Truly, the world is a pendulum. A great post on Why Evolution is True<\/a> about the vestigial grasp observed in human infants was countered by a silly post on Uncommon Descent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

WEIT discussed how the instinctive grasping reflex observed in newborn babies can best be interpreted as a relic of behaviour in pre-hominids (new-born babies hanging on to their mothers) <\/p>\n

This is not a revolutionary new idea. I am amazed that it is even contentious. This was accepted wisdom in the UK several years ago.<\/p>\n

O’Reilly’s counter starts from the position of apparently never having heard of the idea that “anecdote is not evidence”.<\/p>\n

When my first child was very young, she had a habit of grasping my hair while feeding. My hair was long at that time.
\nIt seemed to please and comfort her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Can I be the only person who sees it as a commentary on O’Reilly’s attitude to her offspring that – believing pleasure and comfort to be the only reason for the baby’s hair-grasping – O’Reilly immediately got her hair cut? ) <\/p>\n

However, grasping has many uses for a human infant – it is the principle [sic – a pedant]<\/em> way the infant contacts reality (unfortunately by attempting to put things in its mouth), that being the only sense that is even moderately well developed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This sentence is too ambiguous to follow. She seems to have meant to put the end of the sentence in the bracket, so I’ll ignore the bit about taste. <\/p>\n

We are left with grasping being described as the main way in which an infant contacts reality. What? Does this make any sense? <\/p>\n

In case you can’t answer that rhetorical question, let me answer it for you. “No.”<\/p>\n

So what? Well, this Uncommon Descent post was O’Reilly’s “answer” to:<\/p>\n

Incidentally, what do the ID and the Evolution-is-limited-in-scope (Behe, et all) do with data like this:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Mouth random words” is what they do, apparently.<\/p>\n

Oh, and betray that they implicitly acknowledge the role of evolution \ud83d\ude42 :<\/p>\n

However, I also suspect that it has been a long time since any such skill as hanging on to mother was needed. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A long time? As in “the sort of time scales and species changes that evolution would predict”?<\/p>\n

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    Truly, the world is a pendulum. A great post on Why Evolution is True about the vestigial grasp observed in human infants was countered by a silly post on Uncommon Descent. WEIT discussed how the instinctive grasping reflex observed in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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