Shipman Is Wrong the Author Reaction Paper

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What this author disagrees with Shipman upon is the issue of hominids being exclusively hand-graspers while apes are necessarily foot graspers. A couple of common observations would indicate that this is based upon circular reasoning. We say apes must be foot graspers, therefore this is holy writ. The issue that this author raises is proven by anyone that has seen apes throw feces or garbage at the zoo bar cages or seen humans without hands trained to manipulate their feet in hand-like ways. Certainly, the issues of bipedalism and hand and foot grasping and manipulation are more complicated and were probably due to environmental issues. Until we know who the ancestor was and where they were from in Africa will we be absolutely certain if the transition to a savannah type of existence to a forest type of existence is absolutely correct. For this reason, examples that she gives such as Ardipithecus and Orrorin are interesting speculations just as Australopithecus was before as to who was the first hominid (Shipman 25-27).

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In the beginning of the article, Shipman concedes that the measurement of what an ape is and what a hominid is relative and based upon a cultural need humans have. Unfortunately, she can not think outside of this cultural box. Considering that humans and apes such as chimpanzees have been proven to be very close to us, this author maintains that we have to reacquaint ourselves with the idea of the "missing link," that is a species (or the same species in transition) that shows both attributes. Given the sparseness of the fossil records, we have to be patient in the quest to find this Lucy. Our cultural needs must not make us impatient. If we do that, the results of our research will be useless and circular and will be no better than the Creationists who rely on the same type of analysis. The scientific method does not operate this way and has no patience for the "holy writ" of the golden apples dropped from the professor's lectern.

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