The senses and exactness Page 1 of 2

Picture by Lars Chittka; Axel Brockmann, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

The inner ear image above. Did all those bits and pieces in it evolve from a more simpler one and more parts were added on over time and brought together. It doesn’t really matter how we look at all those parts , as at first look they certainly look like they all belong together. What’s in question though is how we approach saying whether it evolved or not. We might want to say that the whole ear and it’s inner parts evolved , but it is impossible to prove that using fossils. We might then say it all came together at the same time but that would mean it just pops up and that’s not provable either. The only solid thing we have to go on , is the thought that a physical ear is involved with the outcome , hearing.

We are still stuck though , as we are reliant on the thoughts that we have , and we don’t know how restricted or otherwise those thoughts are. We might or most likely are only able to think about it like in the above.

So continuing with the thoughts that we have , then every day normal environment sounds that we hear will not burst the ear drum. We can talk to each other from say one meter away from each other and it feels comfortable and natural , and that has to involve some sort of exactness , because at twenty meters away from each other we have to shout to be able to hear each other.

Imagine the opposite. If we could talk to each other comfortably from twenty meters away from each other without having to shout , then talking to each at one meter would be far too loud and intolerable. And that is a tiny distance compared to the size of the universe. That’s quite some exactness when all of the possible levels of sound are considered. If we could hear voices from twenty meters away we would hear conversations from next door and conversations going on in cars passing us by. Is that some sort of restriction. No idea. But if ears could hear over longer distances it would make living almost not possible.

We certainly couldn’t have a dog in the house. The bark would end all hearing. Even our own voice would do the same and just brushing our teeth would also be too much. Imagine the scream of a baby. You’d soon feed it. In fact the baby screaming is so perfect to get attention. That screaming/crying at that level of sound could not be there because babies that screamed thousands of years ago survived and passed on that characteristic and those that didn’t scream didn’t survive. Naturally selected from what. That crying and especially the sound level of screaming surely didn’t evolve and no use of trial or error got it so exact.

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When I say “That did not evolve” i know that I don’t have any evidence or proof . And anyone reading will hopefully know that me the writer is just thinking aloud and saying something like the natural selection idea in evolution did not choose crying babies from the babies that didn’t make a noise. But when a nature programme says this or that animal evolved from say a fish in the sea to a walking land animal with legs , it’s sort of fact and sticks in our mind or brain or consciousness or whatever as fact and for the whole of our lives. More on that later. ( Basically the evidence in fossils or DNA is scant – in my opinion of course and for everything else written here.)

Anyway , back to the hearing. Imagine the opposite of the sound being too loud to talk comfortably to each other at one meter from each other. If the sound from our voices was just ever so slightly quieter or the ears didn’t pick up sound below a certain level from one meter then we would have to put our mouth next to the ears of whoever we are talking to for them to hear us.
Life would get very complicated in either scenario. It’s such a small margin of sound level to get it right. Even 500 million years ago animals could live with each other and make noises at the perfect level to communicate. Absolutely no evolution using random mutations and natural selection would get that right. It’s as finite as the pull or push of gravity that keeps us on the ground but allows us to walk around.

(Anyone can probably see I’m not a writer and am just dilly-dallying with some thoughts and writing them down. But if anyone could see what I am trying to say about that hearing and level of sound and put it in maybe a one minute visual video please do so and post link to comments and I’ll link it. Even if you think i’m talking nonsense and have got it all wrong but like making videos. In particular though highlighting that comfortable talking to each at almost one or two meters.)

Continuing on.. The voice box with all it’s bits and pieces , gives out the best amount of sound for us to talk to each other comfortably in those distances. So if either of the voice box or the ear and sense of hearing came first in an evolutionary way , it would have been the hearing , since what good would the voice box be on its own. Seems more likely that they came together at the same time. Silliness thinking, maybe. But putting it down to an evolutionary process seems much more silly.
Surely ears and and necks with voice boxes in them that join to a head with a brain come together as a whole.
Clearly all of those are used to hear. But quite what hearing is and why it requires those physical parts just leaves us wondering.
In the very least , we should have a rethink about why we give our evolution ideas such prominence when there is absolutely no evidence.

That comfortable hearing seems to be to exact to have relied on random mutations and natural selection. Imagine another planet where evolution has not quite got things right. Maybe things sort of haven’t gone to plan and the individual humans and all the other individual animals on that planet have different voice sound levels above or below those that we have on earth. It feels intuitively that nothing like that has occurred on any other planet anywhere in the universe. For example there isn’t a species here on earth that bursts the ear drums of their nearest and dearest. It seems that evolution simply couldn’t use trial and error to get that right. So all the other animals in the universe will have perfect levels of sound coming from their physical voice boxes and perfect physical ears to cope with the sound waves.

Like all animal body part phenomenas and senses , we would wonder how they would be similar and all succeed on a universal scale using evolution. Firstly we might imagine that on other planets the animals have the senses of hearing and seeing and feeling etc. So say there is a pair of ears on an animal on a planet in another galaxy. We might say that the ears on that animal evolved. But that would mean that the process of evolution on that planet in another galaxy is the same as the process of evolution as here on earth and that ears evolve on all planets . It’s hard to imagine that given there could exist ears on all planets , that evolution would come up with sets of ears along with the sense of hearing using random mutations and natural selection to hear sound using ears on all planets.

