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Darwin-L Message Log 2: 36–89 — October 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 October 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 2: 36-89 -- OCTOBER 1993
----------------------------------------------
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 October 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 some administrative messages and personal messages posted to
the group as a whole have been deleted. No genuine editorial changes have been
made to the content of any of the posts. This log is provided for personal
reference and research purposes only, and none of the material contained herein
should be published or quoted without the permission of the original poster.
The master copy of this log is maintained in the archives of Darwin-L by
listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu. 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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:36>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Fri Oct 8 11:40:52 1993
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1993 12:47:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: The term "locus"
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
An afterthought on the issue of ploidy and polymorphism: Do any of our
population biologists know when and by whom the term "locus" was first
used to describe the position of a gene on a chromosome? Would it have
been by T.H. Morgan? I am wondering now whether the term might have
been chosen not just for its obvious meaning of "place", but also because
of a recognized parallel between genetic and textual transmission, since
the same word is used by philologists to describe a "place" in a text.
Bob O'Hara
darwin@iris.uncg.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:37>From LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU Fri Oct 8 11:54:50 1993
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1993 11:54:50 -0500
From: "JOHN LANGDON" <LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: altruism?
Someone asked what altruism is.
Altruism in the dictionary means a regard and attention for others over self.
In sociobiology, it refers to actions that one performs for the apparent
benefit to others and at a cost to oneself. The problem: natural selection is
expected to work against any individuals with such tendencies, favoring the
beneficiaries over the giver. Nonetheless altruistic acts are observed with
surprising frequency among both human and non-human societies.
Sociobiology really got off the ground on this topic, with its notions of
inclusive fitness and the need to incorporate degree of relatedness (or genetic
similarity) into any calculation of cost and benefit. The "solutions" to the
biological problem lie in analyzing the contexts of altruistic acts and
deomonstrating (or at least hypothesizing) that the actions in question
actually benefit the genes (inclusively defined) of the altruistic individual
more than they cost him or her-- in other words, demonstrating that the acts
are not really altruistic after all.
The quality and detail of the arguments must be understood in the context of
each case. Some of these sociobiological models, such as for ants and bees, are
quite convincing. Others, such as for human behavior, often require conjecture
amounting, in my opinion, leaps of faith.
JOHN H. LANGDON email LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY FAX (317) 788-3569
UNIVERSITY OF INDIANAPOLIS PHONE (317) 788-3447
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46227
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:38>From junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu Fri Oct 8 12:45:24 1993
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 93 13:42:47 EDT
From: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu (Peter D. Junger)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Quote from Nietzsche
Harold J. Berman, in Law and Revolution, says: "As Friedrich Nietzsche
once said, nothing that has a history can be defined."
This quote seems to have an obvious relevance to the discussions on this
list, especially the more technical ones that worry about what evolution
_really_ is. And it seems, when one thinks about it, to be obviously
true. But where does the quote come from?
--Peter Junger
By the way, some time ago I think I posted a message to this list in
which I said that Maine had said something like "the forms of action are
dead and buried, but they rule us from the grave." If I said that, I
was wrong. The remark was made by Maitland, the greatest historian of
the common law.
Sorry about that.
Peter D. Junger
Case Western Reserve University Law School, Cleveland, OH
Internet: JUNGER@SAMSARA.LAW.CWRU.Edu -- Bitnet: JUNGER@CWRU
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:39>From ECZ5KAT@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU Fri Oct 8 14:47:19 1993
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1993 09:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kathy Donahue <ECZ5KAT@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Why altruism?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Re: Altruism
You might look at the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. He has an extensive
discussion of altruism.
KES Donahue, History & Special Collections
Biomedical Library, UCLA
ecz5kat@mvs.oac.ucla.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:40>From WILLS@macc.wisc.edu Sat Oct 9 15:21:11 1993
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 93 15:22 CDT
From: Jeffrey Wills <WILLS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: manuscript polymorphism
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Bob O'Hara writes:
"Unlike organisms, however, manuscripts aren't of any particular ploidy;
rather, at most loci a manuscript will carry only one reading (haploid), at
some loci it will carry two readings (diploid), and at some loci it might
carry three or more readings (triploid or polyploid)."
If one wants to analyze the ms. parallel more closely, one would say that
although mss. often have diploidy, those multiple readings are not necessarily
equal (isoploid???) in their origins or possibility of replication. Usually one
reading will be on the main line with other readings written above it or in the
margin (These variants may be corrections or merely comparanda). For some
scribes, words written above will be seen as corrections and will therefore be
substituted or inserted for the lemma (the glossed word) on the ordinary line
of the text. For other scribes, the glosses might be ignored; for others both
will loyally be copied.
My points are that 1) although the text is polyploid, the
text will be "expressed" uniquely if someone is reading it aloud (i.e. terms
like "dominant" and "recessive" readings might apply); 2) the likelihood of
the successful copying of diploid variants is not equal (are there biological
situations which weight the inherited diploid "readings"?); 3) the variable
likelihoods of successful copying depend on something external (the human
copier) and cannot be predicted a priori.
Language can probably also be seen as diploid at points. As we have
discussed, a person can carry more than one language (which are inherited in
distinctly and used in distinct environments), but even within a single
register of a single speaker of a single language we often say that two forms
of a word are "in free variation". Yesterday, a student asked a colleage of
mine how he pronounces "Augustine", i.e. whether he put the accent on the first
or second syllable. The response was that he pronounced it both ways--further
discussion was unable to find an environmental factor (academic vs.
non-academic, religious vs. secular, Cath. vs. Prot.) for his variation. You
can probably think of forms in your own speech (unusual past tenses, spellings
of traveler vs. traveller,etc.). Looking at the population we might say that
forms A and B have different geographic or social distributions, but in
speakers on the margins one might say that "free variation" is a type of
diploidy--either form has a random chance of being expressed or reproduced.
Personally, I think there probably are factors (psychological, prosodic
(=sentence rhythm), social,etc.) but we just don't know enough to sort them
out.
Jeffrey Wills,
wills@macc.wisc.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:41>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Oct 10 11:35:03 1993
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1993 12:41:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: October 10 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
OCTOBER 10 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1802: HUGH MILLER, author and geologist, is born at Cromarty, Scotland.
Apprenticed to a stonemason as a young man, Miller made several important
geological discoveries, including finding in the Old Red Sandstone the
earliest fossil vertebrates that were then known. His greatest distinction,
however, came as a popularizer of the geological research of his day: in vivid
and powerful prose, Miller made known to a wide audience the lost worlds of
the past and the depth of geological time. In one of his best-known works
Miller describes a scenic view of the Bay of Cromarty, and then asks his
readers to "survey the landscape a second time; -- not merely in its pictorial
aspect, not as connected with the commoner associations which link it to its
present inhabitants, but as _antiquaries of the world_, -- as students of
those wonderful monuments of nature, on which she has traced her heiro-
glyphical inscriptions of plants and animals that impart to us the history,
not of a former age, but of a former creation. Geology is the most poetical
of all sciences; and its various facts, as they present themsleves to the
human mind, possess a more overpowering immensity than even those of Astronomy
itself. For while the Astronomer can carry about with him in his imagination,
a little portable Orrery of the whole solar system, the Geologist is oppressed
by a weight of rocks and mountains, and of strata piled over strata which all
his diligence in forming theories, has not yet enabled him completely to
arrange. He is no mere intellectual mechanician, who calculates and reasons
on the movements of a piece of natural clockwork; the objects with which he is
chiefly conversant, have no ascertained forms, or known proportions, that he
may conceive of them as abstract figures, or substitute a set of models in
their places; his province, in at least all its outer skirts, is still a
_terra incognita_, which he cannot conceive of as a whole; and the walks which
intersect it are so involved and irregular that, like those of an artificial
wilderness, they seem to double its extent. The operations of his latest
eras, as his science exists in time, terminate long before history begins;
while, as it exists in space, he has to grapple with the immense globe itself,
with all its oceans, and all its continents. Goethe finely remarks, that the
ideas and feelings of the schoolboy who tells his fellows that the world is
round, are widely different in depth and sublimity from those experienced by
the wanderer of Ithaca, when he spoke of the unlimited earth, and the
unmeasurable and infinite sea." (_Scenes and Legends of the North of
Scotland, or the Traditional History of Cromarty_. Edinburgh: Adam and
Charles Black, 1835. Pp. 48-49.)
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:42>From PICARD@Vax2.Concordia.CA Sun Oct 10 11:41:57 1993
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1993 12:35:38 -0500 (EST)
From: MARC PICARD <PICARD@Vax2.Concordia.CA>
Subject: WATER BABIES
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
A few years ago I saw a program on television (PBS I think) which was called
WATER BABIES. It dealt with a theory conceived by an Englishman to the effect
that homo sapiens had spent a few million years of its evolution living
near and virtually in shallow water. This supposedly accounted for some of
the major differences between us and the other primates such as our relative
hairlessness, our swimming abilities, a reflex (I've forgotten the name) that
kids have that enables them to stay underwater quite a long time without
drowning, etc. I remember seeing at least one baby born underwater in that
program.
