You know how the creationists like to talk about the eye as a "proof" that some things just could not have happened via evolution?
Look at this picture:
Yeah, it's a gross bug, and it's probably a little hard to look at. (Or not. Click it to zoom.)
My point here is: look at those two little things to the top-center of the bug's head. The things that look like outgrown nostrils. Or vaginas hoohaas. Those things with the single whisker sort of thing growing out of the top of them.
Those "whiskers" are probably some kind of antennae.
It's not too hard to imagine a mutation of this bug's ancestor, wherein the compound eyes to the outside of the skull worked a little less well, just by chance, and the apparent secondary sensory organs, located more centrally, worked a little bit better, again, just by random mutation. Maybe this worked better in one particular otherwise stagnant pond, two hundred eighty million years ago.
We can also speculate that the offspring might well have continued to favor this bit of preferential randomness. How are we to say what the difference is between sight and heat sensation (which I guess is what those inner things are for in the case of this particular bug), or what the separation is, between smell and some other kind of sensory input? Yeah, those central things look like nostrils. But how are we to say that the compound eyes didn't shift to the sides of the skull to become ears, and that the things that look like a nose didn't become what we now call eyes?
I think we can't. What we learned as "our five senses" back in grammar school are really just five ways of participating in the electromagnetic spectrum. Or the sensing community, or something.
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Apparently the Museum of Natural History in NYC has just opened a wonderful, new, and permanent exhibit space: The Hall of Human Origins.
Check it out here
Early reviews are very positive.
I bet Rudy wishes he were still mayor, so he could close that down, too, to build his conservative "credibility."
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