The aquatic ape hypothesis was never crazy

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Do you really think bringing that theory to a public forum is going to give you or the theory any credibility? You need to take it to a group of experts in that field and find out how much credibility you earn from them. That's what you should have learned from science.

And, while I'm not a researcher myself, I'd guess that it probably won't be likely achieved by largely random marginally related image-based posts/"articles."

Curious random observation, it seems to me that aquatic ape hypotheses are even worse, in its track of scientific support through history, than "birds are not dinosaurs" hypotheses (once something close to the mainstream standard, and for a good while a contender in good position), but somehow the former have a wider popularity in certain niches of lay people, whereas BAND seems more restrict to actual researchers, despite being itself a living-fossil hypothesis by now

I guess.it must be the factor of things being "cooler," maybe there were even Discovery/"History" channel "documentaries" about the aquatic ape theory, they even had one about actual mermaids. In contrast birds not being dinosaurs doesn't have the same appeal, unless maybe you'd suggest they're aliens or something.

 

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Indeed. That's what I hoped to get into a bit with this verhaegen guy, who may (or may not) be a researcher of some sort, possibly pursuing this as a minority hypothesis. However he seems to have just made a couple of drive-by posts and disappeared again. That doesn't bode particularly well for his credentials, it seems to me.

some of what (s)he posted in their last message I've seen in contexts of minority hypotheses of the evolution of bipedalism, but that are totally unrelated to aquatic ape/primate hypotheses. Basically there's the suggestion that human bipedalism is somewhat more basal, sharing some traits with orangutans and gibbons, thus gorillas and chimps, more closely related to us, would have diverged more from a basal proto-bipedalism. rather than being analogs to ancestral conditions of humans.

AFAIK none of these hypotheses suggest any different phylogeny for living species (unlike some crank theories along the lines of different living ape species being each more closely related to a different human race, and such things, and a somewhat less cranky but troublesome idea that orangutans should be seen as more closely related to humans somehow, but evasive on how that would be genetically non-absurd), although some may suggest some significant tweaks on the positions of fossil species on cladograms.

AFAIK those minority hypotheses of a more ancestral bipedalism also don't speculate much on paleo-niches and "stories" of the evolution of the adaptation, being more focused on the developmental and anatomical aspects, without the whole thing that seems to implicitly challenge that hunter-gatherers can exist. Also not hinting at anything aquatic, the closest thing would be perhaps something along the lines of hominids being almost fully bipedal as they've first descended from trees with legs and arms proportions that would have been more close to that of Proconsul than that of chimpanzees, orangutans, or gibbons

 

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Yes, "hydrofeminism" does look like a parody, I agree.

I've never come across the idea of physics being "masculinist" for "privileging" solids over liquids, though. Have you made that one up, or can you provide a reference or two? It sounds rather amusing. (I love the use of "privileging", turning privilege into a verb, by the way - seems authentically right-on. You've clearly got the lingo.)

Here it is:

The Hunt for the Sexed Equation

Did Luce Irigaray really say that E=m c 2 is a "sexed equation"? The Sokal Affair In 1996, the journal Social Text published ...

zetetical.blogspot.com

[...]
Here is the original French version of the quotation as it appeared in the first edition of Impostures Intellectuelles (#1, above):

“[L]’équation E=mc2 est-elle une équation sexuée ? Peut-être que oui. Faisons l’hypothèse que oui dans la mesure où elle privilégie la vitesse de la lumière par rapport à d’autres vitesses dont nous avons vitalement besoin. Ce qui me semble une possibilité de la signature sexuée de l’équation, ce n’est pas directement ses utilisations par les armements nucléaires, c’est d’avoir privilégié ce qui va le plus vite …”

The citation given is “Irigaray 1987b, p. 110”, which leads to the following entry in Sokal and Bricmont’s bibliography:
Irigaray, Luce. 1987b. « Sujet de la science, sujet sexué ? » Dans : Sens et place des connaissances dans la société, p. 95-121. Paris : Centre national de recherche scientifique.
In the English translation (#3 etc, p.100 in my copy of the second edition #4), the quotation is rendered as:

