Complexity
On reading Life - The Science of Biology I ran across the following statement:
Of course, humans are obviously much more complex than fish
We are? Which part of us, apart from the brain? I’m honestly confused. There’s no qualifying statement, no explanation as to how they measure complexity. Not only is “humans are more complex than fish” a rather drastic statement to make, but the way they do it - as if it’s a widely known and accepted fact - takes me aback.
But perhaps I’m just a dullard who missed some essential point during my education. If some enlightened reader would like to explain to me how we’re more complex than fish and how this is obvious, I would be much obliged.
The heart! Theirs only has two chambers and ours has four! Right? I think? Gosh, it’s been a long time since high school biology.
Comment by Carrie — April 17, 2008 @ 19:22
Carrie, Good start. But then what of the fish that use an ingenious system of countercurrent heat exchange to raise their body temperature to several degrees above that of the sea, such as tuna? Isn’t that rather a complex circulatory system?
Comment by Felicia Gilljam — April 17, 2008 @ 23:08
Because we’re an arrogant, self-centred species who assume we’re at the top of everything?
I wouldn’t blame us for that. If the fish were catching us in huge nets they’d probably assume they were more complex too.
Here’s a thought: since a bacterial generation time is much less than a human’s (as low as 20 minutes in the extreme cases) bacteria are actually far more evolved than we are.
Comment by Glynn — April 18, 2008 @ 20:23
Glynn, I do get that anthropocentrism explains why the authors wrote what they did, but that doesn’t exactly answer the question.
If you measure in actual time, we’re all equally “evolved”, bacteria, fish and people alike. And humans probably exhibit a lot more derived traits than bacteria. Question is if we exhibit more derived traits than fish? Although a derived trait obviously doesn’t have to be a more complex trait, the appendix is a derived trait after all and it’s less complex than its more functional cousins.
Comment by Felicia Gilljam — April 19, 2008 @ 00:53
Because we’re all angsty and gothy and emo?
Comment by efrique — April 21, 2008 @ 01:38
In actual time yes, but if there are more generations there are more opportunities for selection to work, no?
To be honest, I have no idea how you would even measure the “complexity” of an organism. Corn has more genes than we do, but most people would say that humans are more complex than corn, perhaps objectively on the grounds that we have a wider variety of tissue types. Do we use our genes more efficiently (multiple versions through alternate splicing etc) or is this just another self-centred fallacy?
Comment by Glynn — April 30, 2008 @ 23:01
Could you perhaps tell us in what context that statement appeared? Could you transcribe the entire paragraph? It does undoubtedly sound very strange. I would think twice before using ‘of course’ or ‘obviously’… and I would hesitate even more to use them both in one sentence.
Comment by Daniel Ocampo — May 20, 2008 @ 13:35
I have no problem with the sentence as is, fish obviously don’t know how to play to their audience- as we do… One half billion years ago there were fish, and I’m still waiting for ONE of them to have a blog…
Comment by Kovarik — June 25, 2008 @ 21:17