In: Anatomy and Physiology
Was Darwin right to say that the evolution of the human eye appears " absurd in the higest possible degree"? why or why not ?
There is a debate still that Darwin did not believe his own theory involved the human eye. Darwin mentioned the evolution of the eye “absurd”! But when we read the entire statement in context, we would realize that no way had he abandoned his theory, tough he himself confessed that evolution of human eye occurred through spontaneous mutation and natural selection. The theory has been supported recently by Detlev and Jochen who recently discovered an unexpected evolutionary process of rods and cones from an ancient population of cells which is initially located in the brain and were light-sensitive cells in nature. The theory is not surprising since we still have light sensitive kind of cells in the brain. They could have evolved to confer vision and relocated to eye. Recent study also reveals the rhabdomeric and ciliary cells that are light-sensitive cells of our ancestors. Among them, rhabdomeric seem to be relocated to eye and ciliary cells decided to remain embedded in the brain. The absurd or surprising thing is that the ciliary cells eventually evolute to the rods and cones of the retina.