Ok, we'll try a noncontroversial topic and see how it goes.
I have a 23 month old daughter and with my wife visiting her family in China I have had lots of time to get closer and further bond. I have to say that it has been a wonderful learning experience being with Mija 24/7 for 2.5 weeks.
It's been the perfect vacation for me.
One thing that I have only slightly thought about before was how young children fight sleep but with all my extra time off work I started thinking more deeply about it. Well, I think I have the answer and would like to test it by posting and seeing what the replies are.
Answer: Natural Selection
What could be the advantage of fighting sleep? Well, children don't fight sleep when their parents are with them. In fact, Mija actually makes an effort to sleep when I lay with her. If not, she'll fight sleep until she falls down.
The way we live today is alien to us although few people actually take this into consideration. Evolution is slow by our standards but we were hunter gatherers for at least 2 million years. This is more than enough time for evolution to make its marks and adaptations. But the way we live today is 'civilized' and we've been doing that for only a few thousand years. This is hardly enough time for evolutionary adaptation.
So, I figure we have to look at the 2 million years prior to living in the safety of communal boxes (buildings).
When children sleep they snore, cough, and talk a lot in their sleep. Imagine how dangerous this would have been before civilization if children could fall asleep without their parents. Surely some did and were detected and consumed by predators. Remember, we had a lot more predators and less people before civilization.
Those children that carried the genes that let them sleep without their parent by their side probably didn't live long enough to pass on their genes. The children who carried the gene for fighting sleep when alone would have had a much higher chance of survival and therefore lived long enough to pass on their genes.
So, does anyone see any flaws in this or have something to add?
I didn't know that about Andy. Interesting and I hope he posts.
As for studying biology, or anything else for that matter, I'm cursed.
My grade 8 biology teacher told me I'd have problems later because I was too eclectic. He said I'd never be able to focus on one area. Well, almost 30 years later I'd have to say he called that one accurately.
I cannot distinguish the borders. To me everything is connected. Everything is one. I cannot focus.
Sometimes it sucks to be interested in everything.
I have that problem. Luckily I can memorize just about every fact or phone number I read instantly, so that negates some of my academic idiocy when taking exams.Originally posted by Pirschjaeger:
I didn't know that about Andy. Interesting and I hope he posts.
As for studying biology, or anything else for that matter, I'm cursed.
My grade 8 biology teacher told me I'd have problems later because I was too eclectic. He said I'd never be able to focus on one area. Well, almost 30 years later I'd have to say he called that one accurately.
I cannot distinguish the borders. To me everything is connected. Everything is one. I cannot focus.
Sometimes it sucks to be interested in everything.
Keep doing it your way Pirsch, your just one of those people that are interested in things as opposed to someone who goes to university/learns because they feel they have to.
All kids are different, but our son is much like your daughter- fought naps, bedtime, basically every sleep opportunity unless he was close to one of us. Then, it's no problem.
Our neighbor's kids? They go down for naps or bedtime like angels, like flipping a switch.
That said, I think your hypothesis sounds good, and, at first glance, might easily be confirmed with DNA testing. Or not. It would be interesting to know.
In recent years I've noticed I see beyond the surface and all those connections to other areas doesn't help. For example, spending 2.5 weeks with my daughter leads me to what? Evolution, parenting, biology, genetics, psychology? To me it is all of the above and more.
I took a year off from the forum to focus on studying with a purpose of finding and focusing on one area . On average I read just over 1 book a week. Memetics took me to genetics which took me to psychology which took me to religion which took me to economics, and so on. There seem to be no end. I failed miserably but have a very extensive library.
Perhaps I have to come up with 'Allology'.
I must say that this theory does actually seem plausible this time, keep me updated Pirsch
Everything does connect, that's what I love about science. However you can never hope to learn it all, what is great is when you get several different people in different fields in a pub and start discussing your theories. Soon enough you find how your fields relate and you stumble upon new ways of looking at things. It's fascinating.
"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in." - American Beauty
Um, I've got a degree in anthropology Aimail, but that doesn't make me an anthropologist - you need to do fieldwork, catch some exotic tropical disease, and write a doctoral thesis that nobody else wants to read before you qualify.
I think this comes under the category of 'evolutionary anthropology', and raises some interesting questions, though as it stands, it raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps a little background might help (this is from memory, a.k.a. making it up as I go along...)
Firstly, amongst the Great Apes, 'childhood' is extended, and infants would be vulnerable to predation for many years, were it not provided by adults. In most species this is probably largely maternal, though you will see evidence of male 'caring' behaviour too - I'd have to do some further investigation to give specifics. Such caring presumably has a genetic root causation, though it is clearly learned as well - chimps etc captured in infancy raised away from contact with their own kind often seem to have difficulty bonding with their offspring, making captive breeding programs difficult.
