"Dawkins is one of the pre-eminent experts in the field."
If we're discussing the ear's suitability for the job then "the field" is actually quite complex. It starts, obviously, as an exercise in acoustics (and I doubt Dawkins is pre-eminent in that field) but we also have some engineering constraints:
It must be something that an embryo can create.
It must be something that the adult body can interface to and provide energy to.
It probably helps if it is also something that the adult body can maintain.
and as noted later in the article, mathematical fidelity of response is less important than being able to notice certain kinds of sound and locate their sources. As a result, a perfect microphone would be a totally rubbish ear. Pretending otherwise merely gives the ID-iots an easy target to shoot at.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
