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Why aren't teeth just solid enamel?


tibberous

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Up until a few hundred years ago, all you could do if your tooth hurt was pull it, which makes having nerves in your teeth pretty damn pointless. Now the nerves are good for letting people know when to go to the dentist, but if your teeth were solid, they wouldn't rot to begin with. Solid enamel would mean no cavities, the tooth would literally have to wear away to stump -- so why the hell aren't teeth just enamel?

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Up until a few hundred years ago, all you could do if your tooth hurt was pull it, which makes having nerves in your teeth pretty damn pointless.

How is that pointless?

 

If your tooth hurts there is a reason, perhaps infection, and by removing the tooth you're preventing the infection from spreading. Hardly seems pointless to me.

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Up until a few hundred years ago, all you could do if your tooth hurt was pull it, which makes having nerves in your teeth pretty damn pointless.

How is that pointless?

 

If your tooth hurts there is a reason, perhaps infection, and by removing the tooth you're preventing the infection from spreading. Hardly seems pointless to me.

 

But if it was solid enamel, there would be nothing to infect. Why have smoke detectors when you can have a concrete house?

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Houses are generally not primarily constructed of concrete, and although looking at it from this single perspective it seems that it might be best, you must realize that other factors you are not considering come into play. Otherwise this method would be employed universally, no? Your original question suffers from the same lack of varied perspective.

 

Besides, in your original question you make it sound as if it was a conscious decision made by someone. In your concrete house analogy, it might be fair to ask "Why aren't houses made of concrete?", but you can't apply the same question to the composition of human teeth, for there was no conscious logical decision made in determining this. Evolution, and more specifically, natural selection, doesn't necessarily return optimal results, but rather, on average, better results.

 

Following your same line of thought, similar questions would be: "Why isn't the human skeleton composed of steel" or "Why don't we have twice the brain capacity". Similar to your question, these questions suffer from the same two flaws: 1. Although when contemplating them initially they might seem better, there are most likely flaws that we have not foreseen because we're looking so blindly. 2. Even if (and that's a big if) it turned out that our postulates were indeed true, evolution simply doesn't work that way.

 

I suppose to reiterate and answer your question most concisely: The reason is one of, or a combination of, the following: 1. Your postulate isn't really optimal. 2. Evolution doesn't necessarily provide optimal results.

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Even if your house was made of concrete, that wouldn't stop things inside it from burning.  given that you have all kinds of burnable things in your house, there's a good chance you'll die just the same. Especially if you are sleeping on that nice flammable bed.  Which is mainly what smoke detectors are useful for...waking your ass up when you are sleeping.  Also, most modern smoke detectors not only detect smoke, but they also detect other harmful gases.  But I'm done straying from the point.

 

 

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Anyways, I think the overall point Alex was trying to make is that unlike concrete houses, you don't choose to grow up with fake teeth, so your question is more or less moot and/or rhetorical.

I could be wrong, but what I got from it was: "why aren't teeth naturally solid enamel?"

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Well, such questions are the basis for science, but I think I understand what you meant. If tibberous was asking for an answer from an evolution point-of-view (which I don't necessarily get the feeling he is), then the discrepancy lies seemingly in the understanding of evolution.

 

A better way to go about this would be to support the positive postulate and explain why you believe that they would be solid enamel (simply because you think it might be better isn't a valid argument), since the burden of proof is on the person trying to prove the positive assertion, anyway.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I read an article in a newspaper ages ago that they were close to developing something where your teeth grow back again... That would be so awesome to grow an entire new set of teeth :D All white, new, perfect!

 

Also heard about a drug that can increase life by decades so maybe coupled with this... wicked sick

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  • 4 weeks later...

If tibberous was asking for an answer from an evolution point-of-view

 

That's exactly what I was asking. Steel bones would make you heavy and require your body to not only acquire, but sculpt, large amounts of steel. Having a larger brain would take longer to development, and require more calories to support. Also, humans have giant head when they are first born - before C-sections, a lot more babies died in labor. Almost anything that would seem evolutionarily beneficial normally has a drawback (generally the extra food required to support it)

 

But it just seems like there is no downside to having teeth be solid. Maybe without nerves, people chewed hard stuff until their teeth broke? Or filed them down for looks?

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