Vi skriver nu 2009 Dette er 200-året for Charles Darwin fødselsdag. Over hele verden er fremtrædende evolotutionister ivrige efter at fejre dette. De vil oplyse os om næsten alt omkring Darwin og hans liv og hvordan han ændrede vor tankegang. Jeg siger næsten alt, fordi der er eet aspekt ved dette, som de slet ikke har kastet lys over. De synes ivrige efter at gå udenom eller springe henover det, og tale om noget andet. Så det vil jeg nu tale om. Det er spørgsmålet: Hvorfor vi er så forskellige fra chimpanserne?
Well, this is 2009. And it's the Bicentenary of Charles Darwin. And all over the world, eminent evolutionists are anxious to celebrate this. And what they're planning to do is to enlighten us on almost every aspect of Darwin and his life, and how he changed our thinking. I say almost every aspect, because there is one aspect of this story which they have thrown no light on. And they seem anxious to skirt around it and step over it and to talk about something else. So I'm going to talk about it. It's the question of, why are we so different from the chimpanzees?
Vi har genetikerne, som hele tiden siger hvor utrolig tæt vi er beslægtet, der er næsten ingen forskel i generne, meget, meget tæt beslægtet. Og så - hvis man kigger på fænotyperne, her er en chimpanse, her en mand. De er utrolig forskellige. Ingen ligheder overhovedet. Jeg taler ikke om fantasier eller om kultur eller psykologi eller adfærd. Jeg taler om helt jordnære målbare fyskiske forskelle. Den ene er pelset og går på fire ben. Den anden er nøgen og tobenet. Hvorfor? Altså... (latter) hvis jeg er en god Darwinist, så er jeg nødt til at tro, at der er en grund til det. Hvis vi har forandret os så meget, så må der være sket noget. Men hvad skete der?
We get the geneticists keeping on telling us how extremely closely we are related -- hardly any genes of difference, very, very closely related. And yet, when you look at the phenotypes, there's a chimp, there's a man; they're astoundingly different, no resemblance at all. I'm not talking about airy-fairy stuff about culture or psychology, or behavior. I'm talking about ground-base, nitty-gritty, measurable physical differences. They, that one, is hairy and walking on four legs. That one is a naked biped. Why? I mean -- (Laughter) if I'm a good Darwinist, I've got to believe there's a reason for that. If we changed so much, something must have happened. What happened?
For 50 år siden var det et ret simpelt spørgsmål. Enhver kendte svaret. De vidste, hvad der var sket. Abernes forfader opholdt sig i træerne. Vore forfædre gik ud i de åbne vidder. Det forklarede alt. Vi var nødt til at rejse os op på vore to ben, for at se over det høje græs, eller for at jage dyr, eller gøre hænderne frie til våben. Vi blev så overophedet i jagten, at vi var nødt til at tage pelsen af og smide den væk. I generationer vidste alle det.
Now 50 years ago, that was a laughably simple question. Everybody knew the answer. They knew what happened. The ancestor of the apes stayed in the trees; our ancestors went out onto the plain. That explained everything. We had to get up on our legs to peer over the tall grass, or to chase after animals, or to free our hands for weapons. And we got so overheated in the chase that we had to take off that fur coat and throw it away. Everybody knew that, for generations.
Men så i 90-erne kom der mere lys over sagen. Palæontologerne kiggede nærmere på den medfølgende mikrofauna, som eksisterede på samme tid og sted som menneskerne. De var ikke savanna-arter. De så på planteæderne. Og de var ikke planteædere fra savannaen. De var så kløgtige, at de fandt en måde at analysere fossil-pollen. Oh rædsel. Dette fossil-pollen kom ikke fra savannaen. Noget af det kom endda fra lianer, det der hænger inde midt i junglen.
But then, in the '90s, something began to unravel. The paleontologists themselves looked a bit more closely at the accompanying microfauna that lived in the same time and place as the hominids. And they weren't savanna species. And they looked at the herbivores. And they weren't savanna herbivores. And then they were so clever, they found a way to analyze fossilized pollen. Shock, horror. The fossilized pollen was not of savanna vegetation. Some of it even came from lianas, those things that dangle in the middle of the jungle.
