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To: PatrickHenry

Good...yet ANOTHER thing Stephen Jay Gould was wrong about.


8 posted on 06/08/2005 4:05:08 AM PDT by Pharmboy ("Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God")
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To: Pharmboy
Good...yet ANOTHER thing Stephen Jay Gould was wrong about.

No, not at all. Gould's thesis was that the female orgasm was not adaptive, not that it was not genetic. He theorized that it was the result of the fact that the clitoris is the homologue of the penis. Therefore, the female orgasm exists as a sort-of side note to the selective pressure to generate the male orgasm, but that there was no direct adaptive pressure on the female which resulted in the clitoris or the female orgasm. In a similar manner, males have nipples, but they are not there because of any adaptive pressure for men to have nipples, but because of the adaptive pressure on women to have nipples. Male nipples are homologues of true female nipples.

Nothing in this view is challenged by the article. In fact, in some ways it supports it. If the female orgasm was purely adaptive, I would expect the genetic correlation to be even higher.

If anything, I think Gould's theory is correct, but incomplete. I think it is an accurate account of the origin of the clitoris and female orgasm, but it failed to account for pre-adaptation. That is to say, although the female orgasm did not originate as an adaptation, it is becoming adaptive. I think that if female orgasm accompanied by vaginal contractions actually moves the cervix closer to the sperm creating a fertilization advantage, this can be a true adaptation, but one made possible by the preadaptive homologue responsible for the female orgasm in the first place.

40 posted on 06/08/2005 5:20:21 AM PDT by WildHorseCrash
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