• animals but also above them
• we think of animals not virtuous, so we are different
• we change more (social/intellectual evolution)
• animals are more like humans than we thought: use tools, they can learn and pass knowledge socially, recognize themselves in a mirror, use language with grammar, feel emotions (?), show altruism
• artificial intelligence raises another set of questions about what it means to be human
• but machines cannot reproduce unaided?
• machines don't have souls
• machine learning means computers can now in effect write their own programs
• philosophize, think of abstract thoughts
  
• if you believe the brain is just a computer then machines can do everything we can do
• we may see the same kind of debates in a few years about robot citizens
  

Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there [by God], may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

• the ability to reason, logic, intelligence
• able to discover new things
  
• use of tools (we know differently but only in the last 40 years)
  
• language
  
• eternal soul
• a spiritual soul is something humans have that transcends the limitations of matter
• animals have a life force that is sometimes called a soul, but it ceases to exist when they die
• though attitudes have changed, the traditional Christian belief is that animals do not go to heaven
  
• emotions--are the emotions shown by animals like human emotions, or are they just instinctual responses?
  
• ethics, morals, altruism
• humans are obviously superior
  

• most churches, including the Catholics, took this view
• at a time of enthusiasm for science, the concern was to find ways to fit science and faith together
  

• scientists accepted it because it explained the big pattern of related species so elegantly and because it opened up lots of exciting new questions for science
  
• Those who were already atheists  tended to embrace Darwinism: it gave them the alternative explanation of origins they needed
  
• It seemed the only way to get rid of the idea of original sin--which people wanted to get rid of so they could believe that society could improve
  
• believed that human society could be continually improved (eg. Spenser, Soviets)
• those who felt oppressed by religion, such as some women's rights activists
  
• people like Carnegie who thought they were fittest
  

• the evidence for evolution was how many things it made sense of; there wasn't one neat proof
• one push was to find the missing links in the fossil record
  

• search for a common ancestor for humans and apes

• the discovery of Java man (Pithecantropus) in 1891 by Eugène Dubois provided the first intermediate example (now named homo erectus), but there was a lot of controversy over the find
  
• The discovery in 1925 of Australopithecus Africanus was an even better intermediate species, also showing that the first humans had evolved in Africa
• starting in 1929 more fossils similar to Pithecantropus  were found in China
  
• Who's Who in Human Evolution
• scientists thought if only we can find the missing link then people will accept evolution
• found more and more evidence of various sorts