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Darwin-L Message Log 29: 25–59 — January 1996
Academic Discussion on the History and Theory of the Historical Sciences
Darwin-L was an international discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences, active from 1993–1997. Darwin-L was established to promote the reintegration of a range of fields all of which are concerned with reconstructing the past from evidence in the present, and to encourage communication among scholars, scientists, and researchers in these fields. The group had more than 600 members from 35 countries, and produced a consistently high level of discussion over its several years of operation. Darwin-L was not restricted to evolutionary biology nor to the work of Charles Darwin, but instead addressed the entire range of historical sciences from an explicitly comparative perspective, including evolutionary biology, historical linguistics, textual transmission and stemmatics, historical geology, systematics and phylogeny, archeology, paleontology, cosmology, historical geography, historical anthropology, and related “palaetiological” fields.
This log contains public messages posted to the Darwin-L discussion group during January 1996. It has been lightly edited for format: message numbers have been added for ease of reference, message headers have been trimmed, some irregular lines have been reformatted, and error messages and personal messages accidentally posted to the group as a whole have been deleted. No genuine editorial changes have been made to the content of any of the posts. This log is provided for personal reference and research purposes only, and none of the material contained herein should be published or quoted without the permission of the original poster.
The master copy of this log is maintained in the Darwin-L Archives (rjohara.net/darwin) by Dr. Robert J. O’Hara. The Darwin-L Archives also contain additional information about the Darwin-L discussion group, the complete Today in the Historical Sciences calendar for every month of the year, a collection of recommended readings on the historical sciences, and an account of William Whewell’s concept of “palaetiology.”
----------------------------------------------
DARWIN-L MESSAGE LOG 29: 25-59 -- JANUARY 1996
----------------------------------------------
DARWIN-L
A Network Discussion Group on the
History and Theory of the Historical Sciences
Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu is an international network discussion group on
the history and theory of the historical sciences. Darwin-L was established
in September 1993 to promote the reintegration of a range of fields all of
which are concerned with reconstructing the past from evidence in the present,
and to encourage communication among academic professionals in these fields.
Darwin-L is not restricted to evolutionary biology nor to the work of Charles
Darwin but instead addresses the entire range of historical sciences from an
interdisciplinary perspective, including evolutionary biology, historical
linguistics, textual transmission and stemmatics, historical geology,
systematics and phylogeny, archeology, paleontology, cosmology, historical
anthropology, historical geography, and related "palaetiological" fields.
This log contains public messages posted to Darwin-L during January 1996.
It has been lightly edited for format: message numbers have been added for ease
of reference, message headers have been trimmed, some irregular lines have been
reformatted, and some administrative messages and personal messages posted to
the group as a whole have been deleted. No genuine editorial changes have been
made to the content of any of the posts. This log is provided for personal
reference and research purposes only, and none of the material contained herein
should be published or quoted without the permission of the original poster.
The master copy of this log is maintained in the archives of Darwin-L by
listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu, and is also available on the Darwin-L Web Server
at http://rjohara.uncg.edu. For instructions on how to retrieve copies of this
and other log files, and for additional information about Darwin-L, send the
e-mail message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu, or connect to
the Darwin-L Web Server.
Darwin-L is administered by Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu), Center for
Critical Inquiry in the Liberal Arts and Department of Biology, University of
North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A., and it
is supported by the Center for Critical Inquiry, University of North Carolina
at Greensboro, and the Department of History and the Academic Computing Center,
University of Kansas.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:25>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu Mon Jan 15 11:44:17 1996
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 12:43:27 -0500
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (Darwin List)
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy C. Ahouse)
Subject: Ahouse & Dennett 2d rejoinder
Dear Darwin-L,
Umberto Eco, in his hesitant postscript to "The Name of the Rose",
advises, "The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to
trouble the path of the text (Eco 1994)." Dan Dennett invited me to roll
away the stone a few months ago. Sadly, he found my subsequent comments
unsatisfying and from the tone of his last volley it looks as if we have
squandered our conversation as he feels that he has said "enough". (Thanks
Dan, for giving us a chance to probe the author's intention, for a little
while, maybe we can pick it back up in print.) With Phillip Johnson's
recent contribution we may have an opportunity to widen the discussion even
as some of the discussants head back to the locker room.
Dan writes:
>Jeremy Ahouse's rambling two-part response to my inserted rebuttals to
>his earlier comments evades the quite sharp challenges I raised. I
>demanded that he back up his attack with details. We still have no
>details. He admits he doesn't know what to say about the 4 falsehoods I
>claim people have (mis-)learned from Gould. He ignores my other
>corrections of his errors. Enough said.
I do want to apologize for not highlighting "Reinventing Darwin:
The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory" (Eldredge 1995)
earlier. This book touches on some of the topics we have raised here.
Eldredge is anything but eldritch in this book. Rather he is very
earthly and well rooted in bones and stones. This slim (227 pages) summary
of the 'naturalist' position could be the scaffolding for a book three
times the length. I hope that we will get something like that from
Eldredge one day. Many of the discussions that he touches on are
enticingly short. He is spare in his references giving you entry points
into the literature but more would be welcome. This book could be the
overview (first week or two) of a seminar course that then unpacks and
fleshes out each topic by returning to the primary literature.
There are plenty of arguments waiting to unfold (estivating?) in
this book. N.E. wants to engage the discussants at the "high table"
(Eldredge's reference, following Maynard-Smith', to the place where
ultra-selectionists and 'naturalists' stare across at each other - not
blinking) as well as tell others about what happens there so I will allow
myself this criticism.
I think there is much more to be said about the 'species' question
than what Eldredge offers (see essays in Ereshefsky 1992; Keller and Lloyd
1992). The 'reality' of species is core to Eldredge's world view (check
out Atran 1990). "Species" discussions don't emphasize the problem of in
the field and in the rocks recognition. How do you know you have
identified a species (whatever definition you deploy). The stasis or
change in fossilizable morphotypes is a biological phenomenon that demands
study. Gene flow through demes and populations does as well (a terrific
recent example is found in Morin, Moore et al. 1994). Are we sure that we
are studying the same thing - just by agreeing that we will call the nouns
in our respective discourse 'species'? If morphology, specific mate
recognition systems, genetic variance, interfertility, etc... all covaried
perfectly we wouldn't have many arguments about species. But they don't.
So we do. For evolutionists it is handy to posit that the goal of the
appellation 'species' is unique lineage (triumphantly captured in Ghiselin
and Hull's "species as individual"). Actual breeding in sexual species can
define that lineage. Thus something like Mayr's counterfactual
"potentially interbreeding" isn't all that helpful theoretically, for a
population biologist, or paleontologically. There is a much longer
discussion to be had, and I hope that Eldredge will weigh in. In this same
vein I don't yet share Eldredge's enthusiasm for seeing trends in higher
level Linnaean categories (I am suspicious about species and wind up almost
apoplectic about the "reality" of higher level taxa). At the same time, I
am enthusiastic about bauplane (symplesiomorphic developmental
constraints).
I will leave it there. Overall I enjoyed the book, especially the
first 5 chapters. A few important references fell through the cracks - I
will only alert you to those that I expected to find but didn't; Patterson
has a recently published collected works (Paterson 1993), George Stevens
coined 'Rapaport's Rule' in 1989 (Stevens 1989), Stan Salthe's early
article inspired Eldredge's thought's about hierarchy (Salthe 1975), and
Herbert Simon's address on complexity to the APS (Simon 1961).
I encourage you stop reading my notes and just pick up Eldredge for
a clear treatment of these issues from a paleontological point of view. I
think that we will see much of the dichotomous discussion at the high table
eroded by the re-emergence of current (molecular) developmental biology. I
alluded to some of the recent exciting results to come from this discipline
in my earlier critique of Dennett. Natural selection selects variations so
we need to know (to use a traditional dichotomy) what the local
neighborhood in phenotype space is for any given genotype - and this is
becoming slowly clearer, and may undermine the extreme
gradualist-mutationist position.
If you are still with me then I assume that you are willing to
indulge my repetition (streamlined?) of those parts of DDI that I hope some
of Dennett's partisans will clarify.
Dis-analogy
The Crane and Skyhook analogy is not particularly helpful. a) It
commits us to a currently non-existent tension between those who long to
explain the distribution and abundance of organisms by an appeal to
volitional external forces and those who do not. b) the word 'crane;
suggests a task. (I haven't discussed this before - but I get a sense that
Dennett does view sentience as being an inevitable out come of natural
selection. I floated this in my first critique but he didn't bite.) c) It
encourages the view that the structure being built has a direction (up)
toward the skyhooks. (This again is a (not so) tacit embrace of
progressivism that is surprising in 1995 and should be examined carefully.
Bait and Switch
Dennett trades on the enthusiasm about guaranteed results that he
(and he assumes his audience) has for 'algorithms'. But admits in his book
and reaffirmed in his response to my critique that he means to cast a much
wider net for this term. He truly wants to include natural selection as an
'algorithm'. But given his less discriminating use of an already intricate
technical term it isn't clear how he can sustain his sense of guarantee...
unless "success' is also broadly accepting. (This threatens to return us
to the old "what is successful is what was selected" problem that everyone
who teaches natural selection gets to discuss with their students.)
