Darwin-L Message Log 3: 1–59 — November 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 November 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 3: 1-59 -- NOVEMBER 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 November 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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:1>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Mon Nov  1 01:11:11 1993

Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1993 02:17:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: List owner's monthly greeting
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Greetings to all Darwin-L subscribers.  At the beginning of each month I send
out a short note on the status of our group with a reminder of basic commands.
Darwin-L is now just two months old, and we have more than 470 members from
nearly 30 countries.  I am very grateful to all of you for your interest and
your many contributions.

The following are the most frequently used listserv commands that Darwin-L
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   For example: SUBSCRIBE DARWIN-L John Smith

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To post a public message to the group as a whole simply send it as regular
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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.

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<3:2>From G.R.Hart@durham.ac.uk  Mon Nov  1 07:58:22 1993

Date: Mon, 01 Nov 93 14:01:26 GMT
From: G.R.Hart@durham.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Pronouncing "palaetiology"
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Cratylus - title of a dialogue by Plato, and name of the sophist whose
theories about the nature of the relationship between words and meanings
were  discussed in the dialogue.
Jill Hart

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<3:3>From LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU  Mon Nov  1 09:43:07 1993

Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1993 09:43:07 -0600
From: "JOHN LANGDON"  <LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution

hantuo@utu.fi wrote:

> Morgan writes in a style that is easy to read and understand, i.e. her
> books are "popular". Because "popular" is the opposite of "scientific", the
> theory she advocates must be wrong.
>
> I'm adding this as number 8 to my list of possible non-scientific reasons
> why people reject AAT.

I wouldn't be quite so hasty with this. I like to use popular accounts of the
standard theories in my teaching. I don't believe that the reviewer who wrote
of "Popular explanations" was referring to the genre of literature. I hesitate
to say exactly what the reviewer did mean, but I believe it referred to the
thought and publication process rather than to the genre.

Serious scientists who do get heavily involved in popular writing sometimes
lose credibility. Carl Sagan is a good example. I think he brought that upon
himself when he strayed outside his expertise (astronomy) into poorly
formulated evolution (Dragons of Eden and others). I have heard disparaging
remarks of Stephen Jay Gould for the same reason (although I do not share
them). Someone coined the term "saganization" to describe this phenomenon.

There is another distinction between "popular" and "scientific" explanation
that applies here. Books such as those of Richard Leakey and Donald Johanson
emerged from the scientific literature where the ideas had been presented
formally and critiqued before they were placed before the public. Popular
explanations, including Morgan's, were placed before the public without a
formal critique or discussion in the scientific literature. The appearance is
that the author attempted to bypass peer review and appeal over the heads of
scientists to the uninformed public. That practice is sneered at by scientists.
Perhaps justifiably, since the author does not seek peer review, the
establishment is not likely to give such works serious consideration. Add that
as your number 8 reason.

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:4>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Mon Nov  1 09:53:04 1993

Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1993 10:59:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: November 1 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

NOVEMBER 1 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1793 (200 years ago today): JOHANN FRIEDRICH ESCHSCHOLTZ is born at Dorpat,
now Tartu, Estonia.  Following education at Dorpat University, now Tartu
University, Eschscholtz will serve as naturalist and physician on Kotzebue's
voyages around the world from 1815 to 1818.  His specimens from the voyage
will be given to Dorpat University, and he will become curator of the Dorpat
zoological collections in 1822.

1865: JOHN LINDLEY dies at Turnham Green, Middlesex, England.  One of the
most active botanical researchers, editors, artists, and administrators of the
nineteenth cenury, Lindley had specialized in the systematics of orchids, and
had published an _Introduction to the Natural System of Botany_ in 1830.  The
characters of plants, he wrote, are "the living Hieroglyphics of the Almighty
which the skill of man is permitted to interpret.  The key to their meaning
lies enveloped in the folds of the Natural System."

1880: ALFRED LOTHAR WEGENER is born in Berlin.  In 1912 he will read a paper
titled Die Herausbildung der Grossformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane)
auf geophysikalischer Grundlage [The geophysical basis of the evolution of
large-scale features of the earth's crust] before the Geological Association
of Frankfurt am Main.  It will be expanded in 1915 into _Die Entstehung der
Kontinente und Ozeane_ [_The Origin of Continents and Oceans_], the first
comprehensive account of the theory of continental drift.  On this day in
1930, his fiftieth birthday, while on an expedition to Greenland, Wegener
will leave his base camp for the western coast and will not be seen again.

Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.  For
information send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:5>From JSA@antnov1.auckland.ac.nz  Mon Nov  1 16:05:08 1993

Date: 02 Nov 1993 11:03:12 +1200
From: John Allen <JSA@antnov1.auckland.ac.nz>
Subject: Bergmann's Rule
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: Auckland University - Anthropology

Does anyone know if there is an English translation or accessible
German version of:

Bergmann, C. 1847. Ueber die Verhaeltnisse der Waermeoekonomie
der Thiere zu ihrer Groesse.  Goettinger Studien, Pt. 1. pp. 595-708.

This (I hope) is the original "Bergmann's Rule" paper.

Thanks,

John Allen
Department of Anthropology
University of Auckland
jsa@antnov1.auckland.ac.nz

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<3:6>From hantuo@utu.fi  Mon Nov  1 20:07:28 1993

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: hantuo@utu.fi (Hanna Tuomisto)
Subject: re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution
Date: 	Tue, 2 Nov 1993 04:10:51 +0200

John Langdon wrote:
>Books such as those of Richard Leakey and Donald Johanson emerged
>From the scientific literature where the ideas had been presented formally and
>critiqued before they were placed before the public. Popular explanations,
>including Morgan's, were placed before the public without a formal critique or
>discussion in the scientific literature.

