Saturday, February 18, 2006

The Piltdown Man

** The following was created for a discussion board for a Philosophy of Science class. The class had previously debated the merits of the creationist theory in contrast with those of the evolutionist theory. As a class, we are directed to use the journal, Scientific American, to reference our facts as well as to inspire us to write. Any mentions of Scientific American, in this case, refer to the March, 2006 issue. The parenthetical citing is completed in no particular format as we are not required to do so for this discussion board. **



I just picked up the March Issue of Scientific American. While reading the “SA Perspectives,” I came across a reference that tied in very closely with the discussion that was held in class on Friday. The author referenced a forgery of monumental proportions called the “Piltdown Man” (Page 10, Sci Am- 1st Paragraph). For some reason, I felt compelled to learn more about this forgery so I utilized Wikipedia to find the following information. Notice how it relates to our creationist/evolution debate.


The so-called Piltdown Man was fragments of a
skull and jaw bone collected in the early years of the twentieth century from a gravel pit at Piltdown, a village near Uckfield, in the English county of Sussex. The fragments were claimed by experts of the day to be the fossilised remains of an hitherto unknown form of early man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_man)”.

“…exposed in
1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jaw bone of an ape combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man (Wikipedia)”.

It is argued that because it gave them what they wanted, the experts taken in by the Piltdown forgery were prepared to ignore all of the rules that are normally applied to evidence (Wikipedia)”.

Now clearly exposed as a fake, the Piltdown skull has been taken up by
creationists who claim the forgery exposes corruption in the scientific community and points to the possibility that all existing specimens of fossil hominids are forgeries, thus weakening the case made for human evolution. Scientists counter the creationists' claim by pointing out that the Piltdown hoax was exposed by members of that same scientific community whom they, the creationists, accuse of corruption (Wikipedia)”.



I am happy that I took the time to educate myself about this event. It’s a good example of the chances that people will take to prove their hypotheses, especially when under intense pressure and scrutiny which, in this case, stems from people asking the “Missing Link” question that our TA proposed in class. It also relates to our class via the fact that if this forgery would have been used to propose any sort of revolutionary thoughts concerning evolution, there would have been a major weakness in the main background assumption used to create any of those new thoughts. In this case, the background assumption would be incredibly misleading as it was, in fact, a fake.

The discovery of the Piltdown Man and the later realization that it was a forgery is seen by Scientific American as being of utmost importance. In fact, in comparing it to the recent scandal concerning forged cloned human embryo studies they state: “Five decades after it was revealed as a forgery, the Piltdown man still haunts paleoanthropology (page 10, first line)”. I find it a bit revealing that, as important an event that this was, I have never heard of
it.