Disproof of an exaggeration
I was surprised to read, "He admits he doesn't know what to say
about the 4 falsehoods." I thought I had said quite a bit. I went to some
care to reformulate Dennett's claims in a way that might underline some of
the scientific issues that were lost in Dennett's discussion. I ended
with:
>So while I agree that Gould has not proved
>Dennett's "falsehoods" I am not impressed by this claim. Dennett has
>chosen to disprove the overstated, presumably this comes from his sole
>empirical claim that "there is simply no question that these four
>propositions are widely believed by the interested bystanders."
I should add that I don't believe Gould intends to prove Dennett's
falsehoods either, so his failure to do so is not particularly telling.
Dennett might agree but insist that people (his "interested bystanders")
believe Gould has and that Gould is now responsible for leading them back
from these shrill misreadings. According to Dennett, Gould has abdicated
this responsibility and so Dennett must take up the task. This line of
reasoning really does hinge on showing that this Gould's message has been
thus (mis) perceived.
Dennett's chapter does not seem to me to seek to help readers
understand the "falsehoods" in a way that gives them a sense of the
scientific issues that are under discussion. Rather he wants to convince
them of some kind of pattern of Gould's missteps. At the same time Dennett
has repeatedly allowed that Gould may have had useful things to say - but
quickly adds that Gould is misperceived and these misperceptions are
Gould's real failing.
Those are some of the main points that I am interested in hearing
some discussion of. I went back and looked over Dennett's marginal notes
on my initial critique. I am not sure what he was looking for from me. He
says that:
>He ignores my other corrections of his errors.
So to review. Dennett's longest comment concerns the 4 falsehoods
that I discussed at length in my first rejoinder. He insists that
explanations of science to a wider public require simplification. He
offers the self referential "skyhooks are any phenomena that cannot be
produced by a succession of algorithmic processes." He reminds us that
Gould has critiqued people harshly. He insists that I have not rebutted
the pattern of mistakes that Gould has made. I went step by step
indicating the scientific backdrop to the issues that Dennett raised vis a
vis Gould's positions. Dennett has not resisted any of my points. In fact
he did the opposite. He embraced Gould's contributions - but insisted that
Gould-myth has had a disastrous effect on Dennett and his colleagues.
So I am left with the impression that we are talking right past
each other somehow. At the core in my initial critique was the reiteration
that the evolutionary biologist "is impressed by the enormous diversity of
the organic world. He wants to know the reasons for this diversity as well
as the pathway by which it has been achieved (Mayr 1961)." (Biological
systems seem to share the motto of the Benziger Family Winery (Glen Ellen,
CA): Diversity, Intensity, & Complexity.)
Dennett's anti-Gould broadside still seems (to me) undermotivated
by Gould's published work. There may well be other (personal, political,
historical) factors at work. These are crucial in understanding the
history direction of scientific discourse... but I have chosen to turn a
blind eye to them and try to exhume the scientific issues that are buried
under the slings and arrows. Here Dennett and I seem to disagree very
little... do you all get this sense as well?
I will let this discussion fall to others for a while. I don't
want to dominate this conversation and I hope that others will either take
sides and rally or allow the list to return to its less heated pursuits and
follow Judith Masters (Masters 1995) in quoting Voltaire's Candide, "All
this is very well..., but let us cultivate our garden."
_______
Atran, S. (1990). Cognitive foundations of natural history: towards an
anthropology of science. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Eco, U. (1994). English translation of: Il postille a Il nome della rosa.
The name of the rose (Nome della rosa). San Diego, Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich.
Eldredge, N. (1995). Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the Hill Table
of Evolutionary Theory. New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Ereshefsky, M., Ed. (1992). The Units of evolution : essays on the nature
of species. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
Keller, E. F. and E. A. Lloyd, Eds. (1992). Keywords in Evolutionary
Biology. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
Masters, J. (1995). "The Rules of the Game." Book World 16 July: 8.
Mayr, E. (1961). "Cause and Effect in Biology: Kinds of causes,
predictability, and teleology are viewed by a practicing biologist."
Science 134(10 November): 1501-1506.
Morin, P. A., J. J. Moore, et al. (1994). "Kin Selection, Social Structure,
Gene Flow, and the Evolution of Chimpanzees." Science 265: 1193-1201.
Paterson, H. E. H. (1993). Evolution and the recognition concept of
species: collected writings. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.
Salthe, S. N. (1975). "Problems of Macroevolution (molecular evolution,
phenotype definition, and canalization) as seen from a hierarchical
viewpoint." American Zoologist 15: 295-314.
Simon, H. A. (1961). "The Architecture of Complexity." Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 106: 462-482.
Stevens, G. C. (1989). "The Latitudinal Gradient in Geographical Range: How
so Many Species Coexist in the Tropics." American Naturalist 133(2):
240-256.
________
Jeremy C. Ahouse
Biology Department
Brandeis University
Waltham, MA 02254-9110
ph: (617) 736-4954
fax: (617) 736-2405
email: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu
_ _
/\\ ,'/| "Truly speaking,
_| |\-'-'_/_/ it is not instruction,
__--'/` \ but provocation,
/ \ that I can receive
/ "o. |o"| from another soul."
| \/ - R.W. Emerson
\_ ___\
`--._`. \;//
;-.___,'
/
,'
_-'
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:26>From mpitcava@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu Tue Jan 16 07:38:47 1996
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 08:38:24 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: mpitcava@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark Pitcavage)
Subject: Proof?
I've been reading the Darwin list for just a short while, but I hope that no
one will mind if I venture a topic of conversation. I am not myself in the
field of natural history, but a distantly related field: history. I enjoy
reading works about evolution, paleohistory, etc., because (among other
reasons) they give me a rather different perspective on "history" than is
generally held in my field.
One thing that has struck me, however, about the historical aspect of
"natural history" is that there seem to be distinctly different standards of
proof. Although I understand that some people (Bakker, certainly) are
inherently more given to speculation than others, nevertheless it seems to
me that evolutionary biologists (and their ilk) are often willing to make
rather broad conclusions based on a rather small sample of evidence. For
instance, the area of early hominid evolution, in which even a single
partial skeleton can "revolutionize" our understanding, strikes me as being
particularly culpable in this regard. Can you really draw firm conclusions
from -one- skeleton of anything? It is impossible to know what degree of
typicality that one skeleton could represent. What if, three million years
from now, the only skeleton of Homo Sapiens that future cockroach
paleontologists could find was a skeleton of Michael Jordan? What
conclusions might they draw?
Some of the speculations about dinosaurs strike me in much the same way,
only more so. Did dinosaurs care for their young? Does a single dinosaur
draped over a clutch of eggs prove it? That seems like a risky proposition
to me, and yet suggestions far more far-flung than this one seem to be
bandied about all the time.
I say this not as criticism but as an observation, and I wonder to what
degree you think it might or might not have merit. What really constitutes
"proof" or "evidence" that can really satisfy? I'm curious.
Dr. Mark Pitcavage
mpitcava@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
http://www.greyware.com/authors/pitman
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:27>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Jan 16 22:16:56 1996
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 23:16:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Bryn Mawr Classical Review
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
One of the finest examples of electronic scholarly communication in
the historical sciences is the long-running Bryn Mawr Classical Review
(and its younger sibling, the Bryn Mawr Medieval Review), edited by
Jim O'Donnell. BMCR has just passed its fifth anniversary, and the
reflective editorial below just appeared from its address. Darwin-L
members may find it of interest, along with the news of expanded
archeological coverage in BMCR.
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
--begin forwarded message--------------
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 20:03:52 -0500
From: owner-bmr-l@cc.brynmawr.edu
Subject: BMR 96.1.2, From the Editor's Disk: Retrospect and Prospect
BMCR/BMMR/BMR: retrospect and prospect, January 1996
BMCR is five years old, BMMR two and a half. We grow, thrive,
and change. A few notes seem in order.
There are now about 250 subscribers receiving the paper, or eco-
criminal, version of BMCR, another 1200 receiving BMCR by e-mail,
900 receiving BMMR, and 630 receiving both together. If you
subscribed to BMCR on day one, you would now be awaiting in a few
days the arrival of your 900th BMCR production; for BMMR we have
passed the 200 mark. Sometime in 1996, we will have a new WWW
site for archives for both journals with substantially enhanced
"look and feel" (ut nostrates aiunt), excellent searching
capacity, and a way of seeing Greek as Greek (with alphabet and
diacrital marks) on screen. (If you have still not seen Greg
Crane's Perseus web site with Greek as Greek, full text of much
pre-Hellenistic Greek literature, and LSJ with hot-links from the
citations to the full texts for the pre-Hellenistic stuff, run
don't walk to http://www.perseus.tufts.edu and have a rummage.
The future is now.)
