Darwin-L Message Log 1: 81–105 — September 1993

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 September 1993. 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.”

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DARWIN-L MESSAGE LOG 1: 81-105 -- SEPTEMBER 1993
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DARWIN-L
A Network Discussion Group on the
History and Theory of the Historical Sciences

Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu is an international network discussion group on
the history and theory of the historical sciences.  Darwin-L was established
in September 1993 to promote the reintegration of a range of fields all of
which are concerned with reconstructing the past from evidence in the present,
and to encourage communication among academic professionals in these fields.
Darwin-L is not restricted to evolutionary biology nor to the work of Charles
Darwin but instead addresses the entire range of historical sciences from an
interdisciplinary perspective, including evolutionary biology, historical
linguistics, textual transmission and stemmatics, historical geology,
systematics and phylogeny, archeology, paleontology, cosmology, historical
anthropology, historical geography, and related "palaetiological" fields.

This log contains public messages posted to Darwin-L during September 1993.
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 archives of Darwin-L by
listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu.  For instructions on how to retrieve copies of
this and other log files, and for additional information about Darwin-L, send
the e-mail message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:81>From junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu  Thu Sep  9 10:20:12 1993

Date: Thu, 09 Sep 93 11:17:57 EDT
From: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu (Peter D. Junger)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Ordered Change

In message <01H2OL05TDIS8ZEW0F@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU> Doug Charles writes:

>May I rephrase David Polly's question?  Why do the people that have commented
>on ordered change tend to assume the pattern must arise in some future
>predestination rather than via the constraints of structure and history?

I suspect that the answer has something to do with the fact that when we
see something creating order (like a bird building a nest) we tend to
perceive that it is done to accomplish a goal (like having a nice soft
place to lay eggs).  If the universe appears to be creating order, then
the universe appears to have a goal.  And once we believe that the
universe has a goal it is hard not to believe that it will reach that
goal.  And so we get predestination.

I suspect that, to use a distinction that I think was first made by
Ernst Mayr, there is going to be a lot of discussion on this list about
the distinction between "unscientific" teleological explanations and
"scientific" teleonomic explanations.

Edelman makes much of the distinction in his Neural Darwinism as I
recall?  (By the way, have I missed something?  I don't recall seeing
any references to Edelman on this list.)

Peter D. Junger

Case Western Reserve University Law School, Cleveland, OH
Internet:  JUNGER@SAMSARA.LAW.CWRU.Edu -- Bitnet:  JUNGER@CWRU

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:82>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Thu Sep  9 13:07:27 1993

Date: Thu, 09 Sep 1993 14:05:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: A bibliography on "progress", "order", etc.?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

I wonder if some of the people who have been discussing the topics of "order"
and "progress" might be willing to collaborate and put together an annotated
bibliography on these topics for the use of the group as a whole.  Someone
could volunteer to receive suggested references from the group, and maybe two
or three people could connect via regular e-mail to assemble the
bibliography. The literature on both of these topics is truly vast, and there
are many aspects to it: "progress" as a notion in evolution, in civil
history, in language change; "order" as a philosophical and physical notion;
the current attention given to "complexity" and "chaos" etc.; and especially
how these various topics relate to our own interests in the sciences of
historical reconstruction.  This thicket is so dark and deep that we might
profit from some bibliographic maps before venturing too far into it.


As a start, here are some entries that have crossed my desk lately:

Nitecki, Matthew, ed.  1988.  Evolutionary Progress.  Univ. Chicago Press.
  [A volume of papers on different aspects of "progress" in evolution.]

Lass, Roger.  1980.  On Explaining Language Change.  Cambridge Univ. Press.

Aitchison, Jean.  1991.  Language Change: Progress or Decay?  Cambridge Univ.
Press.


George Gale kindly contributed these two a couple days ago:

"An extremely useful account of change vs. evolution vs. progress, and all
the other synonyms, is to be found in "The Concept of Biological Progress",
by Francisco Ayala, in _Studies in the Philosophy of Biology_, Ayala and
Dobzhansky, U.C. press.  An even more general discussion, perhaps more useful
because of it, is William Dray, _Philosophy of History_, Prentice-Hall, Ch.
5."

I would also offer for such a bibliography a paper of my own in which I argue
that the notion of evolutionary progress is an artifact of our (human)
psychology and how it perceives biological diversity:

O'Hara, Robert J.  1992.  Telling the tree: narrative representation and the
study of evolutionary history.  Biology and Philosophy, 7:135-160.


Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner
darwin@iris.uncg.edu

Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
Center for Critical Inquiry and Department of Biology
100 Foust Building, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:83>From T80MAV1%NIU.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU  Thu Sep  9 14:54:10 1993

Date: Thu, 09 Sep 1993 14:52 -0500 (CDT)
From: T80MAV1%NIU.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU
Subject: entropy, order and chaos
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

To add my own two cents worth to the discussion on entropy as a
directional force, isn't there a theory that entropy is not a dead-
end, but a force that eventually leads to new order? The argument,
as I understand it, goes somewhat like this: orderly matter degrades
into entropy (chaos), which can build up as heat, for example, until
there is so much of this entropy/heat that it shoves the system back
into a higher state, and thus into new order. I believe this idea
came from Ilya Prigogine's book _Order Out of Chaos_, but my
understanding of the work may be very flawed. Can someone explain to
me how close to the mark I am on this? And what effect would this
concept have on theories of directionality caused by entropy?

Mark VanderMeulen
(t80mav1@niu.bitnet)

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:84>From wis@liverpool.ac.uk  Fri Sep 10 05:37:18 1993

From: Bill <wis@liverpool.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: entropy, order and chaos
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 93 11:37:06 BST

> To add my own two cents worth to the discussion on entropy as a
> directional force, isn't there a theory that entropy is not a dead-
> end, but a force that eventually leads to new order? The argument,
> as I understand it, goes somewhat like this: orderly matter degrades
> into entropy (chaos), which can build up as heat, for example, until
> there is so much of this entropy/heat that it shoves the system back
> into a higher state, and thus into new order. I believe this idea
> came from Ilya Prigogine's book _Order Out of Chaos_, but my
> understanding of the work may be very flawed. Can someone explain to
> me how close to the mark I am on this? And what effect would this
> concept have on theories of directionality caused by entropy?
>
> Mark VanderMeulen
> (t80mav1@niu.bitnet)

Hello List Readers!

As my introduction, I think I'll just describe myself as a paleomechanic
and then leap into the fray. My understanding of entropy has always been
that it is very much a global concept rather than a local one. True, the
laws of thermodynamics predict a universal increase in the level of
entropy but at the local level of our planet, because of the flow of
energy through the system, you actually get an increase of order
(reduction in entropy) mostly due to the activities of life. Of course
this energy flow won't continue forever. When the sun eventually fades
away, then the true course of the universe should re-assert itself.

However, if you subscribe to the oscillating universe theory, once the
Universe contracts back in on itself, we get lots of energy flowing
through systems again and plenty of chance for more increases in order -
so we won't permanently be out of jobs :->.

Bill Sellers

--

Remember, it's never too late to have a happy childhood!

__________wis@liverpool.ac.uk______________ ( )_( )
               / \. ./
        __________________/ __=.=__
              \  m " m

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:85>From BLANTON@mcopn.dseg.ti.com  Fri Sep 10 07:51:58 1993

Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1993 7:53:21 -0500 (CDT)
From: BLANTON@mcopn.dseg.ti.com
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: RE: entropy, order and chaos

>To add my own two cents worth to the discussion on entropy as a
>directional force, isn't there a theory that entropy is not a dead-
>end, but a force that eventually leads to new order? The argument,
>as I understand it, goes somewhat like this: orderly matter degrades
>into entropy (chaos), which can build up as heat, for example, until
>there is so much of this entropy/heat that it shoves the system back
>into a higher state, and thus into new order. I believe this idea
>came from Ilya Prigogine's book _Order Out of Chaos_, but my
>understanding of the work may be very flawed. Can someone explain to
>me how close to the mark I am on this? And what effect would this
>concept have on theories of directionality caused by entropy?
>
>Mark VanderMeulen
>(t80mav1@niu.bitnet)

Quick response with no research:

Prigogine won the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that the second
law of thermodynamics (that deals with entropy) does not preclude
evolution of species (and all that goes with it).  My most recent
encounter with this subject was a course I took in statistical
physics last spring, but I have never encountered this idea, and
I have not read Prigogine's book.  That sounds like the place to
start.

