Zhu Haijun: Force Does Not Need Acquired Inheritance

14,163 characters2007.06.18

Zhu Hairun’s Force

Taken from KeyinWiki

Definition

An evolutionary driving force proposed by the amateur scientist Zhu Hairun, used to explain why human beings walk upright.

Zhu Hairun believed that among animals, only human beings engage in face-to-face sex, and only human beings walk upright; therefore, face-to-face intercourse must be the main reason human beings walk upright. He explained that when our remote ancestors engaged in face-to-face sex, the female pelvis was subjected to downward pressure from the male, thereby gradually changing its structure, so that women could gradually begin to walk upright. And since all men are born of women, the mother’s upright manner of walking, through reproduction and inheritance, also enabled human males to acquire the ability to walk upright.

Zhu Hairun named this evolutionary driving force that led human beings to walk upright Zhu Hairun’s Force.

The criticisms it provoked

The evolutionary mode proposed by Zhu Hairun is basically a Lamarckian theory of evolution, holding that acquired traits can be inherited by offspring. To prove whether Lamarck’s theory was indeed valid, an experiment was once carried out in which the tails of mice were cut off for dozens of consecutive generations. If Lamarck’s theory were true, one would expect the tails of the mice’s descendants to gradually shorten; yet by the end of the experiment, the length of the mice’s tails had not changed, and Lamarck’s theory was thereby falsified. An abnormal force dreamed up by an abnormal brain

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Zhu Hairun’s sudden death was already something from many years ago, but its influence probably still has not faded. Teacher Tian Song once talked with him, and among the currently overwhelming crowd of amateur science enthusiasts, he was one of the more outstanding ones. Zhu Hairun said to Teacher Tian: “What sets me apart from other amateur science enthusiasts is that I have always been making my utmost effort to collect as much material as possible. The mere fact that I can read five foreign languages shows that I may be a cut above the rest. I know that acquired inheritance is the ‘lifeline’ of my theory, so I pay very close attention to the debates in the biological community concerning acquired inheritance. Just look: the focus of my battle of words with Dr. Fang is whether acquired inheritance has already been completely abandoned. I think I have already brought out materials that are new enough and authoritative enough to show that acquired inheritance has not been completely abandoned; there are still people in the scientific world using new experimental results to defend acquired inheritance.” Teacher Tian commented: “Zhu Hairun is a special cultural phenomenon of the internet age. I still regard him as an amateur science enthusiast, but he is very special. Not long ago, I deliberately went online again to study a large number of Zhu Hairun’s articles. From these articles, one can see that Zhu Hairun has read extensively, ranged widely, and is able to achieve a genuine understanding of the books he has read; he has also expressed his own unique views on numerous social and cultural phenomena. Of course I cannot fully agree with these views, and I even think that many of the arguments are laughable. But I believe Zhu Hairun had talent. From his conduct, I can sense the feelings of an arrogant young man, struggling desperately like a trapped beast when his talents found no outlet. If Zhu Hairun had had a position where his abilities could have been brought into play a little earlier, his life path might have been completely different.”http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/485da37d0100053c

Why am I suddenly bringing up Zhu Hairun? Because it suddenly occurred to me: Zhu Hairun’s hypothesis does not need acquired inheritance at all to be explained.

The reason I suddenly thought of face-to-face intercourse was, well, of course not because I myself did that thing… It was because I suddenly thought of another unique ability of the human species—if face-to-face intercourse, besides among human beings, is also relatively common among bonobos, then this skill may truly be unique to human beings alone: the ability to sleep on one’s back.

Of course, I would not say that human beings evolved a vertical spine in order to sleep on their backs; naturally, it is because they acquired a vertical spine that sleeping on the back became possible. But I would nevertheless rather believe that human beings “worked hard” to evolve a vertical spine for the sake of these two things—sleeping on the back and face-to-face intercourse.

The advantage of face-to-face intercourse is that one can gaze at one’s lover’s face at the most rapturous moment—what more marvelous sight is there in the world? Perhaps there is another: gazing at the starry sky at the most relaxed moment—only human beings possess this ability. Sleeping on one’s back, in the most relaxed posture of the whole body, from the best vantage point, gazing up at the starry sky…

If human wisdom is said to come from walking upright, then rather than saying that walking upright liberated the hands, I would prefer to attribute it to the possibility of face-to-face intercourse and sleeping on one’s back.

As for whether human beings might possibly have evolved upright walking in pursuit of face-to-face intercourse, I don’t quite believe it, but I do think this possibility does not require acquired inheritance as a premise.

