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Darwin-L Message Log 34: 1–50 — June 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 June 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 34: 1-50 -- JUNE 1996
------------------------------------------
DARWIN-L
A Network Discussion Group on the
History and Theory of the Historical Sciences
Darwin-L@raven.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 June 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 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 and the
historical sciences, connect to the Darwin-L Web Server or send the e-mail
message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@raven.cc.ukans.edu.
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:1>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sat Jun 1 00:30:28 1996
Date: Sat, 01 Jun 1996 01:29:57 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: List owner's monthly greeting
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Greetings to all Darwin-L subscribers. On the first of every month I send
out a short note on the status of our group, along with a reminder of basic
commands. For additional information about the group please visit the
Darwin-L Web Server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu).
Darwin-L is an international discussion group for professionals in the
historical sciences. The group is not devoted to any particular discipline,
such as evolutionary biology, but rather seeks to promote interdisciplinary
comparisons across the entire range of "palaetiology", including evolution,
historical linguistics, archeology, geology, cosmology, historical geography,
textual transmission, and history proper. Darwin-L currently has more than
700 members from over 35 countries.
Because Darwin-L does have a large membership and is sometimes a high-volume
discussion group it is important for all participants to try to keep their
postings as substantive as possible so that we can maintain a favorable
"signal-to-noise" ratio. Personal messages should be sent by private e-mail
rather than to the group as a whole. Subscribers who feel burdened from
time to time by the volume of their Darwin-L mail may wish to take advantage
of the "digest" option described below.
Because different mail systems work differently, not all subscribers see
the e-mail address of the original sender of each message in the message
header (some people only see "Darwin-L" as the source). It is therefore
very important to include your name and e-mail address at the end of every
message you post so that everyone can identify you and reply privately if
appropriate. Remember also that in most cases when you type "reply" in
response to a message from Darwin-L your reply is sent to the group as a
whole, rather than to the original sender.
The following are the most frequently used listserv commands that Darwin-L
members may wish to know. All of these commands should be sent as regular
e-mail messages to the listserv address (listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu),
not to the address of the group as a whole (Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu).
In each case leave the subject line of the message blank and include no
extraneous text, as the command will be read and processed by the listserv
program rather than by a person. To join the group send the message:
SUBSCRIBE DARWIN-L Your Name
For example: SUBSCRIBE DARWIN-L John Smith
To cancel your subscription send the message:
UNSUBSCRIBE DARWIN-L
If you feel burdened by the volume of mail you receive from Darwin-L you
may instruct the listserv program to deliver mail to you in digest format
(one message per day consisting of the whole day's posts bundled together).
To receive your mail in digest format send the message:
SET DARWIN-L MAIL DIGEST
To change your subscription from digest format back to one-at-a-time
delivery send the message:
SET DARWIN-L MAIL ACK
To temporarily suspend mail delivery (when you go on vacation, for example)
send the message:
SET DARWIN-L MAIL POSTPONE
To resume regular delivery send either the DIGEST or ACK messages above.
For a comprehensive introduction to Darwin-L with notes on our scope and
on network etiquette, and a summary of all available commands, send the
message:
INFO DARWIN-L
To post a public message to the group as a whole simply send it as regular
e-mail to the group's address (Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu).
I thank you all for your continuing interest in Darwin-L and in the
interdisciplinary study of the historical sciences.
Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner
Dr. Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu) | Darwin-L Server
Cornelia Strong College, 100 Foust Building | http://rjohara.uncg.edu
University of North Carolina at Greensboro | Strong College Server
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A. | http://strong.uncg.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:2>From vkg1@axe.humboldt.edu Sat Jun 1 13:26:39 1996
Date: Sat, 01 Jun 1996 11:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: Victor Golla <vkg1@axe.humboldt.edu>
Subject: Yet more on salt
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Following up on Michael Kenny's comments on the importance of
the salt trade in history, it should be noted that control of salt
deposits was of social importance in aboriginal California as well.
The socio-political result was less complex than in East Africa,
never mind the Venetian Republic, but the underlying importance of
trade networks based on salt seems to be similar. See A. L. Kroeber,
_Salt, Dogs, and Tobacco_ (U. of California, Anthropological Records
6:1-20, 1941).
--Victor Golla
Visiting Professor
Dept. of Anthropology, UC-Davis
vkg@ucdavis.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:3>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Jun 2 17:21:25 1996
Date: Sun, 02 Jun 1996 18:20:52 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: A.W.F. Edwards on the recent history of systematics (from Greg Mayer)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
--begin forwarded message--------------
Date: Sun, 02 Jun 1996 16:42:42 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: A.W.F. Edwards on the recent history of systematics
An interesting recent addition to Bob O'Hara's bibliography is the following:
Edwards, A.W.F. 1996. The origin and early development of the method of
minimum evolution for the reconstruction of phylogenetic trees. Syst.
Biol. 45:79-91.
This is first-hand history, by a participant. He argues, quite correctly
I believe, that Hennig had only post facto significance in the development
of methods of phylogenetic reconstruction, by being used as a mythical
precursor. None of the methods used today actually derive from Hennig or
his work. Character parsimony methods, which are often thought to derive
from Hennig, were in fact introduced and discussed by Edwards and Cavalli
Sforza, and Camin and Sokal, and Kluge and Farris. When the latter
introduced quantitative phyletics in 1969, there was no mention of
Hennig. Hennig was only later claimed to have presaged this work, and
Edwards argues he didn't.
Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu
--end forwarded message----------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:4>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Jun 2 18:01:53 1996
Date: Sun, 02 Jun 1996 19:01:17 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Chauncey Wright and his circle
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Long-time readers of Darwin-L know the name of Chauncey Wright, a
late nineteenth-century philosopher of science who has been discussed
here from time to time. (Ron Amundson and I constitute the total
membership of the Chauncey Wright Promotional Association.) Wright
wrote quite a bit on natural selection and other topics, and was the
mentor of the Pragmatist school of American philosophy (including
William James, Charles Sanders Pierce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, etc.).
I just came across a new book that has a chapter on Wright, as well as
extensive discussions of the whole Harvard circle of Wright's day,
including Asa Gray, Louis Agassiz, and others. The citation is:
Croce, Paul Jerome. 1995. _Science and Religion in the Era of William
James, Volume 1: Eclipse of Certainty, 1820-1880_. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
William James of course studied with Agassiz and participated on
Agassiz's Brazilian expedition before turning to psychology and philosophy.
Wright-o-philes as well as others interested in the history of evolutionary
thought may find much of interest in this book.
Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner
Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu) |
Cornelia Strong College, 100 Foust Building | http://rjohara.uncg.edu
University of North Carolina at Greensboro | http://strong.uncg.edu
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A. |
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:5>From mblsalt@ibm.net Sat Jun 1 10:54:17 1996
Date: Sat, 01 Jun 1996 18:42:09 -0700
From: David Bloch <mblsalt@ibm.net>
Organization: Salt & Separation Engineering.
To: snoe@ivy.tec.in.us
Cc: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Population increase
Stephen Noe wrote:
> An interesting set of observations, well worth pursuing. I had been told
> (highschool Latin teacher
> 30+ YBP) that 'salacious' derived from the legionaries' practice of paying
> camp-followers with their salt rations. Your etymology makes better sense.
> Two minor points to correct. 1. The correlation between excessive NaCl
> intake and hypertension is pretty solid. What we do not have is a good
> mechanism to distinguish whether it is the Na or the Cl ions that are
> responsible, and why certain populations are more susceptible than others.
OUTSIDE A NERVE CELL - SODIUM IONS PREDOMINATE
[INSIDE A CELL, POTASSIUM PREDOMINATES AND SODIUM IS KEPT OUT.]
THE PERMEABILITY OF THE CELL MEMBRANE CHANGES UNDER CONDITIONS
OF[EG; SHOCK RESULTING IN 'FREQUENCY MODULATED' NERVE SIGNALS
HOWEVER IT IS THE CL- IONS IN RATIO TO THE BR- IONS THAT
INFLUENCE THE RESULTING SEDATIVE EFFECT. ie: The NEGATIVE Cl ions and not
the POSITIVE Na ions that influence the already small quantities of Bromide
ions.
PLANTS [VEGETABLES HAVE VERY HIGH BROMIDE CONTENT COMPARED WITH
TABLE SALT OR ROCK SALT WHICH HAS ALMOST NONE.
FOR SOMEONE ON A VERY LOW SALT DIET, Br FREE TABLE SALT CAN
DRASTICALLY CHANGE THE DELICATE BALANCE OF THIS NATURAL SEDATION.
THUS HOT CLIMATES WHERE SALT MAY BE IN SHORT SUPPLY, CONTRIBUTE
TO THE CLAIM THAT SALT IS AN APHRODISIAC. SIMILARLY SOMEONE SWEATING
IN A HOT CLIMATE MAY LOOSE BROMIDES AND BECOME HYPERSENSITIVE.
Thus the BROMIDE / CHLORIDE RATIO may be the important factor eliminating the
Sodium parameter. The results of an [MRBLOCH Archive] investigation into
the correlation of the Cl-/Br- ratio in the body show a
the presence of a regulating mechanism in the kidney, counterbalancing
the changes of salt diet, that retain bromides in preference to chlorides.
1.Plants have a high Bromide content in their halogenides.