All that I know of entropy in this regard is that it does lead to
a "dead end."  Also, equating entropy with chaos is playing fast
and loose with some words.  When you talk seriously about these
subjects you need to talk in mathematical language.

John Blanton
blanton@lobby.ti.com

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:86>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu  Fri Sep 10 08:10:21 1993

Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1993 07:34:40 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Introduction
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

	Greetings to members of the Darwin-L list from

		Gregory C. Mayer
		mayerg@cs.uwp.edu
		Dept. of Biological Sciences
		University of Wisconsin-Parkside
		Kenosha, WI 53141-2000

	I have been a subscriber since near the very beginning of
Darwin-L, but have been lurking for the last few days.  I am an
evolutionary biologist at UW-Parkside, a small branch of the UW System
near the shore of Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee.  My
interests are in the origin and maintenance of species-rich ecological
communities, and my research has focused on the ecology, evolution and
biogeography of West Indian lizards.  Within evolutionary biology, I have
been struck by the distinction between reconstructing evolutionary history
(what our list owner, Bob O'Hara, has called "the ideal evolutionary
chronicle" in his 1988 paper in _Syst. Zool._), which is the primary goal
of systematics, and the study of evolutionary mechanisms.  This
distinction is _not_ the same as the facile and, I believe, largely
misguided, "pattern-process" dichotomy about which some authors have
commented; rather it is the distinction between the historical and
mechanistic aspects of a science.  This distinction applies to other
disciplines as well.  In physics, for example, Newton's mechanics are the
mechanistic principles by which bodies move, but if we wanted to know how
a particular set of bodies acquired the arrangement and velocities they
currently exhibit, we would be asking an historical question.  Physicists
are generally not interested in these historical aspects, but the
distinction, and interest in the historical aspect, should be readily
apparent to all in astronomy and geology.  I have been thinking for
awhile about which principles of scientific inference are most appropriate
for the two aspects, and am currently exploring analogies with modes of
statistical inference.  Darwin-L is of great interest to me since it will
provide a forum for interchange among workers in the historical aspect of
a variety of disciplines, and I have been impressed by similarities in the
modes of reasoning used in such apparently disparate subjects as
linguistics and biology.  I look forward to much interesting discussion.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:87>From LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU  Fri Sep 10 09:07:31 1993

Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1993 09:07:31 -0500
From: "JOHN LANGDON"  <LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Introduction

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a paleoanthropologist with broad but
selective interests in  the natural sciences, history, genealogy, and the
history of science. I have been reading this list for a few days and I am
intrigued by what I see.

In message <Pine.3.07.9309100738.A11550-c100000@cs.uwp.edu>  writes:

> Within evolutionary biology, I have
> been struck by the distinction between reconstructing evolutionary history
> (what our list owner, Bob O'Hara, has called "the ideal evolutionary
> chronicle" in his 1988 paper in _Syst. Zool._), which is the primary goal
> of systematics, and the study of evolutionary mechanisms.  This
> distinction is _not_ the same as the facile and, I believe, largely
> misguided, "pattern-process" dichotomy about which some authors have
> commented; rather it is the distinction between the historical and
> mechanistic aspects of a science.

I would simply like to add my agreement to this statement. We can define a
scientific methodology of thought that is used in common by many disciplines;
but the subject and goals distinguish natural, historical, and behavioral
sciences (at least). Historical sciences, including evolutionary history,
clearly may use a scientific method, but for the purpose of reconstructing and
generating explanatory hypotheses for unobservable and unrepeatable events. The
natural sciences, including evolutionary theory, use the methodology to
generate and test timeless principles of the natural world in order to explain
observable and repeatable (in theory, anyway) events.

JOHN H. LANGDON         email  langdon@gandlf.uindy.edu
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY       phone (317) 788-3447
UNIVERSITY OF INDIANAPOLIS      FAX   (317) 788-3569
1400 EAST HANNA AVENUE
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46227

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:88>From junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu  Fri Sep 10 12:22:05 1993

Date: Fri, 10 Sep 93 13:19:18 EDT
From: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu (Peter D. Junger)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Introduction

    I teach law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland,
Ohio.  My major research interest is in the evolution of restitutionary
actions in the Common Law system; i.e., the evolution of judicial
proceedings in which the demandant seeks to get something that he claims
of right, rather than damage actions in which the plaintiff seeks
compensation for the loss (i.e., damages) that he has suffered because
of the defendant's wrong.  A secondary, but related interest, is in
explaining how legal academics and treatise writers have come to
act--or, rather, to write--as if the only civil actions are wrong-based
damage actions for tort and breach of contract, when in actuality most
lawyers' work involves creating and conveying rights, and very little of
it has to do with wrongs, at a time when the old right-based actions (as
well as more modern ones) are still very much with us.

    It turns out that back in the 12th century, when the common law
was young, the only actions (except for "appeals", which correspond to
criminal actions) that were known to the common law were restitutionary
actions, most of which were commenced by  "praecepi" writs in which the
king commanded the sheriff to order (that's where the word "praecipi"
comes in) the defendant to deliver something to (or do something for)
the demandant; and it was only if the defendant did not obey that order
that there was to be a trial.  The writ assumed that the demandant had a
right to the relief that he demanded, and the only "wrong" that could be
at issue was the defendant's "wrongful" refusal to obey the sheriff's
order.  These praecipi actions included "real" actions in which the
defendat was ordered to render or give back ("quod reddat") land to the
demandant, the action of detinue in which the defendant was ordered to
give back a chattel, the action of debt in which the defendant was
ordered to pay a debt owed to the demandant, the action of account in
which the defendant (who was usually the demandant's bailiff) was
ordered to render an account to the demandant, and the action of
covenant in which the defendant was ordered to keep a promise made in a
sealed instrument.

    At the beginning of the 13th century, two new species of
writs--or maybe it was just one writ that latter split into two--came
into common use: trespass and trespass on the case (which is also known
just as case), in both of which the plaintiff sought to recover damages
for a wrong that was done to him by the defendant.  These wrong based
actions had--at least from the point of view of the
plaintiff--significant procedural advantages over the older praecepi
actions.  And thus there was continuous pressure on the courts to permit
the development of new versions of the actions of trespass and case that
could be used in place of the praecepi actions.  (This pressure was
effective because there were three different royal courts (Common Pleas,
Kings Bench, and Exchequer) that competed with each other for business.)
In time new writs (i.e., new actions) evolved out of trespass and case
that filled the same niches--performed the same functions--as the older
praecepi action, which were not as a general rule abolished, but did
become obsolete.

    That's a brief sketch of the bit of evolutionary history that
interests me.

    Now this history of the development of the forms of actions--of
the original writs that were available to start common law actions--has
one feature that I think is quite unusual in the greater history of
cultural institutions: there is a well-preserved "fossil" record.  There
are available, from the beginning of the Common Law at the end of the
12th Century when Glanvill (or one of his clerks) wrote the first
treatise on the common law of England, down to today, collections of the
forms of writs (and, after use of writs to start an action was abolished
in the nineteenth century, of the forms of allegations that plaintiffs
had to use in their complaints) that were (and are still) used by
practicing lawyers.

    It is, I think, remarkable that the forms of the earliest writs
hardly change over the centuries (at least until the writs were
abolished in the nineteenth century) and that they still persist, even
when the language in which they are written changed from Latin to
English, and even when they were transported across the Atlantic to
North America.

    I have described this fragment of evolutionary history at
length, because I have never found any relevant discussions of the
evolution of similar cultural institutions.  I should imagine that the
evolution of the forms of action would bear some resemblance to--and
perhaps direct relation to--the evolution of language, especially the
evolution of performatives (since the forms of the writs can be
considered to be the forms of performatives).  But I have never come
across any studies of the evolution of performatives.  The evolution of
the forms of action might also resemble the evolution of religious
rituals, but again I know of no studies that deal with the evolution of
rituals.  And I am completely unaware of any theoretical works that deal
with the evolution--or, better, the co-evolution--of cultural
institutions.

