This post elicits two conflicting reactions from me. Immediately, I am fascinated and drawn to the topic. Logically if evolution exists (which I believe) then it makes sense that evolution must essentially be a continuing process, not one that stopped for our or any other species 40,000 years ago. That said my intuitive sense rather than learned understanding leans toward the idea that evolution moves in fits and starts. Sudden rapid changes in a species that occur in response to major changes in outside influences makes more sense to me than the model of tiny changes building up over long periods of time until the changed attributes become enough to be seen as evidence of incremental evolution. My untrained view is that nature (evolution) is dependent on the existence within all species of great internal diversity. Continual variations take place within each species, with dozens (or thousands or tens of thousands) of variations constantly being introduced that do not alter the species in any fundamental way until some dramatic change in circumstances that results in the core attributes of a given species being unable to cope while certain variations on the fringe suddenly thrive and produce what is essentially the next evolutionary step, becoming as it were a new species.

How aesthetics and art fit together with evolution is a fascinating topic. While Dutton's antipathy toward abstraction and modernism may skew his reasoning a bit, his book looks like must reading. Among the reviews I note certain tidbits that immediately get me thinking, like one from the New Yorker that mentions Dutton's book positing the question, " why did no art form develop to exploit smell, as music does hearing?" I suspect there are artists dedicated to the pursuit of delighting olfactory aesthetes with their perfume who would argue this point.

On the other hand, the persistent return here to the theme of evolution and genetics that is then inevitably linked to racial differences grows tiresome. Each of these posts immediately elicits comments that seek to place racial groups into essentially separate categories of being. Implicit (or explicit) in those comments will be the equally persistent theme of white (and sometimes Asian) superiority. For pointing out that this is tiresome I suspect the Shouting One and his backup band will rant and rave about my status as a race traitor/martyr.

Given my own view of evolution I fail to see racial differences as fundamental, but rather see them as evidence of the sort of diversity nature wants and needs a species to possess in order to exist in our current circumstances, and hopefully to have some individuals with characteristics that would enable them to survive and thrive should those circumstances alter dramatically. The characteristics we deal with as race may ... or may not ... serve that purpose if and when a particular dramatic change in external circumstances occurs.

Posted by: Chris White on January 17, 2009 2:20 PM

An expression such as "cheese-eating surrender monkey" means so much more if you know about lactose tolerance.

Posted by: dearieme on January 17, 2009 4:29 PM

Michael, based on your recommendation of Squarespace awhile back, I checked it out and am now building a site for a client on it. Amazingly easy. Too easy! It will put me out of business! :) Now, if they would only release an app so it could be hosted anywhere.

About the evo-bio topic, I'm ignorant on the subject and can offer nothing.

Posted by: JV on January 17, 2009 9:42 PM

Those were brilliantly executed articles, especially the Derbyshire. In the course of recording a lot of classics, it has occurred to me that something along these evo-biological lines is popping up in seminal works, especially in poetry. There is something almost primeval about The Iliad which cannot be explained away by the term "poetical license".

Posted by: Charlton Griffin on January 18, 2009 10:12 AM

JV,

You have to move up the food chain from coding to business analysis and information design. Ten years ago you could make good money knowing basic HTML code, at a level that any reader of this blog could pick in two weeks, but today they are just basic literacy. Information design etc. has also advanced, but at a slower pace, and it cannot be automated, so that's where you want to be.

Posted by: Chris Burd on January 18, 2009 11:11 AM






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