2.Any salt free diet has a relatively high bromide content
3.Salt (NaCl) used as a condiment has little Bromide to
Chloride, and reduces the relative Bromide content in food
halogenides
4.The bromide content of urine halogenides is always lower
than that of bloodserum [twice as low] The kidney reabsorbs
bromide in preference to chlorides
5.Sweat and saliva, have higher bromide content, than blood
and urine. Sweating causes more bromide losses than
chlorides, counteracting the reverse effect of the kidneys..
THE SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THIS: IN PRE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION HISTORY
WHEN SALT WAS WORTH "MORE THAN GOLD" (or even a life)- LIVING ON
A SALT DEPRIVED DIET, WE MAY SURVIVE FOR A TIME, BUT APATHY AND
LACK OF VITALITY, [CLINICAL SIGNS: NAUSEA, VOMITING, TACHYCARDIA,
HYPERTENSION,VERTIGO, DEHYDRATION, AND COLLAPSE )
MAY HAVE BEEN A LIMITING FACTOR IN POPULATION GROWTH.
AS WITH ALL INORGANIC ELECTROLYTES, SALT IS NOT MANUFACTURED BY THE HUMAN
BODY AND IT CANNOT BE STORED AS SUGAR, OR FAT IS STORED
note: THE ORIGIN OF CANNIBALISM MAY LIE IN SALT HUNGER, IN JUNGLE
AREAS WHERE SALT IS IN SHORT SUPPLY, BUT THIS,OF COURSE SHOULD NOT BE
CONFUSED WITH PREDATION !
--
***Researching the History of salt ****
* and its influence on society up
* to the industrial revolution
* keywords: sea-levels, money, power
* craving, dehydration,
* sacrifice, embalming
* MRBLOCH SALT ARCHIVE
*http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2707/
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:6>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Mon Jun 3 14:36:09 1996
Date: Mon, 03 Jun 1996 15:35:24 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Re: More salt (fwd)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
--begin forwarded message--------------
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 19:22:28 +0300 (WET)
From: Yossi Mart <y.mart@research.haifa.ac.il>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: More salt
Salt production was very common and important in many coastal sites in
coastal Israel. The salt was produced by evaporation of seawater, and
transported inland towards Damascus and northern Mesopotamia. A part of
the road that served the salt transports has preserved its name to the
present as "Wadi el Mileh", namely the valley of the salt. Furthermore,
it seems that in spite of the economic significance of salt, and its
abundance in the region of the Dead Sea, that salt was not mined
extensively. Considering that blocks of asphalt that used to float on the
Dead Sea were in great demand, the lack of mining in that region could
not be traced to the harsh climate and topography, but rather to high
amout of potassium in the Dead Sea salt, which gives it a very bitter
taste.
Yossi Mart
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Prof. Yossi Mart y.mart @ research.haifa.ac.il
Chair, Center of Marine Studies phone: +972 48 24 91 63
University of Haifa fax: +972 48 25 20 37
Haifa 31905, Israel
--end forwarded message----------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:7>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Mon Jun 3 16:07:07 1996
Date: Mon, 03 Jun 1996 16:19:45 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: New on the web
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
The bibliography of recent literature on the history of systematics that
I posted here a few days ago is now available on the Files page of the
Darwin-L Web Server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu). I haven't yet added the
several new titles that people have suggested, but the original list is
there for browsing. I noticed that I botched the formatting on the copy I
posted to the list, so those who didn't have the patience to read through a
tangle of strange symbols may find the copy of the web page more reader-
friendly. I still welcome suggestions for additions, corrections or
deletions.
The log of last month's Darwin-L messages is also now available on the Logs
page of the server. All past Darwin-L message logs are maintained there;
new subscribers might wish to look them over to see the range of topics we
have discussed in the past.
Another new website that has come to my attention is the excellent home
of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, one of the great
museums of the world. All Darwin-L members should pay it a visit at:
http://www.mnhn.fr
Are there any particular sites that Darwin-L members find useful and
that have a direct bearing on the historical sciences? What about sites
for historical linguistics -- do any in particular stand out? (There is
a list of some assorted historical sciences web sites available on the
Network Resources page of the Darwin-L Web Server).
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:8>From mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca Tue Jun 4 08:42:56 1996
From: Mary P Winsor <mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Salt not Winsor's
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 09:42:24 -0400 (EDT)
Fellow Darwin-listers, I returned from a few days' away to find much
interesting information on salt. Most of you will already have
realized that it comes from Bloch, not Winsor. Confusion on that point
may have been caused by the original posting having been labelled a
reply to my remarks on population. On the fascinating topic of the
effect of salt on the history of civilization, I am quite ignorant.
Polly Winsor mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca = mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:9>From snoe@ivy.tec.in.us Tue Jun 4 09:10:33 1996
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 09:14:31 +0500
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: snoe@ivy.tec.in.us (Stephen Noe)
Subject: de Buffon & North America
De Buffon's work at le Jardin du Roi (now les Jardin des Plantes) in Paris
is well known to all biologists, and nearly all historians. Is anyone aware
of how his specimens from North America influenced his Histoire naturelle?
I would greatly appreciate references to documents, or to individuals who
collected for de Buffon in New France. (many thanks for the web site URL
posted to the list today.)
Steve Noe snoe@ivy.tec.in.us
Anatomy & Physiology, Ivy Tech State College Indianapolis, IN
We are not passengers on Spaceship Earth, we are crew,
and it's about time we took our duties seriously.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:10>From mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca Tue Jun 4 09:28:44 1996
From: Mary P Winsor <mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: James and Agassiz
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 10:28:11 -0400 (EDT)
I would like to join the Chauncey Wright Promotional Association.
But this note is just a footnote, to Bob O'Hara's statement:
> William James of course studied with Agassiz and participated on
> Agassiz's Brazilian expedition before turning to psychology and philosophy.
James's experiences as an unpaid assistant on the Thayer Expedition is
well documented, but I have not seen any actual evidence of his having
otherwise "studied" with Agassiz. During the trip to Brazil, Agassiz
did give lectures, so we could certainly decide that that year was
more than enough exposure to let us count W.J. as a student. But most of us
imagine James also taking a course from L.A. while W.J. was at
Harvard. This is perfectly possible, but it is also possible he did
not, and I would be interested in knowing of any record of fact either
way. Polly Winsor mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca = mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:11>From mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca Tue Jun 4 12:05:34 1996
From: Mary P Winsor <mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: add Stevens book to biblio
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (bulletin board)
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 13:05:02 -0400 (EDT)
essential to a history of systematics bibliography:
Stevens, Peter F. The Development of Biological
Systematics:Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Nature, and the Natural
System. Columbia University Press, New York, 1994.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:12>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Jun 4 12:11:25 1996
Date: Tue, 04 Jun 1996 13:10:48 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: James and Agassiz
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Polly Winsor writes:
>James's experiences as an unpaid assistant on the Thayer Expedition is
>well documented, but I have not seen any actual evidence of his having
>otherwise "studied" with Agassiz.
I will gladly defer to Polly's better knowledge of the details of
Agassiz's career in a question such as this. What I find precisely in
the Croce book that prompted the original message (_Science and Religion
in the Era of William James_) is the implication throughout that James
was part of Agassiz's circle (but then who might not have been I suppose),
that he worked for Agassiz on the Brazilian expedition, and that James
attended Agassiz's Lowell Lectures, "Methods of Study in Natural History",
in 1861 (Croce mentions this on p. 121). Croce also refers to a paper:
Smith, Carleton Sprague. 1951. William James in Brazil. Pp. 97-138
in: Four Papers Presented in the Institute for Brazilian Studies,
Vanderbilt University. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
Perhaps this has more detail.
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:13>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Wed Jun 5 10:52:41 1996
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 1996 11:52:07 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: History of systematics bibliography
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Polly Winsor writes:
>essential to a history of systematics bibliography:
>
>Stevens, Peter F. The Development of Biological Systematics:
> Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Nature, and the Natural System.
> Columbia University Press, New York, 1994.
Strange how the mind works (and sometimes doesn't). The first thing I did
when putting together the history of systematics bibliography was get out my
copy of Peter's book and go through his bibliography page by page pulling out
appropriate references, since his bibliography is the most comprehensive
available. But since the book itself isn't in its own bibliography I forgot
to include it!
This is an outstanding book, in a class by itself. Anyone interested in
systematics should read it, and people interested in general intellectual
history ought to also. I continue to think that the conceptual history
of systematics is an area of enormous depth that has not yet attracted
the degree of attention it deserves, in comparison, say, to the general
history of evolutionary biology, which is very popular among historians
of science.
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:14>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Wed Jun 5 11:01:43 1996
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 1996 12:01:08 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: References for the history of mammal systematics (fwd)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
--begin forwarded message--------------
Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 14:27:36 +0000
From: Santiago Reig <Mustela@pinar1.csic.es>
Subject: references
To: darwin@iris.uncg.edu
A couple of references that may complete your survey:
Birney, E.C. and J.L. Choate (eds.). 1994. Seventy-five years
of mammalogy (1919-1994). Special Publication. The
American Society of Mammalogists, 11:1-433.
Written by members of the American Society of Mammalogists,
includes a chapter on the history of mammalian systematics in
North America.
the perfect complement to that volume is:
Hershkovitz P. A History of the recent mammalogy of the
Neotropical region from 1492 to 1850. Fieldiana: Zoology,
n.s. #39. "Studies in Neotropical Mammalogy: Essays in
Honor of Philip Hershkovitz" B.D. Patterson and R.M. Timm
eds.