    So I hope that the members of this list will be able to help me
cure myself of my ignorance.

Peter D. Junger

Case Western Reserve University Law School, Cleveland, OH
Internet:  JUNGER@SAMSARA.LAW.CWRU.Edu -- Bitnet:  JUNGER@CWRU

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:89>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Fri Sep 10 12:48:31 1993

Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1993 13:54:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: History of genealogy
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

John Langdon's mention of genealogy in his introduction prompts a question.
Can anyone tell me if there is any good literature on the history of (human)
genealogy as a subject of study?  I have been interested for some time in the
history of the branching "genealogical" diagrams used in evolutionary
biology, historical linguistics, and manuscript studies, diagrams that may be
collectively referred to as "trees of history", and will post a bibliography
on them sometime soon.  My question about human genealogy as a subject is a
bit vague in my mind, but perhaps I could focus it into two general areas:

(1) The language of "root", "branch", "scion", etc. to refer to the
relationships of persons and groups of people is ancient certainly.  Is this
a universal metaphor in all cultures, or is it, say, Indo-European?  Has
anyone ever seen anything on how Classical authors, for example, use the
metaphor of a tree to describe the historical relationships among people?

(2) When animal and plant breeding become practiced seriously people must
begin talking about the pedigrees of animals just as they do/did of people.
Are there any histories of animal or plant breeding (say before 1850) that
talk about the representation of relationships among breeds by means of
branching genealogical diagrams?  The tradition of animal and plant breeding
influenced Darwin quite a bit, and I wonder what he might have found in that
literature in the way genealogical diagrams.  The literature on the history
of such diagrams in systematics I know fairly well, but I am largely ignorant
of the literature on animal and plant breeding in the agricultural sense.

(Incidentally, the word "pedigree" means "foot of the crane", something like
this:

        \  |  /
         \ | /
          \|/
           |
           |


Please feel free to post replies to the list.  Many thanks.

Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner

Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
Center for Critical Inquiry and Department of Biology
100 Foust Building, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:90>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Fri Sep 10 23:07:09 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 00:13:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: September 11 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

SEPTEMBER 11 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1522: ULISSE ALDROVANDI born at Bologna, Italy, to noble parents.  After
studying medicine and mathematics at Padua, he will take a teaching
position in Bologna and establish a natural history collection and a
botanical garden there.  A paradigmatic "Renaissance man", Aldrovandi will
be best remembered for his encyclopedic works in Latin on birds, fishes,
insects, and metals.

Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.
ukans.edu, a network discussion group on the history and theory of the
historical sciences.  E-mail darwin@iris.uncg.edu for more information.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:91>From LBRYNES@vax.clarku.edu  Sat Sep 11 05:02:17 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 06:04 EST
From: GIVE PEAS A CHANCE <LBRYNES@vax.clarku.edu>
Subject: Prigogine
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Actually, his most interesting work involves neuro-phys.
The paradigm developed utilizes the metaphor of the hologram.
[For those not into this, UNLIKE a photo negative-where if you
snip a corner and develop you get a corner of the picture; with a
hologram, if you shatter it each shard contains the whole picture
just with slightly less resolution.]

He argues for a holographic universe with a holographic brain as
interactive perception.

For physics fans, cf. Bohm on Implicate Order.

Yes, I do think that fractals and Chaos theory dovetial beautifully
here.

For the linguists/culture fans. Most interesting to note how
these sci. metaophors are absorbed into the "general" culture.
Entropy sinks into meaninglessness and ennui just as the Adam
Smit foundations of Darwin's language and INTERPRETATION in the
popular culture becomes market-place competition as a
clock-work ex cathedra.

Interesting thought as Prigogine and/or Mandelbrot seep in.

On this line, I would very much appreciate hearing your thoughts
on Lynn Margulis' symbiosis as the author of evolution, natural
selction as the editor.

Cheers,
Lois

Lois Brynes
New England Science Center
Worcester, MA
USA
lbrynes@vax.clarku.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:92>From p_stevens@nocmsmgw.harvard.edu  Sat Sep 11 08:31:16 1993

Date: 11 Sep 1993 09:33:05 U
From: "p stevens" <p_stevens@nocmsmgw.harvard.edu>
Subject: Early trees and genealogy
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

   This is by way of reply to Bob O'Hara's plea for early literature on
trees.

   Some early literature on plant and animal breeding refers to genealogical
trees, and these were drawn as reticulating (Buffon - Histoire Naturelle, vol.
5, 1755 -on breeds of dogs; Duchesne - Histoire naturelle des fraisiers...,
1766 - on strawberry crossing).  A similarity was seen between human
genealogies and those or organisms (Duchesne - I don't know about Buffon), but
the important point was that they were seen as reticulating. In Buffon's case
this is because animals such as dogs copulate, it obviously does take two to
tango, and he was also describing crossings between more or less distinct
forms; in Duchesne's case, because he, too, was crossing varieties and the
like, although many botanists at that time believed that plants normally
selfed.  Breeding generally might be expected to produce reticula, just as
human genealogies would (unless one is selective about just which of your
ancestors you are prepared to acknowledge...).  Depicting selfing genealogies
will result in a tree, but I have never seen these.  And of course it was
Naudin, the plant breeder, who came up with the analogy of a tree (pre
Darwinian, and independant).

   As to trees in Rome, and the like.  I would probably broaden my net, at
least initially, although along the lines already implied by my first
paragraph.  I would look generally at metaphors/analogies for genealogy sensu
latissimo.  Certainly, the idea of "family" when used as a rank in mid 19thC
taxonomy had unacceptable baggage for some (Payer) - family implied ideas of
genealogy, so "order" was a better word (like the Benedicitines).  People like
Duchesne commented on the generative connotations of "genus", just as Cuvier
was aware of the connotations of the word "nature".  Roselyne Rey has a brief
paper, "Aspects du vocabulaire de la classification dans l'encyclopedie",
Docum. Hist. Vocab. Sci. 2: 45-63. 1981, that deals with this almost untouched
problem (well, it may be the appendix, written by ?Dagognet which takes it up).
 I would (for this subset of your larger problem) go to Chambers ed. 1 and look
at how words like "family" were used.  I think that Berlin, in his recent
(1992) "Ethnobiological classification" makes the point that even with "folk",
ideas of genealogy of some sort are never far away when one discusses their
classifications with them.

  Enough.  I should have introduced myself to the group - Peter Stevens,
systematist (plants, tropical, often Malesian - some aspects of systematic
theory) with an interest in the history of the discipline.

Peter Stevens, Harvard University Herbaria.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:93>From SOSLEWIS@ACS.EKU.EDU  Sat Sep 11 09:16:22 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 10:18:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: SOSLEWIS@ACS.EKU.EDU
Subject: Re: Introduction
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Hi Peter:  In response to your observations of the evolution of legal
writs I would like to commment on a couple of similar things. It is not
uncommon for an existing institution to maintain its integrity by merely
shifting its function. In my classes students are reminded that the Feudal
System is alive and doing quite well in most universities, where colleges
and departments are analogous to Medieval fieds. We have King Hanley
Thunderbird (Funderburk) I and a string of princely Vice Presidents and
several Ducal Deans. At the bottom are the students who pay the Medieval
dues as tuition. Even the quaint and curious costumes worn at graduation
and the rituals performed are not exactly new.  Another good case is the
March of Dimes originally founded to combat polio which found itself with
a profitable structure and no cause when the polio vaccine was developed.
But the officials of the organization were not dismayed they merely changed
their function to another ailment which should allow them to exit well into
the forseeable future as they find a cure for birth defects.
  I wonder how many other examples of a similar nature there are out there?
  Ray, EKU
  soslewis@acs.eku.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:94>From rowilli@eis.calstate.edu  Sat Sep 11 10:38:10 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 08:33:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Robert E. Williams Jr." <rowilli@eis.calstate.edu>
Subject: Re: History of genealogy
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Bob,

Dr. Christine Rodrigue's disertation - Clark University - focused on and
documented the beginnings of domestication.  I believe she also indulged
in the speculation of discussion by early languages in order to support her
thesis.  I donm't know how accesable the document is but an abstract should
be readily available.  She is currently a faculty member of the Department
of Geography and Planning at California State U Chico.