For a long time, we had thought that the next member of our
little family would be a separate archaeological review, but
instead the editors have recently begun to expand the
archaeological coverage of BMCR. Richard Green and James Wright
have joined the editorial board, to help Jenifer Neils and
Miranda Marvin place archaeological publications for review, and
Natalia Vogeikoff, archivist for the American School of Classical
Studies at Athens, has agreed to be our Greek editor. Her first
job has been to gather a list of Greek archaeological
publications, which will appear in a message to follow shortly.
She will also coordinate reviews of these books as well as
translating their "blurbs" until BMCR is able to provide Greek
Greek.
BMMR, meanwhile, has been having a bit of a quiet time this fall.
We are in a period of transition from one managing editor
arrangement to another, and we apologize for the relative
inactivity on that front, but we are urgently interested in its
future and hope to have announcements over the next few months of
some revitalization.
Finally, the editors cannot forbear to express as loudly and
ardently as possible their great gratitude not only to the
readers who have received these publications with such warmth and
enthusiasm but to the literally hundreds of reviewers who have
contributed their time, their insight, and their craft to making
these journals what they are. The electronic editor, JO'D,
cannot forbear to express his admiration and thanks to his co-
editors, Rick Hamilton (harum litterarum auctor et actor)
and Gene Vance as well.
**********
Some current administrivia. To subscribe to either journal, send
e-mail to listserv@cc.brynmawr.edu with the message "subscribe
bmcr-l" or "subscribe bmmr-l". If you wish to receive both
classical and medieval reviews with no duplications (a fair
number of items will appear on both journals lists), then the
message should be "subscribe bmr-l". To remove yourself from
our mailing lists, the same message should substitute merely the
verb "unsubscribe". There is no "nomail" function in our
software, so if you need to placate the e-mail gods for a time,
you should unsubscribe and then resubscribe when they are
appeased. Subscription queries and problems or small matters of
ritual observance in matters of placation should go to
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
All our reviews are archived thanks to the University of Virginia
Libraries and may be accessed and searched there. They are still
in gopher format, but WWW browsers may reach them as well. To
see them with a gopher client, point the client to
ccat.sas.upenn.edu, choose the menu item for Electronic
Publications, then the item for BMCR or BMMR. The URLs for WWW
browsers differ between the two by a single letter, so nota bene:
BMCR: gopher://gopher.lib.Virginia.EDU:70/11/alpha/bmcr
BMMR: gopher://gopher.lib.Virginia.EDU:70/11/alpha/bmmr
--end forwarded message----------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:28>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Wed Jan 17 00:10:43 1996
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 01:10:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 17 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
JANUARY 17 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1705: John Ray dies at Dewlands, near Braintree, England. His memorial
(inscribed in Latin) will read:
John Ray, Master of Arts.
Once Fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge.
Afterwards
A member of the Royal Society in London:
And to both of those learned bodies
An illustrious Ornament.
Hid in this narrow tomb, this marble span,
Lies all that death could snatch from this great man.
His body moulders in its native clay;
While o'er wide worlds his Works their beams display
As bright and everlasting as the day.
To those just fame ascribes immortal breath,
And in his Writings he outlives his death.
Of every Science every part he knew,
Read in all Arts divine and human too:
Like Solomon (and Solomon alone
We as a greater King of knowledge own)
Our modern Sage dark Nature's Secrets read
From the tall Cedar to the hyssop's bed:
From the unwieldiest Beast of land or deep,
To the least Insect that has power to creep.
Nor did his artful labours only shew
Those plants which on the earth's wide surface grew,
But piercing ev'n her darkest entrails through,
All that was wise, all that was great he knew,
And Nature's inmost gloom made clear to common view.
From foreign stores his learning bright supplies,
Exposing treasures hid from others' eyes,
Loading his single mind to make his country wise.
But what's yet more, he was so Meekly great,
That envy unrepining saw his state;
For, rare accomplishments! his humble mind
Possess'd a jewell, which it could not find.
A great descent lent nothing to his fame;
Virtue, not birth, distinguished his high name,
Titles and wealth he never strove to gain,
Those he would rather merit than obtain,
His private life in humble shades he spent,
Worthy a palace, with a cell content.
Unwearied he would knowledge still pursue,
The only thing in which no mean he knew.
What more did add to these bright gifts, we find
A pure untainted Piety of mind.
England's blest Church engross'd his zealous care,
A truth his dying accents did declare.
Thus lost he in retirement his great breath;
Thus dy'd he living, who thus lives in death.
Thus heav'n called his age's glory home,
And the bright wonder of the age to come.
Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
network discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.
Send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu or connect
to the Darwin-L Web Server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu) for more information.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:29>From jim@ling.ed.ac.uk Thu Jan 18 04:09:19 1996
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 1996 09:31:28 GMT
From: jim@ling.ed.ac.uk
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 543
According to normal interpretive conventions of English,
"Luther believed that man was born in sin." DOES NOT NECESSARILY attribute
to Luther a belief about a time prior to his holding the belief. It is
perfectly normal, if John says to me "I'm going out", for me to report
this by saying "John said that he was going out" OR "John said that he is
going out". The English sequence of tenses rule, which applies to both
verbs of saying and verbs of believing, produces this. True, it does
result in an ambiguity, and the exact time of the proposition about which
the belief is/was held is lost. But it can usually be recovered by sensible
extrapolation from context. And if you're really desperate to make your
meaning clear, you can always add a phrase like "... prior to that time" or
" ... always ...".
Jim Hurford, Linguistics, Edinburgh
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:30>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Fri Jan 19 00:31:31 1996
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 01:30:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 19 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
JANUARY 19 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1761: PIERRE-AUGUSTE-MARIE BROUSSONET is born at Montpellier, France.
An ardent naturalist from an early age, Broussonet will study Classics and
medicine at Montpellier, and will receive his doctorate in medicine there in
1779 at the age of eighteen. Broussonet's interests will turn to ichthyology,
and he will travel to London in 1780 where Joseph Banks will give him charge
of the ichthyological collection from James Cook's first voyage around the
world. Broussonet's initial reports on the Cook collection, _Ichthyologia
sistens piscium descriptiones et icones_, will begin to appear in 1782, but
the work as a whole will never be completed. Caught up in the violence of the
French Revolution, Broussonet will escape to Spain and will reside for a time
in Morocco where he will study botany. In 1803 he will return to Montpellier
to become professor of medicine, and will devote his energies to the revival
and expansion the Montpellier botanical garden. The first catalog of the
garden's collections, _Elenchus plantarum horti botanici Monspeliensis_,
will appear shortly before his death in 1807.
Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
network discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.
Send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu or connect
to the Darwin-L Web Server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu) for more information.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:31>From jim@ling.ed.ac.uk Sun Jan 21 10:38:42 1996
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 16:37:33 GMT
From: jim@ling.ed.ac.uk
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: LANGUAGE EVOLUTION CONFERENCE
EVOLUTION OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
Conference: University of Edinburgh, April 1st-4th, 1996
PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE OF TALKS.
(For registration procedure, see end of message.)
MONDAY, APRIL 1ST, 2.00pm - 6.00pm, PLENARY SESSION.
Jean Aitchison
"On discontinuing the continuity-discontinuity debate"
Kathleen Gibson
"The biocultural brain, mental hierarchies and continuity approaches"
Robbins Burling
"Iconic communication: between gesture-calls and language"
Bencie Woll
"Do sign languages tell us anything about the origins of human
language?"
Robert Kluender and Shannon Casey
"The continuity of gesture and language: a case study"
R Q Goodwin
"A functional perspective on the communicative abilities of apes
and children"
TUESDAY APRIL 2ND, 9.00am - 1.00pm, PLENARY SESSION.
Myrna Gopnik
"Genes, grammars and other curiosities"
Paul Fletcher
"Linguistic impairment in a British family: characterisation and
interpretation"
Elizabeth Isaacs, Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, Lucinda Carr, Edward Brett,
Christopher Adams, and Mortimer Mishkin
"Onset of speech after left hemispherectomy in a nine-year old boy"
Robin Dunbar
"Why did language evolve?"
R P Worden
"The evolution of language from social intelligence"
John Locke
"Talking as a precursor to spoken language"
Leslie C. Aiello
"The foundations of human language"
TUESDAY APRIL 2ND, 2.00pm - 6.00pm, PARALLEL SESSION A.
John Batali
"A model of the evolution of grammar"
Pat Healey and Carl Vogel
"Simulated coordination and convergence"
Asif Agha
"A typology of `concepts' for mental development"
Jean Louis Dessalles
"Genetic constraints on the evolution of human communication"
David Dickins and Richard Bentall
"Stimulus equivalence: a laboratory 'knack' or the heart of language?"
Pat Healey
"Natural selection and naturalised semantics"
Gary Marcus
"Two mechanisms of linguistic generalization: an evolutionary
perspective"
TUESDAY APRIL 2ND, 2.00pm - 6.00pm, PARALLEL SESSION B.
Maria Ujhelyi
"Long call structure in apes as a possible precursor for language"
William Noble
"Discovering the symbolic potential of communicative signs"
Ib Ulbaek
"The origin of language and cognition"
Chris Knight
"A 'selfish-gene' solution to the problem of deception"
Camilla Power
"The vocal grooming and gossip theory of language origins:
can cheap signals be reliable?"
