Noted between man and chimp in their DNA sequences
Is to refer to the compound eyes of crustacea and insects
And other similarities in organisms no evolutionist connects
By common descent (like hawkmoths and hummingbirds, the tracheae
Of insects and spiders, the animals and plants having ciliae,
The flying phalangers and squirrels, the frogs, lizards
And tree-snakes that glide, the birds and fish with gizzards)
And to explain the congruities in terms of the adaptive success
Of universal laws of form and morphogenesis,
To account for what cannot be inferred from an ancestral condition.
The penchant of complex systems for self-organization
Is one that each knows with his mind and heart, and premises
A universal adaptational programme on an ‘analogue’ hypothesis
Abler to explain the independent acquisition of like organs
And functions in lineages as distinct as insects and crustaceans.
The macro-evolutionist compares organs for a verdict that bores
The micro-aligners of DNA sequences, who cause
Their own ‘homologies’ by begging the question of descent.¹
The bat and the dolphin both have sonar, meant
For themselves: as neither has a hand-me-down from the other,
Their lineages are parallel to Mac. Yet the human character
Is derivative to Mick. The bat and dolphin were there
When the parallel branches were handed out, but where
Were we? In Mick’s own little world, on a three-branch tree* * man, chimp, gorilla -
Where congruence between data-sets could never be reached independently the chimp and gorilla being
But receives a common explanation, for the sake of ‘parsimony’, our “nearest relatives”.
And an apt ‘weighting of characters to give a Twist to our phylogeny!
Bertie:That’s rum! If they can’t distinguish between homology and analogy
Objectively, we could all be barking up the wrong tree!