B.Boyd: I would reply to the Discovery Institute were
it really interested in open debate and facts rather than a priori convictions
that (as I have pointed out elsewhere) Nabokov's assumption that mimicry
exceeds predators' powers of deception* has been
falsified.
LH: (*I
suppose you mean "powers of
appreciation"?)
JM: Following LH's indication, in
B.Boyd (ch4, N's Ada, page 71 on SM 124-5): "when
a protective device was carried to a point of mimetic subtlety, exuberance, and
luxury far in excess of a predator's power of
appreciation."
What strikes me in this debate is the fact that Man was
not considered a predator! A dangerous one, under all accounts, whose
powers of appreciation are equal to his powers of deception...
[Btw: I only just remembered a
coincidence: several thirty years ago I followed the work of
another Boyd, I.A.Boyd (!), on muscle spindles
and evolutionary links bt. reptiles and lower mammals.]