_______
| __ __ | Santiago Reig
|_\_Y_/_| Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC
|\_] [_/| Jose Gutierrez Abascal 2
| [_] | 28006 MADRID, Spain
|C S I C| Voice: 34-1- 411 1328 FAX: 34-1- 564 5078
|_______| Mustela@pinar1.csic.es
--end forwarded message----------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:15>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Wed Jun 5 11:36:19 1996
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 1996 12:35:45 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Depew & Weber (fwd)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
--begin forwarded message--------------
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 18:32:46 -0400
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (Darwin List)
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy C. Ahouse)
Subject: Depew & Weber
Darwin-L,
I have just been reading Depew & Weber (1995) Darwinism evolving:
systems dynamics and the genealogy of natural selection. MIT Press. QH361
.D46 1995.
After having its 500 pages sit on my desk staring back - daring me
to start... I just dove into the middle and very much enjoyed the history
of genetics in this century. My enthusiasm has carried me along since.
The only review I found so far was Griffiths in Nature. Are there
others? How did historians and philosophers react to this summary of so
much work?
Except for the end (which is admittedly speculative*) it seems like
a solid philosophical history. A good book to use in a course - the
references and reading guides seem geared for just such a use. Have any of
you used it this way?
cheers,
- Jeremy
*maybe we can start a discussion of the future of Darwinism on this list.
My guess is that much will come from the current integration of development
(e.g. Gilbert et al. (1996) Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental
Biology. Developmental Biology v 173 p357-372), less from alife and the
current wave of computationists (the next wave, using more realistic models
may do more) and I guess we will weather Darwinian psychology and the
universal selectionists (again!).
--end forwarded message----------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:16>From ronald@hawaii.edu Wed Jun 5 16:42:34 1996
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 11:36:02 -1000
From: Ron Amundson <ronald@hawaii.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: James and Agassiz
On Tue, 4 Jun 1996, Mary P Winsor wrote:
> I would like to join the Chauncey Wright Promotional Association.
As I understand our responsibilities, we must pledge to insert gratuitous
citations of Chauncey Wright into any and all publications. For your
convenience:
Wright, Chauncey, (1877), _Philosophical Discussions_. Henry Holt and
Company, New York.
I believe that O'Hara may take the position that _no_ citation of
Chauncey is gratuitous. I consider that a quibble. ;-)
Ron
__
Ron Amundson
University of Hawaii at Hilo
ronald@Hawaii.Edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:17>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Fri Jun 7 00:30:08 1996
Date: Fri, 07 Jun 1996 01:30:00 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: June 7 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
JUNE 7 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1811: JOHN WILLIAM DONALDSON is born at London. Donaldson will be privately
educated as a child, and his skill in Greek will win him admission to Trinity
College, Cambridge, in 1831. At Cambridge he will devote himself to the study
of philology, and he will be instrumental in bringing the new historical and
comparative approaches of Franz Bopp and other Continental philologists to
the attention of English-speaking scholars. Among his many publications will
be the influential _New Cratylus, or Contributions Towards a More Accurate
Knowledge of the Greek Language_, first published in 1839 and revised in 1850:
"The study of language is indeed perfectly analogous to Geology; they both
present us with a set of deposits in a present state of amalgamation which
however may be easily discriminated, and we may by an allowable chain of
reasoning in either case deduce from the _present_ the _former_ condition, and
determine by what causes and in what manner the superposition or amalgamation
has taken place."
1894: WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY dies at New Haven, Connecticut. One of the
leading Sanskrit scholars of the nineteenth century, Whitney was born in
Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1827, and rose to become Professor of Sanskrit
and Comparative Philology at Yale University. His _Sanskrit Grammar_ (1879)
was the standard work in its field, and his popular volume _The Life and
Growth of Language_, first published in 1875, went through several editions.
Whitney's elder brother, Josiah Dwight Whitney, was an historical geologist,
and served for many years as Sturgis-Hooper Professor of Geology at Harvard
University.
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:18>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Jun 9 21:42:31 1996
Date: Sun, 09 Jun 1996 22:42:26 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Time travel as a literary genre
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
A literary colleague of mine has the idea of teaching a course on
time travel as a genre of literature, and this got me wondering about
how time travel literature fits in historically with other temporal
fields (like the historical sciences we discuss on Darwin-L).
At my colleague's suggestion I just read H.G. Wells' famous story
_The Time Machine_ (1895), and enjoyed it very much. Darwin-L people
interested in the history of science would particularly appreciate it,
I think. It is full of references to geologic time, speciation, and
other evolutionary topics, and the protagonist at one point explores
the remains of a natural history museum in the distant future (the year
802701, to be exact). According to the jacket blurb on my copy, Wells
taught biology and studied with T.H. Huxley, so he was quite conversant
with the historical sciences of his time.
Perhaps literary scholars have written about this already, but I am
now wondering about the origin of this particular literary genre, time
travel. It seems that Wells is the first to develop it in detail (perhaps
Jules Verne is earlier?). Why might this be? Why aren't there any ancient
Greek stories about time travel? (Or perhaps there are, and I have it all
wrong.) What struck me in Wells' story was the convergence of two ideas:
"deep time", which really caught the public imagination in the 19th century
(see Martin Rudwick's wonderful book _Scenes From Deep Time_), and the
idea of _machines_ -- the story is about inventing a machine to travel
through time, and this seems very much an industrial-revolution-born idea.
Does anyone know of any work that has been done on the genre of time
travel in relation to general historical thinking? It would seem to be
an interesting topic to pursue. (And please note: I'm not talking about
time travel itself: we can leave that to the science fiction and relativity
theory groups. I'm talking about a particular fictional genre in which
people physically travel through time.)
I have another set of ill-formed questions on the linguistic phenomena
that make this sort of fiction possible, but I think I'll leave them for
another message.
Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner
Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu) |
Cornelia Strong College, 100 Foust Building | http://rjohara.uncg.edu
University of North Carolina at Greensboro | http://strong.uncg.edu
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A. |
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:19>From bayla@pbfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us Sun Jun 9 22:47:39 1996
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 23:46:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: Bayla Singer <bayla@pbfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us>
Subject: Re: Time travel as a literary genre
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
One factor in the development of time-travel as a literary genre, aside
from the <machine> and <industrial revolution> perspective, might be the
change in expectations as to what time could accomplish, and a growing
urge to explore the effects of time. Where there is no sense of
<progress>, and time is seen not as an arrow but as a wheel, there would
not seem to be any incentive to speculate on deep time.
Then again, the ancient Greeks saw their own time as a degenerate version
of previous glories; Bob's question as to why they gave us Icarus' flight
but not (say) Hermes' return to the Golden Age is a good one. What
mythic lesson might such a return have provided?
Much, if not most, modern time-travel literature involves the future, and
is a way of throwing into relief our present civilization. Prior to the
19th century or so, it was possible to do this with simple travel gimmicks
such as those of More's -Utopia- or Swift's -Gulliver's Travels-. Now
that <undiscovered> places are so rare, it's easier to utilize the
time-travel framework for social commentary.
--Bayla Singer bayla@pbfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:20>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Jun 9 22:50:15 1996
Date: Sun, 09 Jun 1996 23:50:07 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Wells on the web
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Following up my last message, I see that the full text of Wells' _The
Time Machine_ is available on the web at:
http://www.literature.org/Works/H-G-Wells/time-machine/
Here's a sample from the final chapter, just to convey the flavor:
One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he
swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages
of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or
among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic
times. He may even now -- if I may use the phrase -- be wandering on some
plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes
of the Triassic Age.
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:21>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Mon Jun 10 00:49:03 1996
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 01:48:55 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: June 10 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
JUNE 10 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1858: ROBERT BROWN dies in London in the Soho Square house left to him by
Joseph Banks, his long-time patron. One of the preeminent taxonomic botanists
of the early nineteenth century, Brown had been an exceptionally industrious
student of medicine and botany as a young man in his native Scotland.
Following a period of naval service as a surgeon's mate, he was appointed in
1801 as a naturalist on the _Investigator_, a British Admiralty ship preparing
to sail around the world. The _Investigator_ voyage gave Brown an extensive
knowledge of the plants of the southern hemisphere, and he returned with
specimens of nearly 4,000 species. As a leading figure in London scientific
circles, Brown played an important role in the establishment of the Department
of Botany in the British Museum, and served as Librarian and President of the
Linnean Society. Charles Darwin in his _Autobiography_ will recollect the
many hours he spent in Brown's company:
I saw a good deal of Robert Brown, "facile Princeps Botanicorum," as he
was called by Humboldt; and before I was married I used to go and sit with
him almost every Sunday morning. He seemed to me to be chiefly
remarkable for the minuteness of his observations and their perfect
accuracy. He never propounded to me any large scientific views in
biology. His knowledge was extraordinarily great, and much died with
him, owing to his excessive fear of ever making a mistake. He poured out
his knowledge to me in the most unreserved manner, yet was strangely
jealous on some points....Hooker told me that he was a complete miser,
and knew himself to be a miser, about his dried plants; and he would not
lend specimens to Hooker, who was describing the plants of Tierra del
Fuego, although well knowing that he himself would never make any use
of the collections from this country. On the other hand he was capable
of the most generous actions. When old, much out of health and quite
unfit for any exertion, he daily visited (as Hooker told me) an old
man-servant, who lived at a distance and whom he supported, and read
aloud to him. This is enough to make up for any degree of scientific
penuriousness or jealousy. He was rather given to sneering at anyone
who wrote about what he did not fully understand: I remember praising
Whewell's _History of the Inductive Sciences_ to him, and he answered,
"Yes, I suppose that he has read the prefaces of very many books."
