PSYC 3100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Burgess Shale, Common Chimpanzee, Homo Erectus
Document Summary
Steven j gould, wonderful life, and the tape of life, though experiment. There are many animals in the shale that were not previously known about and that had different body types, died in the cretaceous period. Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the burgess shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay. Homologous adaptations, there would still be similar problems for organisms to solve. Three possible results to the thought experiment: identical world, very different world, similar world. The thought problem puts forth a mixed metaphor, rolling back a tape will always give you the same sequence of events. Did not believe that humans would always exist if the world played out again. Was also resistant to the idea of a similar world. Directed claims of being have a long history.