Human infants are in the same situation, though evidently at a vulnerable stage for longer, so for evolutionary success (i.e. survival) such caring is also necessary. This however leads to an awkward question. If it is necessary, why would the adults ever fail to provide it to the extent that an infant would risk drawing attention to itself by crying etc? For ultra-Darwinists (e.g. Richard Dawkins) one can do some maths here, to 'prove' that there may be a logic to it, but I've seen no evidence that genes have ever studied maths, so instead I'll explain it in looser terms. Though it is in the genetic 'interest' that a related infant survives, this is not so where it puts the adult at extreme risk (an adult chimpanzee who 'sacrificed her life' for her newborn infant would be wasting it in a futile gesture given the infants near-zero chance of survival. Now, between the easy no-loss infant caring context, and the extremes of self-survival, there is a grey area where it is in the infants interest to make their vulnerability as evident as possible - basically, at that age, you just need to be able to eat, sleep, pee, pooh, and make an almighty row when prevented from doing any of the former, and evolution has equipped you with a high-pitched audio-frequency alarm for the purpose. In a sense, it is the infant being 'selfish' (arguably for genetic reasons), but this 'selfishness' is something you need passed down (or as Dawkins would argue, it is something the 'screaming gene' wants passed down, i.e. itself). Though you may find being woken in the middle of the night by this ungrateful little brat unpleasant, you can console yourself that your ancestors went through the same process, while the 'quiet' babies were less likely to have survived.
There are other questions that arise too. Methods of childcare seem to vary wildly in different cultural contexts - In Margaret Mead's 'Growing Up in New Guinea' for example she noted with some astonishment that amongst those groups who dwelt in huts on stilts in coastal lagoons, a young infant falling through a gap in the floor was a common occurrence, and indeed seen as little more than a minor annoyance. The children learned to swim before they could walk. Other societies have gone to the opposite extreme, 'swaddling' children to prevent any movement at all. This points to childcare being a learned behaviour too, and there is no reason to suppose that even a newborn is incapable of learning some of the basics of this essential art of crying, and how much you can get away with in a particular cultural context.
I think this all indicates that even a baby's scream is a multi-faceted thing, with genetic roots in the rainforests of Africa, and aspects that the sneaky little sod is cooking up for itself even as it gurgles contentedly in your arms. Complicated, aren't we?
Cool, well you seem to know what your talking about.Originally posted by AndyJWest:
Um, I've got a degree in anthropology Aimail, but that doesn't make me an anthropologist - you need to do fieldwork, catch some exotic tropical disease, and write a doctoral thesis that nobody else wants to read before you qualify.
I think this comes under the category of 'evolutionary anthropology', and raises some interesting questions, though as it stands, it raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps a little background might help (this is from memory, a.k.a. making it up as I go along...)
Firstly, amongst the Great Apes, 'childhood' is extended, and infants would be vulnerable to predation for many years, were it not provided by adults. In most species this is probably largely maternal, though you will see evidence of male 'caring' behaviour too - I'd have to do some further investigation to give specifics. Such caring presumably has a genetic root causation, though it is clearly learned as well - chimps etc captured in infancy raised away from contact with their own kind often seem to have difficulty bonding with their offspring, making captive breeding programs difficult.
Human infants are in the same situation, though evidently at a vulnerable stage for longer, so for evolutionary success (i.e. survival) such caring is also necessary. This however leads to an awkward question. If it is necessary, why would the adults ever fail to provide it to the extent that an infant would risk drawing attention to itself by crying etc? For ultra-Darwinists (e.g. Richard Dawkins) one can do some maths here, to 'prove' that there may be a logic to it, but I've seen no evidence that genes have ever studied maths, so instead I'll explain it in looser terms. Though it is in the genetic 'interest' that a related infant survives, this is not so where it puts the adult at extreme risk (an adult chimpanzee who 'sacrificed her life' for her newborn infant would be wasting it in a futile gesture given the infants near-zero chance of survival. Now, between the easy no-loss infant caring context, and the extremes of self-survival, there is a grey area where it is in the infants interest to make their vulnerability as evident as possible - basically, at that age, you just need to be able to eat, sleep, pee, pooh, and make an almighty row when prevented from doing any of the former, and evolution has equipped you with a high-pitched audio-frequency alarm for the purpose. In a sense, it is the infant being 'selfish' (arguably for genetic reasons), but this 'selfishness' is something you need passed down (or as Dawkins would argue, it is something the 'screaming gene' wants passed down, i.e. itself). Though you may find being woken in the middle of the night by this ungrateful little brat unpleasant, you can console yourself that your ancestors went through the same process, while the 'quiet' babies were less likely to have survived.
There are other questions that arise too. Methods of childcare seem to vary wildly in different cultural contexts - In Margaret Mead's 'Growing Up in New Guinea' for example she noted with some astonishment that amongst those groups who dwelt in huts on stilts in coastal lagoons, a young infant falling through a gap in the floor was a common occurrence, and indeed seen as little more than a minor annoyance. The children learned to swim before they could walk. Other societies have gone to the opposite extreme, 'swaddling' children to prevent any movement at all. This points to childcare being a learned behaviour too, and there is no reason to suppose that even a newborn is incapable of learning some of the basics of this essential art of crying, and how much you can get away with in a particular cultural context.
I think this all indicates that even a baby's scream is a multi-faceted thing, with genetic roots in the rainforests of Africa, and aspects that the sneaky little sod is cooking up for itself even as it gurgles contentedly in your arms. Complicated, aren't we?
Regarding 'Allology', I'd say that anthropology makes a darned good effort at covering most aspects of it - it isn't so much a subject, but a way of studying a subject, and as long as there are people involved (or our close relatives), some anthropologist somewhere will have a go at it.
And yes, everything is connected, but figuring out what the connections are, and how they work, is what makes it interesting. This is just as well, because anthropology rarely 'proves' anything, and has often come to false or at least premature conclusions. As one of my university lecturers suggested, the subject consists at best mostly of 'being wrong in interesting ways'.