Scientific journals have published lots of theories that have later been
proved wrong. Although I readily agree that on average such journals
contain less rubbish than books that have not been subjected to peer
review, I do not consider the place of publication as a valid argument to
evaluate a theory. It's a long time since I read a book by Leakey, but
those of Johanson are not really concentrating on explaining scientific
theories, although they do a bit of that too. They rather describe how
paleoanthropologists work and how their theories come about, and therefore
they are more like novels. Morgan's AAT books (i.e. The Aquatic Ape and The
Scars of Evolution) are different in that their main purpose is to weight
different explanations on the basis of available evidence. Therefore their
contents are purely scientific, even though the form may be popular.

>The appearance is that the author attempted to bypass peer review and appeal
>over the heads of scientists to the uninformed public.

I don't know exactly why Morgan has not published in scientific journals. I
have got a guess, though: She is a writer by profession, not a scientist,
and therefore it was probably more natural to her to write a book than to
write a scientific article. Besides, the two books contain so much
information that it would have been necessary to write something like 20
articles to accommodate it all. If your future career is not dependant on
getting as many titles as possible in your curriculum vitae, you probably
would not like to split your argument like that. After all, one of the main
virtues of AAT is that it is so coherent.

> That practice is sneered at by scientists. Perhaps
>justifiably, since the author does not seek peer review, the establishment is
>not likely to give such works serious consideration. Add that as your number 8
>reason.

I've noticed. I keep number 8 and add number 9: Scientists reject AAT
because they were not given a chance to comment on it before it was
published.

Now AAT has been published, however, even though it happened without peer
review. The books of Morgan are well written (both in literary and in
scientific sense), and she has already said almost everythng that can be
said on the basis of the available data. Unless new evidence pops up, there
is little point in writing a scientific article just to introduce the idea,
because scientific articles are supposed to contain something new. In my
opinion the field of human evolution should acknowledge that a rival
hypothesis has been proposed, that it has raised quite some discussion, and
that it should be either proven wrong or accepted.

By the way, The Selfish Gene (by Richard Dawkins) was also published as a
popular book, but it seems to have gotten away with it.

Hanna Tuomisto      e-mail  hantuo@utu.fi
Department of Biology     Fax   +358-21-6335564
University of Turku     Phone +358-21-6335634
FIN-20500 Turku, FINLAND

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:7>From korb@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au  Mon Nov  1 20:10:32 1993

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 12:15:20 +1100
From: korb@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au (Kevin Korb)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: sj gould's popular work

An editor would like me to report what influence SJ Gould's popular
work (esp. on intelligence testing) has had on academia.  I would
appreciate hearing (directly) from those who have used Gould's popular
writings in the classroom, or who have anecdotal or other information
about such use.  I'll be happy to repost a summary/compendium if
people express interest.

What would I like to learn from this exercise?  Such things as: how
widespread the use of Gould's popular writings is; how receptive
students are to his writings; whether students can either accept or
generate criticism of Gould; whether students can separate Gould's
scientific from his political conclusions; whether Gould's
politicizing of his popular science impedes or increases the influence
of Gould's ideas in the academic community; etc.

Lest I be misunderstood:

(1) I've no objection at all to popularizing science.  I think good
popularization is very important.

(2) I think Gould by and large does an excellent job in his
popularizations.  I have, however, significant criticism of his
metamethodological pronouncements, especially his characterization of
factor analysis in the Mismeasure of Man.  Criticism is the point of
my pending article.

Regards, Kevin

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:8>From staddon@psych.duke.edu  Tue Nov  2 07:18:14 1993

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 08:21:26 EST
From: staddon@psych.duke.edu (John Staddon)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: sj gould's popular work

I am happy to see that people are worrying about the
politicization of science.  I wonder what people think about the
much-lauded Dawrin biography by Desmond & Moore, for example.  I
find the mix of judgment, invention (the authors frequently
describe Darwin's private thoughts, for example), and the
imputation of motives (nearly always bad) unscholarly and not a
little offensive.  SJG reviewed the book very positively.  Any
comments?

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:9>From LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU  Tue Nov  2 07:20:48 1993

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 07:20:48 -0600
From: "JOHN LANGDON"  <LANGDON@GANDLF.UINDY.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution

In message <93Nov2.041057eet.143930-7@utu.fi>  writes:

> In my opinion the field of human evolution should acknowledge that a rival
> hypothesis has been proposed, that it has raised quite some discussion, and
> that it should be either proven wrong or accepted.

In what I hope is a final word, let me repeat (since obviously you missed it):
We will never prove the AAT wrong and never can. Nor can we disprove Chariot of
the Gods or Killer Apes or Elvis Sighted in Outer Space. This does not mean
that we must or should accept them. You have a mistaken perception of the
nature and capability of science.

I don't think that paleoanthropology denies that a rival hypothesis has been
proposed. It has raised some discussion. It has been rejected as unlikely
(certainly more unlikely than the accepted models) for good reasons, given the
broadest picture. The fact that most paleoanthropologists found it too weak to
merit serious discussion in print does not mean that they rejected it without
consideration.

Yes, there are hypothesis in print and currently accepted that will have to be
changed. Yes, many great ideas were rejected almost unanimously before they
were finally accepted. Continental drift is the classic example. But there are
an awful lot of bad ideas that are also rejected unanimously. Rejection is not
a sign of prejudicial treatment by the establishment nor a stigma of martyrdom.
Most of the time, rejection means the idea doesn't stand up.

I suggest you take a couple of courses in human evolution with an open mind and
figure it out for yourself.