“Is E=mc2 a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possibly sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2hu5sb/did_luce_irigaray_ever_actually_say_emc2_is_a

Not sure about that one but it wouldn't surprise me. She does argue in chapter six that the reason we're having trouble with fluid mechanics in physics is because fluidity is feminine whereas math is rigid/masculine and so trying to understand fluid mechanics through a mathematical/masculine lens is flawed for gendered reasons rather than it just being a straightforwardly and nongenderedly difficult question.

 

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Why would playing in the shallows cause an otherwise fully furred hominid to lose its hair?

Because it's a semiaquatic species. Picking brain-selective foods for two million years, growing its brain bigger and bigger. The only animal meat you can eat raw to this day and digest in full.

That's a combination of "non-sequitur" with "begging the question."

The question is why a mammal evolving in a semiaquatic niche would cause it to lose its hair. There are several haired semi-aquatic mammals, with fur. That is therefore far from sufficient cause. Trying to add "size" to the explanation doesn't immediately help, children are small and would need to survive as well, but lanugo doesn't commonly persist after birth and most likely never works for thermal insulation to begin with,

Another way of phrasing the question would be, why would less hairy apes living in constant contact with water supposedly have more offspring than those that were hairier?

The crab-eating macaque, perhaps one of the few rare actually semi-aquatic primates, has a fuller body hair coverage than gorillas (who have naked chest and less facial hair). They're larger than human babies, which are fully naked (more so than adults, even balder), so small size wouldn't be an obstacle for an hypothetical inherent reproductive advantage of the trait in this niche.

 

[exchemist]

Here it is:

Aha, so this comes up in connection with the Sokal Hoax and associated criticism of "Intellectual Impostures". How interesting.

I must say that what immediately struck me about this is that Luce Irigaray, the author of the quote, is labouring under the same tiresome and ignorant delusion, apparently widespread in popular culture, that E=mc² somehow enabled, or contributed to, the development of nuclear weapons. That is completely wrong. That equation is no help whatsoever when it comes to making a bomb. (The confusion seems to arise from Einstein's role in co-signing the Szilard Letter to Roosevelt, warning that Nazi Germany might be able to build a fission bomb. Einstein had to have Zsilard explain to him what he, Wigner and Teller had worked out, which was that such a bomb was possible and the Germans knew it. It had never occurred to Einstein. E=mc² had nothing to do with the bomb at all, save that applying it to the observed mass defect of various nuclei enables one to calculate the energy release from a fission reaction.)

Apparently, Irigaray is employing the familiar, tedious feminist trope that nuclear weapons - and armaments generally - are somehow "male". (Tell that to your average Ukrainian woman and you'll probably get a black eye!) She then absurdly extrapolates from that, by way of the above-mentioned popular error about E=mc² and the bomb, plus the further loony idea of her own that the fastest possible speed, c, is somehow "privileged" by "male" science, to conclude that E-mc² is arguably a "sexed" equation.

I see the second reference explains the background to her bonkers assertion that fluid mechanics is somehow neglected because it is concerned with "feminine" fluids rather than "masculine" solids. The consensus on that seems to be that she was speaking ex ano, not knowing the first thing about fluid mechanics and not having bothered to find out.

In (slight) mitigation of Irigaray, she seems to have grown up in Wallonia, which is culturally French. At the time (she is now 91), it probably was a highly sexist milieu, so it may not be surprising that she jumps at shadows. (My wife was French. She and, a fortiori, her mother and grandmother, were engineers and mathematicians who experienced quite a bit of being patronised and overlooked.)

 

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Apparently, Irigaray is employing the familiar, tedious feminist trope that nuclear weapons - and armaments generally - are somehow "male". (Tell that to your average Ukrainian woman and you'll probably get a black eye!) She then absurdly extrapolates from that, by way of the above-mentioned popular error about E=mc² and the bomb, plus the further loony idea of her own that the fastest possible speed, c, is somehow "privileged" by "male" science, to conclude that E-mc² is arguably a "sexed" equation.