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:22>From DEVONIS@acc.mcrest.edu Mon Jun 10 00:18:01 1996
From: "Dave Devonis" <DEVONIS@acc.mcrest.edu>
Organization: Teikyo Marycrest University
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 00:13:36 CST
Subject: Re: Time travel as a literary genre
Consulting PsychLit I find, in connection with
'time travel', the following:
Roussillon, Rene. Voyager dans le temps. Revue
Francais de Psychanalyse, 56(4), 969-78, Oct-Dec
1992.
Maybe a little out of the way, but consider--
--Freud is at least contemporary with Wells (I'm
not sure if Freud was a Wells reader, but he was
certainly well-versed in similar contemporary
literature);
--As the abstract of this article indicates, the
idea of regression in Freud and the device of
time travel come together in the metaphor of
archaeological excavation of the mind's, as well
as civilization's, past.
Is it only coincidence that Freud claimed to have
discovered the secret of dreams in 1895, the same
year that Time Machine appeared?
David Devonis
Dept. Psychology
Marycrest Intl. U.
Davenport, IA 52804
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:23>From Neve@ecol.ucl.ac.be Mon Jun 10 17:49:31 1996
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 00:50:36 +0200
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: Neve@ecol.ucl.ac.be
Subject: HG Wells and TH & JS Huxley
Bob O'Hara wrote yesterday about the links between HG wells and TH Huxley.
Wells did indeed study at the Royal College of Science, at South
Kensington, where he graduaded in 1888, eight years before the death of TH
Huxley. What surprised me is that I did not know about links between HG
Wells and Darwin's bulldog (TH Huxley; Wells is not mentionned in Adrian
Desmond's biography of THH); I knew however of his collaboration with THH's
grandson, Julian Huxley, with whom he wrote the Science of life in 1929
(together with his son GP Wells). Rememberances of this time can be found
in Julian Huxley's 'Memories', chapter XII, pp 155ss, including a piicture
of HG Wells, GP Wells and JS Huxley together.
Gabriel
===========================================================
Dr Gabriel NEVE o o
Unite d'Ecologie et de Biogeographie \ /
Universite Catholique de Louvain *** Y ***
Croix du Sud 5 * * I * *
B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve * *I* *
Belgium * *I* *
* * I * *
EMAIL: NEVE@ECOL.UCL.AC.BE *** ***
Fax : +32/10/473490
Tel at work : +32/10/47 89 34
at home : +32 2 366 93 75 fax : +32 2 366 21 24
===========================================================
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:24>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Jun 11 12:14:45 1996
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 13:14:21 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: More on time travel literature
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Several people have sent me private messages following up my questions
about time travel literature. I take the liberty of forwarding them to
the list in abridged form.
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
--begin forwarded messages-------------
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 08:06:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: John E Limber <John.Limber@unh.edu>
Subject: Re: Time travel as a literary genre
To: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
You might want to look at the book by Nahin, who is in the physics
department here.
AUTHOR Nahin, Paul J.
TITLE Time machines : time travel in physics, metaphysics, and
science fiction / Paul J. Nahin.
IMPRINT New York, N.Y. : American Institute of Physics, c1993.
DESCRIPT xvii, 408 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
BIBLIOG. Includes bibliographical references (p. [353]-402) and index.
SUBJECT Science fiction, American --History and criticism.
Science fiction, English --History and criticism.
Time travel in literature.
Metaphysics in literature.
Physics in literature.
John Limber
Department of Psychology
University of New Hampshire, Durham NH 03824, USA
email:jel@christa.unh.edu
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jel (course information, etc.)
FAX (603)-862-4986
---------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 09:10:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Eugenie C. Scott" <ncse@crl.com>
Subject: Re: Time travel as a literary genre
To: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Bob:
I have a good friend in comparative literature who teaches courses on
science and the imagination, with a special focus on the 19th century.
John Greenway's e-mail address is
engjlg@ukcc.uky.edu
and he is at the Univ. of Kentucky (down the road from your old
institution, Transy!). Send him a note about your time travel idea: I
wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't though some about this topic.
Genie
---------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 13:17:12 +0200
From: turner@bio.uva.nl (Hubert Turner)
To: darwin@iris.uncg.edu
Dear Dr. O'Hara,
I just read your message on Darwin-L about time travel. You suggest Wells
was the first to develop it in detail, but if my memory serves me well,
Mark Twain wrote "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" before 1895.
The text is available at:
http://www.literature.org/Works/Mark-Twain/connecticut/
Best wishes,
Hubert Turner
**********************************************************
ISP/ZMA, Dept. Entomology, Plantage Middenlaan 64,
1018 DH Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Phone: +-31-20-5256245 Fax: +-31-20-5256528
E-mail: turner@bio.uva.nl
WWW: http://rulsfb.leidenuniv.nl/~turner/index.html
**********************************************************
--end forwarded messages---------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:25>From Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca Tue Jun 11 12:54:30 1996
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:54:19 -0700 (PDT)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca (Michael Kenny)
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 618
Re Dave Devonis interesting observations concerning Freud, regression, and
time travel. Freud also used the metaphor of 'the search for the Nile' when
speaking of the unconscious roots of human behavior, thus borrowing - in
particular - from Henry Stanley. Likewise, in *The Heart of Darkness*
Joseph Conrad speaks about a trip up the Congo as being a trip backward in
time, back to the childhood of the human species. Kurz regressed into
savagery on his own trip up the Congo, as all supposedly civilized white
men were in danger of doing.
I would say that both Freud and Conrad were using essentially Lamarckian
thinking in the construction of their great metaphors. Savage peoples
represent the infancy of the human race; civilization is a veneer on the
savagery within.
Freud made much of that kind of thinking in his highly evolutionist *Totem
and Taboo* where neurosis is seen as a kind of temporal regression in
species terms as well as a developmental regression to childlike modes of
thought.
Michael G. Kenny
Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6; Canada
Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca
phone: (604) 291-4270
fax: (604) 291-5799
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:26>From michaels@SciFac.usyd.edu.au Tue Jun 11 19:30:51 1996
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 22:34:13 +0800
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: michaels@SciFac.usyd.edu.au
Subject: Re: HG Wells and TH & JS Huxley
>Bob O'Hara wrote yesterday about the links between HG wells and TH Huxley.
>Wells did indeed study at the Royal College of Science, at South
>Kensington, where he graduaded in 1888, eight years before the death of TH
>Huxley.
Without wishing to promote self, I can inform Darwin readers that a chapter
in Alan Barr's forthcoming edition of essays on Huxley (due out from Univ.
of Georgia Press later this year) is on Wells, Huxley and the Method of
Zadig. It is written by me and Bruce Sommerville and considers the
relationship between the two--not much evidence remains, as it transpires,
of the period during which Wells studied at the Royal College of Science.
Michael Shortland
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associate Professor Michael Shortland
Email : michaels@scifac.su.oz.au
Unit for the History and
Philosophy of Science F07 _--_|\
University of Sydney / \
Sydney NSW 2006 \_.--._ /*
Australia
Fax : (61-2) 351 4124
Tel : (61-2) 351 4801
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:27>From daaf@cerium.demon.co.uk Tue Jun 11 23:04:45 1996
From: Danny Fagandini <daaf@cerium.demon.co.uk>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Time travel as a literary genre
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:01:23 BST
I regret having to be vague, but there was a Penguin paperback
written by Stephen Toulmin and Jane Good published some 30
years ago that dealt with the concept of time as it had
developed over the centuries. If I remember correctly, the
authors understood that the Greeks had no deep concept of Time,
life for one generation being much the same as it was for the
previous one and fully expected to be likewise for the next.
--
danny
daaf@cerium.demon.co.uk
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:28>From LCOOK@fs2.scg.man.ac.uk Wed Jun 12 06:53:29 1996
From: Laurence Martin Cook <LCOOK@fs2.scg.man.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Manchester, UK
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 12:52:40 GMT+1
Subject: Re: time travel again
Darnton, R. 1995 in The forbidden best-sellers of pre-revolutionary
France. (Norton, New York) discusses a book in which the plot
involves travelling forward in time. This projects the genre back a
bit; it was presumably a best-seller, too.
Laurence M. Cook
The Manchester Museum
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:29>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Wed Jun 12 13:07:21 1996
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 14:07:02 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: More references on time travel (fwd)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
--begin forwarded message--------------
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 11:54:07 -0500
From: Vdismas <Vdismas@jis.net>
Subject: Time travel
To: darwin@iris.uncg.edu
Here are two essays that might give you another way into time travel.
"Tips for Time Travelers," Monte Hall, in _Philosophers Look at Science
Fiction_, Nicholas Smith, ed. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1982.
"Language for Time-Travelers." L. Sprague de Camp. _Analog's Golden
Anniversary Anthology. 1980.
