The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Before DNA sequencing and Lucy, there was molecular biology.

Even without the collection of hominid fossils, and direct DNA comparisons with the other great apes, it was always clear to the biologically informed doing comparative anatomy that humans were properly classified among the monkeys and apes; primates among mammals among vertebrates (and so on).

Linnaeus' 1747 letter to Gmelin (https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-223725):

It is not pleasing that I have assigned Homo to the anthropomorphs, but man knows himself. Let us remove the words. It will be all the same to me, by what name they are treated. But I seek from you and from the whole world a generic difference between men and Simians, which is in accord with the principles of Natural History. I certainly know none. If only someone might tell me one such thing! If I called man an ape or vice versa I would bring together all the theologians against me. Perhaps I ought to, in accordance with the law of the art.

Of course, Linnaeus was a creationist. Given that natural historians of that era still believed in a great chain of being, rather than nested family trees of common descent, I guess he thought that apes were "below" humans despite the strong anatomical similarities.

The concept of the chain of being was one of the things that Darwin explicitly rejected -- "Never say higher or lower", he wrote.

It seems very strange to me to accept evolution and common descent in general, yet also posit a strange exceptionalism for humans as not being a part of that common descent.