Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Micah Hanks talks Evolution @ Mysterious Universe

Photo courtesy of sporkinthedrawer.typepad.com

“If you read science fiction you might think that humans in the future will be slender, short, bald, with big heads and big eyes that sort of the stereotype that you get from the comic books,” Kaku said, (not the obvious reference to popular “Gray Aliens” that are prolific throughout abductee lore). However, when it comes to how humans will adapt and change, Kaku suggests there may be less change than we might expect, since humans are a product of our surroundings.
“In the old days, when we lived in the forests, there was enormous selection and pressures placed on us to develop a large brain, to understand how to use tools, to run, to be able to navigate, to survive in the forests. Enormous pressures on us because if you were not fit to live in the forest, you died.” True, there aren’t the sorts of pressures on humans that forged us into what we are today, as a result of our continuing adaptation. Hence, as Kaku says, “gross evolution, that is, evolution that will give us big brains, big eyes, bald heads and little bodies, that kind of gross evolution is pretty much gone.”
So in other words, we aren’t going to evolve into the sorts of “aliens” that we see buzzing around in flying saucers (scratch the “visitors from the future” hypothesis).
But perhaps there are in fact pressures on humankind today that are evolving and shaping us. While Kaku suggests that manipulation of humankind through genetic engineering may be a possibility a good ways down the road, the kinds of evolution taking place among the human species today may not be outwardly visible, like Kaku notes. Nonetheless, there could be potentials being crafted through the advancement of technology that will fundamentally restructure the way we think, act, and evolve, especially in terms of brain function and intelligence.

Read the rest here.

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