Not really defending the whole thing, but it seems that she actually explicitly says that what "engenders"/"sexualizes" it is that the equation "privileges" the "fastest speed," rather than "speeds that are more important for us," and not its use in the development of nuclear weapons. Which was something someone questioning her suggested, not herself (in that part, at least).

Funnily enough, I actually think the "masculinity-weaponry" association would "make more sense," than "speed-masculinity." Not that it would necessarily really salvage anything worthwhile. This caveat seems almost like as if she tried to avoid possibly sounding misandric with the weapon-masculinity association, picking speed instead as something more neutral.

The statement of the use in the development of nuclear weapons is also of the person making the questioning, which she merely didn't correct, and I can't blame her as I'd not be able to do the same myself.

I see the second reference explains the background to her bonkers assertion that fluid mechanics is somehow neglected because it is concerned with "feminine" fluids rather than "masculine" solids. The consensus on that seems to be that she was speaking ex ano, not knowing the first thing about fluid mechanics and not having bothered to find out.

It seems much of the whole thing has to do with psychoanalytic interpretations of the history of science. With psychoanalysis having even inspired perhaps the most famous demarcation of what is an what is not "science," being left out of it, one must not hope see anything much better than random confabulations not that unlike someone with no expertise on the are would make while high on pot. Coming up with imagined ulterior reasons, interpreting dreams...

It's kind of depressing to find out that apparently there is still many people defending such things, I was hoping that most I'd find on the subject were claims that it's unfair singling-out of something that's not representative of the "field," which may well most of the time manage to produce endless amounts of grandiloquent verbiage about near-tautologies while nevertheless avoiding things that are barely distinguishable from parody.

Although, as some people have pointed, Sokal himself didn't claim he "debunked postmodernsm" entirely, I'm expressing disappointment with the whole psychoanalytical take on history of fluid mechanics specifically still apparently being taken seriously rather than claimed as non-representative, despite not holding even the less inherently ludicrous things on the "field" in high regard.

 

[exchemist]

Not really defending the whole thing, but it seems that she actually explicitly says that what "engenders"/"sexualizes" it is that the equation "privileges" the "fastest speed," rather than "speeds that are more important for us," and not its use in the development of nuclear weapons. Which was something someone questioning her suggested, not herself (in that part, at least).

Funnily enough, I actually think the "masculinity-weaponry" association would "make more sense," than "speed-masculinity." Not that it would necessarily really salvage anything worthwhile. This caveat seems almost like as if she tried to avoid possibly sounding misandric with the weapon-masculinity association, picking speed instead as something more neutral.

The statement of the use in the development of nuclear weapons is also of the person making the questioning, which she merely didn't correct, and I can't blame her as I'd not be able to do the same myself.




It seems much of the whole thing has to do with psychoanalytic interpretations of the history of science. With psychoanalysis having even inspired perhaps the most famous demarcation of what is an what is not "science," being left out of it, one must not hope see anything much better than random confabulations not that unlike someone with no expertise on the are would make while high on pot. Coming up with imagined ulterior reasons, interpreting dreams...

It's kind of depressing to find out that apparently there is still many people defending such things, I was hoping that most I'd find on the subject were claims that it's unfair singling-out of something that's not representative of the "field," which may well most of the time manage to produce endless amounts of grandiloquent verbiage about near-tautologies while nevertheless avoiding things that are barely distinguishable from parody.

Although, as some people have pointed, Sokal himself didn't claim he "debunked postmodernsm" entirely, I'm expressing disappointment with the whole psychoanalytical take on history of fluid mechanics specifically still apparently being taken seriously rather than claimed as non-representative, despite not holding even the less inherently ludicrous things on the "field" in high regard.

Yes I suppose that’s fair, though she most certainly did commit the error, unprompted, of assuming the formula somehow enabled nuclear weapons to be developed.