It would have to mean that evolution works in a way to make physical ears available to hear. That is clearly not the case ( in my opinion ) as our evolution theory is of something that involves graduality. If anything has some ability to set out and come up with the senses of hearing and seeing on a universal scale across galaxies , then the making of physical ears or eyes would use whatever makes the senses of sight and hearing. It wouldn’t rely on our invention of evolution. Quite clearly , physical phenomenas like ears that allow animals to hear and physical eyes that allow animals to see , don’t use evolution. ( Again in my opinion )

Then there is the physical head of an animal that has to exist to hold all these physical features. Putting aside the physicalities, and what seems again like a bit of silliness in talking about these things, the word evolution sits very strongly in many of us as a solid probability , or on a weaker level a possibility. In between, we mostly don’t ponder it at all and have no idea. But the word evolution does sort of sit there in our thoughts.

Back on the sense of sound and hearing though. It is simply not possible for us to be here today to be able to talk to each comfortably at that closeness to each other because of natural selection and mutations in bodies due to an idea that those that have that quality survived and those without it didn’t. That hearing and seeing etc is too exact. And that was how it was 500 million years ago. The animals then also maybe blinked their eyelids 30 times in every minute like us , and never had their vision showing a break in sight. We don’t get that break in sight either , despite the eye blinking thousands of times in a day. Not once in a day do we notice that blank vision.

Even if natural selection tried to do things from tiny beginnings like the tiniest amount of sound or light sensors on a single cell , the thing that brought about the sound and sight sensors that appeared first would have to make a guess at the best levels to get it right from it’s first attempt.. There was no guessing. Somehow life did not need natural selection from the start. Eyes were here 500 million years ago and they worked as good as today’s. Life or whatever knew before the ear and eye existed how to do it. And smell and touch etc of course.

Like sound perception , sight enables animals to see what is happening in less than a second in time. We can see this by looking at a clock and see it showing each second that goes by. Of course our understanding of what one second is , is as similar as trying to understand or perceive what a million years is. But we have only our thoughts and words on it to try and think about it. So our thinking about it just goes on. We can only go on the thoughts that we have about it.

So If we were only able to see what is in front of us say every 5 seconds we wouldn’t be able to catch a ball. And we would most likely be run over by a bus sooner or later. Being able to see one second of say that moving ball seems too much to rely on natural selection or mutations. Sight , however it works , gives us in under one second a full moving scene of what is happening.

With sight comes though another ability to catch that ball. With eyes closed we can throw the ball from one hand to the other sideways and catch it easily. That’s a short distance of course but throwing the ball upwards covering the same distance is more difficult to catch. What does that mean. No idea. It means nothing , ill read it again tomorrow.

If we put our hands together on the little fingers side of each hand together and then leave a tiny gap between the little fingers situated next to each other for seeing then we can see a slice of vision. If we move the hands very slowly we see slices at a time, But move that gap left and right more quickly then we see we see the whole second of vision. It joins up all that is seen in that one second. That has nothing to do with our conjectures of evolution being involved. Sight had that ability over 500 million years ago.

Back on sound. Try this. In a car with radio or with head speakers on, turn the volume up a bit. In one second you can turn it to an uncomfortable level. Don’t do that but just feel the range. It surely cannot be possible to find that comfortable exactness through natural selection. The first animals did not have to work out the possible sound wave levels around them that existed.

For natural selection to find that exactness for any animal to hear another animal at that comfortable level it would have to test and try all ranges on the same scale of testing the astronomical distances in space. The range of comfortable hearing is astronomically/ so finite. And same for sight and smell and touch and all the others working at the same time. etc Then there is the ability to take in loads of words in say 10 seconds and know what they all mean.

Natural selection would say that those animals whose ear drums didn’t burst, survived and the ones who’s eyes didn’t go blind also survived and had more babies.

Then as well as the ears and eyes there’s smell and touch etc and all of them working together. And maybe/definitely lots of other ones we don’t know about. And also understanding what we are seeing and hearing is almost immediate. For example we know a song on the radio after just one or two beats.

If any animal survived for millions of years using natural selection and mutations and changed into another species , that is our idea of what could have happened. Pure conjecture. A guess. One or two’s peoples speculation passed to other people.

However , life or natural selection could not test the ranges of sound waves and dimensions of light through millions of generations having a go at this or that level. All animals would have been blinded and left deaf millions of years ago. And all of the trees on earth would just fall over.

As for feeling ones way around the physical world and finding the correct pain thresholds for say walking about on a volcano the mind boggles.

Like the gravity thing.. Another which came first thought. Which out of the next two concepts might be how to think of hearing .. Firstly though when thinking about it we have to keep in mind (whatever that is) that sound doesn’t actually exist outside of our head. For simplicity the sound we get in our heads is our brain using the vibrations travelling through the air caused of say clapping our hands. This is getting more than tricky.. Anyway.. Two concepts.

1/ The sound waves exist in the air and life knows about them and the physical ear comes about to use the sound waves to hear.

Or 2/ The sound waves are at a specific level for the physical ear that comes into existence later to hear. Once again no idea.

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