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:10>From buchignani@hg.uleth.ca  Tue Nov  2 07:52:42 1993

Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1993 06:59:51 MST
From: Norman Buchignani <buchignani@hg.uleth.ca>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: RE: sj gould's popular work

I've used the M of M in anthro courses on race relations. Students were in fact
far TOO willing to go with Gould's arguments here; perhaps they unconsciously
were seduced by the chief weakness of this particular book: Gould's reflection
of modern uncritical assumptions about historical racial attitudes into
putative history (of course, they would be racist, etc.). Ditto the ideology
of scientific progress (of course they would be naive..). As this book is
really rotten history, esp. of intellectual views of human variation,
I dropped it.

Norman Buchignani

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:11>From boisei@liverpool.ac.uk  Tue Nov  2 09:33:00 1993

From: "Dr. C.G. Wood" <boisei@liverpool.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 15:33:27 GMT

Can I just add, as someone who makes his living in hominid palaeontology,
that I wholeheartedly agree with John Langdon's statement.

  Chris Wood
  Hominid Palaeontology Research Group
  Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology
  University of Liverpool
  P.O. Box 147        ||
  Liverpool L69 3BX      /  \
  United Kingdom      /--\__/--\
           <  0 /\ 0  >
  Tel: +51 794 5516      \  []  /
  Fax: +51 794 5517     [____]
            BOISEI

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<3:12>From jlipps@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU  Tue Nov  2 11:53:55 1993

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 09:58:52 PST
From: jlipps@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU (Jere Lipps)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution

I too agree with Langdon re: AA.  Continental drift, however, was not almost
unanimously rejected.  Many British and southern hemisphere geologists believed
it, as did some paleontologists.  It was rejected by Americans because no
believable mechanism could be determined that would allow it.  Once plate
tectonics was developed, it was immediately accepted by almost everyone.  But
this is not "continental drift" as formerly advocated.
Jere Lipps

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:13>From princeh@husc.harvard.edu  Tue Nov  2 12:37:46 1993

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 13:04:20 -0500 (EST)
From: Patricia Princehouse <princeh@husc.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: Desmond & Moore Darwin Bio
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

On Tue, 2 Nov 1993, John Staddon wrote:

> I am happy to see that people are worrying about the
> politicization of science.  I wonder what people think about the
> much-lauded Dawrin biography by Desmond & Moore, for example.  I
> find the mix of judgment, invention (the authors frequently
> describe Darwin's private thoughts, for example), and the
> imputation of motives (nearly always bad) unscholarly and not a
> little offensive.  SJG reviewed th ebook very positively.  ANy
> comments?

You might be interested in the transcript of a session held on this book
at the recent meeting of the International Society for the Sociology,
Philosophy and History of Science (July 18-20 at Brandeis). There were at
least a dozen well-known panelists (incl Gould, Michael Ruse, Peter
Bowler...) and a packed audience. Discussion was wide-ranging and included
praise and condemnation (usually not of the same points). I think the
organizer of the session was Betty Smocovitis (VBSmocum@UFla.edu -Dept
Hist, U Florida, Gainesville) and I imagine she could send you a
transcript &/or tape.

Myself, I found the book very compelling reading. But I don't know that I
would recommend it to a person unfamiliar with natural selection and other
aspects of evolutionary theory lest they misunderstand the more subtle
points & think politics is the only major force in Biology.

Best wishes,
	Patricia Princehouse    Princeh@husc.Harvard.Edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:14>From BDHUME@ucs.indiana.edu  Tue Nov  2 12:56:38 1993

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 14:00:12 EST
From: BDHUME@ucs.indiana.edu
Subject: Re: sj gould's popular work
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Personally I found the Desmond and Moore biography to be a wonderful and
very human presentation of Darwin.  While I might agree about some of
the criticisms voiced about invention or descriptions of Darwin's private
thoughts, I happen to believe that it is blatantly obvious that science
has ALWAYS been political.  Marx and Nietzsche, for example, immediately
saw the politics of England in Darwin's descriptions of nature.

Sorry folks, you've got at least one social constructivist lurking in
your midst.

BDHUME@Indiana.edu

PS:  Facts are still facts, and vaccines work.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:15>From peter@usenix.org  Tue Nov  2 14:09:09 1993

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 12:12:24 PST
From: peter@usenix.org (Peter H. Salus)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution

Just a footnote to Jere Lips' remarks about drift and
tectonics:  I feel that credit must be given to the
"non-American, J. Tuzo Wilson, of the University of
Toronto, for establishing the mechanism
and "reviving" Wegener's theories in the early
1960s.  Jock went on to become Principal of
Toronto's Erindale College and Director of the Ontario Science Center.

Peter

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:16>From hantuo@utu.fi  Tue Nov  2 16:28:29 1993

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: hantuo@utu.fi (Hanna Tuomisto)
Subject: Re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution
Date: 	Wed, 3 Nov 1993 00:31:43 +0200

John Langdon wrote:

>In what I hope is a final word, let me repeat (since obviously you missed it):
>We will never prove the AAT wrong and never can. Nor can we disprove Chariot
>of the Gods or Killer Apes or Elvis Sighted in Outer Space. This does not mean
>that we must or should accept them. You have a mistaken perception of the
>nature and capability of science.

Sorry if I disappoint you, but I'm adding my final word too. When I wrote
"prove wrong" I was thinking in terms of hypothesis testing, which is a
normal procedure in science: take the available facts and evaluate which of
the available hypothesis explains them best. The "right" hypothesis
explains more facts with less ad hoc assumptions than the "wrong"
hypothesis.

Elvis Sighted in Outer Space is not a hypothesis, it's a claim. Of course
you cannot prove that it never happened, but you can show that such an
incidence would contradict quite a few natural laws. But AAT does not
contradict any natural laws. It just explains the available facts in a new
way.

>It has been rejected as unlikely (certainly more unlikely than the accepted
>models) for good reasons, given the broadest picture.

