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Post by quaderni on Feb 16, 2005 1:52:33 GMT
I'm afraid I still don't see it. (Sorry, I'm a stubborn bugger; I need to wrestle ideas to the ground before I get them). Alabaster, I wrote back a very detailed response and then I had network problems and lost it all. Arghhh!!!! Suffice to say, in brevity, evolution does not 'create' new modifications. People may be lazy or unmotivated, but if they fail to provide for themselves, they simply die - long before natural selections get its hands into them. Natural selection works on variations already existing within a population. These variations have a natural statistical spread, no more, no less. You can breed a domestic dog into a bunch of varieties (producing dachshunds or whatever today) but you can't breed a dog into a octopus, no matter how long the evolutionary cycle. Wells clearly states that the Martians were once human[oid], and have since evolved into an Octopoid-type organism. This is very Lamarckian. I can illustrate this further through human evolution. Most people believe, erroneously, that biological science holds that humans are descended from apes. But that's not true. Biologists say that humans and apes share a common ancestor, millions of years in the past. Apes never became humans, much like humans will never become apes, or octopuses, or whatever. In the Martian case, Wells posits transformation, not evolution. Wells's vision of the Morlock/Eloi evolutionary path is perhaps a bit closer to the mark, but the Martian thing is bizarre (though obviously very interesting). I wish I hadn't deleted the original post. Darn.
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alabaster
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Post by alabaster on Feb 16, 2005 2:04:23 GMT
Does Wells say exactly how humanoid the Martians originally were? There is a big difference between "humanoid" and "human." They may have had tenticles where we have hands and still been bipedal, binocular, upright etc.
Yes evolution (now) demands physical exertion, but once all needs have been sated by technology, and there is no longer any need for physical exertion in order to survive, a body simply becomes a burden. If that happens, evolution would take care of it topswitch, just as it took care of the whales' feet and the horses' toes.
Oh, and I feel your pain regarding your computer foul-up. Happened to me loads of times. It hurts. Thanks for making the effort to respond to me anyway. I appreciate it.
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Post by quaderni on Feb 16, 2005 2:15:18 GMT
Does Wells say exactly how humanoid the Martians originally were? There is a big difference between "humanoid" and "human." They may have had tenticles where we have hands and still been bipedal, binocular, upright etc. Interesting question, and there's a bit of debate over what Wells meant. His Narrator speculates that the Martians were once human-like but had evolved (or, better put, transformed) over time. I've yacked on about this in the past (you can dig up my older postings), but many scholars think that Wells intended _The War_ as an evolutionary parable. Whereas the Time Traveller crosses the 'gulf of time' to see the future, the future (Mars) crosses the 'gulf of space' and shows us another terrifying evolutionary scenario. The Martians are our future, much as Earth will one day become like the planet Mars, too (thinks Wells). The Martians are thus another variation of the Eloi and Morlocks. Unlike the Eloi, though, their minds never degenerated, although their bodies certainly did. As is often pointed out, though, the Martians are not simply naturalistic: they have a touch of the supernatural, too - much like Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_ has both a biological and supernatural element. The Martians are not cannibals but vampires with ESP - again, much like Bram Stoker's _Dracula_, too (Count Dracula is like the Martians: physically degenerate but mentally superior, cunning, cruel, and collected).
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alabaster
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Post by alabaster on Feb 17, 2005 13:28:28 GMT
Yes, I can see that he would want us to see our future in the Martians, but I dout he would want to see our future in them LITERALLY. Wells made a point of the fact that the Martians had followed a separate evolutionary path to our own, and that they were completely inhuman in every aesthetic way. That Wells wished to warn us that we could eventually become as they were, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, all brain and no passion, is beyond doubt, but I don't think Wells meant that they were a literal snapshot of ourselves. The Martians are alien; it seems logical they would have alien characteristics.
As to the Martians having supernatural powers, no I don't see that. Wells showed unequivocally that the Martians' vampiric tendancies were purely physical and technological- their feeding pattern was based on a scientific rationale (We use digestive systems to convert matter into blood, so the ultimate feeding system would be direct blood injection) even if (as I am quite certain) it was flawed in its reasoning. As for the ESP, where was that?
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Post by HTT on Feb 17, 2005 13:46:08 GMT
Regarding ESP the book does mention this.
It 'appears' that they communicate by telepathy. This is a proposition put forward by the writer and scientists as a possibility. For all they knew, it was either telepathy or some other form of communication unknown to them. Science would probably proven that it was some form of electronic communications, but that does not rule out that they could be genuinely telepathic. After all, modern scientists believe that certain animals may be telepathic 9such as ants, but may be disproved as we discover more about nature.
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Post by Charles on Feb 17, 2005 16:36:24 GMT
You guys are making some great points.