I don't remember the Englishman's name unfortunately but I do recall that
he had kept this hypothesis under his hat for most of his life for fear of
being ridiculed and perhaps losing his job. I also remember that he found a
staunch supporter in a woman whose name was Morgan I think. A few books were
written on this topic by the two of them but I've never been able to get
my hands on one to see if his thesis holds water, so to speak.
Can anybody out there furnish the name of this Englishman and comment on
the validity of his ideas?
Marc Picard
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:43>From azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu Sun Oct 10 13:05:17 1993
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 93 13:08:54 CDT
From: "asia z lerner" <azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: WATER BABIES
I don't remember the Englishman's name unfortunately but I do recall that
he had kept this hypothesis under his hat for most of his life for fear of
being ridiculed and perhaps losing his job. I also remember that he found a
staunch supporter in a woman whose name was Morgan I think. A few books were
written on this topic by the two of them but I've never been able to get
my hands on one to see if his thesis holds water, so to speak.
Can anybody out there furnish the name of this Englishman and comment on
the validity of his ideas?
Marc Picard
There is a thread going on on Ellen Morgan's "Aquatic Ape" book
on talk.origins, that you, and others who are interested, might
want to tune into.
Asia
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:44>From idavidso@metz.une.edu.au Sun Oct 10 17:10:30 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 08:14:05 +0700
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: idavidso@metz.une.edu.au (Iain Davidson)
Subject: Re: WATER BABIES
What is talk.origins?
Iain Davidson
Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351
AUSTRALIA
Tel (067) 732 441
Fax (International) +61 67 73 25 26
(Domestic) 067 73 25 26
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:45>From John_Wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au Sun Oct 10 18:14:06 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 09:12:46 +0000
From: John Wilkins <John_Wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au>
Subject: Re- Textual transmission
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Reply to:
Re: Textual transmission
I wonder how this relates to G C Williams' (_Natural Selection: Levels,
confusions and issues_, 1992, pub forgotten) use of the term _codical domain_
(in which information is selected in evolution) and his discussion of Fred
Dretske's _xerox principle_.
As I understand these two terms, the codical domain is the domain of structural
information (the codex). It is the programmatic information contained within
the gene and expressed in ontogeny and the environment. The xerox principle is
that the information is the same when transcribed to another medium, but that
it is not the same codex in a different medium -- a photocopy of a book is not
the same as printed copy of the book, because while it is the same information
in the codical domain, the material storage medium is different.
I raise this because I am having difficulties sorting these concepts and would
welcome anyone else's responses to them.
John Wilkins
Monash University, Melbourne Australia
Internet: john_wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au
Tel: (+613) 565 6009
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:46>From azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu Sun Oct 10 18:36:15 1993
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 93 18:39:53 CDT
From: "asia z lerner" <azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: WATER BABIES
> What is talk.origins?
It's a newsgroup. Do you have access to the News facility?
If you are on a Unix mainframe, you usually type something
like "rn" or "trn" and then you are in.
Asia
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:47>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Oct 10 19:23:39 1993
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1993 20:30:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Re: What is "talk.origins"?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Iain Davidson asks what "talk.origins" is. talk.origins is one of the
"newsgroups" on the USENET network. USENET is an international network
that runs primarily on UNIX computers and it is accessible from most
universities. _Very_ loosely speaking, USENET is to the student population
what the Internet listserv environments (such as Darwin-L) are to faculty.
USENET has hundreds of such newsgroups, and while there are exceptions
(such as the computing newsgroups), most of them are not particularly
"serious" in the professional academic sense. talk.origins is the
newsgroup devoted to creationism and evolution; other newsgroups have
titles like talk.politics, talk.rumors, talk.philosophy (What _is_ the
meaning of life?), rec.arts.startrek, alt.grad.skool.sux, etc.
Many of the USENET newsgroups generate an enormous volume of mail.
talk.origins, for example, generates as many as 50 messages a day, and if
you want to read all about Velikovsky, Noah's Ark, how the dust on the moon
proves the universe is only 10,000 years old, and on and on (much of it in
the form of "flamage"), then talk.origins is the place to go. From what
I've seen there are a few people who do post informed messages there, but
in some respects they are crying in the wilderness, since they can't really
*prove* that ancient astronauts didn't seed the oceans with DNA extracted
from passing comets.
talk.origins has its audience, and I would never wish to censor it or any
other such group in any way. Indeed, it is surely valuable for students to
have places like USENET to talk freely about all kinds of topics. The good
thing about the Internet, though, is that there is lots of space for people
to sort themselves into different communities for different purposes. The
purpose of Darwin-L is very different from that of talk.origins.
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:48>From idavidso@metz.une.edu.au Sun Oct 10 19:56:42 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 11:00:17 +0700
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: idavidso@metz.une.edu.au (Iain Davidson)
Subject: Re: What is "talk.origins"?
Many thanks for preventing me from wasting time on talk origins. I feared
it was something I needed to know about. The clue I needed was that it was
not about the origins of talk, but a talk show about origins.
Iain Davidson
Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351
AUSTRALIA
Tel (067) 732 441
Fax (International) +61 67 73 25 26
(Domestic) 067 73 25 26
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:49>From Boalch@ba1.curtin.edu.au Sun Oct 10 20:57:03 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 09:59:53 WST
From: Gregg=Boalch%IS=Staff%CURTIN@ba1.curtin.edu.au
Subject: re: WATER BABIES
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
I think the person's name was Desmond Morris, of Naked Ape fame.
************************************************************************
* Gregg Boalch E-Mail: Boalch@ba1.curtin.edu.au *
* School of Information Systems Phern: (619) 351 7246 *
* Curtin University of Technology Fax: (619) 351 3076 *
* Snail: GPO Box U1987 *
* ...seek grace, elegance and PERTH W. AUSTRALIA 6001 *
* understanding in all things... _--_|\ *
* / \ *
* Here--->\_.--._/ *
* v *
************************************************************************
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:50>From azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu Sun Oct 10 21:42:08 1993
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 93 21:45:46 CDT
From: "asia z lerner" <azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: re: WATER BABIES
I think the person's name was Desmond Morris, of Naked Ape fame.
Nope, the name of the book is "The Aquatic Ape" and the
name of the author is Ellen Morgan. She just wrote
another book on the same subject - "The Scars of Evolution".
Asia
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:51>From Boalch@ba1.curtin.edu.au Sun Oct 10 22:24:59 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 11:27:04 WST
From: Gregg=Boalch%IS=Staff%CURTIN@ba1.curtin.edu.au
Subject: re: WATER BABIES
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
My apologies - I seem to remember watching a TV documentary on this subject
hosted by Desmond Morris, and assumed (that terrible action) that it was his
theory being espoused.
************************************************************************
* Gregg Boalch E-Mail: Boalch@ba1.curtin.edu.au *
* School of Information Systems Phern: (619) 351 7246 *
* Curtin University of Technology Fax: (619) 351 3076 *
* Snail: GPO Box U1987 *
* ...seek grace, elegance and PERTH W. AUSTRALIA 6001 *
* understanding in all things... _--_|\ *
* / \ *
* Here--->\_.--._/ *
* v *
************************************************************************
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:52>From swann@divsun.unige.ch Mon Oct 11 00:33:19 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 06:36:02 +0100
From: Swann Philip <swann@divsun.unige.ch>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: What is "talk.origins"?
Re the original query, Corballis in his book The Lopsided Ape
has a good summary of the water babies theory /and lost of
similar ones/
Philip Swann
University of Geneva
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:53>From LBRYNES@vax.clarku.edu Mon Oct 11 04:11:33 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 05:15 EST
From: GIVE PEAS A CHANCE <LBRYNES@vax.clarku.edu>
Subject: Re: WATER BABIES
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
It is Elaine Morgan.
The Descent of Woman.
Quite an interesting book. Much of the theory has great validity based
upon available evidence.
However, perhaps the most salient aspect of the text is that
it uncovers the social consructions of Naked Apeism!
Worth a read.
Lois
Lois Brynes
Associate Director
New England Sciene Center
Worcester, MA
USA
lbrynes@vax.clarku.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:54>From staddon@psych.duke.edu Mon Oct 11 08:43:50 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 09:47:02 EDT
From: staddon@psych.duke.edu (John Staddon)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: WATER BABIES
Charles Kingsley
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:55>From bkatz@lehman.com Mon Oct 11 08:58:47 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 10:02:17 EDT
From: bkatz@lehman.com (Boris Katz)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: re: WATER BABIES
Gregg Boalch writes:
...I seem to remember watching a TV documentary on this subject
hosted by Desmond Morris...
