RE: Vision and Evolution (A Critique of Dawkins)
August 4, 2019 at 8:56 am
(This post was last modified: August 4, 2019 at 8:58 am by John 6IX Breezy.)
(August 4, 2019 at 8:13 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: Evolutionary development and fetal development aren’t the same subject.
In humans, broadly, our brain, spine, and nervous system develops first....but none of these things are even remotely close to the oldest adaptations that make us what we are. There is no rule stating that organs and structures have to develop according to the temporal order of their evolutionary emergence.
What’s being referred to, with the brain following the eye, is that if you have an eye, a brain that can extract more information from that eye is advantageous.
So we agree that there would be a disconnect between the two; that the way the eye develops would, in fact, be opposite to the way it evolved? I'm fine if there's no rule constricting the embryonic development of the eye to the temporal order of its evolutionary emergence. However, if such is the case then you (or evolutionary biologists) would need to account for the structural discrepancies between the two orders. For example, at what point in our evolution did the retina become inverted? Or at what point did the eye go from a folding of light-sensitive cells in the exterior surface of the organism, to a folding of neural matter (brain) within the organism that makes its way to the surface?