Koji Ohnishi
"African origin of classifier-prefixed words in extra-African
languages: new evidence for Ruhlen's monogenesis theory of human languages"
WEDNESDAY APRIL 3RD, 9.00am - 1.00pm, PLENARY SESSION.
Derek Bickerton
"Catastrophic evolution: the case for a single step from
proto-language to language"
Frederick Newmeyer
"On the supposed 'dysfunctionality' of universal grammar: some
evolutionary implications"
Ted Briscoe
"Parsability as a constraint on the evolution of language"
Simon Kirby
"Fitness and the selective adaptation of language"
Christer Johansson
"Transmission of 'language parameters' during the years of the plague"
Robert Berwick
Title to be announced
Philip Lieberman
"On the evolution of the human brain's functional language system"
WEDNESDAY APRIL 3RD, 2.00pm - 6.00pm, PARALLEL SESSION A.
T J Crow
"Sexual selection acting on an X-Y homologous gene as the
mechanism of evolution of language"
Chris McManus
"Handedness, cerebral lateralization and the evolution of
language"
Peter MacNeilage
"Evolution of the mechanism of language output"
Kevin Cohen
Title to be announced
Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy
"Synonymy avoidance, phonology and the origin of syntax"
Marilee Monnot
"What is the adaptive function of maternal 'motherese' speech?"
WEDNESDAY APRIL 3RD, 2.00pm - 6.00pm, PARALLEL SESSION B.
Klaus Kohler
"The development of sound systems in human language"
Jean-Marie Hombert and Egidio Marsico
"Do vowel systems increase in complexity?"
Didier Demolin
"The role of self-organization in the emergence of phonological
systems"
Jean-Marie Hombert
"30,000 years of vowel changes in Australian languages"
Bjorn Lindblom
Title to be announced
Susan Duncan
"The role of rhythm in human language"
THURSDAY APRIL 4TH, 9.00am - 1.00pm, PLENARY SESSION.
Alexander Marshack
"Middle Palaeolithic and earlier Acheulian symbolic materials and
their relevance to the origin and evolution of language"
Iain Davidson
"Language origins and the dispersal of modern humans"
James Steele
"Stone tools and language capacities; a methodology for
apple-and-pear comparisons"
Johanna Nichols
"Linguistic bottlenecks and the human dispersal"
Leon Stassen
"A-languages and B-languages: parameter clusters in the languages
of the world"
Daniel Nettle
"Language and other systems of exchange: the evolution of
linguistic diversity"
CONFERENCE ENDS 1.OOpm, THURSDAY APRIL 4TH.
--------------
OUR SPONSORS
We gratefully acknowledge financial support from:
University of Edinburgh Linguistics Department
University of Edinburgh Interdisciplinary Research Fund
The Times Higher Educational Supplement
University of Edinburgh Northern Scholars Committee
Linguistics Association of Great Britain
Royal Anthropological Institution
Edinburgh International Science Festival
-----------------------cut here-------------------------------------
EVOLUTION OF HUMAN LANGUAGE CONFERENCE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, APRIL 1-4, 1996
REGISTRATION FORM
Please edit and return to: evoconf@ling.ed.ac.uk
Title: _____________________________________________________
Name: _____________________________________________________
Affiliation (if any): ________________________________________
Contact Address: _____________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Vegetarian or other dietary requirements: ____________________
ALL COSTS IN UK POUNDS STERLING (insert amounts below)
Conference Fee:* _________
75.00, non-student delegates
40.00, students (with copy of student ID)
Discounts available to a maximum
of 15 students
*Includes lunch April 2 and 3, afternoon tea
and morning coffee April 1-4, all conference
facilities, materials & administration costs
Number of nights' accomodation required: _____
Type of accomodation required (1-3): _____
Type 1: single room, shared facilities, 25.00/night
Type 2: double room, shared facilities, 36.00/night
Type 3: double room, en-suite facilities, 59.00/night
Price includes accomodation at Pollock Halls and
full Scottish breakfast.
Total accomodation costs: _________
Abstract booklet only (price 5.00): _________
TOTAL ALL COSTS: _________
FOREIGN EXCHANGE FEE (See *note below) _________
GRAND TOTAL _________
Payment is due by March 1st. (10% surcharge for late payment). Please
send cheques or money orders in POUNDS STERLING* to:
Evolution of Human Language Conference
Dept. of Linguistics
University of Edinburgh
Adam Ferguson Building
40 George Square
Edinburgh
EH9 8LL
Please make cheques payable to "Evolution Conference 96"
*For payment in other currencies, please add the equivalent of 10
pounds sterling to the "TOTAL ALL COSTS" above.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:32>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Jan 21 19:47:32 1996
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 20:46:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Early wall charts for teaching natural history
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
This query was posted on another list, and I thought some of our
historians of science might be able to provide information. I would
be grateful to have any replies posted to Darwin-L also, as I myself
have an interesting systematic wall chart from the 1850s that is
very tree-like, though it appeared before the _Origin_. It is titled
"A general view of the animal kingdom by A. M. Redfield", published by
E. B. and E. C. Kellogg of New York and Hartford, Connecticut, about
1857, and is just over a meter square. If anyone is familiar with
Redfield or with similar charts I would be interested to hear more.
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
--begin forwarded messsage-------------
From: Dr.Franca Guidali@mikasa.iol.it (University of Milan)
Subject: Botanical and Zoological Wall Charts
Date: 17 Jan 1996 19:56:04 GMT
Organization: Italia Online
We would appreciate to know as soon as possible details of publishers,
artists and scientists who have produced, up to 1950, wall charts for
the study of Botany and Zoology (including also Genetics and
Comparative Anatomy), on paper or canvas, for didactic purposes in
high schools, universities or museums.
Please contact Dr. Franca Guidali
c/o Museo Zoologico, Universit` degli Studi di Milano
via Celoria 26
20133 Milano (Italy)
Phone: ++39 - 2 - 26604311
--end forwarded message----------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:33>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Jan 23 11:23:01 1996
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 12:15:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 23 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
JANUARY 23 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1785: CARL ADOLPH AGARDH is born at Bastad, Sweden. As professor of botany
at the University of Lund, Agardh will become the leading algologist of his
day. His initial _Synopsis algarum Scandinaviae_ (1817) will be expanded
into the _Species algarum_ (1821-1828) and the _Systema algarum_ (1824), and
his broader views on the natural system in botany will appear in the series
_Aphorismi botanici_ (1817-1826) and in _Classes plantarum_ (1825). Agardh's
systematic views will be strongly influenced by German Naturphilosophie, and
in 1827 he will meet the philosopher Friedrich Schelling at Karlsbad, where
together they will examine the algae growing in Karlsbad's mineral springs.
In 1835 Agardh will be appointed to the bishopric of Karlstad, and will
abandon his botanical work. He will die at Karlstad in 1859.
Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
network discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.
Send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu or connect
to the Darwin-L Web Server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu) for more information.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:34>From ddennett@diamond.tufts.edu Wed Jan 24 08:48:12 1996
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 09:48:00 -0500 (EST)
From: Daniel Dennett <ddennett@diamond.tufts.edu>
To: Darwin-List <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject: Darwin on nervous systems?
Did Darwin ever comment on diversity of nervous systems in insects? I do
not recall such a discussion, and doubt that microscopy in his day could
give him much evidence, but have I overlooked or forgotten some
interesting passage? A friend insists Darwin pointed out
intra-species differences in the "wiring" of insects (might it have been
barnacles?).
Dan Dennett
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:35>From mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca Fri Jan 26 13:50:17 1996
From: Mary P Winsor <mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: Darwin on nervous systems
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 14:50:03 -0500 (EST)
In reply to:
> Did Darwin ever comment on diversity of nervous systems in insects? I do
> not recall such a discussion, and doubt that microscopy in his day could
> give him much evidence, but have I overlooked or forgotten some
> interesting passage? A friend insists Darwin pointed out
> intra-species differences in the "wiring" of insects (might it have been
> barnacles?).
> Dan Dennett
Certainly he did, in chapter 2 of the ORigin. I laid my hand on the
place (pp. 45-6 of 1st ed) instantly with the help of the Concordance
ed. by Paul H. Harrett et al., by looking up "nerves."
"I should never have expected that the branching of the main nerves
close to the central ganglion of an insect would have been variable
in the same species...yet Mr. Lubbock has shown a degree of
variability in these main nerves in Coccus, which may almost be
compared to the irregular branching of the stem of a tree."
Microscopy?! have you forgotten poor old Pierre Lyonet in the 18th
c., not to mention stunning Swammerdam in the 17th? you don't need to
see cells to see nerves.
Polly Winsor mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:36>From brewer@cs.wmich.edu Fri Jan 26 15:46:58 1996
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 16:46:35 -0500
From: brewer@cs.wmich.edu (Steve Brewer)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Conceptual representations of phylogenetic inference
As some of you know, I'm studying manual phylogenetic tree
construction. I'm in the middle of my data analysis and have
been toying around with some abstract conceptual ideas about
phylogenetic inference and thought I might run them past all
of you.