A while ago I read that Desmond Moris produced a many hatural science
documentaries for BBC. Does anyone know if there is a place in US
(preferably, in or around New York City) that has the videotapes of
the documentaries.
Thanks a lot,
Boris Katz (bkatz@lehman.com)
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:56>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu Mon Oct 11 09:43:37 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 09:36:02 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: The term "locus"
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Bob O'Hara has asked what is the origin of the term "locus" in
genetics. A brief search has not revealed the answer, but the results
might be useful for those who wish to pursue it further. The earliest
usage I have found is by Sewall Wright in 1941, but I doubt that this is
the first. A paper of Wright's from 1934 does _not_ use the word,
although it would have been natural to do so. In volume one of his
_Evolution and the Genetics of Populations_ (1968. University of Chicago
Press), Wright discusses the origin of a number of genetic terms (e.g.
operon), and defines locus succinctly, but does not discuss its origin.
As I mentioned in a very early post to this list, Wright was interested in
linguistics, and if he did introduce the term, there might thus be some
connection between the genetic and philological terms.
O'Hara suggests T.H. Morgan as a possible originator, and he, or
one of his students, is a good first guess. The word locus does not
appear in the index of Gar Allen's biography, _Thomas Hunt Morgan_ (1978.
Princeton Univ. Press), and I could not find it in a brief perusal of the
text, but a more careful study of this book might be a place to start. I
also found nothing in Mayr's _Growth of Biological Thought_ (Harvard
University Press), or in several introductory biology and genetics texts.
Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:57>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu Mon Oct 11 09:55:36 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 09:55:18 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: The term "locus"
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
A further note on the origin of the term locus: I have just found
a usage predating Wright (1941): R.A. Fisher, _The Genetical Theory of
Natural Selection_ (1930. Oxford University Press).
Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:58>From LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU Mon Oct 11 10:01:48 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 10:01:48 -0500
From: "JOHN LANGDON" <LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: WATER BABIES
In message <01H3Y3V4S4428WZIC4@VAX2.CONCORDIA.CA> writes:
> A few years ago I saw a program on television (PBS I think) which was
> called WATER BABIES. It dealt with a theory conceived by an Englishman to the
> effect that homo sapiens had spent a few million years of its evolution
> living near and virtually in shallow water. This supposedly accounted for
> some of the major differences between us and the other primates such as our
> relative hairlessness, our swimming abilities, a reflex (I've forgotten the
> name) that kids have that enables them to stay underwater quite a long time
> without drowning, etc. I remember seeing at least one baby born underwater in
> that program.
> I don't remember the Englishman's name unfortunately but I do recall
> that he had kept this hypothesis under his hat for most of his life for fear
> of being ridiculed and perhaps losing his job. I also remember that he found
> a staunch supporter in a woman whose name was Morgan I think. A few books
> were written on this topic by the two of them but I've never been able to get
> my hands on one to see if his thesis holds water, so to speak.
> Can anybody out there furnish the name of this Englishman and comment on
> the validity of his ideas?
I believe you are referring to Sir Alistair Hardy, who published his ideas in
New Scientist (March 17, 1960, pp. 642-645) in an article called "Was Man More
Aquatic in the Past?" This was in a series on the relationship of man and the
sea, past, present, and future; thus I doubt it got much notice among
anthropologists at the time. When I first tracked down the reference, I assumed
it was an example of British humor. However, Morgan's extensive acknowledgement
of Hardy in her two books (single-authored) makes it clear that he was not
joking.
JOHN H. LANGDON email LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY FAX (317) 788-3569
UNIVERSITY OF INDIANAPOLIS PHONE (317) 788-3447
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46227
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:59>From LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU Mon Oct 11 10:10:59 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 10:10:59 -0500
From: "JOHN LANGDON" <LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: WATER BABIES
In message <01H3Z3HRJGR4920LKY@vax.clarku.edu> writes:
> It is Elaine Morgan.
> The Descent of Woman.
> Quite an interesting book. Much of the theory has great validity based
> upon available evidence.
> However, perhaps the most salient aspect of the text is that
> it uncovers the social consructions of Naked Apeism!
> Worth a read.
Yes, but it is ripe for social deconstruction itself. Its primary value was a
counterbalance to the male-dominated perspectives of DeVore, Morris, Ardrey, et
al., of the 1960's. Since that was accomplished, it has little value in serious
anthropology.
JOHN H. LANGDON email LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY FAX (317) 788-3569
UNIVERSITY OF INDIANAPOLIS PHONE (317) 788-3447
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46227
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:60>From mahaffy@dordt.edu Mon Oct 11 10:23:50 1993
Subject: Some serious USENET and Paleontology Listserver?
To: Address Darwin list <Darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 10:28:09 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Prof. James Mahaffy" <mahaffy@dordt.edu>
Bob's message would leave you with the impression that USNET
newsgroups do not contain much serious professional exchanges. In
biology and especially under bionet there are a number of groups which
are mainly used for professional exchanges. Some in fact like
n2-fixation were listservers.
Does anyone know if there are professional listservers that are
active in the area of paleontology or paleoecolgy? This may not be of
general interest so feel free to respond to my personal e-mail address.
It is a little harder to find the active and useful listservers,
especially if you teach at a smaller institution.
--
James F. Mahaffy e-mail: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Biology Department phone: 712 722-6279
Dordt College FAX 712 722-1198
Sioux Center, Iowa 51250
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:61>From HOLSINGE%UCONNVM.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU Mon Oct 11 11:38:09 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 08:21:11 -0500 (EST)
From: "Kent E. Holsinger" <HOLSINGE%UCONNVM.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: The term "locus"
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Bob O'Hara asked where the term "locus" was first used to describe the position
of a gene on a chromosome. He correctly surmised that T. H. Morgan was
involved. The citation I have is:
Morgan, T. H., A. H. Sturtevant, H. J. Muller, and C. B. Bridges. 1915. The
mechanism of Mendelian heredity. H. Holt. & Co., New York.
(This citiation is from the 4th edition of Rieger, Michaelis, and Green's
Glossary of Genetics and Cytogenetics.)
-- Kent
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Kent E. Holsinger Internet: Holsinge@UConnVM.UConn.edu |
| Dept. of Ecology & BITNET: Holsinge@UConnVM |
| Evolutionary Biology, U-43 |
| University of Connecticut |
| Storrs, CT 06269-3043 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:62>From LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU Mon Oct 11 12:49:05 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 12:49:05 -0500
From: "JOHN LANGDON" <LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: manuscript polymorphism
In message <23100915225806@vms2.macc.wisc.edu> writes:
> Bob O'Hara writes:
>
> "Unlike organisms, however, manuscripts aren't of any particular ploidy;
> rather, at most loci a manuscript will carry only one reading (haploid), at
> some loci it will carry two readings (diploid), and at some loci it might
> carry three or more readings (triploid or polyploid)."
It doesn't appear to me that you are describing "ploidy" of the manuscripts.
For a genetic analogy, you are describing polymorphisms. A gene or locus is
polymorphic if there is more that one variant to that sequence in the
population. A gene may be polymorphic in a haploid species or monomorphic in a
diploid species. Hence your multiple readings are more analogous to different
alleles of the manuscript.
> My points are that 1) although the text is polyploid, the
> text will be "expressed" uniquely if someone is reading it aloud (i.e. terms
> like "dominant" and "recessive" readings might apply); 2) the likelihood of
> the successful copying of diploid variants is not equal (are there biological
> situations which weight the inherited diploid "readings"?); 3) the variable
> likelihoods of successful copying depend on something external (the human
> copier) and cannot be predicted a priori.
The analogy here is with transcriptional repair mechanisms (repairing errors
that occur during DNA copying or scribal copying) plus some degree of natural
selection. Just as scholars decide to reject certain readings of a text,
natural selection may eliminate certain morphs of the gene.
JOHN H. LANGDON email LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY FAX (317) 788-3569
UNIVERSITY OF INDIANAPOLIS PHONE (317) 788-3447
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46227
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:63>From @UKCC.UKY.EDU:KIERNAN@UKCC.UKY.EDU Mon Oct 11 13:05:44 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 13:58:34 EDT
From: Kevin Kiernan <KIERNAN@UKCC.uky.edu>
Subject: Re: The term "locus"
To: Multiple recipients of list <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
On Mon, 11 Oct 1993 11:54:35 -0500 Kent E. Holsinger said:
>O'Hara asked where the term "locus" was first used to describe the position
>of a gene on a chromosome. He correctly surmised that T. H. Morgan was
>involved. The citation I have is:
>
>Morgan, T. H., A. H. Sturtevant, H. J. Muller, and C. B. Bridges. 1915. The
> mechanism of Mendelian heredity. H. Holt. & Co., New York.