--end forwarded message----------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:30>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu Wed Jun 12 10:32:29 1996
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 11:31:35 -0400
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (Darwin List)
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy C. Ahouse)
Subject: how to say "@" and language evolution
Darwin-L,
The following messages were forwarded to me. I thought I would
share them as an example of the interesting ways that language diffuses
while under strong local constraints. Language change through time really
does seem different from organismal evolution; even the tenuous distinction
between germline and somatic tissue that allows us to erect a wall between
phenotype and genotype and encourages us to see information flowing one way
is not to be found with language. Memes have always seemed like problematic
analogs to genes (the disanalogies overwhelm). Still I would love to hear
what you all think.
- Jeremy
The question being posed is how to say the '@' in an email address:
>____________
> Usually I say "at" even when speaking German (and I think this is
> the original meaning of the sign). In Swiss German, we call it
> "Affenschwanz" (which means monkey-tail). In Germany, it is called
>"Klammeraffe" (spider-monkey).
> --
> Rainer Henrich, lic. theol.
> Bullinger-Briefwechsel-Edition Phone: xx41 1 257 67 54
> Kirchgasse 9 Fax: xx41 1 262 14 12
> CH-8001 Zuerich e-mail: henrich@theol.unizh.ch
> Switzerland http://www.unizh.ch/irg/henrich.html
>____________
> What does one say in German,
> French, Italian, and in the many non-European languages on the
> internet when in English one gives an e-mail address, say
> "jones@exeter.ac.uk" as "jones at exeter.ac.uk" (allowing for the fact
> that the period is uttered as "dot")?
> In French (here, in Montreal), I usually hear "a commercial" (which
> is of course "commercial a".
>
> B.Lepine
> lepineb@ere.umontreal.ca
>____________
> @ is "arroba" in Spanish; pronounced ah-'roh-bah
>
> JC Garelli
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Juan Carlos Garelli, MD, PhD
> Department of Early Development
> University of Buenos Aires
>
>____________
> Never mind the "@" sign!
>
> On this side of the Atlantic, a period is a full stop in English!
>
> Ian Mitchell LAmbert
> University of Kent at Canterbury
>____________
> Concerning the"@" sign: in Israel, among many compute wizards, this sign
> is called "Strudel" (because of the shape of an Apfelstrudel)
> Joseph Galron
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Joseph (Yossi) Galron | Internet: jgalron@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Jewish Studies Librarian | galron.1@osu.edu
> Ohio State University Libraries | or jgalron@aleph.lib.ohio-state.edu
> 308 Main Library | URL http://aleph.lib.ohio-state.edu
>____________
> Here in The Netherlands many of us say *apestaartje* (i.e. *monkey's
> tail*) or *slingeraap* (i.e. spider monkey, according to the
> dictionary) for *@*. The habit usually stops from the moment we
> know what *@* really means (i.e. *at*).
>
> OnnOKosters
>____________
> In French I sometimes say "at" (in English), sometimes "arobace" (the
> French name for the typographic character), sometimes "a" with circular
> gesticulations. the "dot" is "point", incidentally.
>
> -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=-
>
> Charles C. Hadley, Doyen ! ...by these [words] be admonished:
> Faculte des Langues ! of making many books there is
> Universite Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 ! no end, and much study is a
> 74 rue Pasteur ! weariness of the flesh
> 69002 Lyon, France ! --Ecclesiates 12:12
> phone (33) 72 72 20 88 !
> hadley@univ-lyon3.fr !
> -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=-
>____________
> Perhaps someone more learned in palaeography than I will confirm that the @,
> "at-sign", is derived from the minuscule letter "a" by extending the
> terminal stroke (at the lower right-hand corner) counterclockwise up and
> over the top of the letter, then around it to the base-line. It is, I think,
> a "commercial a" in the sense that it was used by if not devised to serve
> those transcribing items with their prices, "5 pounds of potatoes AT 2 cents
> per pound". It would be interesting if in any language other than English
> the sense of "at" were to be used in speaking the @.
>
> WM
>
> Willard McCarty, Univ. of Toronto || Willard.McCarty@utoronto.ca
> http://www.epas.utoronto.ca:8080/~mccarty/wlm/
>____________
> In Portuguese we would say "arroba" - the reason being that the @ sign is
> used as notation for a measure of weight (non metric, equivalent to about
> 15 kilograms and somewhat obsolete) with that pronunciation.
>
> Dennis Cintra Leite <Dennis@eaesp.fgvsp.br>
>____________
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
web: http://www.rose.brandeis.edu/users/simister/pages/Ahouse
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:31>From bdhume@indiana.edu Wed Jun 12 13:01:10 1996
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 08:56:38 -0500 (EST)
From: Bradley David Hume <bdhume@indiana.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Time
I'm not sure how this subject came up but here are a few references:
Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield. 1965. The Discovery of Time (NY,
Harper Torch Books).
Karl Lowith. 1949. Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the
Philosophy of History (Chicago).
Donald K. Grayson. 1983. The Establishment of Human Antiquity (NY, Academic
Press).
John C. Greene. 1959. The Death of Adam: Evolution and its Impact on Western
Thought (Ames, IA: Iowa State U. Press).
Hans Blumenberg. 1983. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MIT).
Martin J. Rudwick. 1976. The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History
of Paleontology (NY, Neale Watson Academic publications).
The list could be extended indefinitely. It's not so much, I think, that
the Greeks had no deep conception of time, but that their conception was
cyclical. That could mean a general conception that the universe would
always exist (or perhaps had always existed as per Aristotle) or that the
universe itself went through cycles (such as the so called "Great Year")
which lasted thousands of years ending in fiery conflagration and
ultimate renewal. It is the Judaeo/Christian/Muslim beliefs which
attached cosmic significance to the human drama bringing both the origin
of the universe and the human connection to the fulfillment of the
universe's purpose into one grand, chronological narrative, the unfolding
of which was God's Providence at work.
Brad Hume
History and Philosophy of Science
Indiana University
bdhume@ucs.indiana.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:32>From kent@darwin.eeb.uconn.edu Wed Jun 12 17:06:28 1996
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 96 18:05:50 EDT
From: kent@darwin.eeb.uconn.edu (Kent E. Holsinger)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: how to say "@" and language evolution
>>>>> "Jeremy" == Jeremy C Ahouse <ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu> writes:
Jeremy> Language change through time really
Jeremy> does seem different from organismal evolution; even the
Jeremy> tenuous distinction between germline and somatic tissue
Jeremy> that allows us to erect a wall between phenotype and
Jeremy> genotype and encourages us to see information flowing one
Jeremy> way is not to be found with language. Memes have always
Jeremy> seemed like problematic analogs to genes (the disanalogies
Jeremy> overwhelm). Still I would love to hear what you all think.
I'm not convinced that ``the disanalogies overwhelm'' the analogy
between memes and genes, but that's for another post. I'd just like to
point out that there are (at least) two reasons to suppose that
requiring information flow *only* from genotype to phenotype is not a
prerequisite even for organismal evolution.
First, Darwin allowed a considerable role for ``soft inheritance'' in
his thinking about evolutionary mechanisms. Others on this list know
better than I and will, no doubt, correct me if I am mistaken, but my
impression is that Darwin's theory of pangenesis was, at least in part,
an attempt to explain how acquired characters (of the phenotype, we
would now say) could be hereditarily transmitted to offspring, i.e.,
it proposed a mechanism whereby information could (in modern terms)
flow from phenotype to genotype. Darwin gave a primary role to natural
selection as the agent of evolutionary change, but he clearly allowed
a role for ``soft inheritance,'' and I can see no logical
inconsistency in doing so.
Second, several large groups of organisms do not have even the
``tenuous distinction between germline and somatic tissue'' that
Jeremy refers to. In fact, that distinction is restricted to
Metazoa. The most obvious examples are single-celled organisms. Less
obvious are plants and fungi. In both of these latter groups, however,
gametes are formed very late in development. ``Somatic'' mutations in
a branch of a tree will be incorporated *all* gametes produced by
flowers on that branch, just as if they had happened in the germ line
of a typical metazoan. The Weismannian distinction between germ line
and soma is not easily applied, if it can be applied at all, to
plants, fungi, protistans, or bacteria.
-- Kent
--
Kent E. Holsinger Kent@Darwin.EEB.UConn.Edu
-- Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
-- University of Connecticut, U-43
-- Storrs, CT 06269-3043
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:33>From cheri@uclink.berkeley.edu Wed Jun 12 20:00:30 1996
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:59:16 -0700
To: HOPOS-L@ukcc.uky.edu
From: cheri@uclink.berkeley.edu (Cheri Larsen Hoeckley)
Subject: Call for Papers
Cc: DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu, DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu,
MERSENNE@mailbase.ac.uk
*Call for Papers*
Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies
12th Annual Conference
University of California, Berkeley
April 4-6, 1997
*** "Death and Life" ***
INCS welcomes proposals for its 12th annual conference, to be held at the
University of California, Berkeley, April 4-6, 1997. The theme for this
year's conference will be death and life. Suggested topics include:
-ceremonies and technologies of birth and death
-disease and epidemic; war and mutinies
-the concept of population
-capital punishment
-labor, midwifery, male birthing
-pathos, sentimentality, mourning
-elegies and other writing about the dead
-anatomical illustration and picturing the dead
Send 200 word abstracts, and, if possible, papers (15 pages maximum). We
will consider proposal for inter-disciplinary panels that draw on scholars
from at least *three* different disciplines. When proposing a panel,
please indicate whether you would like individual papers considered
separately if the panel is not accepted.
