Part of this reads like a shortlist of things that doctors and scientists don’t know enough about yet. If you’re looking for a PhD topic, here are some ideas.
It also reads like a collection of evidence against intelligent design.
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Quirks of Human Anatomy
51–60 of 109 posts
Re: Quirks of Human Anatomy
#52Re: Quirks of Human Anatomy
#53The urethra is routed through the prostate specifically because it needs to occlude it during sex. The prostate swells during an erection to obstruct the urethra and significantly reduce the likelihood of a bacterial infection in the bladder.
It's a very important function.
Re: Quirks of Human Anatomy
#54Anatomy is the latest image snapshot of Evolution. Evolutionary quirks are more general, interesting and important. One is the debated and funny Haeckel’s law: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
Re: Quirks of Human Anatomy
#55The urethra is routed through the prostate specifically because it needs to occlude it during sex. The prostate swells during an erection to obstruct the urethra and significantly reduce the likelihood of a bacterial infection in the bladder. It's a very important function.
Amazing. I didn't know that. Prostate in Greek means Protector and took its name from it's role. Ages ago this function was known.
Re: Quirks of Human Anatomy
#56Fun and educating article. Reading that we once had three eyes, lead me to this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221.... Fascinating that many vertebrates had a third light-sensing organ (called the pineal gland) on top of their heads millions of years ago. If our eyes are now the main mode of light transmission to the pineal gland, should we be wearing sunglasses all of the time?
Re: Quirks of Human Anatomy
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain the fundamental difference between our intent and the intent of, say, a molecule in our chain of evolution? Is it free will? Because that debate hasn't been sorted out yet.
The difference is intelligence, which might be a better word than “intent.” A fence was built by someone with some measure of intelligence. An evolved feature is randomness combined with selection pressures, and sometimes it’s only there because it’s not sufficiently detrimental to be selected out.
Ok, intelligence is better than intent yes. But intelligence doesn't have a good definition and most people would say that it exists on a continuum. And when thinking of human-designed products, you can also say that there is selection pressure, and features can be selected out, etc. So I don't think there's a fundamental difference here.
Re: Quirks of Human Anatomy
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read a number of consciousness books and this idea that the brain is inpainting the blind spot. I know Dennett in his "Consciousness Explained" book of 30+ years ago did his best to debunk that idea. The problem with inpainting is that it suggests there is a generator that knows how to fill in that spot before the "witnessing" part of the visual system then gets to work. This is perhaps best thought about from a…
I was going to say the same thing. When we look at a book, we see the book in our minds, not a picture of a book. The processing that happens in our brains works to create the representation, it’s not transforming one image into another.
There’s a significant portion of the population that doesn’t “see” anything in their mind’s eye when reading.
Re: Quirks of Human Anatomy
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also reads like a collection of evidence against intelligent design.
Akshully… These flaws were left in so there would be no proof of a creator. Because with proof, there is no faith. And faith is a requirement of winning. Imagine how hard it must have been to design “flaws” like these but still allow humans to survive. I can’t. Therefore, you can’t. Only an omnipotent god could do it. Checkmate atheists!
If we must have faith, then why does He need constant advertising?
I'd say kill that advertising for a few generations, then see what is left.
Re: Quirks of Human Anatomy
#60> f. Nipples are useless in human males (cf. Ch. 5). When I was a kid, I got my tonsils removed "because they were useless and a source of illness". I've recently heard that tonsil removal is now more disputed: it may collect filth, sure, but it may also prevent it from going deeper into the body, which may cause more serious illnesses. Given its vast complexity, and the timeline of its creation/evolution, I remain s…
There's also a difference between having no immediate use, and having no reason to exist. From what I understand, sexual differentiation works by having the Y chromosome act as a switch, and both sexes have to share the same blueprint with hormones guided the development of their organs. For males not to have nipples, they'd need to be actively destroyed, which poses a risk for females to also not have nipples, which…
The actual switch (in humans and I believe most mammals) is a gene called SRY.
The Y chromosome is just the (usual) container for the switch.