Response 4/26

Reading both the chapter on Exhibiting Evolution: Diversity, Order and the Construction of Nature in the book Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads by Stephen Asma and the article Human Evolution – Genus Homo – Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins by John Noble Wilford made me think how anthropology is a puzzle on multiple levels. Beyond the physical puzzle of piecing bone shards together to reconstruct a body part, there is the historical puzzle (the evolutionary timeline) and the sociological puzzle (the cultural and genetic overlap) of how these ‘parts’ fit in with others. Each researcher views the puzzle in his or her own way, putting the pieces together as best as they can, then offering their view to the scientific world. It is a painstakingly tedious process, one that might mean dedicating an entire academic career to pieces together one jaw bone.
As Asma noted, systematist and philosopher Michael Ghiselin had an interesting approach to the problem of ambiguity of overall similarity. As stated, ‘the subject matter of biology is historical, which means that it matters to the understanding of such entities where they are located in space nad when they are located in time’ (Asma, 184). For example then, is it not confusing when the AMNH in NYC takes the Cladistic approach to displays, rather than the historical? Is it not making the puzzle exponentially more complicated to present this data in more than one format? Are we not doing the entire field a disservice as we alternate between methodology as we educate the general population on evolution? It seems to me that we are creating more confusion. The Cladistic approach, moving through nested boxes does not serve the purpose of fitting the pieces together in my opinion. It compartmentalizes them, into the box where they fit best.
As more and better tools are developed that aid in this work, the puzzle will become more clouded, with multiple interpretations and decision points needing to be rethought. To make the statement that ‘[we] are relentlessly optimistic that we have all the information we need to answer our big questions, but just haven’t figured out the order in which to connect the dots’ (Wilford, 5) simplifies the process to the lowest level providing a baseline that everyone can understand, but also leaves begging the question of when and how will we know when the ‘family tree’ is complete.