Så vi havde et problem hvor vi vidste at vore forfædre bevægede på fire ben oppe i træerne, før savanna-økosystemet overhovedet fandtes. Det er ikke noget jeg har fundet på. Det er ikke en mindretals-teori. Enhver er enige i det.
So we're left with a situation where we know that our earliest ancestors were moving around on four legs in the trees, before the savanna ecosystem even came into existence. This is not something I've made up. It's not a minority theory. Everybody agrees with it.
Professor Tobias kom hertil fra Sydafrika og talte i "University College London". Han sagde: "Glem alt hvad jeg har fortalt i de sidste 20 år. Glem det. Det er forkert. Vi er nødt til at starte helt forfra." Det gjorde ham upopulær. De ville ikke starte helt forfra igen.
Professor Tobias came over from South Africa and spoke to University College London. He said, "Everything I've been telling you for the last 20 years, forget about it. It was wrong. We've got to go back to square one and start again." It made him very unpopular. They didn't want to go back to square one.
Tro mig: det var forfærdeligt. Man har et dejligt pardigme. Man har troet på det i generationer. Ingen har betvivlet det. Man har bygget smukke ting ovenpå det, i forvisningen om, at det var bundsolidt. Og så bliver det revet væk under dig. Hvad gør man så? Hvad gør en forsker i sådan en situation?
I mean, it's a terrible thing to happen. You've got this beautiful paradigm. You've believed it through generations. Nobody has questioned it. You've been constructing fanciful things on top of it, relying on it to be as solid as a rock. And now it's whipped away from under you. What do you do? What does a scientist do in that case?
Jo, vi kender svaret fordi Thomas S. Kuhn skrev en skelsættende afhandling om det tilbage i 1962. Han sagde, at det en forsker gør, når et paradigme ikke holder længere, er ... de fortsætter, som intet var sket. (latter) Hvis man ikke har et paradigme, så kan man ikke stille spørgsmålet. De siger så: "Ja, det er forkert men hvis nu det var rigtigt..." (latter) Den eneste mulighed, der er tilbage er at lade være med at stille spørgsmål. Det er hvad de har gjort nu. Derfor hører man ikke dem tale om det. Det hører gårsdagen til.
Well, we know the answer because Thomas S. Kuhn wrote a seminal treatise about this back in 1962. He said what scientists do when a paradigm fails is, guess what -- they carry on as if nothing had happened. (Laughter) If they haven't got a paradigm they can't ask the question. So they say, "Yes it's wrong, but supposing it was right ..." (Laughter) And the only other option open to them is to stop asking the questions. So that is what they have done now. That's why you don't hear them talking about it. It's yesterday's question.
Nogle af dem har endda hævet det op til at være et princip. Dette er, hvad vi burde gøre. Aaron Filler fra Harvard sagde: "Er det ikke på tide at vi hører op med at tale om selektivt tryk? Hvorfor taler vi ikke om... dér er kromosomerne og dér er generne. Lad os bare notere hvad vi ser." Charles Darwin må rotere i sin grav! Han kendte til alt om den slags videnskab. Han kaldte det hypotese-fri videnskab. Han foragtede det af hele sit hjerte. Hvis man vil sige: "Jeg vil nu holde op med at tale om selektivt tryk" så kan man tage "Arternes Oprindelse" og smide den ud af vinduet, for den drejer sig kun om selektivt tryk.
Some of them have even elevated it into a principle. It's what we ought to be doing. Aaron Filler from Harvard said, "Isn't it time we stopped talking about selective pressures? I mean, why don't we talk about, well, there's chromosomes, and there's genes. And we just record what we see." Charles Darwin must be spinning in his grave! He knew all about that kind of science. And he called it hypothesis-free science. And he despised it from the bottom of his heart. And if you're going to say, "I'm going to stop talking about selective pressures," you can take "The Origin of Species" and throw it out of the window, for it's about nothing else but selective pressures.