According to the Supplement of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the
earliest citation is 1913: "Jrnl. Exper. Zool. XV. 591. White and eosin
are allelomorphic to each other, that is, they occupy the same locus
in the sex chromosome." The second citation, for 1915, is the one Kent
cites.
Kevin Kiernan, KIERNAN@UKCC.UKY.EDU
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:64>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu Mon Oct 11 15:09:19 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 15:08:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: manuscript polymorphism
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Bob O'Hara's attribution of "ploidy" to manuscripts is intriguing,
and, I believe, the right analogy to genetics. It is, as John Langdon
correctly remarks, a form of polymorphism, but it represents not a
populational polymorphism, but rather a polymorphism within the individual
(in this case individual manuscript), i.e. heterozygosity.
Heterozygosity, of course, can occur only in an n>1-ploid individual, so
manuscripts with more than one reading at a single locus can be justly
described as heterozygous and diploid (or triploid, etc.). The analogy
seems to be "right" in the sense that it is useful: it immediately
suggests to me that the techniques of "polymorphism parsimony" used in
biological systematics for the reconstruction of evolutionary trees could
also be applied to stemmatics, the reconstruction of manuscript trees. A
"heterozygous" manuscript could be copied giving rise to two (or more)
copies that differ in their reading at a particular locus. Since multiple
readings are a known phenomenon, it may in some cases be easier to account
for differences and similarities among manuscripts by descent from a
heterozygous version.
I believe the parallels O'Hara has drawn between multiple readings
and ploidy are useful because they suggest the adoption in one discipline
of a problem-solving technique (polymorphism parsimony) found useful in
another discipline.
Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:65>From idavidso@metz.une.edu.au Mon Oct 11 17:37:13 1993
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 08:40:39 +0700
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: idavidso@metz.une.edu.au (Iain Davidson)
Subject: Re: WATER BABIES
I was amazed to hear Hardy being given time at the Royal Society of London
(a comment on the idea and the Society!) in 1980. A paper was subsequently
published in the volume from that symposium: Lumiere "Evolution of human
bipedalism" Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B
292, 103-107.
Elaine Morgan raises some really interesting problems for which her
elaboration of the theory seem to offer a plauible explanation, but
plausibility is not really enough.
Iain Davidson
Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351
AUSTRALIA
Tel (067) 732 441
Fax (International) +61 67 73 25 26
(Domestic) 067 73 25 26
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:66>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Mon Oct 11 18:05:45 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 19:12:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Survey courses on language diversity (fwd from LINGUIST)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
The following summary was recently posted to the LINGUIST list in response
to a request for information on survey courses in language diversity. While
some of our historical linguists may already have seen it, I thought it might
be of interest to others among us, particularly evolutionary biologists who
teach or have considered teaching review courses on biological diversity.
Bob O'Hara, darwin@iris.uncg.edu
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
------------------ begin forwarded message ------------------
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1993 17:44:11 -0500
From: The Linguist List <linguist@tamsun.tamu.edu>
Subject: 4.809 Sum: Teaching survey course on the world's languages
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 93 11:21:45 CST
From: karchung@ccms.ntu.edu.tw (Karen S. Chung)
Subject: Survey of the World's Languages
Dear LINGUIST netters:
The following summarizes the messages I received from the six people
who responded to my inquiry regarding references and ideas for teaching a
survey course on the world's languages.
Some respondents said they offer an overview of all the world's
language families; some, particularly if it is only a one semester course, try
to cover only a few families more thoroughly, then just touch on the others.
One introduces a different language every 1-2 weeks, and covers a total of
about 12 in the course.
In addition to introducing the linguistic structures of the various
languages, some also give background information on writing systems and
culture; some even teach a little of several languages in the course. Course
titles range from 'Introduction to the Study of Language' to 'Immigrant
Languages' (this one can fulfill a non-Indo-European language requirement for
Ph.D. students, and tends to attract ESL people). One respondent is proposing a
survey of East European languages.
The course tends to be oriented mainly toward linguistics majors, since
there is usually an Intro to Linguistics prerequisite. Some teach it every
other year or so, and have an average of 8-20 students in the course. All seem
to make an active effort at preventing the course from becoming too technical
and dry; one mentioned that the course tends to bog down about the middle of
the semester.
The standard approach seems to be family-by-family, but some
respondents noted that language typology has emerged as a major theme; one
suggested using typology as a basis for organizing the course.
I am pleased with the references suggested (there are of course many
more for individual languages), but was a little disappointed at not hearing
from more people regarding their feelings about the position of such a course
in a university linguistics curriculum. One respondent said he felt some of his
colleagues were 'suspicious' of the course, perhpas because it lacks a
tradition. He also mentioned that it is a difficult course to teach.
My personal feeling is that a world language survey is a solid back-
ground course that should be included in any linguistics program. It can help
give students an idea of both the possibilities of human language and the
actual situation of language use in the world, while also offering a macro view
of language to put their linguistic studies in better perspective, regardless
of the students' area of specialization. I'd be interested in hearing from
anybody who either agrees or disagrees, or has other feelings on this.
Suggested references:
(1) Comrie, Bernard. 1990. The world's major languages. New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press. Technical; for linguists. (Miner, Pensalfini)
(2) Grimes, Barbara A., ed. 1992. Ethnologue: languages of the world (12th
ed.). Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. An index is published to
Ethnologue as a separate companion volume. Listings and information on genetic
classification, geographical distribution, number of speakers, etc. of 6,528 of
the world's languages. Particularly good for identifying obscure languages.
(3) Katzner, Kenneth. 1977. The languages of the world. London and New York:
Routledge and Kegal Paul. Paper. Written specimens of many languages, minimal
information about each, short sketch of Indo-European, country-by-country
language survey. (Miner)
(4) Ruhlen, Merritt. 1987; 1991. A guide to the world's languages. Volume 1:
classification. London: Edward Arnold. Paper. Family-by-family account.
'Unorthodox' position on language relationships, but useful. (Miner)
(5) Shopen, Timothy, ed. 1979. (a) Languages and their speakers. Offers
sketches of selected languages, including Jacaltec, Maninka, Malagasy, Guugu,
Yimidhirr, and Japanese. (b) Languages and their status. Includes sketches of
Mohawk, Hua (Papuan), Russian, Cape York Creole, Swahili, and Chinese.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Paper.
Also, the Cambridge Linguistic Surveys, Cambridge University Press
(Pensalfini). Already published: (1) Dixon, R.M.W. The languages of Australia
(out of print). (2) Comrie, Bernard. The languages of the Soviet Union (out of
print). (3) Suarez, Jorge. The Mesoamerican Indian languages. (4) Foley,
William A. The Papuan languages of New Guinea. (5) Holm, John A. Pidgins and
creoles, vol. I: Theory and structure; vol. II: Reference survey. (6)
Shibatani, M. The languages of Japan. (7) Norman, Jerry. Chinese. (8) Masica,
C.P. The Indo-Aryan languages.
The following is a Russian language reference billed as a survey of all
known languages of the world:
Iartseva, V.N., ed. 1982. Iazyki i dialekty mira. Moscow: Nauka. (Feldstein)
References on written languages:
(1) Coulmas, Florian. 1989. The writing systems of the world. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell. Paper. (Miner)
(2) Nakanishi, Akira. 1980. Writing systems of the world: alphabets,
syllabaries, pictograms. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle. Paper. (English version
of: Sekai nomoji. 1975. Kyoto) (Miner)
Many thanks to:
Ronald F. Feldstein <FELDSTEI@ucs.indiana.edu>
Jim Holbrook <jholbroo@cscns.com>
Alan Huffman <AAHNY@CUNYVM.Bitnet>
Ken Miner <MINER@UKANVAX.Bitnet>
Zev bar-Lev <zbarlev@zeus.sdsu.edu>
Rob Pensalfini <rjpensal@MIT.EDU>
Karen Steffen Chung
National Taiwan University
karchung@ccms.ntu.edu.tw
------------------- end forwarded message -------------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:67>From GA3704@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU Mon Oct 11 21:57:44 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 21:56:08 CST
From: "Margaret E. Winters" <GA3704@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: manuscript polymorphism
Let me add another kind of variation (other than interlinear
glosses/variants of the kind that Bob O'Hara talked about
in the original posting) to the discussion of the parallels
between manuscript transmission and stemmata and genetics.
In the edition of Old French mss at least, there is an editorial
convention that the words at the rhyme can be more safely identified
as being passed on accurately from the original version, while
words in the interior of the line (I'm talking about 11th and 12th
century rhymed epic and courtly romances which were the preponderant
literary forms in Old French at the time) could not be so identified
and could much more plausibly be the reworking of a scribe. Under-
lying this notion was the idea that scribes would respect the
reading at the end of the line since a change in one line meant
a corresponding change in the following line which rhymed with
it - just too much trouble! There certainly are ms versions
of texts which show radically different dialectal traits in the
interior and at the end of the line.