I still have not seen a generally accepted terrestrial theory. There's a
dozen or so different models for how bipedalism could have evolved. There's
another dozen for hairlessness. There's another dozen for big brains.
There's another dozen for speech. Most of them contradict each other, and
there's little data to support any of them, so it's difficult to choose
among the alternatives. The only generally accepted thing seems to be that
the hominids never went into the water, and for that claim there is no
evidence at all.

I've now got access to The Aquatic Ape: Fact or Fiction. Thanks for
everyone who sent me the reference. It is not quite what I was looking for,
though. Those chapters in the book that are critical towards AAT do present
arguments against it, and that is of course very well. But I was really
looking for a comparison of the explanatory power of the (semi)aquatic vs.
the terrestrial models. You can always scrutinize a hypothesis and claim
that it has weaknesses, but if the alternative hypothesis is not subjected
to a similar scrutiny the excercise does not help much in choosing among
alternatives.

>I suggest you take a couple of courses in human evolution with an open mind
>and figure it out for yourself.

I had accepted the savanna theory before I was 15. That's what we were
tought at school, and that's what we were tought later at university. I
never found the scenario really obvious or logical, but I believed someone
must have proved that it was correct, and anyway it was better than
admitting that humans never evolved at all. When I first read about AAT I
was really astonished because it just made so much sense. Then I started to
study the scientific papers about the savanna theories and was astonished
again, because they made much less sense. And now I'm desperately trying to
find a book or article or anything that would weight the two models against
each other. But all I'm getting is comments like "The savanna theory is
better than AAT. I can't give you the reasons but you just believe when I
say so." If savanna can't do better than that, I prefer aquatic.

Hanna Tuomisto      e-mail  hantuo@utu.fi
Department of Biology     Fax   +358-21-6335564
University of Turku     Phone +358-21-6335634
FIN-20500 Turku, FINLAND

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:17>From jlipps@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU  Tue Nov  2 19:37:08 1993

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 17:42:02 PST
From: jlipps@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU (Jere Lipps)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution

J. Tuzo Wilson was certainly an important figure in the development of
plate tectonics.  The idea caught on fast--about 1972, we had a student that
compiled papers with plate tectonics in the title.  Just a handful in
1968, several hundred in 1969, then almost uncountable thereafter.  The
non-believers were inverse.
Jere Lipps

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<3:18>From peter@usenix.org  Tue Nov  2 19:50:02 1993

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 17:53:29 PST
From: peter@usenix.org (Peter H. Salus)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution

I think Jock's first paper was around 1963.  There was another in
1966 or 67.  In 70 I was on a number of committees at UofT with
him and we used to joke about how he was "suddenly an authority."

Peter H. Salus

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<3:19>From jacobsk@ERE.UMontreal.CA  Tue Nov  2 20:30:05 1993

From: jacobsk@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Jacobs Kenneth)
Subject: Re: Social constructivism & Desmond/Moore biography
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 21:31:28 -0500 (EST)

On 2 November, BDHume wrote:

> Personally I found the Desmond and Moore biography to be a wonderful and
> very human presentation of Darwin.  While I might agree about some of
> the criticisms voiced about invention or descriptions of Darwin's private
> thoughts, I happen to believe that it is blatantly obvious that science
> has ALWAYS been political.  Marx and Nietzsche, for example, immediately
> saw the politics of England in Darwin's descriptions of nature.
>
> Sorry folks, you've got at least one social constructivist lurking in
> your midst.
>
> BDHUME@Indiana.edu
>
> PS:  Facts are still facts, and vaccines work.

	Thank goodness someone jumped in at last.  I find it remarkable that
so many comments have passed thus far without anyone going "GACK!! what do you
mean <<the politicization of science>>?  As though that were something new,
dreamed up by the nefarious radicals (of whichever stripe haunts you).  Back
before Darwin (and Marx and Nietzsche), who defined the system by which the
heavens were monitored, controlled the calendar and, thereby, the timing of
Temple rituals in Babylon.  A fact commented upon at length by Talmudic sages
between 200 & 400CE.  I'd say the politicization of science has been around for
a while.
jacobsk@ere.umontreal.ca
PPS:	We make facts, but we don't make them up.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:20>From jlipps@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU  Tue Nov  2 21:07:28 1993

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 19:12:26 PST
From: jlipps@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU (Jere Lipps)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution

Wilson published several papers on continental drift in 1963.  Perhaps
the most readable is in Sci American, v. 208, p. 86-100/
Jere Lipps

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<3:21>From TREMONT%UCSFVM.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU  Tue Nov  2 22:36:11 1993

Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1993 20:33:53 -0800 (PST)
From: "Elihu M. Gerson" <TREMONT%UCSFVM.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Desmond & Moore Darwin Bio
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

On Tue, 02 Nov 1993 13:42:59 -0600 Patricia Princehouse said:

>Myself, I found the book very compelling reading. But I don't know that I
>would recommend it to a person unfamiliar with natural selection and other
>aspects of evolutionary theory lest they misunderstand the more subtle
>points & think politics is the only major force in Biology.

Which subtle points in Darwin's theory aren't political? Presumably,
they are the ones nobody has ever bothered to contest. Which are those?

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:22>From dpolicar@MIT.EDU  Tue Nov  2 22:39:30 1993

From: dpolicar@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 93 21:32:45 EST
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: sj gould's popular work

Hm. Unsure if this is at all helpful to you... I am only an interested
layman in this field. But here goes anyway...

> how receptive students are to his writings;

I picked up Gould on my own in high school and college and learned a
fair amount from him. Wasn't a substitute for biology or ethology
classes, both of which I took in college, but helped me make more out of
them. My first ethology class used his text, which I still remember --
and in fact, still own, which is rare for my college texts -- as being
clear and concise and well-written enough to be worth going through
independant of the class.