Og det sjove er, at dette var et tilfælde af et paradigme-kollaps, hvor vi ikke skulle vente på et nyt paradigme. Der ventede een i kullissen. Den har ventet siden 1960 da Alister Hardy, en havbiolog, sagde: "Jeg tror, at det der er sket, er, at vore forfædre måske - for en tid - havde en større tilknytning til vandet." Han holdt det for sig selv i 30 år. Men så fik pressen fat i det og helvede brød løs. Alle kollegerne sage: "Det er ude i hampen. Du latterliggør os i offentligheden! Dét gør du ikke igen!" Og dengang blev det mejslet i sten: Vandabe-teorien bør betragtes ligesom UFO'er og Yeti'er, som noget gak-gak videnskab.
And the irony of it is, that this is one occasion of a paradigm collapse where we didn't have to wait for a new paradigm to come up. There was one waiting in the wings. It had been waiting there since 1960 when Alister Hardy, a marine biologist, said, "I think what happened, perhaps our ancestors had a more aquatic existence for some of the time." He kept it to himself for 30 years. But then the press got hold of it and all hell broke loose. All his colleagues said, "This is outrageous. You've exposed us to public ridicule! You must never do that again." And at that time, it became set in stone: the aquatic theory should be dumped with the UFOs and the yetis, as part of the lunatic fringe of science.
Men det tror jeg ikke det er. Jeg tror at Hardy havde fat i noget. Jeg vil tale om nogle af de ting, som betragtes som særkender for mennesket. De ting som gør os forskellige fra alle andre og alle vore slægtninger. Se på hvor nøgne hud. Det er klart, at de fleste dyr, som vi tænker på, som har mistet deres kropsbehåring, - pattetdyr uden kropsbehåring - er knyttet til vand. Såsom Dygong'en, Hvalrossen, Delfinen, Flodhesten, Manateren. Og nogle mudder-væltende dyr såsom Hjortesvin. Man skulle næsten tro, at måske er det derfor vi er nøgne?
Well I don't think that. I think that Hardy had a lot going for him. I'd like to talk about just a handful of what have been called the hallmarks of mankind, the things that made us different from everybody else, and all our relatives. Let's look at our naked skin. It's obvious that most of the things we think about that have lost their body hair, mammals without body hair, are aquatic ones, like the dugong, the walrus, the dolphin, the hippopotamus, the manatee. And a couple of wallowers-in-mud like the babirusa. And you're tempted to think, well perhaps, could that be why we are naked?
Jeg foreslog det, men man sagde: "Nej nej nej. Hvad med elefanten? Du har glemt alt om elefanter, ikke også?" I 1982 sagde jeg: "Elefanten har måske en akvatisk forfader." Og de grinede! "Det gale kvindemenneske. Hun vrøvler igen." Men nu er enhver enige om, at elefanten har en akvatisk forfader. Nu hedder det, at alle de nøgne tykhudede dyr har en akvatisk forfader. Det sidste undtagelse, mente man, var Næsehornet.
I suggested it and people said, "No no no. I mean, look at the elephant. You've forgotten all about the elephant haven't you?" So back in 1982 I said, "Well perhaps the elephant had an aquatic ancestor." Peals of merry laughter! "That crazy woman. She's off again. She'll say anything won't she?" But by now, everybody agrees that the elephant had an aquatic ancestor. This has come 'round to be that all those naked pachyderms have aquatic ancestors. The last exception was supposed to be the rhinoceros.
I Florida fandt man sidste år en uddød forfader til Næsehornet og man sagde: "Det synes at den har tilbragt meget tid i vandet." Så der er en tæt forbindelse mellem nøgenhed og vandet. Som en absolut forbindelse, virker det kun i en retning. Man kan ikke sige, at alle akvatiske dyr er nøgne, for se på havodderen. Men man kan sige at ethvert dyr, som er blevet nøgent, er blevet det af vandet, i dens fortid, eller i forfædrenes levetid. Jeg mener, at dette er vigtigt. Den eneste undtagelse er den somaliske nøgenrotte, som aldrig stikker næsen over jordens overflade.