Does this strengthen the parallels with genetic transmission
or go off in an entirely different direction?
Margaret Winters
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:68>From @VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU:RMBURIAN@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU Mon Oct 11 22:19:38 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 23:09:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Richard M. Burian" <RMBURIAN%VTVM1.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: The term 'locus'
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Just back from a trip, I see that there has been some question as to
the origin of the use of the term 'locus' in genetics. R. Rieger, A.
Michaelis, and M. M. Green, in their Glossary of Genetics and Cytogene-
tics (4th ed., 1976, Springer) ascribe it to the urtextbook of the chro-
mosome theory, Morgan, Sturtevant, Muller and Bridges' 1915 Mechanism of
Mendelian Heredity. I only have the revised edition of 1922 on hand,
not the 1915 edition. There are a lot of places where one would expect
the term to be used in which it is not, but it DOES occur (in the cor-
rect plural form, 'loci') at the beginning of chap. X, "The Factorial
Hypothesis," e.g. on p. 262: "Red eye color in Drosophila, for example,
must be due to a large number of factors, for as many as 25 mutations for
eye color at different loci have already come to light. Each produced a
specific effect on eye color; it is more than probable that in the wild
fly all or many of the normal allelomorphs at these loci have something
to do with red eye color."
The term "locus" does not appear in the index and is not strikingly
prominent, but the usage seems stable and natural in the few places
that I spotted it in a quick scan of a few passges.
Richard Burian, Science and Technology Studies, Virginia Tech
rmburian@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:69>From dasher@netcom.com Tue Oct 12 00:02:32 1993
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 22:06:45 -0700
From: dasher@netcom.com (D. Anton Sherwood)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: WATER BABIES
> > I think the person's name was Desmond Morris, of Naked Ape fame.
> Nope, the name of the book is "The Aquatic Ape" and the
> name of the author is Ellen Morgan.
The aquatic hypothesis *is* mentioned in "The Naked Ape", but I think
Morris said it was not original with him. "Naked" was published in
the sixties, I think; when was "Aquatic" published?
Anton Sherwood DASher@netcom.com
+1 415 267 0685 1800 Market St #207, San Francisco, California 94102
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:70>From LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU Tue Oct 12 08:02:16 1993
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 08:02:16 -0500
From: "JOHN LANGDON" <LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: WATER BABIES
In message <9310120506.AA05620@netcom3.netcom.com> writes:
> > > I think the person's name was Desmond Morris, of Naked Ape fame.
> > Nope, the name of the book is "The Aquatic Ape" and the
> > name of the author is Ellen Morgan.
>
> The aquatic hypothesis *is* mentioned in "The Naked Ape", but I think
> Morris said it was not original with him. "Naked" was published in
> the sixties, I think; when was "Aquatic" published?
Elaine Morgan published her first book, The Descent of Woman, in 1972, five
years after the Naked Ape. Morris must have been referring to Hardy's
hypothesis. Morgan's second book, The Aquatic Ape, came out in 1982.
JOHN H. LANGDON email LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY FAX (317) 788-3569
UNIVERSITY OF INDIANAPOLIS PHONE (317) 788-3447
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46227
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:71>From LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU Tue Oct 12 08:15:39 1993
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 08:15:39 -0500
From: "JOHN LANGDON" <LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: manuscript polymorphism
It appears to me that there are two different types of polymorphic variations
to the manuscripts in this discussion. One, just described by Margaret Winters
and really what I was talking about earlier, is scribal/typographic error in
the copying or reprinting of a manuscript. This is most analogous to genetic
transmission with mutation, constraints, selection, etc. and to true evolution
of a haploid organism.
The other kind, apparently that referred to by O'Hara and others, is simply a
question of interpretation of a printed manuscript. Since that variation does
not change the manuscript, the genetic analogy is more complex.
Different readings over time is not a genetic polymorphism unless one
interpreter influences another. This is more of a phenotypic interaction with
the environment.
If one views all the alternative readings somehow embedded in the
manuscript before anyone reads it, one is simply looking at adaptive
flexibility, like knowing several languages and being able to speak any one at
will.
Do we really want a genetic model for the latter phenomenon?
JOHN H. LANGDON email LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY FAX (317) 788-3569
UNIVERSITY OF INDIANAPOLIS PHONE (317) 788-3447
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46227
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:72>From SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu Tue Oct 12 12:02:49 1993
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: "Gerard M. Smith (HUM)" <SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu>
Organization: Clark College, Vancouver WA, USA
Date: 12 Oct 93 10:01:32 PST8PDT
Subject: Manuscript polymorphism
Concerning the polymorphism of manuscripts, a detail of
the analogy would be helpful to those of us who aren't well-versed in
genetics. Would the scribal/typographic error equal DNA, or would
authorial intention? Authorial intention, I would
think would be a closer analogy. Seems manuscript revision has more
equivalence with genetic transmission etc. The scribal/typographic
error would equal environmental interaction in that the copier
is not a consistent/internal force, but an external variable which
affects the text. Depending on the scribes workload, working
conditions, amount of ale consumed at the scribe's lunch in some
cases, and the scribe's eyesight, the manuscript has a greater or
lesser chance of being copied accurately. Mutations and
variation in the polymorphic manuscript, then are the result
of random operations and not the "intention" of the organism
itself, of which the author is organically connected. Returning to the
case for manuscript revision as polymorph, take for example Whitman's
LEAVES OF GRASS, the authorial revision process of that text more
closely resembles polymorphism than the drunken scribe, because the
original blueprint is in the author's imagination, and the author is
more "organically" linked with the text. The Romantics defined the
universe and poetry (the mimetic representation of nature) as organic,
in keeping with the scientific enlightenment of the period, so it
might be enlightening to consider their employment of the muse during
revision as part of this comparative study.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:73>From LARRYS@psc.plymouth.edu Tue Oct 12 13:30:14 1993
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 14:35:11 -0500 (EST)
From: LARRYS@psc.plymouth.edu
Subject: Re: WATER BABIES
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: Plymouth State College, Plymouth NH
The book by Morgan came out in paperback.
Morgan, Elaine. 1973. The Descent of Woman. Bantam Books, New York.
The only book listed in her bibliography (two pages of references) is an
article by A. C. Hardy.
Hardy, A. C. 1960. Was Man more aquatic in the past. The New Scientist, 7:
642-645.
Larry Spencer
lts@oz.plymouth.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:74>From mahaffy@dordt.edu Tue Oct 12 13:35:26 1993
Subject: Re: Manuscript polymorphism Good analog?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 13:39:46 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Prof. James Mahaffy" <mahaffy@dordt.edu>
I have been observing the thread that tries to compare manuscript
writing to DNA translation. My biological experience suggests that
models in biology are based on observed emperical data. Although there
are analogies between the two since both are information writing, can
detailed similarity be anything but fortuitous. Maybe I am missing
something but it seems like an interesting comparison, whose point I
don't quite see.
--
James F. Mahaffy e-mail: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Biology Department phone: 712 722-6279
Dordt College FAX 712 722-1198
Sioux Center, Iowa 51250
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:75>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu Tue Oct 12 13:42:42 1993
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 13:33:18 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: manuscript polymorphism
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
In recent postings, Jeff Wills has asked if there are any
biological phenomena equivalent to one of two (or more) variant readings
within a manuscript being more likely to be copied into a descendant
manuscript, and Margaret Winters has asked if there is an equivalent to
the end words of manuscripts being less likely to be changed by a scribe
than interior words. The answer to both questions is yes, and thus the
parallels between manuscript transmission and genetic transmission are
furthered.
The parallel to Wills' phenomenon in genetics is "meiotic drive".
Meiotic drive is when the two copies of a gene at a particular locus (that
word again) in a diploid individual are not passed on at random to that
individual's offspring. (The equivalent could also happen in a triploid,
etc. individual.) What this means is that instead of, on average, 50% of
the offspring receiving one copy, and 50% the other copy, one copy is
systematically over-represented (and thus the other is under-represented)
in the offspring. Meiotic drive can also occur at the level of whole
chromosomes, and an example with sex chromosomes might make it clear. A
male is heterozygous for the sex chromosomes, XY; on average, about half
his offspring will get the Y chromosome, and half will get the X. If
there were a statistically consistent over-representation of the X
chromosome (so that, say, only daughters were produced among the
offspring), there would be meiotic drive in favor of the X chromosome.
It's called meiotic drive because the process during which the genetic
material of a parent is divided and packaged up for distribution to the
offspring (via sperm and egg) is called meiosis.