Collections of essays -- the Panda's Thumb, Ever Since Darwin -- were
pleasure reading. His background on Darwin provided some context for
reading Origin of Species. His emphasis on the historical and political
environment of scientific developments -- recapitulation vs. neotany,
vitalism vs. the preformed-human-in-sperm (I forget the official name),
etc. -- helped clarify what was at the time a very muddy understanding
that popular scientific theories have relationships not only to
experiments but also to politics and prevailing philosophies. And his
examples of "self-perpetuating textbook dogma" stay with me to this day.
There are probably other examples, if I were to dig around in my psyche
long enough.

Of course, all of this adds grist to the mill of a different question:

> whether students can separate Gould's scientific from his political
> conclusions;

I wouldn't call Gould political as much as philosophical, and from my
experience, I'd say probably not... and if one is going to try, it might
be better to read someone else in the first place. His popular writing,
as I recall it, tends to use science in a largely metaphorical mode to
make points about history and bias and suchlike... as evidenced by the
fact that what stays with me over the years is those points, and not the
biology or the paleontology itself. (Though I probably learned a few
things along the way there, too.) 'Course, this may say more about me
than Gould. A big part of my worldview construction in college and
afterward involved trying to reconcile what appealed to me about SJGould
and EOWilson; this had ultimately little to do with biology or ethology
or sociobiology and a lot to do with philosophy.

So anyway, my two cents... use or ignore.

--dave policar
  dpolicar@mit.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:23>From @gps1.leeds.ac.uk:phl6sf@leeds.ac.uk  Wed Nov  3 07:56:41 1993

From: S French <phl6sf@leeds.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: scientific and popular explanations / human evolution
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (Hanna Tuomisto)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 93 13:33:40 BST

Sounds like a job for a Philosopher of Science!! (note the caps!)
But not me though, since I know nowt about biology.
Steven French

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<3:24>From princeh@husc.harvard.edu  Wed Nov  3 13:19:30 1993

Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 14:01:38 -0500 (EST)
From: Patricia Princehouse <princeh@husc9.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: Desmond & Moore Darwin Bio
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

On Tue, 2 Nov 1993, Elihu M. Gerson wrote:

> On Tue, 02 Nov 1993 13:42:59 -0600 Patricia Princehouse said:
> >Myself, I found the book very compelling reading. But I don't know that I
> >would recommend it to a person unfamiliar with natural selection and other
> >aspects of evolutionary theory lest they misunderstand the more subtle
> >points & think politics is the only major force in Biology.
>
> Which subtle points in Darwin's theory aren't political? Presumably,
> they are the ones nobody has ever bothered to contest. Which are those?

Dear Mr. Gerson,
	I apologize for having been somewhat opaque in my comment. I was
referring to the subtle aspects of the biography DARWIN (subtitled in the
States "The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist") written by Adrian Desmond
and Jim Moore; not any or all of Charles Darwin's publications. Certainly
politics and social dynamics are important in all human endeavors,
including all levels of interaction in science. However, by politics, I
meant what tend to be referred to as external elements. D & M emphasize
these aspects in explaining why, for example, Darwin waited so long to
publish some of the ideas he outlines in the Origin.
	I think these external elements are illuminating in numerous ways
and D & M put them together to make very worthwhile reading. However, I
don't think that these externalities are all there is to understanding
evolutionary biology -not the subject nor why the discipline exists. The D
& M bio does not give much fanfare, for eg, to variation under
domestication in & of itself as interesting stuff. It does talk about
Darwin running off to see pigeon shows & dog breeders. That's what I meant
by more subtle points. If the reader doesn't already understand the
extreme importance of variation to Darwin's mechanism of evolution, then
the reader might interpret this as very eccentric behavior indeed.

I hope this makes my view a bit clearer.
	-Patricia Princehouse   Princeh@husc.Harvard.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:25>From farrar@mistral.noo.navy.mil  Wed Nov  3 13:31:28 1993

Date: Wed, 3 Nov 93 13:36:36 CST
From: farrar@mistral.noo.navy.mil (Paul Farrar)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: J. Tuzo Wilson

One of Wilson's papers which I find most interesting is his 1954
"The Development and Structure of the Crust" in Kuiper's _The Earth as
a Planet_.  This paper is notable as a later example of PRE-plate-
tectonics geophysics.  I find it interesting as an example of a well
developed theory on the threshhold of a scientific revolution.  Wilson
finds the "shrinking earth" hypothesis the most plausible explanation
for the compression type features, such island arcs and trenches.  The
spreading centers in the mid-ocean ridges were not yet known for what
they are.  When plate tectonics became a viable option, Wilson moved into
the lead.  This makes him a counter-example to some Kuhnists' claim that
the existing scientific paradigmists must die or retire before the triumph
of the new paradigm.

Paul Farrar

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:26>From barryr@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU  Wed Nov  3 18:30:44 1993

Date: Wed, 3 Nov 93 16:35:38 PST
From: barryr@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU (Barry Roth)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: The Selfish Gene

A recent post by Hanna Tuomisto cited the book, The Selfish Gene, by
Richard Dawkins, as an example of a popular book that "seems to have
gotten away with it" -- which I interpret to mean that the book is
well regarded.  I would be interested to hear other opinions on this:
is The Selfish Gene perhaps a particularly good example of sound
scientific writing for a popular audience?  What has been the book's
impact over the (what is it -- 15?) years since its publication?