Cordially
Robert Williams
rowilli@eis.calstate.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:95>From TREMONT%UCSFVM.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU  Sat Sep 11 12:22:15 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 10:18:36 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Elihu M. Gerson" <TREMONT%UCSFVM.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Universities and charities as fiefs
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Hi all. I"m a sociologist, studying the instituitional history of
evolutionary biology. I am moved to respond to Ray Lewis' comments on
Peter Junger's remarks on long-term institutional changes
in restitutive law (which I found fascinating).

Modern universities and charities like the March of Dimes do not
resemble medieval fiefs in any way. Universities and charities are
both market-oriented corporations (even if they have non-profit legal
status), while feudal relationships were very complex formal personal ties.
In fact modern universities and charities don't even resemble their
medieval counterparts very much, although they do perform some of the
same functions.

The problems of understanding long-term institutional change are some
of the toughest faced by social scientists and historians; there really
isn't a lot of good theoretical support available.

Elihu M. Gerson
Tremont Research Institute
458 29 Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
415-285-7837  tremont@ucsfvm.ucsf.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:96>From mperry@BIX.com  Sat Sep 11 12:33:12 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 13:33:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: mperry@BIX.com
Subject: Re: History of genealogy
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

I'm interested in getting references or citations for any work regarding
studies of complexity in artifact assemblages for prehistoric and ethno-
graphic cultures.  I am conducting research on comparative analytical
studies of artifacts based on morphology and use-wear when aboriginal
artifacts are compared to those produced by ethnographic groups.  This
research also includes comparative economic and technological frameworks
and patterns of culture change in arid and semi-arid environmental
settings.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:97>From JQRQC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU  Sat Sep 11 13:03:25 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 14:00:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Joseph Raben <JQRQC%CUNYVM.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Evolution in linguistics?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

The recent mention of similarities between reasoning in science and in lin-
guistics raises the question, Have there been discussions of linguistic evo-
lution as a process closely paralleling biological evolution? Of course, there
is always a free and general metaphoric correspondence implied in all talk of
language families, but I would like to know whether anyone has attempted a
systematic correspondence between the two activities.

Joseph Raben
<jqrqc@cunyvm.cuny.edu>

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:98>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sat Sep 11 16:30:22 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 17:36:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Historical jurisprudence and evolution
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

I was very pleased to read Peter Junger's introduction and his discussion of
the history of law, because I have just recently come to see how well the
history of law fits into the general domain of the historical sciences.  I have
almost no knowledge of law and legal terminology, but have come across a couple
of examples that illustrate the parallels between historical jurisprudence and
evolutionary history very clearly.  I will prefix them with a quotation from
Darwin that evolutionary biologists will know, a quotation that describes the
consequences of adopting an historical view of living things:

"When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at
something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of
nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex
structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to
the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical
invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even
the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far
more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history
become!"  (Darwin, _Origin of Species_, 1859:485-486)


Compare Darwin's perspective with the following two legal examples, the first
one of which concerns Sir Henry Maine, a British Victorian legal scholar, known
for his book _Ancient Law_:

"No one who is interested in the growth of human ideas or the origins of human
society can afford to neglect Maine's _Ancient Law_.  Published in 1861, it
immediately took rank as a classic, and its epoch-making influence may not
unfitly be compared to that exercised by Darwin's _Origin of Species_.  The
revolution effected by the latter in the study of biology was hardly more
remarkable than that effected by Maine's brilliant treatise in the study of
early institutions.  Well does one of Maine's latest and most learned
commentators say of his work that 'he did nothing less than create the natural
history of law.'  This is only another way of saying that he demonstrated that
our legal conceptions -- using that term in its largest sense to include social
and political institutions -- are as much the product of historical development
as biological organisms are the outcome of evolution.  This was a new
departure, inasmuch as the school of jurists, represented by Bentham and
Austin, and of political philosophers, headed by Hobbes, Locke, and their
nineteenth-century disciples, had approached the study of law and political
society almost entirely from an unhistoric point of view and had substituted
dogmatism for historical investigation.  They had read history, so far as they
troubled to read it at all, 'backwards,' and had invested early man and early
society with conceptions which, as a matter of fact, are themselves historical
products."  (J. H. Morgan, "Introduction", p. 1, in: Henry Maine, _Ancient
Law_, Everyman's Library edition, 1917)


The second legal example comes from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who was born in
Boston in 1841 and eventually became an associate justice of the United States
Supreme Court.  Holmes was a founding member of the "pragmatist" school of
philosophers who, under the influence of Chauncey Wright, William James,
Charles Sanders Peirce and others, began to apply a generally Darwinian,
historical, populational, and sometimes progressivist view of the world to many
spheres of human activity.  For "logic" in the first sentence try reading
"design", and for "experience" "variation and selection":

"The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.  The felt
necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions
of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share
with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in
determining the rules by which men should be governed.  The law embodies the
story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt
with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of
mathematics.  In order to know what it is, we must know what it has been, and
what it tends to become.  We must alternately consult history and existing
theories of legislation....In Massachusetts to-day, while, on the one hand,
there are a great many rules which are quite sufficiently accounted for by
their manifest good sense, on the other, there are some which can only be
understood by reference to the infancy of procedure among German tribes, or to
the social condition of Rome under the Decemvirs." (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
_The Common Law_, 1881:1-2)

Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner

Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
Center for Critical Inquiry and Department of Biology
100 Foust Building, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:99>From junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu  Sat Sep 11 17:14:01 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 93 18:10:49 EDT
From: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu (Peter D. Junger)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Historical jurisprudence and evolution

I am most grateful for the three quotations that Bob O'Hara has
supplied.  I will treasure the one from Darwin and I am delighted to
renew my acquaintance with the quote from Holmes, especially when
reading it for the first time from an expressly Darwinian viewpoint.
The passage from Morgan about Maine is most interesting and I will
squirrel it away with my (I fear small) collection of quotations that
combine Darwin and what lawyers call law.

I should perhaps note that Maine was a great believer in progress--which
I take to be some sort of idea of directed evolution.  In fact, I
believe that he is responsible for the famous--but insupportable--claim
that "the progress of the law has been from status to contract."  The
second most famous remark made by Maine is very closely related to the
history of the forms of action that I posted in my previous message:
"The forms of action are dead and buried, but they rule us from their
grave."  [That's not an exact quote, I'm afraid; but it is approximately
as I remember it.]

Peter D. Junger

Case Western Reserve University Law School, Cleveland, OH
Internet:  JUNGER@SAMSARA.LAW.CWRU.Edu -- Bitnet:  JUNGER@CWRU

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:100>From SOSLEWIS@ACS.EKU.EDU  Sat Sep 11 17:54:58 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 18:57:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: SOSLEWIS@ACS.EKU.EDU
Subject: Re: Universities and charities as fiefs
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Hello Elihi M. Gerson:  I have read your reply and saved it until now. In
addition to having studied early Medieval history, Renaisance and
Reformation history I took a minor in cultural anthropology from the Univ. of
Arizona and at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentukcy. Medieval
studies are undergoing a great deal of change, although the start of this
change goes back some years to small monographs issued by the American
Historical Association where they introduce the concept of Bastard Feudalism
to describe fiefs based on money not land. That is what we are now
discussing.
  I agree with you that universities and charities are market oriented
corporations but disagree with you whole heartedly that they in no way
resemble feudalism. Feudalism was very much market oriented if you consider
what the nobility was selling--protection.  Moreover if we consider feudal
war as big business then we can see the market. War was designed to be
profitable for the major fief holders. They expected payment from their
liege lords and expected war to provide the opportunity for them to become
instantly rich through ransoms of captives. Some did as you may well know.
The Hundred Years War offers much evidence to support my contention.
  Also there was mention of close personal ties in the feudal system. I see
little difference between that and the "good old boy" net in any modern
university or in the corporate structure of the charities. Their goals are to
survive and to profit. Then and now.
  You could even extend this line of thinking to cover corporate CEOs and
their relations with labor (their serfs). Look at the hostile takeovers and
compare those with the takeovers of another lords' fied by a rival. Sorry
but the long arm of the past is still a potent force. The feudal system
is still alive and doing quite well in many places no matter the verbal
covering. We can continue this discussion in private to prevent it from
becoming "noise" to our colleagues. I look forward to it.
  Sincerely,
  Ray, EKU
  soslewis@acs.eku.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:101>From @VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU:RMBURIAN@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU  Sat Sep 11 19:49:32 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 93 20:47:53 EDT
From: "Richard M. Burian" <RMBURIAN@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU>
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 11
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

 Joseph Raben asked for references comparing reasoning in historical
linguistics and (historical) sciences.  Long ago I read a small piece
by Norman Platnick and H. Don Cameron, "Cladistic methods ins textual,
linguistic, and phylogenetic analysis," Systematic Zoology 26 (1977):
380-385.  I don't have it on hand, but if I recall rightly it provides
enough references to give one a start into an extensive older litera-
ture on the topic.  Richard Burian, Science Studies, Virginia Tech

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:102>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sat Sep 11 21:59:27 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 23:05:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Re: Evolution in linguistics?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Joseph Raben asks about explicit comparisons between linguistic evolution and
biological evolution.  Let me divide the question into two parts.