People use a variety of strategies to find phylogenetic trees
by hand. Most of my subjects used a character compatibility
approach to find a subset of trees and then used parsimony to
deal with homoplasious characters. This is always a good strategy
to find *a* most parsimonious tree, but doesn't always facilitate
finding *all* most parsimonious trees.
One way of representing this is as a set of possible trees
with a large subset of compatible trees and a small subset
of most parsimonious trees. The most parsimonious trees
usually overlaps with and can be, but is not always, a subset of
the compatible trees. This seems like a useful way to
diagramatically represent how a problem solver reduces the
set of possible trees to a manageable level.
At a conceptual level, though, it seems to me that these sets
are really hypervolumes. If n=number of characters x number of taxa
and c=number of compatible characters x number of taxa then it seems
to me that I can think of the set of all trees as an n dimensional
hypervolume and the set of compatible trees as an n-c dimensional
hypervolume. I'm stuck trying to visualize how many dimensions
the most parsimonious hypervolume would have, though. Maybe it
is not analoguous or comparable to the others in some sense.
Any thoughts?
--
Steve Brewer <steven.brewer@wmich.edu> | Se iu diras 'Mi havas korpon,' oni
http://141.218.91.93/WWW/I_sbrewer.html | povas demandi 'Kiu parolas tie ^ci
Science Studies WMU Kalamazoo MI 49008 | per tiu ^ci bu^so?' --Wittgenstein
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:37>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sat Jan 27 00:09:30 1996
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 01:09:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 27 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
JANUARY 27 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1873: ADAM SEDGWICK dies at Cambridge, England. A mathematics graduate of
Trinity College, Cambridge, Sedgwick became a fellow of Trinity in 1810 and
Woodwardian Professor of Geology in 1818. Enormously influential on an entire
generation of British geologists through his field work and his teaching,
Sedgwick counted among his students the young Charles Darwin who accompanied
him on a geological expedition to north Wales in 1831. Interested especially
in the oldest fossiliferous strata, Sedgwick devoted much of his energy to the
elucidation of the rock system he named "Cambrian", summarizing his views in
_A Synopsis of the Classification of the British Palaeozoic Rocks With a
Systematic Description of the British Palaeozoic Fossils in the Geological
Museum of the University of Cambridge_ (1851-1855). He eventually became
engaged in a fierce dispute with Roderick Murchison who was investigating the
slightly younger rocks of the Silurian system. An ordained Anglican minister
of liberal inclination, Sedgwick opposed Darwin's evolutionary views when they
were published in 1859 just as vigorously as he had opposed the views of the
naive scriptural geologists of the 1820s and 1830s. After his death the
geological museum at Cambridge will be named the Sedgwick Museum in his honor.
Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
network discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.
Send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu or connect
to the Darwin-L Web Server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu) for more information.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:38>From joe@genetics.washington.edu Sat Jan 27 19:15:10 1996
From: Joe Felsenstein <joe@genetics.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Conceptual representations of phylogenetic inference
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 17:21:04 -0800 (PST)
Steve Brewer asked:
> One way of representing this is as a set of possible trees
> with a large subset of compatible trees and a small subset
> of most parsimonious trees. ....
> At a conceptual level, though, it seems to me that these sets
> are really hypervolumes. If n=number of characters x number of taxa
> and c=number of compatible characters x number of taxa then it seems
> to me that I can think of the set of all trees as an n dimensional
> hypervolume and the set of compatible trees as an n-c dimensional
> hypervolume. I'm stuck trying to visualize how many dimensions
> the most parsimonious hypervolume would have, though. Maybe it
> is not analoguous or comparable to the others in some sense.
In general I don't think that thinking of sets of trees as
volumes in a Euclidean space is going to work. For n species, the
number of possible (unrooted) trees with labelled tips and unlabelled
interior nodes is, counting only bifurcating trees,
1 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 9 x ... x (2n-5)
n-2
which gets very big very fast. It can also be written as (2n-5)!/(n-2)!2 ).
Note that the size of this set of trees does not depend on the number of
characters at all. Sets of compatible trees and sets of parsimonious trees
are subsets of this big set.
For enumerations of trees that are multifurcating (of which there are of course
more as they include the bifurcating ones) see my paper of 1978 in Systematic
Zoology, though the numbers were earlier calculated by Ernst Schroeder in
1870 in the Zeitschrift fuer Mathematik und Physik, as I was informed
to my chagrin when that paper was reviewed by Charles Cotterman).
I think that the numbers of trees that Brewer was inferring are substantially
smaller than these numbers.
--
Joe Felsenstein joe@genetics.washington.edu (IP No. 128.95.12.41)
Dept. of Genetics, Univ. of Washington, Box 357360, Seattle, WA 98195-7360 USA
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:39>From brewer@cs.wmich.edu Sun Jan 28 09:10:04 1996
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 10:09:52 -0500
From: brewer@cs.wmich.edu (Steve Brewer)
To: joe@genetics.washington.edu
Subject: Re: Conceptual representation of phylogenetic inference
Cc: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
] From: Joe Felsenstein <joe@genetics.washington.edu>
]
] In general I don't think that thinking of sets of trees as
] volumes in a Euclidean space is going to work.
[...]
] I think that the numbers of trees that Brewer was inferring are substantially
] smaller than these numbers.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
I've spent some time trying to decipher Waterman's chapter on Trees
and Sequences (in his 1995 book Introduction to Computational
Biology) so I had seen the formula for calculating the number
of unique topologies (but not the computational equivalent. Thanks!)
This number is indeed entirely determined by the number of taxa.
This set becomes much larger, however, when you consider how
each character could be distributed on each tree (without
parsimony considerations). I'm not much of a mathemagician,
but for every tree, there will be some factorial of arrangements
based on the number of apomorphies for the character (autapomorphies
must be gained once, 2 apomorphies can be 1 or 2 gains, 3
apomorphies can be 1, 2, or 3 gains, a gain and a loss or a gain
and two losses or two gains and a loss, ...). Each character adds
another dimension which expands the set of topologies into
some other kind of set of possible trees. I was using
'hypervolume' in a general sense to refer to this larger set
of possible trees.
This becomes interesting when someone uses a character
compatibility approach to construct phylogenetic trees in the
case where the set of most parsimonious trees is disjunct
from or only imcompletely intersects the set of compatible trees.
In these cases, those trees which are outside of the set of
compatible trees appear to be very hard to find. In my data,
I have several examples where the two sets intersect incompletely,
but unfortunately none show where the two sets do not
intersect at all (although yesterday I constructed such a problem
to prove to myself that it could be done).
But, as I said before, I'm still not entirely sure what these
'sets' are or how best to characterize them and their
interrelationship. It isn't critical to my purposes to do so,
but I thought it an interesting puzzle.
--
Steve Brewer <steven.brewer@wmich.edu> | Se iu diras 'Mi havas korpon,' oni
http://141.218.91.93/WWW/I_sbrewer.html | povas demandi 'Kiu parolas tie ^ci
Science Studies WMU Kalamazoo MI 49008 | per tiu ^ci bu^so?' --Wittgenstein
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:40>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Jan 28 19:45:59 1996
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 20:00:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections
(fwd from nhcoll-l)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
--begin forwarded message--------------
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 10:50:08 -0500 (EST)
From: BENAMY@say.acnatsci.org
To: nhcoll-l@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: SPNHC '96 Meeting Announcement
Please pardon multiple listings of the following announcement.
SPNHC '96
"Historic Natural History Collections"
The 11th annual meeting of the Society for the Preservation of
Natural History Collections (SPNHC) will be hosted by The Academy
of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia from June 12-15, 1996.
Everyone is encouraged to submit papers and posters on natural
history collection management issues for consideration. Papers
on the special concerns of historic collections are particularly
encouraged.
This years workshop "Valuation and Insurance of Natural History
Collections" will be held on June 15. You may register for the
workshop alone or in addition to the meeting.
In addition to the technical sessions, registration for the
meeting will include a special round robin tour of Philadelphia's
premiere historic institutions, the Wagner Free Institute of
Science and the Mutter Museum.
For additional information, or to receive a registration package,
please contact:
Elana Benamy
SPNHC '96
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19103-1195
USA
Phone: (215) 299-1137
Fax: (215) 299-1170
Email: benamy@say.acnatsci.org
--end forwarded message----------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:41>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Jan 28 19:46:32 1996
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 20:31:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: The number of trees
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
I'm glad to see Steve Brewer mention his interesting work on how
people conceptualize phylogenetic problems. Replying to Steve, Joe
Felsenstein mentioned his own paper on the number of phylogenetic trees:
>For enumerations of trees that are multifurcating (of which there are of
>course more as they include the bifurcating ones) see my paper of 1978 in
>Systematic Zoology, though the numbers were earlier calculated by Ernst
>Schroeder in 1870 in the Zeitschrift fuer Mathematik und Physik, as I was
>informed to my chagrin when that paper was reviewed by Charles Cotterman).