Barry Roth
Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley
barryr@ucmp1.berkeley.edu    Phone: (415) 387-8538

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:27>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu  Thu Nov  4 06:57:48 1993

Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 08:03:12 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy John Ahouse)
Subject: Re: The Selfish Gene

>A recent post by Hanna Tuomisto cited the book, The Selfish Gene, by
>Richard Dawkins, as an example of a popular book that "seems to have
>gotten away with it" -- which I interpret to mean that the book is
>well regarded.  I would be interested to hear other opinions on this:
>is The Selfish Gene perhaps a particularly good example of sound
>scientific writing for a popular audience?  What has been the book's
>impact over the (what is it -- 15?) years since its publication?
>
> Barry Roth
> Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley
> barryr@ucmp1.berkeley.edu    Phone: (415) 387-8538

    Since Barry Roth asked... there was a discussion of selfish genes
on the bionet molbio evolution newsgroup last Spring that even brought a
response by the good Richard Dawkins himself.  I include it below (his last
point is particularly relevant to the current discussion.

    As to Barry's question; I think Dawkins position falls into the
camp of selfconscious caricature theories, used in practice (though he
wouldn't probably use it this way) as a foil.  It is used to stimulate
discussion among students (like the Gaia "hypothesis").  There is even a
whole volume of this kind of "stimulating idease in biology" (e.g. extreme
views that start arguments) from MIT press called _From Gaia to Selfish
Genes_ ed. by Connie Barlow.  I think the selfish gene position is also
tacitly used in the language of molecular evolution where it is wedded with
a notion of optimality and gene specific functionalism so that molecular
evolutionists talk as if each gene is particularly well adapted and has a
single function.  But I don't think many of these people have ever read
_The Selfish Gene_.

    - Jeremy

From RICHARD DAWKINS, Oxford University
I am not equipped to read the USESNET directly, but Steven Brenner of Cambridge
has kindly forwarded to me a large, stimulating and provocative correspondence
about selfish genes. He has kindly offered to forward my remarks onto the
network and I am most grateful to him.  Many of my points have already been
made by correspondents already on the network, and I am grateful to them.  The
latest USENET message I have seen is dated Feb 28th 1993, so I may be out of
date, in which case sorry.

Obviously I could go on till the cows come home, but since I've already done so
in two books (The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype) I'll confine myself
to a few comments where I feel I can specifically clarify points that have come
up in the USENET correspondence.  As follows:-

1. Various people are absolutely right to point out that there are two meanings
of 'selfish gene' going around.  From the point of view of clarity it is best
to call them two meanings, but if I am right in my view of life (see The
Extended Phenotype), they will eventually collapse into the same meaning after
all.  The two meanings are:-
  Selfish-Gene-A. ALL genes are selfish, even those that work via normal
bodies.
  Selfish-Gene-B. Only 'outlaw' genes like 'Selfish DNA' sensu Orgel & Crick
(and segregation distorters etc) should be called selfish genes.  Some people
call Selfish-Genes-B 'Ultra-selfish genes'.

2. There has been some discussion on USENET for and against my priority in
developing the concept of the selfish gene.  There is an irony here.  Many
people are happy to credit my priority for Selfish-Gene-A, but attribute
'Selfish DNA' to Orgel & Crick, and Doolittle & Sapienza.  The irony is that,
whereas it could certainly be argued that G.C.Williams and W.D.Hamilton
invented Selfish-Gene-A, I do not think it can be doubted that I WAS the first
to suggest the hypothesis now called Selfish DNA!!  As Doolittle & Sapienza,
and Orgel & Crick acknowledged in their 1980 papers, their theory is clearly
set out on page 47 of the original 1976 edition of The Selfish Gene.

3. You can imagine, therefore, how pissed off I was to read somebody on USENET
saying how amazed he was "that the concept of the Selfish Gene is always
accredited to a popular science book as opposed to the work of the authors who
published the original papers" [Orgel & Crick etc]!  He seems to have retracted
it, so I'll say no more.  Except to object to ANY sneering at so-called popular
science books SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY ARE WRITTEN IN A STYLE THAT ANYONE CAN
UNDERSTAND.  There are some popular science books that seek to bring to popular
attention ideas that have already been published in the 'original literature.'
There are other books that seek to change the way people think, including or
even especially colleagues in the research community, BUT WHICH ARE WRITTEN IN
SUCH A WAY THAT THEY CAN BE UNDERSTOOD BY ANYONE ELSE AS WELL.  Do not assume
that BECAUSE a book is easy to understand, it therefore CANNOT be saying
anything new or original. And above all don't fall for the pernicious
corollary: "If something is difficult to understand it must be saying something
important or profound!" I believe science would be a lot more fun and might
progress faster if EVERYBODY's papers were refereed, not only by an expert in
the field, but by somebody in another field, such as philosophy or history.
The only objection I can see to this is that papers would become awfully long
filling in background knowledge before getting down to the new stuff.  But if
you want people to listen to your new ideas in science, it's not a bad plan to
write AS IF for the benefit of your aunt, or at least for an intelligent
academic in a wholly unrelated discipline.

4.  A great deal of what I have to say on the subject of selfish genes and the
Levels of Selection controversy is contained in my second book The Extended
Phenotype.  It is emphatically NOT true, as S.Gould (recent NY Review of Books;
see also Dan Dennett's magnificently spirited puncturing of the Gould balloon
in the Letters column) alleges, in his recent bullying review of Helena
Cronin's 'The Ant and the Peacock,' that The Extended Phenotype recants away
from the 'extreme' position of The Selfish Gene.  Quite the contrary: The
Extended Phenotype carries the selfish gene theory to a more radical
conclusion.  The Extended Phenotype is quite a long book, but its essential
argument is sumarised in the new Chapter 13 of the Second Edition of The
Selfish Gene, entitled 'The Long Reach of the Gene.'