Wells uses the speculative and often unreliable Narrator to suggest that we and the Martians may not be all that different. A somewhat vague assertion, but one we're meant to consider seriously.
Quaderni, I like the way you think, though I would dismiss much Lamarkian influence on this aspect of the story simply because the Martians’ evolution is meant to be seen as a product of an advanced and incomprehensible systematic artificial selection more than natural (ie environmental). As you put it so well, “in the Martian case, Wells posits transformation, not evolution.”
The Selenites would later personify a more detailed and politically tinged example.
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Post by Topaz on Feb 17, 2005 18:31:06 GMT
Regarding ESP the book does mention this. It 'appears' that they communicate by telepathy. This is a proposition put forward by the writer and scientists as a possibility. For all they knew, it was either telepathy or some other form of communication unknown to them. Science would probably proven that it was some form of electronic communications, ... That's an interesting thought that opens up a range of possibilities. The Narrator states fairly firmly that the Martians "interchanged thoughts without any physical intermediation." From a literary standpoint, one can take this literally, for whatever reason Wells would have to ascribe 'communicative telepathy' to his invaders. From an engineering standpoint, an identical effect could be achieved with an implant and radio. USAF experiments determined back in the early '90's that one can distinguish activity patterns in the brain associated with 'thinking about' individual words. What's more, the patterns are distinct between homonyms, as well - there is a difference betwenn "rose" and "rows," for example. The Air Force was interested in allowing fighter pilots to control their craft - and possibly communicate - while performing violent maneuvers at high accellerations. The Clint Eastwood movie "FireFox" would be an excellent example of what they were trying to achieve in reality. As I understand it, the flaw in actually deploying the technology was that it required either implanting electrodes into the subject's brain, or using large (and very heavy) external equipment to measure the electromagnetic fields 'indirectly', as it were. The former was probably ethically impossible in our society, the latter a practical impossibility for a fighter-type aircraft. The Martians, however, may not have been constrained by the ethical problems. As someone pointed out earlier on this thread - Charles or Quaderni, I believe - the Martians were single-minded and dedicated to their cause out of the needs of survival. Implanting a series of electrodes, a small processor, and a tranceiver into the brains of the individuals selected to prosecute the invasion may not have been a problem for them. High-'G' conditions are exactly what the Martians were facing constantly on Earth, due to our higher gravity. Using an implanted 'mental command tranceiver' could allow them to control their equipment by thought alone - a definite advantage in a high-'G' environment. Communicating through the 'link' should be even easier than controlling equipment. From my point of view, once you've got your cell phone in your head, why continue to 'talk' conventionally? ;D Wells was unaware of this technology, of course, and no doubt intended for his Martians to be telepathic in the 'traditional' sense. But in this case, there's a technological answer that, given the learning and science they display in the book, would have been open to them. With regard to The First Men In The Moon, I've always wondered if, in addition to the commentary on the imposition of class structure, if the Selenites were also a commentary on the royalty. In their society, all individuals were equal at their 'artificial' birth, but one was structured to become their Grand Lunar, who is definitely presented as a 'royal' figure.
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Post by quaderni on Feb 17, 2005 23:35:34 GMT
You guys are making some great points. Quaderni, I like the way you think, though I would dismiss much Lamarkian influence on this aspect of the story simply because the Martians’ evolution is meant to be seen as a product of an advanced and incomprehensible systematic artificial selection more than natural (ie environmental). As you put it so well, “in the Martian case, Wells posits transformation, not evolution.” Mille grazie. Not to belabor the point, though, the idea of transformation, rather than evolution, was central to the neo-Lamarckian view. However, I should be clear on this. Obviously, Wells rejected Lamarckianism and sided with the Darwinian explanation. However, some of the key tenets of Lamarckian transformism - progress, purpose, meaningful adaptation, and the inheritance of acquired characteristics - were shared by many people who called themselves Darwinists. This is not to belittle or denigrate these people as 'not having got it right'. Rather, it suggests that these ideas were very powerful and meaningful to people in the late 19th and early 20th century; they were not easy to abandon; and they coloured their view of the living world. Wells, I'd suggest, was part of this same cultural milieu and that is only natural. In an amazing way, though, Wells can _dramatise_ these issues in a way few other authors could (or still can). I hope this comment is somewhat coherent....
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Post by Lensman on Feb 25, 2005 4:18:46 GMT
I find it surprising that no one has mentioned the Victorian concept of worlds and societies maturing and becoming senile just like individual people.
The idea was that worlds which were farther from the sun would cool sooner, therefore life could appear on them earlier and evolve sooner. Venus was a "younger" worlds, and was imagined to have dinosaurs and other prehistoric life in a swampy and wet environment under the eternal cloud cover.