Meiotic drive is a form of natural selection at the genic or
haploid level. It is a very strong form of selection. In general, a
chromsome or allele of a gene favored by meiotic drive will rapidly
increase in frequency until it is fixed (i.e. it is the only version of
the gene or chromosome around). Because of their strong selective
advantage, meioticically driven alleles or chromosomes are expected to be
very rare; any place they occur, they should be rapidly fixed, and then
they are not recognizably driven. They should generally only be
noticeable when some countervailing selection maintains them at some
intermediate frequency. One of the most well known cases of meiotic drive
are the t-alleles in house mice. Some alleles at this locus are favored
by strong meiotic drive but are opposed by selection at the individual and
deme levels; the balance of selection leads to the maintenance of a
polymorphism.
In the manuscript case, if particular readings are favored in
copying by scribes, then these favored readings should become the
"standard" reading fairly rapidly. If the reasons for the copying
advantage are scribe-independent, then the same standard may emerge within
different branches of the same manuscript tradition, if the same multiple
readings are present in the branches (i.e. there could be parallel changes
in separate branches of the tradition).
The parallel to Winters' example of different likelihoods of
change in different parts of a manuscript is variation in evolutionary
rates across different parts of the genome. Some parts of the genome
evolve faster than others, e.g. the mitochondrial genome in general, the
major histocompatibility locus in the nuclear genome, and sites in the DNA
where new mutations would not alter a resulting protein wherever they
occur. Others evolve more slowly, e.g. genes for histones and cytochrome.
A particular type of DNA sequence change (called transitions) is common
relative to the other possible type of change (called transversions).
It is not always clear whether this rate variation is due to higher
mutation rates (errors in copying), or selection (consistent differential
change in frequency among already existing variant copies). The analogy
to manuscripts is more complex: while a scribe's slip of the pne is
clearly a copying error, the deliberate change of, say, a Castilian word
to a Catalan word, when it occurs for the first time, is perhaps not. The
analogy between manuscripts and genetics, while fruitful, is not exact,
and here seems to be a point where it breaks down. In genetics, the
machinery of replication is largely separate from the realm in which
differential survival and reproduction take place. With manuscripts, the
scribe not only creates the variants, but decides their fate. Whether a
consistent changing of words in the interior of a line is best analogized
to biased mutation or selection I do not know, but it is probably not
important as long as students of manuscripts understand what scribes
actually do.
Regardless of whether we regard a particular scribe's act as error
or selection, the analogy to genetics, and variable evolutionary rates,
can still be useful. Biologists routinely deal with variable evolutionary
rates in reconstructing evolutionary trees by _weighting_ different
changes, i.e. by considering certain changes more indicative of
relationship by descent than others. There are a number of ways in which
this can be done, from the intuitive to the quite numerical, and many are
controversial. A relatively non-controversial method is the differential
weighting of the two types of changes in DNA I mentioned above,
transitions and transversions. Qualitatively (there are quantitative ways
of doing it), the method amounts to considering a shared transversion more
solid evidence of relationship, because such changes are rare and unlikely
to have happened twice. A transition, because they occur more frequently,
is more likely to have occurred twice. Thus, we might consider the
evidence of two shared transversions to outweigh th evidence of three
shared transitions. Analogously, following Winters' example, two
manuscripts that share a variant reading in the rhymed words might be
considered to be more certainly related because scribes were reluctant to
make such changes, and thus the chance of two scribes adpoting the same
unlikely variant reading independently would be low. Conversely,
introduction of dialectal variant readings within the interior of a line
might be less secure evidence of a relationship between the manuscripts,
because any scribe writing the same dialect might be likely to introduce
such changes, as they would not change the rhyme.
Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:76>From PGRIFFITHS@gandalf.otago.ac.nz Tue Oct 12 17:01:26 1993
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: PGriffiths@gandalf.otago.ac.nz
Organization: University of Otago
Date: 13 Oct 1993 10:26:48GMT+1200
Subject: WATER BABIES
Morgan's argument for the aquatic ape hypothesis is typical of a class of
adaptationist arguments which try to increase the plausibility of an
hypothesised adaptive phase by listing a large number of traits which it can
simultaneously explain. It does this quite impressively.
Bob O'Hara (1988) has drawn attention to the dangers of giving adaptive
explanations of character states without paying attention to the cladistic
relationships of those states.
In this particular case, the argument falls down unless the proposed
'adaptive character suite' emerges in the same general area of the tree for
primate lineages. If, instead, it is a collage of traits from different
portions of the tree then it cannot be a response to a single adaptive
phase.
Morgan's hypothesis is thus eminently testable by cladistic methods, as
discussed in my (forthcoming). But the data set would have to be much
larger than that available from Morgan or from other versions such as
MacNaughton (1989), since these versions tend to commit another classic
adaptationist methodological sin, that of looking at a cladistically
meaningless group of species for a comparative study.
Refs.
O'Hara, R.J (1988) Homage to Clio, or towards a historical philosophy for
evolutionary biology. Systematic Zoology 37. 142-155
MacNaughton, N (1989) Biology and Emotion. CUP.
Griffiths, P.E. (forthcoming) Cladistic Classification and Functional
Explanations. Philosophy of Science, in press.
Paul E Griffiths
Department of Philosophy
University of Otago
P.O Box 56, Dunedin,
New Zealand
Tel: (03) 479-8727
Fax: (03) 479-2305
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:77>From SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu Tue Oct 12 17:02:41 1993
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: "Gerard M. Smith (HUM)" <SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu>
Organization: Clark College, Vancouver WA, USA
Date: 12 Oct 93 15:01:09 PST8PDT
Subject: manuscript polymorphism
A fruitful case study would be Bible translation. Each scribe's
aesthetic sensibility, ideology, and political affiliations and
loyalties parallel sex chromosomes. I hope I am not being
sacrilegious in my comparison. The Hebrew Bible passes through
several versions (Greek, Latin, English) finally reaching King James,
at each translation, the succeeding generation will take on
characteristics of its male parent. Ironic that the church becomes
male in this analogy and The Bible becomes the female which is
manipulated to fit a preconceived vision. Genetic engineering?
The strength of each scribe's paradigm (gene pool) competes with
the manuscripts inherent paradigm. That which does not fit current
ideology is under-represented in the next Bible generation. That which
fits the current religious fervour is systematically over-represented.
For example the three versions of Genesis. In the middle-ages, when
the Catholic Churches fear of women had reached a fever pitch, the
version which placed the blame for man's fall completely on woman
becomes dominant, while versions which stress equality are suppressed,
not passed on.
I hope I've got the analogy correct. If not, please correct me.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:78>From John_Wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au Wed Oct 13 18:35:23 1993
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1993 09:33:36 +0000
From: John Wilkins <John_Wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au>
Subject: Re- WATER BABIES
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Reply to:
Re: WATER BABIES
There has been a very detailed discussion of the Aquatic ape hypothesis on
sci.bio and sci.anthropology recently, with full discussion of original
references and current status. William Calvin especially has made a number of
pertinent posts. Check it out.
John Wilkins - Manager, Publishing
Monash University, Melbourne Australia
Internet: john_wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au
Tel: (+613) 565 6009
Monash doesn't know or approve of my views
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:79>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Wed Oct 13 22:17:16 1993
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1993 23:24:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Some clarifications re: textual transmission
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
A few messages ago John Langdon expressed discomfort with the notion of
"ploidy" as applied to manuscripts. I think this really is fairly close to
the actual case in some texts, and provide here a simple contrived example
by way of illustration (this example could easily be expanded to include
various details of manuscript transmsssion not mentioned here).
The situation begins with some ancestral manuscript (one physical object)
which existed in the past. That text was duplicated by hand, the original
was lost, more copies were made of the copies, and so on, over hundreds of
years. What we have today might be, say, twenty copies of the text all of
which differ at various points due to copying errors. At one particular
line in the text one of the extant copies might read:
From experiment I know this to be true.
Another one of the copies of the text might look like this at the line in
question:
From experience I know this to be true.
But a third copy of the text might actually carry both readings, with one
stuck in the space between the lines or added as a note in the margin.
experience
From experiment I know this to be true.
Thus there is polymorphism in the whole collection of manuscripts, since
some read "experiment" at the locus in question, and others "experience";
but there are also individual manuscripts, like the third one here, that
are themselves polymorphic. It seems reasonable in a loose sort of way to
speak of manuscript three above as being "diploid" at the locus in question
-- two readings are present and they differ, making that individual
polymorphic. Indeed, if you examine a good edition of the Bible (one
ancient text that people other than philologists often have around) you
will see an example of a modern printed edition that carries such multiple
readings (alleles) for a number of loci: one reading in the main body of
the text and another in the notes (what text scholars call "the critical
apparatus") at the bottom of the page.