First, are there explicit comparisons between the process of language change
and the process of evolution (i.e. variation and selection in populations)?
That I can't say, although I feel there must be some out there.

Second, are there explicit comparisons between language history and
evolutionary history (phylogeny)?  The answer to this is a decided "yes".
Dick Burian correctly remembers one, by Platnick and Cameron in 1977, but
these comparisons have been made since the mid-1800s.  Darwin uses a couple
of linguistic examples in the Origin of Species, for example, to illustrate
the difficulties caused by the absence of intermediate forms.  This general
topic may be called the topic of "trees of history" -- the history of
entities like languages, species, and populations that have branching
genealogies.  I have a pretty good bibliography on "trees of history" and
will post it following this message.  The first section of the bibliography
lists several explicit phylogeny/philology comparisons.  (As mentioned
before, I plan to mount these bibliographies on the ukanaix computer sometime
soon, but am still learning the list management business so it may take a
little while.)

Perhaps the most comprehensive single volume on the topic, for those who
don't want to work through the whole bibliography, is:

 Hoenigswald, Henry M., & Linda F. Wiener, eds.  1987.  Biological Metaphor
 and Cladistic Comparison: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.  Philadelphia:
 University of Pennsylvania Press.

It contains a variety of historical and theoretical papers by systematists
and philologists, including a very good one by Cameron that expands upon his
earlier work with Platnick.  This is the only volume of its kind to date,
though, as far as I am aware.

Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner

Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
Center for Critical Inquiry and Department of Biology
100 Foust Building, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:103>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sat Sep 11 22:16:52 1993

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 23:23:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Trees of history bibliography (long)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

WORKING INTERDISCIPLINARY BIBLIOGRAPHY: 'TREES OF HISTORY' IN SYSTEMATICS,
HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS, AND STEMMATICS.  Version of February 1993. Compiled by
Robert J. O'Hara, Center for Critical Inquiry in the Liberal Arts and
Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro,
North Carolina 27412-5001, U.S.A.  (Email: RJOHARA@iris.uncg.edu.)  Suggestions
for additions, deletions, and corrections are very welcome; my own field is
systematics, so that is the area in which this list is most reliable.  My
object here is not to create an exhaustive bibliography, but rather a
bibliography that will help advanced students in any one of these fields get a
good sense of what has gone on and is going on in the other fields, with
special reference to theory.  Studies of particular biological taxa, language
families, or manuscript traditions that do not have a theoretical or historical
emphasis are generally excluded from this list.  Asterisks indicate works that
may be particularly useful to beginners.  This bibliography may be freely
distributed in print or electronically as long as the references and this
header remain intact.

1. Interdisciplinary Works
2. General and Theoretical Works - Systematics
3. General and Theoretical Works - Historical Linguistics
4. General and Theoretical Works - Stemmatics
5. Historical Works - Systematics
6. Historical Works - Historical Linguistics
7. Historical Works - Stemmatics
8. Trees of History Elsewhere
9. Miscellaneous Works on Evolution in Relation to Other Fields


1. INTERDISCIPLINARY WORKS

Bateman, Richard, Ives Goddard, Richard T. O'Grady, Vicki A. Funk, Rich
Mooi, W. J. Kress, & Peter Cannell.  1990.  Speaking of forked tongues: the
feasibility of reconciling human phylogeny and the history of language.
Current Anthropology, 31:1-24.  [See also responses and commentary on pp.
177-183, 315-316, 420-426.]

Bender, M. L.  1976.  Genetic classification of languages: genotype vs.
phenotype.  Language Sciences, 43:4-6.

Flight, Colin.  1988.  Bantu trees and some wider ramifications.  African
Languages and Cultures, 1:25-43.  [Reanalyzes some linguistic data using
the distance Wagner procedure from systematics.]

Greenberg, Joseph H.  1957.  Language and evolutionary theory.  Pp. 56-65
in: Essays in Linguistics.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hoenigswald, Henry M.  1990.  Language families and subgroupings, tree
model and wave theory, and reconstruction of protolanguages.  Pp. 441-454
in: Research Guide on Language Change (Edgar C. Polome, ed.).  Trends in
Linguistics, Studies and Monographs, 48.  Berlin & New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.  [Short historical and theoretical discussion of the tree model
and the principle of shared innovation (apomorphy), and the discovery of
some of the limitations of trees in linguistics.]

*Hoenigswald, Henry M., & Linda F. Wiener, eds.  1987.  Biological Metaphor
and Cladistic Classification: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.  [The most important single
interdisciplinary collection, with papers on all three subjects.]

Koerner, E. F. Konrad.  1981.  Schleichers Einflus auf Haeckel:
Schlaglichter auf die wechselseitige Abhangigkeit zwischen linguistichen
und biologischen Theorien in 19. Jahrhundert.  Zeitschrift fur
vergleichende Sprachforschung, 95:1-21.  [Reprinted in Koerner, 1989,
Practicing Linguistic Historiography: Selected Essays, pp. 211-231.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.]

Koerner, E. F. Konrad, ed.  1983.  Linguistics and Evolutionary Theory:
Three Essays by August Schleicher, Ernst Haeckel, and William Bleek, with
an Introduction by J. Peter Maher.  Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  [Contains:
(1) Schleicher, 1863, The Darwinian Theory and the Science of Language; (2)
Schleicher, 1865, On the Significance of Language for the Natural History
of Man; (3) Bleek, 1867, On the Origin of Language (with preface by
Haeckel); (4) W. D. Whitney, 1872, Dr. Bleek and the Simious Theory of
Language.]

Lee, Arthur.  1989.  Numerical taxonomy revisited: John Griffith, cladistic
analysis and St. Augustine's Quaestiones in Heptateuchum.  Studia
Patristica, 20:24-32.  [Application of cladistic techniques to a stemmatic
problem.]

Maher, John Peter.  1966.  More on the history of the comparative method:
the tradition of Darwinism in August Schleicher's work.  Anthropological
Linguistics, 8:1-12.

Picardi, Eva.  1977.  Some problems of classification in linguistics and
biology, 1800-1830.  Historiographia Linguistica, 4:31-57.

Platnick, Norman I., & H. Don Cameron.  1977.  Cladistic methods in
textual, linguistic, and phylogenetic analysis.  Systematic Zoology,
26:380-385.

Robinson, Peter M. W., & Robert J. O'Hara.  1992.  Report on the Textual
Criticism Challenge 1991.  Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 3:331-337.
[Preliminary report on the application of cladistic analysis to a stemmatic
problem.]

Robinson, Peter M. W., & Robert J. O'Hara.  In press.  Cladistic analysis
of an Old Norse Manuscript tradition.  Research in Humanities Computing.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.  [Application of systematic techniques to a
stemmatic problem.]

Shevoroshkin, Vitaly, & John Woodford.  1991.  Where linguistics,
archeology, and biology meet.  Pp. 173-197 in: Ways of Knowing (John
Brockman, ed.).  New York: Prentice Hall Press.

Stevick, Robert D.  1963.  The biological model and historical linguistics.
Language, 39:159-169.

Uschmann, Georg.  1972.  August Schleicher und Ernst Haeckel.  Spitzbardt,
1972:62-70.