Mars was ("obviously") a dying, dried-out world. Life there was long past its prime, enfeebled, decadent and dying (or possibly already dead; many SF stories have explorers discovering only ruins). There was even a theory that there had been a world beyond Mars, named "Minerva." Supposedly this world had "died;" exploded and formed the asteroid belt.
Similarly, societies evolved from a young, primitive, but robust condition, through their still virile and potent maturity, but eventually aging and becoming decadent and weak... which is exactly the way European empire builders portrayed China. Social Darwinism was very much a part of this world view; the European powers *deserved* to conquer the "decadent and weak" oriental cultures, as well as the primitive and ignorant cultures of Africa, South America and other places.
This world view lingered long in science fiction. It is very present in E.E. Smith's Skylark series, where the mature earthmen become paternal overseers (in an interstellar "Earth man's burden") of the primitive and violent Osnominians, while the older and wiser but enfeebled Norlaminians play mentor but refuse to take any direct part in the struggles for galactic dominance.
The same idea is the foundation of the long-running German SF pulp series Perry Rhodan, where the "young and virile" race of earthmen take over the galactic empire of the old and enfeebled Arkons.
As I noted in another thread, Wells was interested in human evolution, and had written a speculative science article on evolution entitled "The Man of the Year Million" (1893), describing evolved man as having a huge head, atrophied body, permanently immersed in nutrient fluids. The similarity to Wells' Martians is obvious. Whether or not Wells intended for WotW's reading audience to think of Martians as humans evolved to the (il)logical extreme, he certainly had that in mind.
I also think it's obvious that Wells also considered telepathy a natural outgrowth of increasing brain-power.
Wells' science fiction, just like such or most SF today, uses SF as a vehicle to comment on humanity and the human condition. Martians are not really aliens, but rather humans seen thru a distorted lens, the horror aspects of cannibalism and vampirism notwithstanding.
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Post by Lensman on Feb 25, 2005 4:41:28 GMT
As a species mankind has changed since it acquired technology. Our lifestyle has weakened our physical bodies perceptibly; our bones have thinned, our muscles have weakened, and our eyes have become increasingly myopic since the introduction of glasses. By the same token, medicine has meant that our height and lifespans have increased. These are all profound changes, yet none have anything to do with genetics. That's not entirely true. Myopia and other forms of eye problems, including astigmatism, have become more common in the population since corrective eyeglasses have become common. Natural selection would tend to eliminate those with poor eyesight, but easy availability of eyeglasses allows nearsighted people to compete with those with normal vision on a more-or-less equal basis. I think this point actually supports your argument, but I wanted to point out it's not as simple as you're suggesting. The cliche "survival of the fittest" is wrong. It's survival of the breeders. For instance, the average height of men in France was reduced by 2 inches during the Napoleanic wars. There was a minimum height requirement to be drafted into the army, you see. So shorter guys had a better chance of staying home and fathering babies, while the taller guys tended to go off to war and get killed. But if there's no evolutionary pressure, there's no evolution. The fact that we're all a bunch of lazy couch potatoes with flabby muscles and weakened skeletons does not mean that, left to natural selection, our bodies would wither away. Our bodies will only get genetically smaller and weaker if natural selection makes it more likely for those with smaller and weaker bodies to have children. And that's why others in this thread are saying your argument has elements of Lamarckism.
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alabaster
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Post by alabaster on Feb 25, 2005 8:54:22 GMT
But there would be evolutionary pressure if the body becomes merely a useless waste of energy. As our society becomes more and more developed, children become more expensive, and shift from being a common exploitable resource to being a rare and prized commodity. Having a stable source of income has become an indicator of whether you will have children, and therefore is, in the long run, a source of evolutionary pressure. If our society mandates that brainpower is more likely to generate a livelihood than muscle power, then more and more of our energy would be focused on generating intelligence, since those with less intelligence and more bodymass are less likely to have enough of an income to have children.
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Post by Lensman on Feb 26, 2005 0:49:19 GMT
Having a stable source of income has become an indicator of whether you will have children, and therefore is, in the long run, a source of evolutionary pressure. Despite the utopian picture you paint, the fact is that lower income families tend to have more children than higher-income families. And here in the U.S., the reason for that is no longer because family farms need cheap labor. (If such a cold-blooded reason ever was the real reason farm families tended to be large. I question that--I think it was the "frontier" mentality.) In modern times, it's because uneducated people don't engage in family planning-- resulting in many more unplanned pregnancies. It has been argued that this will result in lowered intelligence in the long run. That's called the "marching moron" theory. I hope ultimately that will prove to be untrue, but only time will tell. Presumably the Martians are cold-blooded enuff to use eugenics to weed out their morons, but here in the U.S. it's become politically impossible to sterilize even the most severely retarded. As far as I know, the only government to actively pursue a program of eugenics on a large scale was the Third Reich. The Nazi way of doing things doesn't seem to be very popular, for some reason...
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