Last year in Florida they found extinct ancestor of a rhinoceros and said, "Seems to have spent most of its time in the water." So this is a close connection between nakedness and water. As an absolute connection, it only works one way. You can't say all aquatic animals are naked, because look at the sea otter. But you can say that every animal that has become naked has been conditioned by water, in its own lifetime, or the lifetime of its ancestors. I think this is significant. The only exception is the naked Somalian mole-rat, which never puts its nose above the surface of the ground.
Eller tag to-benet gang. Her kan man ikke finde noget at sammenligne det med for vi er de eneste dyr som går oprejst. Men man kan sige, at alle aber er i stand til at gå på to ben, hvis de ønsker det, men kun for en kort tid. Der er kun een situation, hvor de altid - det gælder alle - går på to ben og det er, når de vader i vand. Tror I at det er vigtigt? David Attenborough mener der er vigtigt som en mulig begyndelse til to-benet gang.
And take bipedality. Here you can't find anybody to compare it with, because we're the only animal that walks upright on two legs. But you can say this: all the apes and all the monkeys are capable of walking on two legs, if they want to, for a short time. There is only one circumstance in which they always, all of them, walk on two legs, and that is when they are wading through water. Do you think that's significant? David Attenborough thinks it's significant, as the possible beginning of our bipedalism.
Se på fedtlaget. Under vor hud har vi et fedtlag over det hele. Intet ligner dette hos nogen abeart. Hvorfor skulle de have det ? Man ved, at ser man på andre akvatiske pattedyr, er fedtet i de fleste land-pattedyr gemt inde i kroppen omkring nyrerne og tarmene og sådan og begyndte at vandre udad og spredtes i et lag under huden. Hos hvalen er det sket fuldstændigt: der er ikke noget fedt inden i den, det hele er spæk under huden. Man kan ikke lade være med at tænke, at det i vores tilfælde allerede er begyndt at ske. Vi har dette fedtlag under huden. Det er den eneste måde at forklare, hvorfor mennesker, hvis de er meget uheldige kan blive voldsomt fede på en måde, som er fuldstændig umulig for nogen abe - fysisk umuligt. Det er noget meget underligt, men sandt og aldrig forklaret.
Look at the fat layer. We have got, under our skin, a layer of fat, all over: nothing in the least like that in any other primate. Why should it be there? Well they do know, that if you look at other aquatic mammals, the fat that in most land mammals is deposited inside the body wall, around the kidneys and the intestines and so on, has started to migrate to the outside, and spread out in a layer inside the skin. In the whale it's complete: no fat inside at all, all in blubber outside. We cannot avoid the suspicion that in our case it's started to happen. We have got skin lined with this layer. It's the only possible explanation of why humans, if they're very unlucky, can become grossly obese, in a way that would be totally impossible for any other primate, physically impossible. Something very odd, matter-of-factly, never explained.
Spørgsmålet om hvorfor vi kan tale. Vi kan tale. Og gorillaen kan ikke tale - hvorfor ? Det har intet at gøre med dens tænder, tunge, lunge eller noget andet. Men har udelukkende noget at gøre med dens bevidste kontrol af vejrtrækningen. Man kan ikke engang lære en gorilla at sige "Ah" på kommando. De eneste væsener, som har bevidst kontrol af vejrtrækningen er dykkende dyr og dykkende fugle. Det var en afgørende forudsætning for at være i stand til at tale.
The question of why we can speak. We can speak. And the gorilla can't speak. Why? Nothing to do with his teeth or his tongue or his lungs or anything like that -- purely has to do with its conscious control of its breath. You can't even train a gorilla to say "Ah" on request. The only creatures that have got conscious control of their breath are the diving animals and the diving birds. It was an absolute precondition for our being able to speak.
Og en anden ting - den kendsgerning at vi er strømliniede. Prøv at forestille jer en svømmer, som dykker ned i vandet, uden noget stort splask. Forestil jer en gorilla som gør det samme. Man ser, at sammenlignet med gorillaen er vi halvt på vej til at være formet som en fisk. Jeg vil hævde, at man i omtrent 40 år har fejlplaceret vandabe-ideen som en gakket ide. Men det er ikke en gakket ide.