DEADLINES:
Abstracts due October 15, 1996
Notification sent by December 1, 1996
*COMPLETED PAPERS DUE January 15, 1997*
Direct all correspondence to:
INCS-Berkeley, English Department, 322 Wheeler Hall, University of
California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1030.
E-mail: incs@violet.berkeley.edu.
Selected conference papers will be published in _Nineteenth-Century
Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Journal_.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:34>From GRANSOM@ucrac1.ucr.edu Wed Jun 12 20:26:21 1996
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 18:25:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: GREG RANSOM <GRANSOM@ucrac1.ucr.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: RE: Time
The notion of 'time' is a central and perplexing one in
the explanation of the empirical order of the market in which
prices repeatedly approach costs of production.
Some particularly useful and classic discussions of this problem
may be found in the following:
P. N. Rosenstein-Rodan, "The Role of Time in Economic Theory", Economica,
Feb. 1934, pp. 77-97.
Ludwig Mises, _Human Action_, 1963, Yale U. Press.
F. A. Hayek, "Economics and Knowledge", Economica, Feb. 1937, pp. 33-54.
F. A. Hayek, "The Mythology Of Capital", The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
Feb. 1936, pp. 199-228.
F. A. Hayek, _The Pure Theory of Capital_. 1941. Chicago: U. of Chicago
Press.
The following are also of interest:
Philip Mirowski, _More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics,
Physics as Nature's Economics_, 1989. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press.
G.L.S. Shackle, _Epistemics and Economics_. 1972. Cambridge: Cambridge
U. Press.
Gerald O'Driscoll, Jr. & Mario Rizzo, _The Economics of Time & Ignorance_,
2nd edition, 1995[1985]. New York: Routledge.
Of central importance in economics is the distinction between 'time'
marked out in a timeless logic or mathematics of a timelessly 'given'
plan to be carried out across time, the real world of open-ended change
in the empirical/causal world of real-time history, in which changes
in understanding constantly occur, and error is possible. This original
distinction is owed to Carl Menger, Friedrich Wieser, and Bohm-Bawerk,
founders of marginal valuation economics in the 1870s and 1880s, which was
later expanded upon by folks like Rosenstein-Rodan, Mises, Hayek, and
others.
The relation between the 'timeless' nature of logic/mathematics, and
the changing world of our understanding is helpfully explored in Ludwig
Wittgenstein, _Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics_.
It would be interesting to hear what folks on this list might have to
say about the relation between the 'timeless' logical/mathematical const-
ructions of mathematical population biology (e.g. Hardy-Weinberg
equilibrium in which no evolutionary change takes place), and the real
time historical world of adaptation and special evolution. This central
problem would seem to be at the core of the debates at the "High Table"
between, e.g. paleontologists like Niles Eldredge and mathematical population
biologists like John Maynard Smith, and also at the core of recent discus-
sions of Daniel Dennett's 'algorithmic'account of the explanatory problem and
contingent content of Darwin's explanation of adapations and the origin of
species by descent.
Greg Ransom
Dept. of Philosophy
UC-Riverside
gransom@ucrac1.ucr.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:35>From GRANSOM@ucrac1.ucr.edu Wed Jun 12 21:06:17 1996
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 19:05:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: GREG RANSOM <GRANSOM@ucrac1.ucr.edu>
To: DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Weismann & the 'hard-inheritance' account of adapt. by nat. selection
I am ready to attribe to August Weismann credit for being the
first to provide an explanation of adaptation which was purely genetic
in foundation, based on 'hard inheritance', not allowing for any
sort of the 'soft inheritence' or pangenesis found in Charles Darwin.
Would I be correct to do so, to give Weismann credit for providing the first
purely genetic account of natural selection?
Im writing a paper tracing the potential influence of Weismann's
_Vortrage uber Descendenztheorie_ on Friedrich Hayek's picture of successful
explanation. How much originality can I credit to Weismann here? If any-
one can tell me more about the content of Weismann's _Vortrage_ I would
be in your debt. I am particularly interested in Helmhotz's influence on
Weismann, and any references to Helmhotz which might occure in Weismann's
_Vortrage uber Descendenztheorie_, 1902-1904. What I'm going on now for the
most part is the excellent discussion found in Ernst Mayr's _The Growht
of Biological Thought_.
Greg Ransom
Dept. of Philosphy
UC-Riverside
gransom@ucrac1.ucr.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:36>From Q.Mackie@soton.ac.uk Thu Jun 13 03:58:02 1996
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 09:57:55 bst
From: Quentin Mackie <Q.Mackie@soton.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Time
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Further to the growing bibliography on the conception of time in the
historical sciences, from an archaeological viewpoint:
Gosden, Chris _Social Being and Time_ Oxford Blackwell 1994
Gell, Alfred _The Anthropology of Time_ (essential overview of
experiential versus measured time) Oxford, Berg, 1992
Thomas, Julian 1996 Time, Culture, and Identity. Routledge, 1996
A common point addressed being the reconciliation of socially
experienced time with the chronometry imposed by normal dating
techniques.
Quentin Mackie
Archaeology
U. Southampton, UK
qxm@soton.ac.uk
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:37>From finnr@bot.ku.dk Thu Jun 13 04:18:40 1996
From: "Finn N. Rasmussen" <finnr@bot.ku.dk>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 11:18:37 GMT+0200
Subject: @ in Scandinavia
In Danish, @ is pronounced "snabel-a" which means "an a with a trunk"
(like an elephants trunk). I think this term originated at the
University mainframe computer center in the early 80'ties. The pc
was hardly invented yet, but a few computer freaks had terminals
connected with a Sperry-Univac 1100. All commands in the operating
system for this machine were still referrred to as "cards",
and they all began with an @, which the computer technicians called
"master space". However, one of the students attending a course
once called the @ sign for snabel-a. This term spread very rapidly,
and it is now the common and accepted term for @ in Danish. I have
heard Swedes using it recently, and I expect that it will eventually become
the official term in all Scandinavian languages.
Before the Internet revolution @ was unknown to most
Scandinavians. It only appeared on sales tickets printed by cash
cash registers imported from the U.S.A.
Finn N. Rasmussen
Botanical Laboratory, University of Copenhagen
Gothersgade 140, DK-1123 Copenhagen K., Denmark
Phone: +45 35 32 21 55 Fax: +45 33 13 91 04
Web homepage: http://www.bot.ku.dk
Email: FinnR@bot.ku.dk
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:38>From daaf@cerium.demon.co.uk Thu Jun 13 17:42:34 1996
From: Danny Fagandini <daaf@cerium.demon.co.uk>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: how to say "@" and language evolution
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 16:10:28 BST
Was the @ sign not once used in the UK in conjunction
with prices in the shops? Did we not have strawberries
@ 6d a lb? Hand written with chalk on metal labels at
the green grocers? Happy days! Prices were nett, then.
--
danny
daaf@cerium.demon.co.uk
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:39>From mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca Fri Jun 14 06:30:27 1996
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 07:26:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mary Winsor <mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca>
To: Neve@ecol.ucl.ac.be
Cc: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: H.G. Wells and evolution
Wells was more important in the promotion of Darwinism than most of us
realized. Gordon McOuat and I recently followed the lead of JBS Haldane's
epigraph to "Causes of Evolution" (1932), which says sardonically
"Darwinism is dead," and the trail led through Hilaire Belloc back to
Wells, who had portrayed it as fact in his 1920 "Outline of History." We
suspect, though cannot yet prove, that the Wells-Belloc debate stimulated
Haldane to start to calculate the power of natural selection.
Gordon McOuat and Mary P. Winsor, "J.B.S. Haldane's Darwinism in its
religious context," British Journal for the History of Science 28 (1995):
227-31.
Wells's period studying under T.H.Huxley are described in A.D.Boney,
"H.G.Wells and F.O.Bower: a mutual antipathy," The Linnean 8 (1992):16-22.
Polly Winsor
Institute for the History and Philosophy
of Science and Technology,
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2J9 Canada
Home phone (416) 920 8645 office (416) 978 3968
office fax (416) 978 3003 mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:40>From mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca Fri Jun 14 06:41:06 1996
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 07:37:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mary Winsor <mwinsor@chass.utoronto.ca>
To: GREG RANSOM <GRANSOM@ucrac1.ucr.edu>
Cc: DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Weismann germ-plasm reference
Greg Ransom was interested in Weismann's continuity of germ plasm but
had only seen Mayr's Growth of Biological Thought. Published after Mayr's
book is another of Fred Churchill's always outstanding articles, this one :
"Weismann's Continuity of the Germ-Plasm in Historical Perspective"
Freiburger Universitatsblatter [umlauts omitted from last two "a"s] Heft
87/88 (July 1985) pp. 107-124
Polly Winsor
Institute for the History and Philosophy
of Science and Technology,
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2J9 Canada
Home phone (416) 920 8645 office (416) 978 3968
office fax (416) 978 3003 mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:41>From joe@genetics.washington.edu Tue Jun 18 08:04:18 1996
From: Joe Felsenstein <joe@genetics.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Preliminary Bibliography: History of Systematics
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 06:13:13 -0700 (PDT)
Bob O'Hara posted a most useful
> PRELIMINARY BIBLIOGRAPHY: RECENT WORKS ON THE HISTORY OF SYSTEMATICS.
