Celibacy is allegedly and falsely esteemed
as a more moral human option, the greatest “offering” a man can
make to an observing God, when in fact it almost inevitably has led
to the horrors of child abuse. Thus it is intellectually thrilling
to me to observe the “miracle” of two biologists at the
University of Utah, Michael Morgan and David Carrier, carefully
observe the miniscule differences between the climbing hands of our
relatives, the chimpanzee, and our ever developing selves. (“Journal
of Experimental Biology,” cited in The Economist, December 22,
2012.)
Peculiarly, the same
organ has two names: use it to hold something and it’s a hand; use
it to strike someone and it’s a fist! But this second use is almost
unknown among other primates. It is thrilling to see those two
curious biologists use the greatest and everyday miracle of
disciplined consciousness to determine the crucial differences
between our human hand/fist and their mere climbing aid! The
primate’s hand, they observe, has long fingers and palm; their
human relatives have short palms and fingers and long thumbs, which
are useless for climbing.
But they do make it easier for the human
hand to grip things in two different ways: the precision grip in
which an object is held between the pads of the first and second
fingers and the pad of the thumb; the power grip on the other hand
all the fingers and thumb wrap around the thing held. These two
deployment are essential to tool-crafting skills, one of “homo
sapiens” essential skills.
But our two
biologists contend that the hand’s exact geometry seems to have
derived more from the hand’s destructive (fist) than constructive
(hand) use. Animals have other natural weapons: teeth, claws,
antlers, horns. But the multiple purpose human hand only becomes a
weapon when a fist is formed. They observed that when the fist
presents knuckles first, making the force of a blow much greater than
an open hand. But our searching duo wanted more evidence so they
asked ten athletes (a mix of boxers and other martial artists) to have their fists carefully observed in action and reaction.
The
test was to strike a punching bag as hard as they could with both
open hand and closed fists, with diverse aims—forward, sidewise, or
overhead. They noted how much power an accelerometer attached to the
punching bag was recorded. They also used pistons to measure the
stiffness of diverse hand shapes: fully clenched fist, a semi-fist
with the fingers curled but the thumb pointed outwards, and a poorly
formed fist in which the fingers were folded over the palm and the
thumb pointing outwards. (The last was the closest a Chimp could get
to a real fist!)
The accelerometer recorded that a side swipe made
with a closed fist delivered 15% more power than an open-handed
strike. Thus they decided the power derived more from the geometry of
the bones, especially the closed together knuckles(one quarter the
space of an open hand.) Crucial was the way the fingers curled back
on themselves. And the buttressing effect of the thumb. With such
measurements Morgan and Carter determined that the human fist was
four times as rigid as the Chimp effort to make a fist. When a chimp
curls up its fingers , it leaves a gap in the middle of the hand with
no buttressing thumb.
Our duo decided that
the human fist and its parallel tool making skill were two distinct
cases of natural selection. “Which,” they concluded, ”makes
perfect sense, for it has long been the case that the species is
divided between those who prosper by making things with their hands,
and those who rely on their fists, or the threat of them, to take
what the makers have made.”
How pathetic Divine Design curricula
such as those made mandatory in the State Of Texas look in the light of this kind of science. Such Chimps in the Austin legislature can
only wield feeble fists. They can’t climb the tree of Natural
Science. We must all learn to cherish the everyday miracle of
rational consciousness. Otherwise we are probably doomed to eventual
extinction.
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