2. GENERAL AND THEORETICAL WORKS - SYSTEMATICS

*Brooks, Daniel R., & Deborah A. McLennan.  1991.  Phylogeny, Ecology, and
Behavior: A Research Program in Comparative Biology.  Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.  [Chapter 2 is an introduction to cladistic analysis.]

Camin, Joseph H., & Robert R. Sokal.  1965.  A method for deducing
branching sequences in phylogeny.  Evolution, 19:311-326.  [One of several
early influential papers in modern phylogenetic theory.]

Edwards, A. W. F., & Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi L.  1964.  Reconstruction of
evolutionary trees.  Pp. 67-76 in: Phenetic and Phylogenetic Classification
(V. H. Heywood & J. McNeill, eds.).  Systematics Association Publication 6.
[One of several early influential papers in modern phylogenetic theory.]

Farris, J. S.  1970.  Methods for computing Wagner trees.  Systematic
Zoology, 19:83-92.  [An early influential paper; now substantially
superseded.]

Farris, James S., Arnold G. Kluge, & M. J. Eckardt.  1970.  A numerical
approach to phylogenetic systematics.  Systematic Zoology, 19:172-189.
[One of several early influential papers in modern phylogenetic theory.]

Felsenstein, Joseph.  1982.  Numerical methods for inferring evolutionary
trees.  Quarterly Review of Biology, 57:379-404.

Fitch, Walter M., & Emmanuel Margoliash.  1967.  The construction of
phylogenetic trees.  Science, 155:279-284.  [One of several early
influential papers in modern phylogenetic theory.]

Hennig, Willi.  1965.  Phylogenetic systematics.  Annual Review of
Entomology, 10:97-116.  [A synopsis of Hennig 1966.]

Hennig, Willi.  1966.  Phylogenetic Systematics.  Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.

Kluge, Arnold G., & James S. Farris.  1969.  Quantitative phyletics and the
evolution of anurans.  Systematic Zoology, 18:1-32.  [One of several early
influential papers in modern phylogenetic theory.]

Maddison, Wayne P., Michael J. Donoghue, & David R. Maddison.  1984.
Outgroup analysis and parsimony.  Systematic Zoology, 33:83-103.  [A review
of outgroup comparison as a method of polarity determination.]

*Maddison, Wayne P., & David R. Maddison.  1989.  Interactive analysis of
phylogeny and character evolution using the computer program MacClade.
Folia Primatologica, 53:190-202.

*Maddison, Wayne P., & David R. Maddison.  1992.  MacClade, version 3.
Sunderland: Sinauer Associates.  [Computer program for interactive analysis
of evolutionary trees.  Comes with introductory text.]

Mayr, Ernst.  1974.  Cladistic analysis or cladistic classification.
Zeitschrift fur zoologische Systematik und Evolutions-forschung, 12:94-128.
[Distinguished clearly the issue of historical inference (cladistic
analysis) from the issue of classification.]

*Mayr, Ernst, & Peter D. Ashlock.  1991.  Principles of Systematic Zoology,
second edition.  New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.  [Pp. 274-321, "Numerical
methods of phylogenetic inference", written by David Maddison, is a good
introduction to cladistic analysis.  Much of the rest of the book is
outdated.]

O'Hara, Robert J.  1988.  Homage to Clio, or, toward an historical
philosophy for evolutionary biology.  Systematic Zoology, 37:142-155.  [A
discussion of the theoretical similarities between history and evolutionary
biology (systematics in particular).]

*Sober, Elliott.  1988.  Reconstructing the Past: Parsimony, Evolution, and
Inference.  Cambridge: MIT Press.

Stevens, Peter F.  1980.  Evolutionary polarity of character states.
Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 11:333-358.

*Swofford, David L., & Gary J. Olsen.  1990.  Phylogenetic reconstruction.
Pp. 411-501 in: Molecular Systematics (D. M. Hillis & C. Moritz, eds.).
Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer.  [An advanced but comprehensive
introduction.]

Wagner, Warren H., Jr.  1961.  Problems in the classification of ferns.
Recent Advances in Botany, 1:841-844.  [One of several early influential
papers in modern phylogenetic theory.]

*Wiley, Edward O.  1981.  Phylogenetics.  New York: Wiley.  [A general
textbook on systematics.]

Zuckerkandl, E., & Linus Pauling.  1965.  Molecules as documents of
evolutionary history.  Journal of Theoretical Biology, 8:357-366.

[Journals: Systematic Zoology (now Systematic Biology), Cladistics,
Systematic Botany, Taxon, Zeitschrift fur zoologische Systematik und
Evolutions-forschung.]

[Software: MacClade, PAUP, PHYLIP, HENNIG-86, Clados, and others.  See
Maddison in Mayr & Ashlock, pp. 320-321 for a listing.]


3. GENERAL AND THEORETICAL WORKS - HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Allen, W. S.  1953.  Relationship in comparative linguistics.  Transactions
of the Philological Society, 1953:52-108.

Anttila, Raimo.  1989.  Historical and Comparative Linguistics.  Amsterdam.
[A general textbook.]

Bynon, Theodora.  1977.  Historical Linguistics.  Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.  [A general textbook.]

Chretien, C. Douglas.  1963.  Shared innovation and subgrouping.
International Journal of American Linguistics, 29:66-68.

*Gamkrelidze, Thomas V., & V. V. Ivanov.  1990.  The early history of Indo-
European languages.  Scientific American, March, pp. 110-116.

Gleason, H. A.  1959.  Counting and calculating for historical
reconstruction.  Anthropological Linguistics, 1(2):22-32.

Grace, George W.  1965.  On the scientific status of genetic classification
in linguistics.  Oceanic Linguistics, 4:1-14.

Greenberg, Joseph H.  1987.  Language in the Americas.  Stanford: Stanford
University Press.

Hetzron, Robert.  1976.  Two principles of genetic reconstruction.  Lingua,
38:89-108.

Hock, Hans Henrich.  1991.  Principles of Historical Linguistics, second
edition.  Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.  [A general textbook.]

Hoenigswald, Henry M.  1966.  Criteria for the subgrouping of languages.
Pp. 1-12 in: Ancient Indo-European Dialects (Henrik Brinbaum & Jaan Puhvel,
eds.).  Berkeley: University of California Press.

*Mallory, James P.  1989.  In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language,
Archeology, and Myth.  London: Thames and Hudson.

Nichols, Johanna.  1992.  Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time.  Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

Pulgram, E.  1953.  Family tree, wave theory, and dialectology.  Orbis,
2:67-72.

*Renfrew, Colin.  1989.  The origins of Indo-European languages.
Scientific American, October, pp. 106-114.

*Ruhlen, Merritt.  1991.  A Guide to the World's Languages.  Volume 1:
Classification.  Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Shevoroshkin, Vitaly, & T. L. Markey, eds.  1986.  Typology, Relationship,
and Time: A Collection of Papers on Language Change and Relationship by
Soviet Linguists.  Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers.

Shevoroshkin, Vitaly, ed.  1989.  Reconstructing Languages and Cultures.
Studienverlag Dr. Norbert Brockmeier.

Shevoroshkin, Vitaly.  1989.  Methods in interphyletic comparisons.  Ural-
Altaische Jahrbucher, 61:1-26.

Shevoroshkin, Vitaly.  1990.  The mother tongue.  The Sciences, May-June.

*Wright, R.  1991.  Quest for the mother tongue.  Atlantic, 267(4):39-68.
[Popular magazine article.]

[Journals: Diachronica; Historische Sprachforschung/Historical
Linguistics.]


4. GENERAL AND THEORETICAL WORKS - STEMMATICS

Clark, A. C.  1918.  The Descent of Manuscripts.  Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Colwell, Ernest Cadman.  1947.  Genealogical method: its achievements and
limitations.  Journal of Biblical Literature, 66:109-133.

Dawe, R. D.  1964.  The Collation and Investigation of Manuscripts of
Aeschylus.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  [On the limitations of
stemmatics.]

Greg, W. W.  1927.  The Calculus of Variants: an Essay on Textual
Criticism.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Greg, W. W.  1930.  Recent theories of textual criticism.  Modern
Philology, 28:401-404.  [Reply to Shepard (1930).]

[Griesbach.  1796.  Prolegomena to his second edition of the New Testament.
(Establishes the principle of lectio difficilior, and other rules, fide
Shepard 1930.)]