Darwin’s theory of evolution includes two kinds of selection: natural selection and sexual selection. The survival of the fittest and the struggle for existence belong to natural selection, whereas the huge antlers of the elk and the beautiful feathers of the male peacock arise from sexual selection. That is, because females always tend to choose mates with more prominent traits in certain respects, these traits will be strengthened over long-term evolution.

So we can imagine among human ancestors: first, although they had not yet learned to walk upright, there was still some possibility of face-to-face intercourse—just as in bonobos, about 30% of intercourse is face-to-face. Then, because people were more inclined to mate with the opposite sex partner who was better at face-to-face intercourse, those who were better at face-to-face intercourse produced more offspring. Finally, it is obvious that the more vertical one’s spine, the better one is at face-to-face intercourse. Therefore, the more vertical one’s spine, the more offspring one produces.

Hmm, makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

June 18, 2007

Latest comments

Gu Chi

2007-06-18 20:24:38 http://epr.ycool.com/ [reply]

This kind of “theory” of mine is not entirely without scientific significance. It could still guide empirical research: for example, one could carry out statistical research on large populations of bonobos—examining the relationship between the degree of spinal erectness and the frequency of face-to-face sex; and the relationship between the frequency of face-to-face sex and the total number of sexual acts. If both of these relationships are positively correlated—no matter how slight the degree, so long as the correlation is statistically significant—then, in accordance with Darwinian evolution, the hypothesis that face-to-face sex promotes human bipedalism could be supported!
Even without empirical support, this set of “theories” fits my basic view of humanity extremely well. Put simply, for me, being human means “starry sky + love.” “Rain” is born of the starry sky, and dies for love.
I could go off and become a pseudoscientist!

luxin

2007-06-19 18:20:14 Anonymous 124.17.17.32 [reply]

Statistical results cannot explain any causal relationship.

Gu Qi

2007-06-19 19:10:17 http://epr.ycool.com/ [reply]

It cannot prove anything, but it can support something.
Although I have been far away from mathematics for many years, I still know the basic common sense of statistics. In particular, for doctrines like Darwinism, statistics is of great significance. Even in physics and chemistry, you cannot do without statistics.
Hume’s problem shows that, in fact, nothing can prove “causality”; thus the reliability of induction has to be appealed to through statistics.
I don’t know whether what luxin means by saying that statistical results cannot explain any causal relationship is directed at statistics or at evolution theory. For neo-Darwinism, this kind of statistical data is something they would gladly beg for; in fact, they still find it hard to obtain strong statistical evidence, and evolution theory has been challenged on this point many times.
This kind of statistics can only be spoken of; if you really go and count, you cannot get results, because to make such a Darwinian hypothesis of gradual evolution supported by statistically significant positive correlations, the sample required would probably have to be in the tens of millions or more. Bonobos clearly do not exist in such numbers, and even if they did, no one could observe that many samples, so empirical research is almost impossible.

luxin

2007-06-22 22:48:38 Anonymous 124.17.17.32 [reply]

We must have an a priori estimate of the problem before we can make meaningful statistics; mere positive correlation says nothing.

Gu Qi

2007-06-22 23:14:17 http://epr.ycool.com/ [reply]

I’m not clear what you mean by “a priori estimate” and “says something” either.
A mere positive correlation really does not explain anything, but under a certain hypothesis, if one finds statistical results that support that hypothesis, then those statistical results are meaningful.
There is a question in Darwinian evolution that is often taken to task: for example, how did things like eyes and wings evolve? According to Darwinian evolution, evolution is gradual. That is to say, it is impossible for one generation of organisms suddenly to go from having no wings to growing fully formed wings. Then, apart from the challenge posed by the lack of fossil records for intermediate forms, there is another theoretical challenge: what use is 1 percent of a wing? Since the evolution of wings from nothing to full form is slow and gradual, that means mutants with 1 percent wings should have a survival advantage over their wingless peers, and those with 2 percent wings should be stronger than those with 1 percent, and so on. This is exactly how neo-Darwinians explain it. They would say that even a small wing of 1 percent—that is, say, a little extra thing on the forelimbs that increases buoyancy—would increase the animal’s survival advantage by even 0.1 percent; anyway, there is always some tiny benefit, such as being able to jump a little farther, or to jump down from trees a little higher without getting hurt (because the drag is increased just a tiny bit), so the survival advantage is always more or less increased by a little bit. And the process of evolution is long; even an extremely weak advantage may be continually reinforced over the course of long natural selection, ultimately causing species to keep evolving in one direction. These are not my words; you can look at books written by Dawkins and other neo-Darwinians—they say exactly this. And borrowing the Darwinian way of thinking, I hypothesize that if the spine is made just a little bit more erect, then one will be a little bit more adept at face-to-face X; and if one is a little bit more adept at face-to-face X, then there will be a little bit more chance of passing on the family line; and if that is indeed the case, then it can support the hypothesis that a preference for face-to-face X promoted natural selection toward a more erect spine.
Of course, if luxin wants to oppose neo-Darwinism, then I would raise both hands in support. Neo-Darwinism is far too arrogant; it really isn’t that great.