A scribe copying manuscript three above might copy it as it is, preserving
the polymorphism, or that scribe might omit one or the other of the
variants in the transcription making the new copy monomorphic (and
haploid). One of the points I think Jeff Wills was making was that
manuscripts were often copied by a group of scribes listening to someone
read the text aloud. The reader would be more likely to read through such
a polymorphism speaking only one of the variants, and the copyists might
never know that the exemplar was polymorphic. Another copyist, working
visually with the exemplar in front of him, would see both variants and
perhaps be more likely to copy them both. This would contrast with the
case of most genetic polymorphisms in evolutionary biology where the
probability of transmitting either of two alleles (variant chromosomal
readings) is ordinarily equal, except in unusual cases where there is
"meiotic drive" as Greg Mayer mentioned. The copying situation where the
exemplar was being read aloud, and the reader was systematically ignoring
marginal or interlinear variants, would be somewhat akin to meiotic drive.
Different mechanisms of copying may lead to different types of errors. If
one is copying visually there are certain errors that are easy to make:
confusing "rn" and "m" for example; these are "errors of the eye". If one
is copying by listening to a reader it is easier to make "errors of the
ear": confusing "weigh" and "way", for example. Manuscript scholars have
developed fairly sophisticated classifications of error types; I'll see
if I can find a copy of one and post it. It would be interesting to
compare these to the types of errors one finds in DNA replication, for
example.
And while it is easy to see the parallel between text sequences and DNA
sequences, I want also to mention (since my own background is in gross
morphology rather than molecular morphology) that the copying history of
manuscripts may also be reconstructed in some cases using evidence that is
more akin to gross morphology than DNA sequences. The transmission history
of geographical maps drawn by hand, for example, may be reconstructed by
examining the presence or absence of whole objects (map objects), the
positions of such objects, and so on. The transmitted entity here is just
not linearly structured.
A couple of references that might be of use to non-specialists interested
in the manuscript situation are:
Cameron, H. Don. 1987. The upside-down cladogram: problems in manuscript
affiliation. Pp. 227-242 in: Biological Metaphor and Cladistic Classifica-
tion: An Interdisciplinary Prespective (H. M. Hoenigswald & L. F. Wiener,
eds.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Reynolds, L. D., & N. G. Wilson. 1991. Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to
the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, third edition. Oxford:
Clarendon Press. (Chapter 6 in particular)
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:80>From LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU Thu Oct 14 07:54:17 1993
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1993 07:54:17 -0500
From: "JOHN LANGDON" <LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: manuscript polymorphism
In message <MAILQUEUE-101.931012150109.352@hawkins.clark.edu> writes:
> A fruitful case study would be Bible translation. Each scribe's
> aesthetic sensibility, ideology, and political affiliations and
> loyalties parallel sex chromosomes. I hope I am not being
> sacrilegious in my comparison. The Hebrew Bible passes through
> several versions (Greek, Latin, English) finally reaching King James,
> at each translation, the succeeding generation will take on
> characteristics of its male parent. Ironic that the church becomes
> male in this analogy and The Bible becomes the female which is
> manipulated to fit a preconceived vision. Genetic engineering?
Perhaps this is a different analogy, but I would compare the scribe and his
idealogies as environmental mutagens, corrupting the transcription as copies
are made. (Again, comparison is valid to a haploid or asexual organism.)
> The strength of each scribe's paradigm (gene pool) competes with
> the manuscripts inherent paradigm. That which does not fit current
> ideology is under-represented in the next Bible generation. That which
> fits the current religious fervour is systematically over-represented.
> For example the three versions of Genesis. In the middle-ages, when
> the Catholic Churches fear of women had reached a fever pitch, the
> version which placed the blame for man's fall completely on woman
> becomes dominant, while versions which stress equality are suppressed,
> not passed on.
Under and over-representation are descriptions of selection.
JOHN H. LANGDON email LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY FAX (317) 788-3569
UNIVERSITY OF INDIANAPOLIS PHONE (317) 788-3447
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46227
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:81>From farrar@mistral.noo.navy.mil Thu Oct 14 08:05:26 1993
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 93 08:10:51 CDT
From: farrar@mistral.noo.navy.mil (Paul Farrar)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Manuscript unploidy
I must say that I don't see the notion of ploidy being aplicable to
document transmission. Sometimes the importation of a concept from
a different field has a useful function, either directly or as a
metaphor or trope. Sometimes it causes endless confusion (Shannon's
use of the word "entropy" in information theory, in my opinion).
When we have to work so hard at finding "ploidness" in manuscript
transmission, maybe the analogy is getting too forced.
One of the things that gives genetics it special character is the
phenotype - genotype dichotomy, but in manuscripts this does not exist.
The genotype is the phenotype.
Genetic systems have specific ploidy (sometimes two though: ants, bees)
and reshuffling rules for each transmission (except for cloning).
For instance humans have two of everything (except men on their X and Y)
and throw away own of each, then obtain one of each from another
individual's genotype. The result is then expressed phenotypically in a
new individual with genes conataining two of everything (except..).
Manuscript transmission is altered by external agents who make mistakes
or alterations according to their own rules, ie characteristic scribal
error types, or deliberate modifications. (Encyclopedia Britannica's
"Biblical Literature" has a discussion of scribal errors for beginners.)
Paul Farrar
Just an oceanographer's opinion.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:82>From GA3704@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU Thu Oct 14 08:49:36 1993
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 93 08:42:24 CST
From: "Margaret E. Winters" <GA3704@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: manuscript transmission
I too am a little uneasy about pushing the parallels between
manuscript transmission and genetic transmission too far, and in
fact much beyond the idea that there *is* transmission. It is
the social factors of manuscript transmission that bother me
somewhat, although I may easily be missing too much about the
genetic parallels. A couple of examples which seem to me to
be problems:
1. Biblical transmission is often altered by the sacred nature
of the text (and this goes for sacred texts in general) - they
are often copied far more carefully than secular texts - I'm
talking about the 11th-13th centuries for the secular texts
since that is the period I know most about. This goes for
translation too (where other parallels may lurk). The only
decent amount of East Germanic we have extent (called Gothic)
is a translation of parts of the gospels. BUT, the syntax,
when examined carefully, is often word-for-word renditions
of Greek (the source language), therefore making the text
relatively useless for historians of syntax looking for clues
as to East Germanic. The same kind of respect goes often into
the simple copying of such texts so that they end up being
much more conservative than the number of generations of mss
should be.
2. Another factor is the reason why texts exist. We have
to differentiate between those which were originally written
and meant for a literate public (courtly romances, for example)
where at least one person could read to the others and those
which were written down almost accidentally after centuries of
oral transmission (epic poems in Old French) where we actually
have mss which were more cheat-sheets for recitation than
sources for reading.
I'm not sure where all of this leads, but these factors are
very much part of manuscript transmission. And of course let
us not forget how random our collection of mss is compared
to how many were copied and lost!
Margaret Winters
<ga3704@siucvmb.siu.edu>
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:83>From CHARBEL%BRUFBA.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU Thu Oct 14 15:09:21 1993
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 93 15:13:38 BS3
From: Charbel Nino El-Hani <CHARBEL%BRUFBA.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: A reference in altruism
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
As soon as I can I will write something longer about altruism.
I have been working for one year and a half in this theme. Now, I
would like to refer to an article by Martin Nowak and Robert May, which
was published in *Nature*, in october 1992, *Evolutionary Games and Spatial
Chaos*. I am really sorry, now I see... I forgot the number of the journal
and the pages. Well, I think you can find the article...
These authors developed a spatial version, in a bi-dimensional matrix,
for a classical metaphor in altruism debate, *Prisoner's Dilemma*. They
concluded, in general words, that the cooperative behaviour can result in
selective advantage simply because cooperators are capable of giving rise
to coherent groups.
It is curious that this same proposition was put forward by Kropotkin,
a russian anarchist, in 1902. The object of my study, in this issue, is the
hypothesis that we can detect the fundamental core in polemics like that of
altruism, if we examine the history of the polemics. Since this core is
detected, it is easier to group the different propositions in the discussion,
and, so, to have a general view of the sides in the polemics.
In altruism, I believe, the discussion is related to the difficulty that
modern scientists have in treating with the extreme poles in the natural
processes; Non-contradiction, one of the principles in the logic underlying
modern science, attach the scientists always to one of the extremes: altruism
is an advantage in the process of evolution or altruism is not. In fact, we
deal here with the opposition between a dialectical view of nature and a
mechanistic one. Kropotkin, working in a dialectical perspective, can see
that darwinists do not take in account the prevalence of the cooperative
behaviour in nature, and for him it is clear that, depending upon the specific
context in which the selective process takes place, both cooperative and non-
cooperative behaviours can lead to an advantage in selection. I agree with him.
