.playing and sampled
Jascha HeifApproved FC
.
writers of this letter, summing
the results one would
conclude that violin playing
was impossible.
James Spottiswoode and
Edwin May
The Cognitive Sciences
Laboratory
Palo Alto, California
Watered down
No doubt Caroline Pond is
correct (Review, 26 November)
when she writes “many
reputable scientists remain
unconvinced” by the aquatic
ape theory (AAT); but can
someone cite for me a
summary of her “large body of
evidence that refutes it”?
The AAT arises from (is
consistent with) a large
suite of facts about human
anatomy, physiology, and
molecular biology. Each attack
upon AAT that
I know
proceeds along a narrow front,
offering an alternative
explanation for just one fact
of the suite and, often,
ignoring any fact embarrassing
to AAT’s older rival, the
savanna theory (ST).
r
Pond herself, in the only
organised exchange for and
against AAT: The Aquatic Ape:
Fact or Fiction? (Roede et al,
eds., Souvenir Press, 1991).
Pond deals with the
“subcutaneous” fat deposits
that extend across much of
the human body. She shows
how these deposits correspond
with smaller deposits of fat in
other primates.
She offers nothing, however,
to explain the “baby fat” that
holds the skin of a newborn
human infant taut, like a
marine mammal’s and in
contrast with the slack skin of
an ape neonate. A human
baby floats easily, contentedly,
right side up. Its fat layer has
developed during its last few
weeks in the womb.
It’s as if
the chimpanzee’s 8-month
pregnancy has been extended
by a month to allow time for
baby fat to accumulate.
The extra month places a
heavy burden upon the human
mother. In comparison with
the chimp female, she must be
equipped to furnish her fetus
with something like SO per
cent greater flow of calorific
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. wirriu/i yv-yvrivarw
explanation how this extra
burden on the mother, or how
our species’s subcutaneous fat,
could be advantageous on
Africa’s savanna.
Opponents of AAT have not
assembled a consistent body of
anatomical and physiological
facts in support of the ST,
which arose from, and appears
still to rest upon, just one
geographical circumstance: the
large number of hominid
fossils from East Africa’s Rift
Valley. The discovery ofA
ramidus, lying in an ancient
tropical forest,
is a big
embarrassment for ST and a
small one for AAT: although A.
ramidus, unlike other hominid
fossils older than two million
years, seems not to have been
found near an ancient lake or
river, even so, its discovery
brings hominid fossils closer to
where our story began, at the
intersection of the Rift Valley
and the Red Sea.
Arthur Squires
Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University
Blacksburg, US
All for me
As a parent and grandparent
I can assure James Ward
(Letters, 24-31 December) that
the “anthropic principle" has
nothing to do with physics and
everything to do with
psychology—the desire of
every child to think of itself as
at the centre of the Universe.
Its theme is the Me! Me!
Me! principle. God (or
“something”) made the Big
Bang the way it was simply in
order that I, wonder of
wonders, could eventually
come into existence. On
philosophical, let alone
scientific, grounds this
supreme arrogance is not the
behaviour of grown-up people.
Thirty-six per cent of the
British population have learnt
to live without religion and
that proportion is increasing.
This change to a non-mystic
and more scientific outlook
does not support Ward’s
contention that we need
quasi-religious, anthropic
beliefs to prevent “a caste
system of scientists and lay
people, with no possibility of
communication between
them”. Prepare to duck as
more and more of the
public caste their Pampers to
the wind.
Peter Rowland
Dulwich, London
John Galbraith’s new screw
with triangular hole may well
be too late (Technology, 3
December and Letters, 24/31
December). In Canada there
is
already in hardware shops a
screw with a square hole
/
CAn't
\fGit put
if sen.
t
IT'S
-TH€J£
,
i 4m eft-icAr/
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y
which must share many of the
advantages, and screwdrivers
with a tapering square end to
fit it are available.
I can confirm that the
tapering fit does provide a
very secure grip, and of course
there is no danger of slipping
out of the slot, as one does
with conventionally slotted
heads, or raising a sharp
splinter of metal to injure the
next handler.
There does seem to be a
communication gap across the
Atlantic: another excellent
North American idea virtually
unobtainable in Britain is the
spirally fluted ordinary nail (I
know the hardened version
can be bought here) which
gives, at a guess, ten times
the grip of an English wire
nail.
I always restock when
I visit Canada.
D. Bard
London
Monopolised
I refer to Andrei Linde’s
idea that our Universe exists
inside a single magnetic
monopole produced in the
first split-second of creation
(New Scientist, Science,
12 November and Letters,
17 December).
The answer is a resounding
“no”. Linde may be one of the
founding fathers of the
inflation model of cosmology,
but he is, like most theorists,
out there in left field, ignoring
the experimental evidence for
magnetic monopoies.
Moreover, these inflation
models are based on SU(5),
which incorrectly predicts
the monopole catalysis of
proton decay.
21 January 1995
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