Joe and others might be interested to know that another independent treatment
of this problem was published a few years ago by someone interested in the
problem of how many stemmata could be drawn for a given collection of
manuscripts. The citation is:
Flight, Colin. 1990. How many stemmata? _Manuscripta_, 34:122-128.
I don't remember the formula that Flight derived, but it might be interesting
to compare it with Joe's (and Schroeder's). I believe he also mentions other
earlier remarks on the problem in stemmatics.
(And I will add Schroeder to the file of things proving the old academic
adage, "If you have thought of an interesting problem, chances are it was
already thought of and solved by some German in the nineteenth century.")
Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner
Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
Cornelia Strong College, 100 Foust Building
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:42>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Mon Jan 29 12:31:16 1996
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 13:31:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 29 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
JANUARY 29 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1688: EMANUEL SWEDENBORG is born at Stockholm, Sweden. Swedenborg will grow
up in Uppsala and will study humanities at Uppsala University. His interests
will soon turn to the sciences, and he will travel to London where he will
study mathematics, astronomy, and geology in association with Edmund Halley
and John Woodward. In 1716 Swedenborg will be appointed an assessor for the
Swedish Board of Mines, and will establish a short-lived scientific journal,
_Daedalus hyperboreus_, the first journal of its kind in Sweden. Swedenborg's
researches in cosmogeny will lead him to argue in _Om jordenes och planeternas
gang och stand_ (_On the Course and Position of the Earth and the Planets_,
1718) that the earth had orbited the sun at a faster rate in earlier times.
Entering the debate about the geological history of Scandinavia in 1719,
Swedenborg will marshal evidence from geology and biogeography to argue in
_Om watnens hogd och forra werldens starcka ebb och flod_ (_On the Level of
the Seas and the Great Tides in Former Times_) that Sweden had previously been
covered entirely by water and had risen up out of the sea. Always a grand and
wide-ranging thinker who maintined an active interest in theological as well
as scientific problems, Swedenborg will increasingly come to suffer from
hallucinations and delusions, almost certainly brought about by severe manic-
depression. The religious interpretations he will give to these experiences
will lead him to abandon his scientific work and devote himself entirely to
theology and prophecy. He will die in March of 1772 and be buried in the
Uppsala Cathedral, a few steps from the site where his countryman Linnaeus
will be buried six years later. The religious followers Swedenborg will win
during his later years will establish The Church of the New Jerusalem in 1787
to keep his spiritual doctrines alive.
Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
network discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.
Send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu or connect
to the Darwin-L Web Server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu) for more information.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:43>From bhayes@dsu.deltast.edu Mon Jan 29 11:41:28 1996
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 11:40:45 -0600 (CST)
From: "William A. Hayes" <bhayes@dsu.deltast.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Help: source of quote?
I am trying to find the source of the following but due to the limits of
our library have been unable to track it down. It sounds much like
T.H.Huxley to me. I thought someone else on the list might recognize it.
Thanks in advance!
Quote: You have all heard it repeated, I dare say, that men of science
work by means of Induction and Deduction, and that by the help of these
operations, they, in a sort of sense, wring from Nature certain other
things, which are called Natural Laws, and Causes, and that out of these,
by some cunning skill of their own, they build up Hypotheses and
Theories. And it is imagined by many, that the operations of the common
mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they have
to be acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft. To hear
all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science
must be constituted differently from that of his fellow-men; but if you
will not be frightened by terms, you will discover that you are quite
wrong, and that all these terrible apparatus are being used yourselves
every day and every hour of your lives.
There is a well-known incident in one of Moliere's plays, where the
author makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had
been talking prose during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust
that you will take comfort,and be delighted yourselves, on the discovery...
unquote
The piece goes on to discuss taking a bite of a green apple and finding
it sour, etc.
Best wishes,
Bill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
William A. Hayes, II, Ph.D. | If you follow your bliss, you put yourself
Professor of Biology | on a kind of a track that has been there
P.O.Box 3234 | the whole while, waiting for you, and the
Delta State University | life you ought to be living is the one you
Cleveland, MS 38733 | are living. --- Joseph Campbell
ph: 601-846-4247 \ _____ ____
fax: 601-846-4016 | \_____ _____/ \
email: bhayes@dsu.deltast.edu | __ \^^/ __ |
or pairodocs@aol.com | ////)\(0= =0)/(\\\\
// ^\| / ^^ \ |/^ \\
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:44>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu Mon Jan 29 08:48:38 1996
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 09:48:53 -0500
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (Darwin List)
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy C. Ahouse)
Subject: Strong Inference
Hi list,
In 1964 biophysicist J.R. Platt wrote a paper on a method in
science that advocated strong empirical tests to prune clearly distinct
trees of hypotheses. This was followed a year later by a detailed critique
(one short example; X-rays and one long; Fermi interactions) that tried to
make the point that it ain't that simple (Haffner and Presswood, 1965).
A few references to the Platt article seem to crop up every year
since in Science Citation Index. I was wondering if any of you can direct
me to a critique (positive or negative) of Platt's "stong inference" from
the practice of biology. I am especially interested in the way this
approach may fit to different domains... for example; molecular biology is
currently in a moping up stage and may be more amenable to this
prescription while evolutionary biology may have particular difficulty with
this "model."
This issue rapidly treads on the subject of what do we tell
ourselves to do good science? Is history of disciplinary episodes the
right story (Brush, 1974)? This may resonate particularly when looking at
the coverage that Darwin has gotten compare; Desmond & Moore (1992),
Ghiselin (1969), Hull (1973) and yes, Dennett(1995).
Thanks,
- Jeremy
Brush, S. G. (1974). Should the history of science be rated X? Science 183,
1164-1172.
Dennett, D. C. (1995). "Darwin's dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings
of life." Simon & Schuster, New York.
Desmond, A. J., and Moore, J. (1992). "Darwin." Warner Books, New York, NY.
Ghiselin, M. T. (1969). "The triumph of the Darwinian method." Univ. of
California Press,
Hafner, E. M., and Presswood, S. (1965). Strong Inference and Weak
Interactions. Science 149, 503-510.
Hull, D. L. (1973). "Darwin and his critics; the reception of Darwin's
theory of evolution by the scientific community." Harvard University Press,
Platt, J. R. (1964). Strong Inference. Science 146, 347-353.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:45>From rroizen@ix.netcom.com Mon Jan 29 14:43:41 1996
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 12:43:32 -0800
From: rroizen@ix.netcom.com (Ron Roizen )
Subject: Re: Help: source of quote?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Bill Hayes wrote:
>
>I am trying to find the source of the following but due to the limits of
>our library have been unable to track it down. It sounds much like
>T.H.Huxley to me. I thought someone else on the list might recognize it.
>Thanks in advance!
>
>Quote: You have all heard it repeated, I dare say, that men of science
>work by means of Induction and Deduction, and that by the help of these
>operations, they, in a sort of sense, wring from Nature certain other
>things, which are called Natural Laws, and Causes, and that out of these,
>by some cunning skill of their own, they build up Hypotheses and
>Theories. And it is imagined by many, that the operations of the common
>mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they have
>to be acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft. To hear
>all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science
>must be constituted differently from that of his fellow-men; but if you
>will not be frightened by terms, you will discover that you are quite
>wrong, and that all these terrible apparatus are being used yourselves
>every day and every hour of your lives.
>
>There is a well-known incident in one of Moliere's plays, where the
>author makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had
>been talking prose during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust
>that you will take comfort,and be delighted yourselves, on the discovery...
Hi Bill...Funny you should ask. I cited the same Moliere quotation in an
undergrad paper I wrote in an independent study class with the late Reinhard
Bendix back in 1971! My, my, what sticks in one's memory. I'm pretty sure
we have the same lead-up text in mind and, yes, it is T.H. Huxley. The
passage comes from one of his "workingman's lecture series" given in 1862.
If my citation practices were worth a hoot back then, you'll find the full
quote in Thomas Henry Huxley, _On the Origin of Species_, Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1969, page 50 or so.
Incidentally, my paper addressed the topic of Huxley's science-selling
powers and strategies. If you're doing something similar, let me know and
I can fax you the text around the Moliere quote therein.
Gotta love the net!
Ron Roizen
Berkeley, CA
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:46>From GRANSOM@ucrac1.ucr.edu Mon Jan 29 20:06:59 1996
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 18:06:26 -0800 (PST)
From: GREG RANSOM <GRANSOM@ucrac1.ucr.edu>
To: DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: William Jones & evolution by descent
Friedrich Hayek suggests that, "The model which made the idea
of evolution generally known in the beginning of the nineteenth
century was Sir William Jone's discovery of the connection of
the Indo-European languages." (F. Hayek, _Hayek on Hayek_, pp. 14-141).
Hayek also suggests that, "[Charles Darwin's] painstaking efforts
to illustrate how the porcess of evolution operated in living organisms
convinced the scientific community of what had long been a commonplace
in the humanities -- at least since Sir William Jones in 1787 recognized
the striking resemblance of Latin and Greek to Sanskrit, and the descent of
all 'Indo-Germanic' languages from the latter." (F. Hayek, _The Fatal
Conceit_, p. 23)
How close is Hayek to the mark here, and what is the relation
between the development of the notion of evolution in the humanities
to the later appropriation of these notions by the biologists.