Charbel Nino El-Hani
Institute of Biology/MsC in Education
Area of Research: Historical Epistemology
Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
Address: Charbel@Brufba
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:84>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Thu Oct 14 19:19:49 1993
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1993 20:26:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Bibliographies and September message log now available
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Several bibliographic files that were posted in the early days of Darwin-L
are now available for general retrieval from the ukanaix computer, along with
a cleanly formatted copy of the log of messages posted to the group during
the month of September. To get a list of these files send the message:
INDEX DARWIN-L
to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (not to Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu).
You will be sent a message that looks something like this:
Archive: darwin-l (path: darwin-l) -- Files:
biblio.clades (1 part, 4532 bytes) -- Basic phylogenetics bibliography
biblio.general (1 part, 5962 bytes) -- Short historical sciences bibliography
biblio.toulmin (1 part, 24311 bytes) -- Stephen Toulmin bibliography
biblio.trees (1 part, 24153 bytes) -- Trees of history bibliography
9309 (1 part, 618939 bytes) -- DARWIN-L Message Log #1 -- September 1993
9310 (1 part, 213362 bytes) -- List owner's monthly greeting
The biblio files are the aforementioned bibliographies, some of which were
posted to the group shortly after Darwin-L opened. Several people contributed
more titles to be included in these bibliographies after they were first
posted; I haven't had a chance to work these additional references in yet,
but plan to do so in future revisions. For the time being I have been
concerned just to get these files up and available for retrieval, and this
has unfortunately not been a trivial matter.
The files 9309 and 9310 are the log files of all messages posted to the group
during the months of September and October. The October file is not yet
complete, of course, and is still in its raw state, with long message headers,
obscure breaks between messages, and so on. The September log has now been
cleaned up for ease of reference: message headers have been trimmed, message
numbers have been added, error messages have been deleted, etc. (though no
genuine editorial changes have been made to the content of any of the posts).
I plan to produce similar edited copies of all the monthly logs as they are
completed so we will have readable transcripts of all of our discussions.
To retrieve copies of any of these files just send the message:
GET DARWIN-L <filename>
For example: GET DARWIN-L biblio.general
or: GET DARWIN-L 9309
to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu. Large files will be automatically split
into parts by the ukanaix mailer, so all subscribers should be able to
retrieve them even if they have limitations on the size of files that fit
through their mail slots. A small amount of editing with a word processor
will be necessary to reassemble the parts of the split files (just cut them
along the dotted lines and paste the parts together). I printed out a copy of
the September log for my own use, and it totals a remarkable 214 pages. If
you plan to print out a copy yourself you will have greatest success if you
use a monospaced font (like Courier 10 on the Macintosh) because e-mail
messages usually format best when displayed in a monospaced font. A printed
copy of the log file, left sitting in a departmental lounge or library, might
serve as a interesting focus for collegial discussion.
I thank you all for your continuing interest in Darwin-L.
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:85>From danny@orthanc.cs.su.OZ.AU Fri Oct 15 10:02:49 1993
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 19:17:43 +1000
From: danny@orthanc.cs.su.OZ.AU (Danny Yee)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: RFD: sci.evolution.human
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
[ This message was posted to the USENET newsgroups sci.bio, sci.anthropology,
talk.origins,bionet.molbio.evolution,sci.lang,sci.cognitive, and
bionet.population-bio. Discussion will take place in news.groups. ]
Request for Discussion
creation of the unmoderated newsgroup
** sci.evolution.human **
Charter
-------
sci.evolution.human is for the discussion of the evolution of the species
homo sapiens. Some of the topics likely to be covered include:
* palaeoanthropology (discussion of new fossil finds, etc.)
* primatology (primate social interactions, comparative morphology, etc.)
* origins of human language and cognition
* origins of distinctive human morphological features (bipedalism, big brain,
hairlessness, etc.)
* genetic variation in homo sapiens relevant to our evolutionary history
(e.g. mitochondrial DNA studies)
--
Some subjects recently debated that would find a place in sci.evolution.human
* The "African Eve" theory vs regional evolution debate
* The Aquatic Ape theory
--
The following are explicitly NOT intended for discussion in
sci.evolution.human:
* religious issues (e.g. Creationism)
the proper forum for these is talk.origins.
* general biological topics without particular relevance to homo sapiens
sci.bio, sci.bio.ecology, the bionet hierarchy or (potentially)
sci.bio.evolution are the appropriate places for these.
* non-biological evolution (eg memetics, cultural and linguistic evolution)
these may later require a newsgroup of their own (perhaps gated to
the DARWIN-L list?) but it is expected that sci.anthropology,
sci.lang and alt.memetics should suffice for the moment.
It is however envisaged that posts will regularly be shared with other
newsgroups, among them
sci.bio
sci.bio.evolution (if created)
talk.origins
sci.anthropology
bionet.molbio.evolution
Motivation
----------
The evolution of the human species is naturally something of
considerable interest to a large number of people. At the moment the
quite frequent threads on this topic are split somewhat clumsily between
sci.bio, sci.anthropology and talk.origins, as well as several other
newsgroups. All three of these groups are fairly high volume, and are
certainly viable without this material; it is also expected that they
would share crossposts to sci.evolution.human where appropriate.
It seems likely that there are many people who are interested in human
evolution but are not particularly interested in natural history,
creationist controversy or social anthropology. (These are examples of
topics which make up a fair fraction of the volume in the three newsgroups
mentioned.)
Calendar
--------
Discussion of sci.evolution.human will take place in news.groups. Unless
any problems are raised the Call for Votes will be sent out on the 18th
of November. Any volunteers to do the vote counting would be welcome.
Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au).
15/10/93
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:86>From SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu Fri Oct 15 11:47:32 1993
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: "Gerard Donnelly Smith" <SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu>
Organization: Clark College, Vancouver WA, USA
Date: 15 Oct 93 09:44:15 PST8PDT
Subject: Re: RFD: sci.evolution.human
Don't see how this newsgroup would be much different from Darwin-L.
Most of the discussions you've proposed could easily be discussed
within the confines of the pre-existing newsgroup.
Dr. Gerard Donnelly-Smith e-mail: smitgm@hawkins.clark.edu
English Department phone: 206-699-0478
Clark College
Vancouver, WA 98663
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:87>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu Fri Oct 15 13:22:23 1993
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 13:25:08 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: RFD: sci.evolution.human
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
I hesitate to send this message, since Darwin-l is not the place
to discuss the creation of sci.evolution.human (to do that, see the
original posting by Danny Yee), but the scope and purpose of Darwin-l is
_very_ different from that of the proposed sci.evolution.human newsgroup.
Darwin-l is about the history and theory of all historical sciences, and
is not at all limited to biological evolution, and especially not to the
evolution of a single species.
Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:88>From barryr@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU Sat Oct 16 00:23:01 1993
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 93 18:06:59 PDT
From: barryr@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU (Barry Roth)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: waterbabes
I have been following (with about one eye) the aquatic ape thread on
sci.bio on Usenet. Most of the posts are devoted to yarn-spinning and
just-so stories pro and con. I do wonder how proponents of the aquatic
ape scenario would respond to the following:
According to the DNA clock (and the figure on about p. 20 of _The Third
Chimpanzee_ by Jared Diamond), the split between the gorilla clade and
the clade (Homo,(chimpanzee,bonobo)) is set at about 1.7-2.0 Ma. So how
could climatic events in the late Miocene (ca. 7-5 Ma) have anything to
do with autapomorphies of Homo?
Unless, of course, we are willing to admit massive and homoplastic
reversals in both the gorilla and (chimp,bonobo) clades ...
Barry Roth
Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley
barryr@ucmp1.berkeley.edu Phone: (415) 387-8538
_______________________________________________________________________________
<2:89>From LARRYS@psc.plymouth.edu Sat Oct 16 00:29:14 1993
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 15:35:54 -0500 (EST)
From: LARRYS@psc.plymouth.edu
Subject: Re: manuscript polymorphism
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: Plymouth State College, Plymouth NH
Another idea crossed my mind, not one necessarily related to manuscript
polymorphism, but perhaps related to how some gene sequences remain un
changed for long periods of time. The example was published someplace
sometime ago (I can not remember where or when). It relates to the fact
that in General Biology textbooks, when the evolution of the horse is
described, the textbook authors state that Eohippus, one of the ancestral
forms, was the size of a (an I may have this somewhat wrong) collier/
terrier, a dog from the coal mines of Wales. What is interesting, is the
fact that this dog is no longer a very common breed of dog, yet the
textbook writers rather than mutating the dog into a modern day form of
dog, eg, golden retriever, poodle, etc., continue to use the old name
as referenced in earlier textbooks.
Larry Spencer
lts@oz.plymouth.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
Darwin-L Message Log 2: 36-89 -- October 1993 End
