Hi Ray, Once again this diminished scientist cannot cope with the full complexity of your latest post while having his first pot of tea of the day. So I'll reply to just one point for now, and try and puzzle out the rest later.
When I wrote (17 Dec): <<<< Taking the longer view, the ordinary person today has an incomparably better standard of living than the typical farm worker of 200 years ago. Would you that the Industrial Revolution had never started? >>>> You have replied (19 Dec): <<<< As for you stuff about how much better off we all are. You weren't there and neither was I. Stories about short, brutish lives have too often withered in the face of scientific study. I wouldn't make those assumptions if I were you. That is the root of much scientific embarrassment. >>>> Good gracious! You don't have to be much a of a scientist to answer this one. Look at the diminished weight and height of the average Asian paddy field peasant today and compare them with those, such as the young Japanese today, who have been lucky enough to grow up in an industrial society. Palaeontologists reckon that the height and weight of the average person in England did not regain his natural height and weight (that of pre-Neolithic man) until the 1960s. His dimensions were about the same as in Tudor times -- or, indeed, at any time for several thousand years past -- that is, about four inches shorter and 40/50 lbs lighter than he should be. At the time of recruitment for WWI, only one in three working men were up to scratch. True, these figures don't speak much for the first 150 or so gruelling years of the Industrial Revolution, but they're even more eloquent about the long-term effects of the Agricultural Revolution starting at about 8-5,000 BC. True, pre-Neolithic people had shorter life-spans, but that's besides the point -- their way of life was necessarily highly physical and dangerous. This doesn't preclude the possibility of happy and fulfilled lives. Keith __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