It seems particularly ludicrous to see Einstein, of all the scientists of the c.20th, as some kind of swaggering, macho embodiment of the phallocracy, though. Schrödinger was a bit of a lad, by all accounts (shacked up with 2 women while at Oxford, scandalising the dons) and Feynman clearly had his fair share of testosterone, to judge by his showmanship, but Einstein?

 

[Pinball1970]

and Feynman clearly had his fair share of testosterone, to judge by his showmanship, but Einstein?

Einstein was no angel on that front.

 

[Pinball1970]

Yes I suppose that’s fair, though she most certainly did commit the error

The more I read about it the more contrived it comes across. It would be nice to think our primitive primate ancestors behaved this was way but they didn't and do not.
Primates are aggressive animals and the females often get a really shitty deal out of life.
A motivated feminist writer with an agenda in the 1960s with no primatology, palaeoanthropology or other scientific background, would have not used evidence the way it should have been.

 

[exchemist]

Einstein was no angel on that front.

Actually yes, he was a serial adulterer, it seems.

 

[Write4U]

I am not sure if this was mentioned in this thread, but there is clear evidence that "early" humans lived on the coast and existed on seafood.
That may not make them aquatic apes, but does make them "fishermen", along with sophisticated tools used for shell-fishing.

Southern Dispersal Route: When Did Early Modern Humans Leave Africa?​

Note the Blombos Cave at the very tip of South Africa.

The Southern Dispersal Route: A Possible Pathway Out of Africa

The Southern Dispersal Route refers to a theory concerning an early migration of modern human beings from southern Africa perhaps 130,000 years ago.

www.thoughtco.com

It may also support the theory that both African coasts may have been used to migrate north. The oceans are full of edible sea-foods, if you know how to fish or gather it for a migrating population.

Early Humans Migrated Out of Africa Several Times, …​

Aug 2, 2024 · Currently, the widely accepted story of human origins suggests that early members of our species left Africa in a single wave of migration about 50,000 years ago and interbred with Neanderthals in Europe and Asia.

Early Humans Migrated Out of Africa Several Times, DNA Study Suggests

Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals as early as 250,000 years ago and may have ultimately bred them out of existence, according to new research

www.smithsonianmag.com

The question is where did these Neanderthals come from if not from Africa?

Pinnacle Point a small promontory immediately south of Mossel Bay, a town on the southern coast of South Africa. Excavations since the year 2000 of a series of caves at Pinnacle Point, first recognized and documented in 1997 by South African professional archaeologists, Jonathan Kaplan and Peter Nilssen, have revealed occupation by Middle Stone Age people between 170,000 and 40,000 years ago.

The focus of excavations has been at Cave 13B (PP13B), where the earliest[vague] evidence for the systematic exploitation of marine resources (shellfish) and symbolic behaviour has been documented,[1] and at Pinnacle Point Cave 5–6 (PP5–6), where the oldest[vague] evidence for the heat treatment of rock to make stone tools has been documented.[2] The only human remains have been recovered from younger deposits at PP13B which are c. 100,000 years old.[3]

In 2024, the Pinnacle Point Site Complex became a part of the World Heritage Site of Pleistocene Occupation Sites of South Africa.[4]

Pinnacle Point 13B and its implications for modern behaviour​

At PP13B, the evidence for symbolic behaviour comes in the form of scraped and ground ochre (usually referred to as limonite bearing powders) that may have been used to form a pigment for body painting. This is similar to more complex ochre utilisation known from Blombos Cave slightly farther to the west at roughly 70,000 years ago.[5]

These discoveries contradict the classical hypothesis that the modern behaviour emerged only 40,000 years ago and was reached through a "large cultural leap".[1] The harsh climate and reduced food resources may have been why people moved to the shore at Pinnacle Point, where they could eat marine creatures like shellfish, whale, and seal.[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Point#

more... https://pinnaclepointestate.co.za/caves/