RICHARD DAWKINS, March 8th, 1993

Posted on bionet.molbio.evol by:
--
Steven E. Brenner     |  Internet  seb1005@mbfs.bio.cam.ac.uk
Department of Biochemistry  |  JANET   seb1005@uk.ac.cam.bio.mbfs
University of Cambridge   |  Laboratory  +44 223 333671
Tennis Court Road     |  Home    +44 223 314964
Cambridge CB2 1QW, UK     |  Lab Fax   +44 223 333345

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:28>From hbpaksoy@history.umass.edu  Thu Nov  4 08:22:09 1993

Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1993 09:25:22 -0500
From: hbpaksoy@history.umass.edu
Subject: Happy Meleagris gullopavo Day
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Happy Meleagris Gullapavo Day

Or, how the "thanksgiving bird" acquired its name:

  The homeland of the fowl known as "Meleagris
gullopavo" or "americana sybestris auis," is the North
American continent.  The 1494 Tordesillas treaty, forged by
the Pope in Rome, granted the monopoly of commerce
originating from the newly discovered continent to the
Portuguese (as opposed to the Spanish). The Portuguese
brought this fowl to their Goa colony in India.  Circa
1615, Cihangir (a direct descendent of the founder of the
"Mughal" empire in India, Babur 1483-1530, who was himself
a grandson of Timur who died in 1405) wrote his Tuzuk-u
Jahangiri (Institutes of Cihangir).  In his book, Cihangir
also described this fowl in detail replete with a color
drawing.  Since "Meleagris gullopavo" resembled the
"Meleagris Numida" commonly found in Africa (especially in
Guinea), and already known in India, the former became
known in British India as the "Guinea Fowl."  [See O.
Caroe, "Why Turkey." Asian Affairs (October 1970)].
Meleagris gullapavo was then introduced to Egypt, a
province of the Ottoman empire and entered the Turkish
language as Hindi ("India," or, "from India").  When
traders took a breeding stock from Ottoman ("Turkish")
Egypt to Spain and the British Isles, the bird was
designated "Turkey."  As a result, the pilgrims landing on
Plymouth rock in 1620 were familiar with "Turkey," when
they encountered it in their new home.  After the 1776
Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin suggested
that "turkey"  --native of the land--  be designated as the
symbol of the young American republic.  Instead, Haliaeetus
leucocephalus ("Bald Eagle") was given this honor.

Translated from:
  H. B. Paksoy, "Turk Tarihi, Toplumlarin Mayasi,
    Uygarlik"  Annals of Japan Association for Middle
    East Studies (Tokyo) No. 7, 1992. Pp. 173-220.
    Footnote 26.
  [Reprinted in Yeni Forum (Ankara), Vol. 13, No. 277,
    Haziran 1992. Pp. 54-65].

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:29>From TQAF072%UTXVM.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU  Thu Nov  4 09:48:06 1993

Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1993 09:50 -0500 (CDT)
From: SShelton@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU
Subject: Happy Meleagris gullopavo Day
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

That's GALLOPAVO. Otherwise, thanks for the background :-)
Sally Shelton

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:30>From hbpaksoy@history.umass.edu  Thu Nov  4 12:53:16 1993

Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1993 13:43:54 -0500
From: hbpaksoy@history.umass.edu
Subject: Re: Happy Meleagris gullopavo Day
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Bad ytpist.  (!) thanks.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:31>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu  Fri Nov  5 08:31:52 1993

Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1993 08:29:57 -0600 (CST)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: The Selfish Gene
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

	I had determined to reply to Barry Roth's query, but did not get a
chance to do so before Jeremy Ahouse forwarded a message from Dawkins
himself which preempts in part what I planned to say.  Let me just briefly
make a few points regarding Dawkins' "getting away with it."

1) Dawkins' book was explicitly aimed at 3 audiences: laymen, students,
 and experts.
2) As Dawkins noted, a major part of his book consisted of an explication
 and elaboration of previously published work by W.D. Hamilton, G.C.
 Williams and J. Maynard Smith.
3) Dawkins followed publication of his book with a series of papers on the
 topic, and, in 1982, another book, _The Extended Phenotype_, directed
 at the "experts".
4) Other authors (e.g. R. Trivers, those mentioned above) also were
 publishing on the subject.
	None of these points, of course, argues either for or against the
validity of Dawkins' views.  Nor do I intend to suggest that Dawkins'
views were unoriginal.  They do, however, show some of the context of
discussion within the discipline within which his book appeared.  They
might therefore be relevant to a consideration of exactly what it is
Dawkins "got away with".  It is the case that Dawkins did attract
professional interest, both pro and con.  I am not an anthropologist, and
thus do not know the context of the aquatic ape; I first read of it in the
cryptozoological literature.
	As regards the current status of Dawkins' views, there is still
debate.  Some of the concepts that have emerged in the dialogue between
Dawkins and his critics, for example replicator and interactor, are of
lasting utility, regardless of who is "right".  Those interested in
subsequent developments should look at E. Sober's _The Nature of
Selection_ (MIT Press, 1984) and G.C. Williams' _Natural Selection:
Domains, Levels, and Challenges_ (Oxford, 1992).
	For a particularly good example of sound scientific writing for a
popular audience, try Dawkins' _The Blind Watchmaker_ (Norton, 1986).

Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:32>From KIMLER@social.chass.ncsu.edu  Fri Nov  5 16:03:34 1993

From: KIMLER@social.chass.ncsu.edu
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1993 17:08:03 EST5EDT
Subject: Re: popular works

Not to pick nits, but there is a larger point on popular authors to
be made.  Dave Policar wrote
  I picked up Gould on my own in high school and college and learned
  a fair amount from him. Wasn't a substitute for biology or
  ethology classes, both of which I took in college, but helped me
  make more out of them. My first ethology class used his text,
  which I still remember --

I think he's referring to James L. Gould's _Ethology_ (1982).  I'm
sure by now James -- himself a fine popularizer of bee dance language
work -- has had plenty of experience being confused with Stephen.  I
know that a number of my students have assumed the two Gould's to be
the same.  But I also think, taking this discussion also to Dawkins'
work on selfish genes, that popular authors get associated with a lot
of ideas: some that are present in their work, some that are fleshed
out because of their work, and even, we could say for S. J. Gould
and Dawkins, some ideas of others that they have written about.
There are also the ideas, because a book is popular and
influential, some ideas that everyone assumes are in the work.
Certainly many people still think _Origin of Species_ is about people
descending from monkeys, or at least assume Darwin's major point was
human evolution.

