sex as genetic recombination which has been going on for over three billion years. It’s only 600 million years ago that differentiation of organisms into male and female developed.

I wrote: ", and the knowledge of the union of sperm and ovum to form a new individual was not recognised until the nineteenth century."

Please forgive me. I was writing off the top of my head, and that knowledge may have come before the close of the eighteenth century.

Dear david f,

Thanks; that really clarifies the matter for me.

By Joe OUG:)...the understandings of your mind to the public is so great, I want to hear more please:)

Planet3

<I wrote: ", and the knowledge of the union of sperm and ovum to form a new individual was not recognised until the nineteenth century.">

Um, but it doesn't define a specific person. A fertilised ovum carries the plans,not the person. Have you ever wondered why identical siblings are different?