Gu Qi

2007-06-22 23:25:14 http://epr.ycool.com/ [reply]

In the past, evolution theory used natural selection to explain how humans evolved bipedalism, and also explained the benefits of bipedalism by saying that it freed the hands for tool use. Its argument was roughly this: the more slightly erect the spine is (even if only just a little, because Darwinism emphasizes gradual change), the better one becomes at using the hands; the better one becomes at using the hands (even if only just a little), the greater the survival advantage the offspring will have (even if only a little greater); after long periods of natural selection, the overall trend of evolution will move toward a more erect spine. This is the explanation of how an erect spine could possibly have evolved.
However, Zhu Haijun says that humans did not evolve toward bipedalism in order to free the hands, but rather in order to engage in face-to-face X; yet he rejects Darwinism and chooses Lamarckism to defend himself. What I want to say is that this kind of statement does not require abandoning Darwinism. One only needs to use sexual selection in Darwinism rather than natural selection, and it can be explained. The method of explanation is exactly the same as the one above. If my hypothesis has no empirical significance whatsoever, then Darwinism’s own account has no empirical significance either.

Yi Wu

2007-06-28 19:31:56 [reply]

Writing for the second time below (the clipboard just broke a moment ago, 555)
How come I never saw this post? It really is an interesting idea. Still, I don’t have much to say; I haven’t read the original *On Evolution* or Dawkins’s original works, so I’ll have to make up for my lack of scientific knowledge later…… Otherwise I won’t have any confidence when I speak……
This is the first time I’ve heard of the view that natural selection and sexual selection act at the same time. But a few days ago I saw an article written like this: in deer herds, when mating season comes, in the earlier phase, the big-antlered, strong males have more mating opportunities, but in the later phase they have mostly exhausted their stamina in advance, and can only leave the remaining opportunities to ordinary males. In the end, the researchers tallied it up and found that, in fact, their final chances were roughly equal!
How do you put that?
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“Born of the starry sky, die for love”
Isn’t this a case of intertextuality?
Even if science doesn’t back it, it is still a very worthwhile personal belief to encourage……
Would it be okay to change “love” directly to “love” in the broader sense? More broadly speaking. (That would make it more in line with Fromm, and of course with comrade Yeats as well—“love one another, or die.”)

Gu Qi

2007-06-28 20:22:19 http://epr.ycool.com/ [reply]

One thing that makes humans more distinct is that humans do not have an “estrous period,” and there is no problem of exhausting one’s stamina too early.
I’m not too clear about the deer issue, but in any case, even if the mating frequency is equal, the ones who mate first always have a better chance than the latercomers of making the doe pregnant, don’t they? If conception succeeds at the outset, then later mating is useless.
I’m not familiar with Fromm or Yeats. Love is of course humanity’s most precious capacity, but for me, love in the narrow sense occupies an unshakable place. Just as I revere all the beautiful sights of nature, yet the starry sky is unique—nothing can replace the starry sky; nothing can replace love.

2007-06-29 09:07:14 Anonymous 211.145.12.70 [reply]

Of course, in evolution theory, natural selection and sexual selection do not occupy equal positions; natural selection is after all the core of Darwinism, and sexual selection must ultimately still submit to natural selection: for example, suppose a species splits into two major groups, where the females of group 1 prefer characteristic A, while the females of group 2 prefer characteristic B. After a long period of sexual selection, in the descendants of group 1, 1′ , characteristic A will be strengthened, while in the descendants of group 2, 2′ , characteristic B will be strengthened. And the two groups 1′ and 2′ may still compete for survival; if the strengthening of characteristic A is more favorable for survival competition, then after another long period of natural selection, the population with strengthened characteristic A will gain the advantage. So in this situation, from the long-term point of view, natural selection is still fundamental, and sexual selection can be ignored. However, in some closed environments, sexual selection may still exert an influence.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.

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