And then again, there is the fact that we are streamlined. Trying to imagine a diver diving into water -- hardly makes a splash. Try to imagine a gorilla performing the same maneuver, and you can see that, compared with gorilla, we are halfway to being shaped like a fish. I am trying to suggest that, for 40-odd years, this aquatic idea has been miscategorized as lunatic fringe, and it is not lunatic fringe.
Og det sjove er, at de ikke udelukker ikke vandabe-teorien for at beskytte deres egen teori som de alle er enige om og holder af. Det er ikke det. De udelukker vandabe-teorien for at beskytte et vakuum (latter) (applaus)
And the ironic thing about it is that they are not staving off the aquatic theory to protect a theory of their own, which they've all agreed on, and they love. There is nothing there. They are staving off the aquatic theory to protect a vacuum. (Laughter) (Applause)
Hvordan reagerer de, når jeg siger sådan noget? En meget almindelig reaktion, som jeg har hørt 20 gange er: "Men det er blevet undersøgt. Man udførte en seriøs undersøgelse allerede da Hardy fremkom med sin artikel." Det kan jeg ikke tro. I 35 år har jeg ledt efter et bevis for dette og jeg må fastslå, at det er en fritløbende myte. Det er aldrig blevet gjort.
How do they react when I say these things? One very common reaction I've heard about 20 times is, "But it was investigated. They conducted a serious investigation of this at the beginning, when Hardy put forward his article." I don't believe it. For 35 years I've been looking for any evidence of any incident of that kind, and I've concluded that that's one of the urban myths. It's never been done.
Jeg spørger ofte nogle, og de svarer: "Jeg synes godt om vandabe-teorien! Enhver kan lide vandabe-teorien. Naturligvis tror de ikke på det, men de kan lide den." Så spørger jeg: "Hvorfor tror du det er noget vås ?" Så svarer de: "Jah... alle jeg har talt med, siger det er noget vås. Og de kan ikke alle tage fejl, kan de?" Svaret til det er et rungende: "Jo! De kan alle tage fejl." Historien er fyldt med tilfælde, hvor de alle tog fejl. (applaus) Hvis man har et videnskabeligt problem så kan det ikke løses ved at tælle folk som er for eller imod og så sige: "Flere siger ja end nej."
I ask people sometimes, and they say, "I like the aquatic theory! Everybody likes the aquatic theory. Of course they don't believe it, but they like it." Well I say, "Why do you think it's rubbish?" They say "Well ... everybody I talk to says it's rubbish. And they can't all be wrong, can they?" The answer to that, loud and clear, is, "Yes! They can all be wrong." History is strewn with the cases when they've all got it wrong. (Applause) And if you've got a scientific problem like that, you can't solve it by holding a head count, and saying, "More of us say yes than say no."
(latter)
(Laughter)
Bortset fra det, så tæller nogle mere end andre. Nogle er kommet hertil. Det var professor Tobis. Han kom hertil. Daniel Dennett kom hertil. Sir Dave Attenborough, kom hertil. Er der flere derude? Vandet er rart.
Apart from that, some of the heads count more than others. Some of them have come over. There was Professor Tobias. He's come over. Daniel Dennett, he's come over. Sir David Attenborough, he's come over. Anybody else out there? Come on in. The water is lovely.
(applaus)
(Applause)
Så nu skal vi se på fremtiden. I sidste ende vil een af tre ting ske. Enten vil man fortsætte de næste 40, 50, 60 år. "Ja, vi taler ikke om det. Lad os snakke om noget interessant." Det ville være meget trist. Det andet, som kunne ske er at et ungt geni kommer på scenen og siger: "Jeg har opdaget det. Det var ikke savannaen, det var ikke vandet, det var 'dette'!" Der er ikke noget som tyder på, at det sker heller. Jeg tror ikke, at der er en tredie mulighed.
And now we've got to look to the future. Ultimately one of three things is going to happen. Either they will go on for the next 40 years, 50 years, 60 years. "Yeah well we don't talk about that. Let's talk about something interesting." That would be very sad. The second thing that could happen is that some young genius will arrive, and say, "I've found it. It was not the savanna, it was not the water, it was this!" No sign of that happening either. I don't think there is a third option.