One thing I notice is the sparse coverage of the extremely hard-fought
controversies in contemporary systematics.
All I can see is three paperss (Craw, 1992, Nelson and Platnick, 1981,
Wagner, 1980). There are also two major books on the contemporary
controversies by philosophers:
Hull, David L. 1988. Science as a process : an evolutionary account of the
social and conceptual development of science. University of Chicago Press,
Chicago.
Sober, Elliott. 1988. Reconstructing the past : parsimony, evolution, and
inference. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Permit me a "cri de coeur" (sp.?) here. There is probably more coverage
in the history-of-systematics literature of controversies in a given year
in the mid-1810's than there is of, say, 1985. I can understand the
desirability of waiting until there is some perspective, though I also
wonder whether that is not mostly done to ensure that the participants are
safely dead.
Since those two interesting books, Sober has moved on to other concerns
and Hull has too. Yet there have been further developments, some reasonably
dramatic. They have not been worked on by anyone.
I once agonized about this to Elliott Sober and he assured me
that historians and philosophers of science engage in feeding frenzies and
that therefore there would soon be lots more of them working on these
controversies. It seems that he was wrong about that.
--
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
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:42>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu Mon Jun 17 10:43:22 1996
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:43:19 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: H.G. Wells and evolution
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Wells apparently had some influence on the generation of
evolutionists following Haldane as well. J. Maynard Smith (who was
a student of Haldane's) wrote:
I was taught no science at school, but by the time I was eighteen
I had given myself an admirable grounding in science by reading
Jeans, Eddington, Haldane, Huxley, Wells, Einstein and
Sherrington. All of these men were writing science for the
general public, and all, except H.G. Wells, were working
scientists.
This would have been long before he began study with Haldane.
Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:43>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu Mon Jun 17 10:51:58 1996
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:51:55 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: Weismann germ-plasm reference
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Mayr revisited Weismann in chapter 8 of _One Long Argument_ (1991,
Harvard Univ. Press), citing the Churchill paper mentioned by Polly
Winsor. I have not compared it with his earlier account to see if he has
added much.
P.S. In a previous posting on H.G. Wells I neglected to include my
source: J. Maynard Smith, 1989, _Did Darwin Get It Right?_ (Chapman &
Hall, N.Y.), p. 22.
Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:44>From ggale@CCTR.UMKC.EDU Wed Jun 19 20:13:24 1996
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 20:13:05 CST
From: ggale@CCTR.UMKC.EDU
To: CADUCEUS@BEACH.UTMB.EDU, darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu,
HOPOS-l@ukcc.uky.edu, HPSST-L%QUCDN.bitnet@vm42.cso.uiuc.edu,
STS@CCTR.UMKC.EDU, HASTRO-L@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU, htech-l@sivm.edu,
galileo@unimelb.edu.au, MEDSCI-L%BROWNVM.bitnet@vm42.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: Kuhn's Obit
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 16:55:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Buschert <buschert@chass.utoronto.ca>
To: PHILOSOP <philosop@Majordomo.SRV.UAlBerta.CA>, PHILOSOPHY GRAD STUDENTS
<philosophy-grads@chass.utoronto.ca>, PHILOSOPHY FACULTY
<philosophy-faculty@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Thomas Kuhn Dead (fwd)
The New York Times, June 19, 1996, p. B7.
Thomas Kuhn, 73; Devised Science Paradigm [Obituary]
By Lawrence Van Gelder
Thomas S. Kuhn, whose theory of sclentific revolution
became a profoundly influential landmark of 20th-century
intellectual history, died on Monday at his home in
Cambridge, Mass. He was 73.
Robert Dilorio, associate director of the news office at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the
scholar, who held the title of professor emeritus at
M.I.T., had been ill with cancer in recent years.
"The Structure of Scientific RevoIutions," was conceived
while Protessor Kuhn was a graduate student in theoretical
physics and published as a monograph in the International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science before the University of
Chicago Press issued it as a 180-page book in 1962. The
work punctured the widely held notion that scientific
change was a strictly rational process.
Professor's Kuhn's treatise influenced not only scientists
but also economists, historians, sociologists and
philosophers, touching off considerable debate. It has sold
about one million copies in 16 languages and remains
required reading in many basic courses in the history and
philosophy of science.
Dr. Kuhn, a professor of philosophy and history of science
at M.I.T. from 1979 to 1983 and the Laurence S. Rockefeller
Professor of Philosophy there from 1983 until 1991, was the
author or co-author of five books and scores of articles on
the philosophy and history of science. But Dr. Kuhn
remained best known for "The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions."
His thesis was that science was not a steady, cumulative
acquisition of knowledge. Instead, he wrote, it is "a
series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually
violent revolutions." And in those revolutions, he wrote,
"one conceptual world view is replaced by another."
Thus, Einstein's theory of relativity could challenge
Newton's concepts of physics. Lavoisier's discovery of
oxygen could sweep away earlier ideas about phlogiston, the
imaginary element believed to cause combustion. Galileo's
supposed experiments with wood and lead balls dropped from
the Leaning Tower of Pisa could banish the Aristotelian
theory that bodies fell at a speed proportional to their
weight. And Darwin's theory of natural selection could
overthrow theories of a world governed by design.
Professor Kuhn argued in the book that the typical
scientist was not an objective, free thinker and skeptic.
Rather, he was a somewhat conservative individual who
accepted what he was taught and appiied his knowledge to
solving the problems that came before him.
In so doing, Professor Kuhn maintained, these scientists
accepted a paradigm, an archetypal solution to a problem,
like Ptolemy's theory that the Sun revolves around the
Earth. Generally conservative, scientists would tend to
solve problems in ways that extended the scope of the
paradigm.
In such periods, he maintained, scientists tend to resist
research that might signal the development of a new
paradigm, like the work of the astronomer Aristarchus, who
theorized in the third century B.C. that the planets
revolve around the Sun. But, Professor Kuhn said,
situations arose that the paradigm could not account for or
that contradicted it.
And then, he said, a revolutionary would appear, a
Lavoisier or an Einstein, often a young scientist not
indoctrinated in the accepted theories, and sweep the old
paradigm away.
These revolutions, he said, came only after long periods of
tradition-bound normal science. "Frameworks must be lived
with and explored before they can be broken," Professor
Kuhn said.
The new paradigm cannot build on the one that precedes it,
he maintained. It can only supplant it. The two, he said,
were "incommensurable."
Some critics said Professor Kuhn was arguing that scieace
was little more than mob rule. He replied, "Look, I think
that's nonsense, and I'm prepared to argue that."
The word paradigm appeared so frequently in Professor's
Kuhn's "Structures" and with so many possible meanings
prompting debate that he was credited with popularizing the
word and inspiring a 1974 cartoon in The New Yorker. In.
it, a woman tells a man: "Dynamite, Mr. Gerston! You're the
first person I ever heard use 'paradigm' in real life."
Professor Kuhn traced the origin of his thesis to a moment
in 1947 when he was working toward a doctorate in physics
at Harvard. James B. Conant, the chemist who was the
president of the university, had asked him to teach a class
in science for undergraduates majoring in the humanities.
The focus was to be historical case studies.
Until then, Professor Kuhn said later, "I'd never read an
old document in science." As he looked through Aristotle's
"Physics" and realized how astonishingly unlike Newton's
were its concepts of motion and matter, he concluded that
Aristotle's physics were not "bad Newton" but simply
different.
Professor Kuhn received a doctorate in physics, but not
long afterward he switched to the history of science
exploring the mechanisms that lead to scientific change.
"I sweated blood and blood and blood, and finally I had a
breakthrough," he said.
Thomas Samuel Kuhn, the son of Samuel L. Kuhn, an
industrial engineer, and the former Annette Stroock, was
born on July 18, 1922, in Cincinnati.
In 1943, he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard with a
bachelor's degree in physics.
During World War II, he served as a civilian employee at
Harvard and in Europe with the Office of Scientific
Research and Development.
He received master's and doctoral degrees in physics from
Harvard in 1946 and 1949. From 1948 to 1956, he held
various posts at Harvard, rising to an assistant
professorship in general education and the history of
science.
He then joined the faculty of the University of California
at Berkeley, where he was named a professor of history of
science in 1961. In 1964, he joined the faculty at
Princeton, where he was the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of
Philosophy and History of Science until 1979, when he
joined the faculty of M.I.T.
Professor Kuhn was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1954-55, the
winner of the George Sarton Medal in the History of Science
in 1982, and the holder of honorary degrees from many
institutions, among them the University of Notre Dame,
Columbia University, the University of Chicago the
University of Padua and the University of Athens.
He is survived by his wife, Jehane and three children,
Sarah Kuhn of Framingham, Mass., Elizabeth Kuhn of Los
Angeles and Nathaniel Kuhn of Arlington, Mass.
[Photo] Thomas S. Kuhn
[End]
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:45>From RJOHARA@iris.uncg.edu Wed Jun 19 21:20:54 1996
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 22:20:46 -0500 (EST)
From: RJOHARA@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: "@" and linguistic and biological evolution
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Jeremy Ahouse forwarded part of a delightful thread that appeared on
HUMANIST recently about how to say the symbol "@" in various languages,
and commented:
>I thought I would share them as an example of the interesting ways that
>language diffuses while under strong local constraints. Language change
>through time really does seem different from organismal evolution; even
>the tenuous distinction between germline and somatic tissue that allows
>us to erect a wall between phenotype and genotype and encourages us to
>see information flowing one way is not to be found with language.