Kleinlogel, Alexander.  1968.  Das Stemmaproblem.  Philologus, 112:63-82.

Maas, Paul.  1958.  Textual Criticism.  (Translated from the German by
Barbara Flower.)  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quentin, Henri.  1926.  Essais de Critique Textuelle.  Paris: Picard.

Reeve, M. D.  1986.  Stemmatic method: 'qualcosa che non funziona'?  The
Role of the Book in Medieval Culture (Proceedings of the Oxford
International Symposium, 1982, edited by Peter Ganz), 1:57-69.
Bibliologia, vol. 3.  Brepols, Turnhout.

*Reynolds, Leighton D., ed.  1983.  Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the
Latin Classics.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

*Reynolds, Leighton D., & N. G. Wilson.  1991.  Scribes and Scholars: A
Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature.  Third Edition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.  [Reviews: Possanza, M.  1991.  Bryn Mawr
Classical Review, 2:431-438.]

Shepard, William P.  1930.  Recent theories of textual criticism.  Modern
Philology, 28:129-141.  [Critique of Quentin (1926) and Greg (1927); see
Greg (1930) for a response.]

Weitzman, Michael.  1985.  The analysis of open traditions.  Studies in
Bibliography, 38:82-120.  [A substantial discussion of how to reconstruct
the history of contaminated manuscript traditions.]

Weitzman, Michael.  1987.  The evolution of manuscript traditions.  Journal
of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 150:287-308.  [Develops a
statistical model of the process of manuscript descent.]

West, M. L.  1973.  Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique.  Stuttgart.

Whitehead, F., & C. E. Pickford.  1951.  The two-branch stemma.  Bulletin
Bibliographique de la Societe Internationale Arthurienne\Bibliographical
Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society, 3:83-90.

Zuntz, G.  1965.  An Inquiry into the Transmission of the Plays of
Euripides.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


5. HISTORICAL WORKS - SYSTEMATICS

Barsanti, Giulio.  1988.  Le immagini della natura: scale, mappe, alberi
1700-1800.  Nuncius, 3:55-125.  [History of scales, maps, and trees in 18th
century systematics.]

Craw, Robin.  1992.  Margins of cladistics: identity, difference and place
in the emergence of phylogenetic systematics, 1864-1975.  Pp. 65-107 in:
Trees of Life: Essays in Philosophy of Biology (Paul Griffiths, ed.).
Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 11.

Greene, John C.  1959.  The Death of Adam.  Ames: Iowa State University
Press.  [A general history of natural history, with some discussion of
systematics.]

Gruber, Howard E.  1972.  Darwin's 'tree of nature' and other images of
wider scope.  Pp. 121-140 in: On Aesthetics and Science (J. Wechsler, ed.).
Cambridge: MIT Press.

Hull, David L.  1988.  Science as a Process.  Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.  [Contains an account of the recent (post-1960) history of
systematics.  See Craw (1992) for criticism.]

Lam, H. J.  1936.  Phylogenetic symbols, past and present.  Acta
Biotheoretica, 2:152-194.

O'Hara, Robert J.  1988.  Diagrammatic classifications of birds, 1819-1901:
views of the natural system in 19th-century British ornithology.  Pp. 2746-
2759 in: Acta XIX Congressus Internationalis Ornithologici (H. Ouellet,
ed.).  Ottawa: National Museum of Natural Sciences.

O'Hara, Robert J.  1991.  Representations of the natural system in the
nineteenth century.  Biology and Philosophy, 6:255-274.

O'Hara, Robert J.  1992.  Telling the tree: narrative representation and
the study of evolutionary history.  Biology and Philosophy, 7:135-160.  [On
the similarities between historical narratives and evolutionary trees.]

Oppenheimer, Jane M.  1987.  Haeckel's variations on Darwin.  Hoenigswald &
Wiener, 1987:123-135.  [On the tree diagrams of the German evolutionist
Ernst Haeckel.]

de Queiroz, Kevin.  1988.  Systematics and the Darwinian revolution.
Philosophy of Science, 55:238-259.  [A good interpretation of the history
of recent systematics.]

Reif, Wolf-Ernst.  1983.  Hilgendorf's (1863) dissertation on the Steinheim
planorbids (Gastropoda; Miocene): the development of a phylogenetic
research program for paleontology.  Palaontologische Zeitschrift, 57:7-20.

Stevens, Peter F.  1982.  Augustin Augier's "Arbre Botanique" (1801), a
remarkable early botanical representation of the natural system.  Taxon,
32:203-211.

Stevens, Peter F.  1984.  Metaphors and typology in the development of
botanical systematics 1690-1960, or the art of putting new wine in old
bottles.  Taxon, 33:169-211.

Voss, E. G.  1952.  The history of keys and phylogenetic trees in
systematic biology.  Journal of the Scientific Laboratory, Denison
University, 43:1-25.

Wagner, Warren H., Jr.  1980.  Origin and philosophy of the groundplan-
divergence method of cladistics.  Systematic Botany, 5:173-193.

Winsor, Mary P.  1976.  Starfish, Jellyfish, and the Order of Life.  New
Haven: Yale University Press.


6. HISTORICAL WORKS - HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Bonfante, Giuliano.  1954.  Ideas on the kinship of the European languages
from 1200 to 1800.  Journal of World History, 1:679-699.

De Mauro, T., & L. Formigari.  1990.  Leibniz, Humboldt, and the Origins of
Comparativism.  Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  [Amsterdam Studies in the
Theory and History of Linguistic Science, 49.]

Hoenigswald, Henry M.  1963.  On the history of the comparative method.
Anthropological Linguistics, 5(1):1-11.

Hoenigswald, Henry M.  1975.  Schleicher's tree and its trunk.  Pp. 157-160
in: Ut Videam: Contributions to an Understanding of Linguistics.  For
Pieter A. Verburg on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday...(Werner
Abraham et al., eds.).  Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press.

Hymes, Dell, ed.  1974.  Studies in the History of Linguistics: Traditions
and Paradigms.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Koerner, E. F. Konrad.  1978.  Toward a historiography of linguistics: 19th
and 20th century paradigms.  In: Toward a Historiography of Linguistics:
Selected Essays.  Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic
Science, III.  Studies in the History of Linguistics, vol. 19.  Amsterdam:
Benjamins.

Koerner, E. F. Konrad.  1982.  The Schleicherian paradigm in linguistics.
General Linguistics, 22:1-39.

Morpurgo Davies, Anna.  1975.  Language classification in the Nineteenth
Century.  Current Trends in Linguistics, 13:607-716.

Myers, L. F., & W. S.-Y. Wang.  1963.  Tree representations in linguistics.
In: Project on Linguistic Analysis, Report No. 3, Ohio State University
Research Foundation (N.S.F. Grant G-25055).  [fide H&W p256]

Pederson, Holger.  1931.  The Discovery of Language: Linguistic Science in
the Nineteenth Century.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press.  [Reprinted
1962, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.]

Priestly, Tom M. S.  1975.  Schleicher, Celakovsky, and the family-tree
diagram.  Historiographica Linguistica, 2:299-333.

Robins, Robert H.  1973.  The history of language classification.  Current
Trends in Linguistics, 11:3-41.

Robins, Robert H.  1979.  A Short History of Linguistics.  London.

Robins, Robert H.  1987.  The life and work of Sir William Jones.
Transactions of the Philological Society, 1987:1-23.  [Short biography of
an 18th century founder of historical linguistics.]

Southworth, Franklin C.  1964.  Family-tree diagrams.  Language, 40:557-
565.

Stewart, Ann H.  1976.  Graphic Representation of Models in Linguistic
Theory.  Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press.

Uschmann, G.  1967.  Zur Geschichte der Stammbaumdarstellungen.  Gesammelte
Vortrage uber moderne Probleme der Abstammungslehre (M. Gersch, ed.), 2:9-
30.  Jena: Friedrich Schiller Universitat.

[Journals: Historiographica Linguistica.]


7. HISTORICAL WORKS - STEMMATICS

Holm, Gosta.  1972.  Carl Johan Schlyter and textual scholarship.  Saga och
Sed (Kungliga Gustav Adolf Akademiens Aarsbok), 1972:48-80.  [Reproduces
Schlyter's stemma of legal texts (earliest known) from 1827.]