Men den tredie mulighed, som kunne ske er noget meget smukt. Hvis man ser tilbage på de tidlige år af det forrige århundrede, da var der en voldsom diskussion og nag mellem tilhængere af Mendel, og tilhængere af Darwin. Det endte med en ny syntese: Darwins tanker og Mendels tanker blandedes. Jeg tror, at det samme vil ske her. Man vil få en syntese. Hardys og Darwins ideer vil blive blandet sammen.
So the third thing that might happen is a very beautiful thing. If you look back at the early years of the last century, there was a stand-off, a lot of bickering and bad feeling between the believers in Mendel, and the believers in Darwin. It ended with a new synthesis: Darwin's ideas and Mendel's ideas blending together. And I think the same thing will happen here. You'll get a new synthesis. Hardy's ideas and Darwin's ideas will be blended together.
Så kan vi komme videre derfra og virkelig opnå noget. Det ville være dejligt. Det ville være skønt for mig, hvis det skete snart. (latter) For jeg er ældre end George Burns var, da han sagde: "I min alder, køber jeg ikke engang grønne bananer."
And we can move forward from there, and really get somewhere. That would be a beautiful thing. It would be very nice for me if it happened soon. (Laughter) Because I'm older now than George Burns was when he said, "At my age, I don't even buy green bananas."
(latter)
(Laughter)
Hvis det sker, og det vil ske hvad stopper det så? Jeg kan sige det med tre ord. Akademia siger nej. De afgjorde i 1960: "Det hører til med UFO'er og Yetier." Det er svært at ændre deres opfattelse. De professionelle journaler vil ikke røre det med en ildtang. Lærebøgerne omtaler den ikke. Læseplanen omtaler ikke engang den kendsgerning at vi er nøgne for ikke at tale om grunden til det. TV-programmet "Horizon", som følger den akademiske linje vil ikke røre det med en ildtang. Vi har aldrig hørt nogen forsvare det med undtagelse af spøgefulde henvisninger til gakkede mennesker.
So if it's going to come and it's going to happen, what's holding it up? I can tell you that in three words. Academia says no. They decided in 1960, "That belongs with the UFOs and the yetis." And it's not easy to change their minds. The professional journals won't touch it with a barge pole. The textbooks don't mention it. The syllabus doesn't mention even the fact that we're naked, let alone look for a reason to it. "Horizon," which takes its cue from the academics, won't touch it with a barge pole. So we never hear the case put for it, except in jocular references to people on the lunatic fringe.
Jeg ved ikke præcis hvor dette diktat stammer fra. Nogen deroppe udsteder et bud: "Du må ikke tro på vandabe-teorien. Og hvis du vil gøre fremskridt i denne profession og du faktisk tror på den, så hold det hellere for dig selv for det vil blot gøre livet surt for dig."
I don't know quite where this diktat comes from. Somebody up there is issuing the commandment, "Thou shalt not believe in the aquatic theory. And if you hope to make progress in this profession, and you do believe it, you'd better keep it to yourself, because it will get in your way."
Jeg har det indtryk, at nogle dele af det videnskabelige opstilling smelter sig sammen til en slags præsteskab. Men jeg skal sige jer, at det gør mig glad for Richard Dawkins fortalte os hvordan man skal behandle præsteskab. (latter) Han sagde: "For det første, så lad være med at give dem al den overdrevne ærefrygt og respekt som de er vant til at modtage." Så det vil jeg gøre. For det andet sagde han: "Man skal aldrig være bange for at udfordre dem." Det vil jeg også gøre. Mange tak.
So I get the impression that some parts of the scientific establishment are morphing into a kind of priesthood. But you know, that makes me feel good, because Richard Dawkins has told us how to treat a priesthood. (Laughter) He says, "Firstly, you've got to refuse to give it all the excessive awe and reverence it's been trained to receive." Right. I'll go ahead with that. And secondly, he says, "You must never be afraid to rock the boat." I'll go along with that too. Thank you very much.
(applaus)
(Applause)