I'm inclined to agree with Kent Holsinger on this one, that the
disanalogies really aren't overwhelming at all. As Kent pointed out,
Darwin did pretty well without the genotype/phenotype distinction, and
there are quite a few organisms that don't exhibit the classic Weismannian
segregation of the germ line. But what I really wanted to point out is
that the interesting question of how "@" is pronounced in different
languages is really a very different question from what historical
linguists usually study in language evolution. For most of the history
of language, all language was spoken and linguistic evolution was an
oral phenomenon. Writing systems are independent of languages to a
considerable extent, and one language may make use of more than one
writing system over the course of its history (as Greek did, first with
the Linear B syllabary which was lost, and then later with a modified
Phonecian alphabet which is still in use). In the case of the "@" sign,
we have a very unusual case of a meaningful _character_ which was
transmitted around the world with no sound attached, and speakers of
different languages had to invent a name/sound for it. These different
names are (for the most part) independent derivations; they aren't coming
into being within a single evolving community of speakers. Perhaps one
of our real linguists can express this better than I have, but I hope
what I am trying to say is more or less clear.
As a further note on the similarity between linguistic and biological
evolution that we talk about frequently here, I see that there is a
paper in the latest issue of the journal _Diachronica_ by one of our
Darwin-L members that specifically applies the founder principle from
evolutionary biology to the origin of creoles:
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1996. The founder principle in creole genesis.
Diachronica, 13:83-134.
Historical population biologists on Darwin-L might find much of interest
in it.
Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner
Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu) |
Cornelia Strong College, 100 Foust Building | http://rjohara.uncg.edu
University of North Carolina at Greensboro | http://strong.uncg.edu
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A. |
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:46>From GRANSOM@ucrac1.ucr.edu Wed Jun 19 22:54:55 1996
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 20:54:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: GREG RANSOM <GRANSOM@ucrac1.ucr.edu>
To: DARWIN-L@RAVEN.CC.UKANS.EDU
Subject: 'Aristotelian science' vs. evolution & bottom-up explanation
Are there any helpful book or papers that treat the relation between
writers like Windelband, Rickert, Sombart, or Schmoller on the distinction
between 'science' and 'history' in thinking about the evolution of social
institutions, i.e. the German historical school, and the rejection by
German naturalists of the Darwinian explanation of apt functional features
and teleological doing by organisms during the same period?
I'm working on a paper that discusses what Daniel Dennet has
called "the philosophical prejudices of the scientists .. that
[have] prevented them form seeing how [bottom-up 'invisible hand'
explanations like natural selection] could work." Hayek suggests
that "it was the Cartesian influence which has been the chief obstacle
to a better understanding of the self-ordering processes of enduring
complex structures" (F. Hayek, _Law, Legislation, and Liberty_),
citing Ernest Boesiger, "Evolutionary theory after Lamarck" in F. J.
Ayala & T. Dobzhansky, (eds.), )Studies in the Philosophy of Biology_
as support. Mayr traces the problem back to Platonic 'essentialism.
Dennett discusses Locke's "mind-down' outlook.
My own lead on this matter comes from Norman Kretzmann's _Encyclopedia
of Philosophy_ entry on "History of Semantics".
Kretzmann writes:
"The most important single factor in the rise of speculative grammer
in the early thirteenth century was the enthusiasm for the notion of a
_science_, then being rediscovered in the Posterior Analytics of
Aaristotle and in his Arabic commentators. For a time it was the aim
of every study to achieve the status of an Aristotilian science, a body
of necessary knowledge deductively demonstrated ..".
Kretzmann points out that two things stood in the way of certifying
grammar as such an Aristotelian 'science': For on thing, as it had been
presented by Priscian and Donatus, grammar was simply a set of observations
about correct constructions without any attempt at explanation of the
correctness; but only knowledge 'by causes' qualified as scientific. For
another, even Peter Helia .. had maintained that there were as many grammars
as there were languages; but a unified subject matter was a prerequisite
of a [Aristotelian] science."
Any many ways this rejection of the 'scientific' status of speculative
grammar as a scientific subject tracks that of the distinction given by the
German economists and historians of the difference between real 'science'
and the non-scientific discipline of economics, which could provide no sort
of necessities -- a similiar criticism which German naturalists could
level at Darwin's bottom-up invisible hand explanation for apt functional
and teleological characters of organisms.
My suggestion, then, is that the Aristotelian notion of 'science' has
played a large role in blocking explanatory progress in all of the
sciences which rely upon bottom-up invisible hand explanations for non-
necessary phenomena which unfold through history without any sort of
necessary development. Any help in tracking down useful discussions that
might provide insight into the detailed history of my suggestion, or
which might implicate its sustainability, would be invaluably useful, and
appreciated.
Greg Ransom
Dept. of Philosophy
UC-Riverside
gransom@ucrac1.ucr.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:47>From RJOHARA@iris.uncg.edu Thu Jun 20 00:25:06 1996
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 01:24:59 -0500 (EST)
From: RJOHARA@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: June 20 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
JUNE 20 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1849: WILLIAM CLIFT dies in London, England, aged 74 years. The son of a
miller, Clift's artistic talent had won him an apprenticeship in his youth as
an illustrator and dissection assistant to the famed anatomist John Hunter.
When Hunter died in 1793 his executors appointed the young Clift as curator
of Hunter's extensive anatomical collections of more than 13,000 specimens,
collections that were eventually bought by the British government and then
given to the Royal College of Surgeons. Clift spent the entirety of his
career as curator of the Hunterian Museum, establishing a reputation as
a noted comparative anatomist, paleontologist, and illustrator.
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:48>From LCOOK@fs2.scg.man.ac.uk Thu Jun 20 09:48:22 1996
From: Laurence Martin Cook <LCOOK@fs2.scg.man.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Manchester, UK
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 15:47:38 GMT+1
Subject: Re: @
The correspondence about @ is interesting. What may or may not be
obvious is that @ started not so much as a symbol with a name
attached but as a word written with a flourish. It actually is the
word "at" written quickly, as it were, just as & is "and" (or "et",
as in &c.), and "ye" (as in ye olde tea shoppe) is "the" written
quickly. These things seem to creep in to pen work, and have
equivalents in other languages, as, for example, the French
circonflex represents an "s" once present in the word, and the German
double s (not on my keyboard) carries on a tradition also present in
English writing a couple of hundred years ago. I don't know about
the U.S, but @ was certainly in use here on an everyday basis, and
understood as a contraction, at least up to the time we stopped using
l.s.d in 1970, as in, for example: "5 lbs of apples @ 1/7 per lb"
(how many people can tell me how much I have to pay?).
We have had several examples of the names @ has been given in
languages written alphabetically but treating this as an unfamiliar
symbol. But what about languages which use ideograms? Does a name
for it present a different kind of problem in Chinese of Japanese? (I
believe some Chinese symbols have different sounds, and meanings, in
Japanese, depending on when they are understood to have been
introduced to Japanese). What sounds and descriptive associations
does @ possess in Chinese and Japanese? Perhaps someone can tell us.
Laurence
Laurence M. Cook
The Manchester Museum
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:49>From rsg2@ukc.ac.uk Thu Jun 20 10:35:40 1996
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 16:34:33 +0100 (BST)
From: "R.S.Goodman" <rsg2@ukc.ac.uk>
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Dr Fludd
I know this isn't quite the subject of the group but could anyone help
me. I am doing a second year history paper upon the Politics of magic in
Jacobean England with specific reference to the alchemist/philosopher/
medical doctor Robert Fludd. If anyone has any information could you
Email me at rsg2@ukc.ac.uk or snail mail me R.S Goodman c/o Cairnic, St
Johns Road, Bishop Monkton, Nr Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG3 3QU
England.
Thanks
Rye
_______________________________________________________________________________
<34:50>From ggori@orsola.dsnet.it Thu Jun 20 11:57:32 1996
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 18:57:52 +0200
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: ggori@orsola.dsnet.it (Gianfranco Gori)
Subject: Re: @
Laurence wrote:
>We have had several examples of the names @ has been given in
>languages written alphabetically but treating this as an unfamiliar
>symbol. But what about languages which use ideograms? Does a name
>for it present a different kind of problem in Chinese of Japanese? (I
>believe some Chinese symbols have different sounds, and meanings, in
>Japanese, depending on when they are understood to have been
>introduced to Japanese). What sounds and descriptive associations
>does @ possess in Chinese and Japanese? Perhaps someone can tell us.
Dear all,
I can't tell you on descriptive association with ideograms, but I can tell
you a funny story of Italians and @.
In our language there is'nt a symbol as @ so when people says about @ the
common definition for @ is "chiocciola" =3D snail, so if (for example) I
describe my email adress in italian I say:
ggori - chiocciola - orsola -punto - dsnet - punto - it
Interesting or not ?
G
Gianfranco Gori MD
Clinica Ostetrica e Ginecologica - Universita' di Bologna
via Massarenti 13
I 40138 Bologna ITALIA
tel. ++39 51 6364394
fax ++39 51 349774
email ggori@orsola.dsnet.it=20
email gori@kaiser.alma.unibo.it
"..El sue=F1o de la razon produce monstruos ...".
_______________________________________________________________________________
Darwin-L Message Log 34: 1-50 -- June 1996 End