Is there a good book or some key articles that I might take a look
at on this history. (I'm familiar with parts of the story from Mayr and
Hayek, who corresponded on the topic, but not much beyond their work.)
Greg Ransom
Dept. of Philosophy
UC-Riverside
gransom@ucrac1.ucr.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:47>From brhenze@mailbox.syr.edu Mon Jan 29 22:55:55 1996
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 23:55:39 -0500 (EST)
From: "Brent R. Henze" <brhenze@mailbox.syr.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Help: source of quote?
The passage you've quoted is from Huxley's "The Method of
Scientific Investigation"--part of his "Lectures to Workingmen". I
actually found it in a writing anthology, _The Culture of Science_ (Hatton
and Plouffe, published by Macmillan, 1993), so I'm not certain where you
could find it--but I believe I've read it elsewhere, as well, so it's
likely to be in a general anthology of H's works.
Along these lines, I've found many a Darwin text available on the
web, but are any Huxley texts available? If so, can someone post a URL?
Take care--
brent henze
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:48>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Jan 30 00:49:48 1996
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 01:49:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 30 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
JANUARY 30 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1707: GEORG DIONYSIUS EHRET is born at Heidelberg, Germany. Apprenticed to
his uncle as a gardener, the young Ehret will travel widely in Germany and
will come to know many of the country's leading horticulturalists. His skill
as an artist will bring him to the attention of the botanist Christoph Jacob
Trew, under whose patronage Ehret will travel around Europe collecting and
illustrating plants and increasing his circle of supporters. Ehret will be
employed by Linnaeus in 1737 to illustrate the _Hortus Cliffortianus_, and
will work for a time in the botanical garden at Oxford University after his
emigration to England in 1740. He will be elected to the Royal Society of
London in 1757, and Linnaeus will name the genus _Ehretia_ in his honor.
Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
network discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.
Send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu or connect
to the Darwin-L Web Server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu) for more information.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:49>From peter@usenix.org Tue Jan 30 06:56:14 1996
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 96 04:57:37 PST
From: peter@usenix.org (Peter H. Salus)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: William Jones & evolution by descent
Greg,
While it may seem immodest, you might look at my
Preface to S.S. Pachori's _Sir William Jones: A
Reader_ (OUP, 1993). The scientific importance
of Jones has not really been explored. Over the
past 30+ years, I have labored on the literary,
linguistic, and philosophic ones. I had once
hoped that Pachori or Garland Cannon might put
together an anthology of Jones' musical and
scientific work, but this hope seems to have
been in vain.
Peter H. Salus
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:50>From ddennett@diamond.tufts.edu Tue Jan 30 09:12:47 1996
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 10:12:41 -0500 (EST)
From: Daniel Dennett <ddennett@diamond.tufts.edu>
To: Darwin-List <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject: evolution in the humanities
I cannot answer any of Greg Ransom's good questions, but would like to
extend them somewhat. In DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA, I comment on the nice
parallels between the methods of genealogical deduction developed by the
philologists working on the "purification" of such texts as Plato's
dialogues, and wonder whether Darwin picked up any insight from that
tradition (p136-8). No one has yet given me any leads, but perhaps some
Darwin-list scholars will be able to help.
Dan Denntt
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:51>From FALN@zuk.iz.uj.edu.pl Tue Jan 30 10:23:00 1996
From: "Falniowski Andrzej" <FALN@zuk.iz.uj.edu.pl>
Organization: Instytut Zoologii U.J.
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 17:22:20 MET
Subject: German taxonomical terminology
Could anybody inform me what is the German for:
# MPR = most parsimonious reconstruction (and parsimony, in general);
## character state ?
The problem has arised, since in Malakologische Abhandlungen a German
"Kurzfassung" is necessary, but nobody knows how to translate above
terms. It has to be said, that similar problems we do have with
Polish terminology, but the latter could be solved, contrary to the
problems with German, not familiar for nobody of us.
Thank you in advance!
Regards,
Andrzej Falniowski
Dr. Andrzej Falniowski
Ass. Professor (Systematic Zoology/Malacology)
Department of Malacology
Institute of Zoology
Jagiellonian University
ul. R. Ingardena 6
30-060 Krakow, Poland
tel. 33-63-77 ext. 414, fax 34-37-16
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:52>From lbeltran@servidor.unam.mx Tue Jan 30 12:44:17 1996
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 12:44:24 -0600 (CST)
From: Lopez Beltran Carlos-IIF <lbeltran@servidor.unam.mx>
To: Darwinlist <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject: Re: William Jones & evolution by descent (fwd)
One reference is Biological Methaphors and Cladistic Classification,
edited by H. M. Hoenigswald and L.f. Wiener, U. of Pennsylvania Press,
1987. Several articles there are relevant. Texts in historical
linguistics are also rlevant, Hock H. H. 1986: Principles of historical
linguistics for example.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:53>From mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca Tue Jan 30 15:08:28 1996
From: Mary P Winsor <mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: biological metaphors
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (bulletin board)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 16:08:10 -0500 (EST)
Indeed, "Biological Metaphors and Cladistic Classification" which I
looked at because our fearless leader Bob O'Hara recommended it soon
after he opened this list has an article directly addressing the
inspiration linguistics gave to evolutionists and vice versa,
concluding if I recall rightly that though there are some nice
mentions of each other, the influences weren't as powerful as we might
guess.
polly Winsor mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca
a book well worth looking at
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:54>From minaka@niaes.affrc.go.jp Tue Jan 30 18:47:34 1996
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 96 09:51:07 +0900
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: minaka@niaes.affrc.go.jp (Nobuhiro Minaka)
Subject: Re: German taxonomical terminology
Hi all,
At 17:22 96.01.30 +0100, Falniowski Andrzej wrote:
>Could anybody inform me what is the German for:
># MPR = most parsimonious reconstruction (and parsimony, in general);
>## character state ?
Standard German textbook on phylogenetics (Ax 1984, Sudhaus and
Rehfeld 1992) says:
"Principle of parsimony" = "Prinzip der sparsamsten Erklaerung";
(Sudhaus and Rehfeld 1992: 3)
"Character state" = "Merkmalszustand". (Ax 1984: 118)
[Ax 1987 (Engl. trans.) translates "Merkmalszustande" into "feature
state". This book adopts "feature" instead of "character" throughout.]
However, I can't find any German counterpart of "MPR" (most
parsimonious reconstruction). "MPR" (Swofford and Maddison 1987) is
characteristic of numerical cladistic theory developed since 1980s.
This word might not be translated (or transplanted) into original Hennigian
phylogenetics in Germany.
References:
Ax, P. 1984. Das phylogenetische System. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart.
Ax, P. 1987. The phylogenetic system. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.
Swofford, D.L. and W.P. Maddison 1987. Math. Biosci., 87: 199-229.
Sudhaus, W. and K. Rehfeld 1992. Einfuerung in die Phylogenetik und Systematik.
Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttugart.
T _____________________ Nobuhiro Minaka ______________________
!_R Laboratory of Statistics, Division of Information Analysis
| E National Institute of Agro-Environmental Sciences
~| !_E Kannon-dai 3-1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305, Japan
!_ ~| _-S PHONE: +81-(0)298-38-8222 FAX: +81-(0)298-38-8199
~-?~ E-mail: minaka@niaes.affrc.go.jp
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:55>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Jan 30 19:15:04 1996
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 20:14:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: More on the number of possible trees
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Following up the recent discussion of the number of evolutionary trees
possible for a given collection of taxa, another very interesting historical
reference on this question can be found in our own Polly Winsor's dicussion
of Alexander Agassiz in her history of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at
Harvard (M. P. Winsor, _Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at
the Agassiz Musuem_, Univ. Chicago Press, 1991). Polly recounts the address
given by Alezander Agassiz at the 1880 meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science. Agassiz criticizes those workers who have
given us genealogical trees where we may, in the twigs and branches and
main limbs and trunk, trace the complete filiation of a group....Ordinarily,
the twigs of any genealogical tree have only a semblance of truth; they
lead us to branchelets having but a slight trace of probability, to branches
where the imagination plays an important part.... [and so on]
He concludes "the time for genealogical trees is passed." Agassiz is not
denying evolutionary history (as his father Louis would have), but rather is
rejecting as speculative the task of reconstructing particular phylogenies.
In this he was not alone in his day, and a number of people recently have
commented on the widespread "eclipse of history" around 1900 as interest in
history declined and interest in function and experiment grew. (The phrase
"the eclipse of history" comes from Brooks & McLennan's _Phylogeny, Ecology,
and Behavior_, 1991.) The same eclipse of history also occurred in
linguistics and textual criticism.
What makes Alexander Agassiz's argument for this position interesting in the
context of our recent messages is that it is based on the impossibility of
searching through the space of all possible trees, or more specifically, the
space of all possible character combinations. Polly quotes further:
Let us take, for instance, the ten most characteristic features of Echini.