Prete, Sesto.  1969.  Observations on the History of Textual Criticism in
the Medieval and Renaissance Periods.  Collegeville, Minnesota: St. John's
University Press.  [A lecture given in the servies "Medieval and
Renaissance Studies" at St. John's College.]

Timpanaro, Sebastiano.  1981.  La Genesi del Methodo del Lachmann, third
edition.  Padua.


8. TREES OF HISTORY ELSEWHERE

Cook, Roger.  1974 [reprinted 1988].  The Tree of Life: Image for the
Cosmos.  New York: Thames and Hudson.  [An art historical study of tree
imagery.  Includes some historical and genealogical trees.]

Murdoch, John E.  1984.  Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.  [Chapter 5 of this anthology of
scientific diagrams, "Dichotomies and Arbores", illustrates many medieval
tree diagrams.  Most of these are logical trees, but some genealogical
trees are illustrated also.]

Toulmin, Stephen E.  1972.  Human Understanding.  Princeton: Princeton
University Press.  [Evolutionary epistemology: trees of disciplinary
development.]

Young, Gavin C.  1986.  Cladistic methods in paleozoic continental
reconstruction.  Journal of Geology, 94:523-537.


9. MISCELLANEOUS WORKS ON EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO OTHER FIELDS

Bichakjian, B.  1987.  The evolution of word order: a paedomorphic
explanation.  Pp. 87-108 in: Papers from the 7th International Conference
on Historical Linguistics (A. G. Ramat et al., eds.).  Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.

Bredeck, Elizabeth J.  1987.  Historical narrative or scientific
discipline?  Fritz Mauthner on the limits of linguistics.  Pp. 585-593 in:
Papers in the History of Linguistics (Hans Aarsleff, Louis G. Kelly, &
Hans-Josef Niederehe, eds.).  Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Durham, William H.  1990.  Advances in evolutionary culture theory.  Annual
Review of Anthropology, 19:187-210.

Kennedy, George A.  1992.  A hoot in the dark: the evolution of general
rhetoric.  Philosophy and Rhetoric, 25:1-21.

Lass, Roger.  1990.  How to do things with junk: exaptation in language
evolution.  Journal of Linguistics, 26:79-102.

Leroy, Maurice.  1949.  Sur le concept d'evolution en linguistique.  Revue
de l'Institut de Sociologie.  337-375.

Masters, R. D.  1990.  Evolutionary biology and political theory.  American
Political Science Review, 84:195-210.

Sereno, M. I.  1991.  Four analogies between biological and cultural
linguistic evolution.  Journal of Theoretical Biology, 151:467-507.

Smith, Donald T.  1993.  The new view of biological evolution:
organizational applications to higher education.  Review of Higher
Education, 16(2):141-156.  [Limited understanding of evolution.]

Terrell, John.  1981.  Linguistics and the peopling of the Pacific islands.
Journal of the Polynesian Society, 90:225-258.  [Biogeography and
linguistics.]

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:104>From 71500.726@CompuServe.COM  Sun Sep 12 05:14:29 1993

Date: 12 Sep 93 06:13:36 EDT
From: "Alan P Peterson 71500.726@compuserve.com" <71500.726@CompuServe.COM>
To: <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject: An Historical question

I have a question about the tempo of alpha taxonomic activity, in the
late 18th and early 19th century.

If one looks at the rate of AVIAN taxonomic descriptions as a function
of time, it appears that there was a distinct lull in activity
between 1790 and 1815.  This lull is not apparent in fish, or mammals
(though the latter are getting a little sparse in number to detect a
"lull" if it is in fact there).  Descriptions of lichens (for example)
seemed to have actually peaked during this same period
(work mostly in Scandinavia).

My initial thought was that the period French Rev. War -- Napoleonic
Wars put a damper on natural history publishing in Europe.  Arguing
against this : the considerable support the French Revolutionary
government gave to natural history acitivities, the ongoing popular
natural history activites from the turn of the century through the
period of the Geoffroy-Cuvier debates, and the continued descriptions
of new fish (and mammals?).

The number of (currently valid) avian spp. described between
1780-1829 are below.

1780   1	1790 86	   1800 28	1810  21	1820  72
1781  19	1791  2	   1801 71	1811  49	1821  91
1782  20	1792 16	   1802 11	1812  20	1822  75
1783 127	1793  9	   1803  5	1813  10	1823 135
1784   7	1794  5	   1804  3	1814  12	1824  83
1785   2	1795  6	   1805  9	1815  33	1825  98
1786  47	1796  5	   1806  4	1816  56	1826  58
1787  14	1797  4	   1807  7	1817 119	1827 126
1788 134	1798 15	   1808 16	1818 120	1828  50
1789 238	1799  3	   1809 19	1819  65	1829  76

Most all of the 1801's are a single publ. of John Latham
Suppl.ind.orn. (it is actually an 1802 publication).
The 1811's are by and large Pallas' Zoogr.Rosso-Asiat.

If a plot is made with citation year on the y-axis, and any
arrangement of birds on the x-axis (taxonomic, random, alphabetic etc.)
a definite gap is apparent from 1790 to 1815.  The bottom of the "gap"
is somewhat artificial, due to the 1788-9 Syst. Nat. publ. by Gmelin
(mostly of Latham's birds !) producing a sharp "line" delimiting the
bottom of the period.

I've done similar plots for fish and mammals, but the "gap" is not
there. Most other taxa are either: 1.)unavailable to me in convenient
computer readable form, 2.) too sparse in number to reveal any "gap",
or 3.) not actively studied during this period.

I've looked at mammals, fish (well 59,000+ of them == 95%),
turbellarians, New World Dragaonfiles ... [Obviously these were chosen
for availability rather than applicability to the question.]

Why, I wonder, did bird descriptions languish until a sudden outpouring of
activity in 1815.  Much of the 1815 -1820 activity was due to Vieillot,
but he first published in 1801.  If the sudden change was the result,
say, of returning expeditions, I would expect the effect to show up in
mammals and fish as well.

If anyone has suggestions why there is a (real or apparent) lull in
avian alpha taxonomic activity from 1790 to 1815 I'd love to hear the
ideas.

By brief introduction:
	Professionally I am a pathologist (and in that, am a practitioner
	of one of the most primitive forms of taxonomy practiced today).  By
	avocation I have a strong interest including systematics, taxonomic
	history, and bio-bibliography.  I know and work mostly with bird
	data, but have an extravagant and irregular head (to quote Sir
	Thomas Browne) attracted by many obscure interests.

Alan P. Peterson, M.D.       internet1:  71500.726@compuserve.com
POB 1999                     internet2:  alanpp@halcyon.com
Walla Walla, WA 99362, USA         fax:  509.525.1326
                                   vox:  509.527.0274
                                    or   509.529.1152

_______________________________________________________________________________

<1:105>From John_Wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au  Sun Sep 12 18:03:23 1993

Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 08:59:43 +0000
From: John Wilkins <John_Wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au>
Subject: RE>Re- Evolution in linguis
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Reply to:
     RE>Re: Evolution in linguistic
Didn't Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, authors of _Cultural evolution: A
quantitative approach_ (1984?) recently publish something on lingusitic
evolution in Scientific American?

BTW:
I'm a masters research student studying cultural evolution in restricted cases
such as intellectual traditions (sciences, humanities), where there are
sufficiently strong selective pressures to create a darwinian evolutionary
process closely analogous to biological evolution.

Two issues concern me:

1. How much is cultural evolution REALLY affected by the so-called
intentionality of social agents? Does this really introduce a lamarckian
element (I think not)

2. What are the close analogies and the disanalogies between cultural and
biological evolution (Gould, eg, thinks that the term "evolution" ought to be
restricted to biology -- I think because he thinks cultural change is a
directed and staged process).

I'd be interested to discourse on this with whoever. My main sources are David
Hull of the Hull/Dawkins distinction, and Stephen Toulmin.

Cheers

John Wilkins - Manager, Publishing
Monash University, Melbourne Australia
Internet: john_wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au
Tel: (+613) 565 6009

Monash and I often, but not always, concur

_______________________________________________________________________________
Darwin-L Message Log 1: 81-105 -- September 1993                            End