The number of possible combinations which can be produced from them is so
great that it would take no less than twenty years, at the rate of one new
combination a minute for ten hours a day, to pass them in review.
Chapter 6 in _Reading the Shape of Nature_ discusses Agassiz's argument
at length, and will be of interest to everyone on Darwin-L who thinks about
trees as well as about the general decline of the historical sciences around
the turn of this century.
Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner
Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
Cornelia Strong College, 100 Foust Building
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:56>From g-cziko@uiuc.edu Tue Jan 30 22:14:19 1996
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 22:15:24 -0600
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: g-cziko@uiuc.edu (Gary Cziko)
Subject: The Spaniels of St. Marx
[from Gary Cziko 960131.0410 GMT]
Those of you interested in the adaptationist debate might find the
following article interesting, and maybe even humorous (I suppose the
latter depends on what "side" you take).
Queller, David C. (1995, December). The spaniels of St. Marx and the
Panglossian paradox: A critique of a rhetorical programme. _The Quarterly
Review of Biology_, _70_(4), 485-489.
--Gary
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Cziko
Associate Professor Telephone 217-333-8527
Educational Psychology FAX: 217-244-7620
University of Illinois E-mail: g-cziko@uiuc.edu
1310 S. Sixth Street Radio: N9MJZ
210 Education Building
Champaign, Illinois 61820-6990
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/g-cziko/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:57>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Jan 30 22:36:33 1996
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 23:36:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Philology and evolution
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Greg Ransom and Dan Dennett ask about connections between genealogical
trees in systematics and philology. This is a Darwin-L specialty, and
one I am always happy to talk about.
On the Darwin-L web server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu) in the Files section
there is a long bibliography on the topic of "trees of history", that is,
branching genealogical diagrams in various fields, particularly systematics,
historical linguistics, and stemmatics (the study of textual transmission).
I haven't revised the bibliography in a while, but it should still be useful
to anyone interested in exploring the topic further.
Pulling a few items out of that list for special notice: a couple people
have already mentioned the Hoenigswald & Wiener volume, which is the most
comprehensive comparative treatment of the topic of phylogeny in all these
fields. The full citation is:
Hoenigswald, Henry M., & Linda F. Wiener, eds. 1987. Biological
Metaphor and Cladistic Classification: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
The papers by Cameron and by Wells in that volume are particularly relevant.
A few other references on the topic that are especially useful might be:
Hoenigswald, Henry M. 1990. Language families and subgroupings, tree
model and wave theory, and reconstruction of protolanguages. Pp. 441-454
in: Research Guide on Language Change (Edgar C. Polome, ed.). Trends in
Linguistics, Studies and Monographs, 48. Berlin & New York: Mouton de
Gruyter. [Short historical and theoretical discussion of the tree model
and the principle of shared innovation (apomorphy), and the discovery of
some of the limitations of trees in linguistics.]
Holm, Gosta. 1972. Carl Johan Schlyter and textual scholarship. Saga och
Sed (Kungliga Gustav Adolf Akademiens Aarsbok), 1972:48-80. [Reproduces
Schlyter's stemma of legal texts (earliest known) from 1827.]
Koerner, E. F. Konrad. 1981. Schleichers Einflus auf Haeckel:
Schlaglichter auf die wechselseitige Abhangigkeit zwischen linguistichen
und biologischen Theorien in 19. Jahrhundert. Zeitschrift fur
vergleichende Sprachforschung, 95:1-21. [Reprinted in Koerner, 1989,
Practicing Linguistic Historiography: Selected Essays, pp. 211-231.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.]
Koerner, E. F. Konrad, ed. 1983. Linguistics and Evolutionary Theory:
Three Essays by August Schleicher, Ernst Haeckel, and William Bleek, with
an Introduction by J. Peter Maher. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [Contains:
(1) Schleicher, 1863, The Darwinian Theory and the Science of Language; (2)
Schleicher, 1865, On the Significance of Language for the Natural History
of Man; (3) Bleek, 1867, On the Origin of Language (with preface by
Haeckel); (4) W. D. Whitney, 1872, Dr. Bleek and the Simious Theory of
Language.]
Priestly, Tom M. S. 1975. Schleicher, Celakovsky, and the family-tree
diagram. Historiographica Linguistica, 2:299-333.
And as perhaps the most up to date survey of the topic as a whole, I offer
one of my own, though it isn't quite out yet:
O'Hara, R.J. [In press.] Trees of history in systematics and philology.
Memorie della Societa italiana di scienze naturali e del Museo civico
di storia naturale di Milano.
This paper was given at a very fine conference in Milan organized by Mike
Ghiselin and Giovanni Pinna, and the volume will probably appear this year.
To demonstrate that the parallels between systematics and stemmatics are
quite close, my colleague Peter Robinson and I have done some work applying
cladistic analysis software (developed for the reconstruction of evolutionary
trees) to problems in textual transmission, and we have stirred up the
community of text scholars a little bit with the results. A couple of
references here are:
Robinson, P.M.W., & R.J. O'Hara. 1992. Report on the Textual Criticism
Challenge 1991. Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 3(4):331-337. [A preliminary
notice, available in electronic form on the Darwin-L web server.]
O'Hara, R.J., & P.M.W. Robinson. 1993. Computer-assisted methods of
stemmatic analysis. Occasional Papers of the Canterbury Tales Project,
1:53-74.
Robinson, P.M.W., & R.J. O'Hara. 1996. Cladistic analysis of an Old
Norse manuscript tradition. Research in Humanities Computing, 4:115-137.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
I'd be happy to discuss details of any of these issues further on Darwin-L.
The short answer to the specific question that Greg and Dan asked (Were early
evolutionary biologists directly influenced by ideas from philology?) is, Yes,
but not in too great detail. It was more that philology was a clear case of
a prominent historical science of the time (along with geology it was one of
Whewell's two prototypical palaetiological sciences, and so would have been
quite familiar to many people), but there is no evidence I know of that Darwin
read William Jones or any other philologist and said "Aha!" Darwin did rely
on his cousin Hensleigh Wedgwood, an etymologist, for some examples of
language evolution in the Origin, and many people were comparing languages to
geological formations at the time (Lyell was influential here). As a sign
of the Zeitgeist it is worth noting that the first genealogical trees in
systematics, linguistics, and textual transmission were all drawn between
1800 and 1860.
Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner
Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
Cornelia Strong College, 100 Foust Building
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:58>From chan@lake.scar.utoronto.ca Wed Jan 31 08:35:00 1996
From: chan@lake.scar.utoronto.ca (Leslie Chan)
Subject: Re: evolution in the humanities
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 09:35:41 -0500 (EST)
The following sources also deal specifically with the relationship of
comparative philology and Darwin's treatment of evolution:
Beer, G. (1989). Darwin and the growth of language theory. In _Nature
Transfigured: Science and Literature 1700-1900_ (pp. 152-170).
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Keefe, R. (1986). Literati, language, and Darwinism. _Language and
Style_, 19, 123-137.
These sources were cited in a recent paper by David Amigoni:
Amigoni, D. (1995). Proliferation and its discontents: Max Muller,
Leslie Stephen, George Eliot and The Origin of Species as
representation. In D. Amigoni & J. Wallace (Eds.), _Charles Darwin's
The Origin of Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays_
(pp. 122-151). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Amigoni quoted the following passage from the _Origin_ as evidence that
Darwin "sought methodological support from the natural history of
languages":
It may be worth while to illustrate this view
of classification by taking the case of languages.
If we possessed a perfect pedigree of mankind, a
genealogical arrangement of the races of man would
afford the best classification of the various languages,
and all intermediate and slowly changing dialects had
to be included, such an arrangement would, I think,
be the only one .. this would be strictly natural,
as it would connect together all languages, extinct
and modern, by the closest affinities, and would give
the filiation and origin of each new tongue. ( _Origin_, p 406)
Amigoni then went on to discuss Max Muller's, a Sanskrit scholar,
treatment of philology as the discipline with the methodology and
authority to test Darwin's idea of genealogy.
Leslie Chan
Dept. of Anthropology
Scarborough College, University of Toronto
chan@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
_______________________________________________________________________________
<29:59>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu Wed Jan 31 09:14:29 1996
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 09:14:23 -0600 (CST)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Eclipse of history
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
As an addendum to Bob O'Hara's comments on A. Agassiz's disparaging of
phylogenetic work, I would like to point out that the phrase "eclipse of
history" is a chapter title in Sharon Kingsland's _Modeling Nature_ (1985.
University of Chicago Press), and thus does not originate with Brooks and
McClennan. I don't know if she coined the phrase or, got it elsewhere.
She uses it to refer to the growth of ecological theories, particularly
those of R.H. MacArthur, in which the most interesting properties of an
ecological system at equilibrium do not depend on the specific path by
which it got there (i.e. many possible histories lead to the same
equilibrium, so that the history of the system cannot be inferred from its
equilibrium state).
Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
Darwin-L Message Log 29: 25-59 -- January 1996 End