I can't resist the obvious for our group:  In _Origin of Species_
Darwin wrote a very popular book, in a style that could be called
scientific (for its day) and popular.  He used the widely known
rhetoric and examples of the natural theology/natural history genre,
and Gillian Beer has argued that he used narrative conventions of the
novel of "development"  (_Darwin's Plots_).  It's also "popular" in
the convention of not including detailed notations to sources and
previous work.  It is also, as Dawkins desires, clearly
understandable to those not versed in the deep details of its
evidences.  Just what is it about a popular and readable text that is
supposed to be the problem?

William Kimler
History, North Carolina State University
kimler@ncsu.edu

p.s.  The responses re "cavemen" have been wonderfully helpful, and
just the sort of interest and help that one could wish a listserv to
provide.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:33>From jacobsk@ERE.UMontreal.CA  Fri Nov  5 20:09:07 1993

From: jacobsk@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Jacobs Kenneth)
Subject: HELP with works of AGRICOLA in translation???
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1993 21:10:45 -0500 (EST)

Greetings-
    A student of mine as part of her thesis research has been
trying to track down two works by AGRICOLA in either French or English
translation.  They are:

 _De natura eorum quae effluunt ex terra_

  and

 _De natura fossilium_

Any leads on these texts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Ken Jacobs
Departement d'anthropologie
Universite de Montreal
Montreal Quebec H3C 3J7 Canada

jacobsk@ere.umontreal.ca    FAX:  (514) 343-2494

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:34>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Fri Nov  5 20:45:44 1993

Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1993 21:52:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Teaching the historical sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

This coming semester I am going to be teaching a new undergraduate course on
the historical sciences, and I'd like to call upon the collective wisdom of
the group for advice.  The course will be called "The History and Theory of
the Historical Sciences", and most of the students will be sophomore honors
students (second-year undergraduates with above average grades).  A draft of
the course description appears below.  I plan to use Toulmin and Goodfield's
_The Discovery of Time_ (University of Chicago Press) as the principal text,
supplemented by a collection of shorter readings from primary and secondary
sources.

In addition to talking about the history and methods of the historical
sciences I would like to include several practical exercises in which the
students will be given some complex object or situation and will be asked to
reconstruct the sequence of events that produced that object or situation. For
example, I have for previous courses generated a collection of manuscripts
copied from an original, and had students reconstruct the stemma, or
genealogical tree, of the copies.  I have found this an excellent exercise to
use in evolutionary biology courses, actually, because it seems to help
students understand the principles of phylogeny reconstruction better than
some biological examples.

My questions are two, I suppose: (1) Can anyone recommend any similar
practical exercises in historical reconstruction that could be easily done
with a class of 20 undergraduates?  For example, are there any commonly used
strategies for teaching, say, stratigraphic correlation by means of contrived
examples?  (The immediate vicinity of my university has no good geological
outcroppings, unfortunately.)  (2) Are there any particularly good short
readings that any of you have used succesfully with undergraduates, and that
relate to either the discovery of deep historical time or the methods of
historical reconstruction in fields other than evolutionary biology?
(Evolutionary biology I know reasonably well.)  I would be particularly
interested in readings relating to historical linguistics or archeology.

Many thanks for any suggestions you may be able to provide.  Feel free to
reply to the group as a whole, or to me privately if you wish.  Here's a
draft of the course description:

 Honors 208: The History and Theory of the Historical Sciences

 The sciences in the twentieth century have usually been divided into
 physical sciences, life sciences, and social sciences, but this
 classification of the sciences is itself largely a twentieth-century
 invention.  In the nineteenth century and earlier it was common to divide
 the sciences into those that took a structural or experimental approach
 to their subjects -- the philosophical sciences -- and those that took an
 historical approach -- the historical sciences.  In the seventeenth
 century the same scholars who were debating the true nature of fossils
 were also collecting data on the history of the English language, and the
 burial practices of the ancient Romans.  In the nineteenth century many
 linguists compared their reconstructions of ancient languages to the work
 of geologists, and Charles Darwin in the _Origin of Species_ explained the
 divergence of biological species and varieties by comparing them with
 language dialects.  And today specialists who reconstruct the history of
 ancient manuscripts copied over many centuries from originals that are now
 lost have begun to employ in their work a set of techniques developed by
 natural historians for the reconstruction of evolutionary trees.  In this
 course we will examine the historical sciences as a coherent whole,
 reviewing their shared histories, and exploring their common methods.
 Students will not only gain a factual understanding of the history and
 practice of the historical sciences, but they will also be encouraged to
 challenge the intellectual framework of the twentieth century that has
 disintegrated the historical sciences and dispersed them across the
 academic landscape.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:35>From jlipps@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU  Fri Nov  5 21:02:31 1993

Date: Fri, 5 Nov 93 19:07:28 PST
From: jlipps@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU (Jere Lipps)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re:  HELP with works of AGRICOLA in translation???

Agricola's De natura fossilium was republished in English by the Geological
Society of America Special Paper 63.
J. H. Lipps

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:36>From dpolicar@MIT.EDU  Fri Nov  5 23:28:28 1993

From: dpolicar@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 06 Nov 93 00:23:40 EST
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re:   Re: popular works

> I think he's referring to James L. Gould's _Ethology_ (1982).

***BLUSH!***
Yup. He's right.

The point about popular authors becoming associated with the ideas of
the time, whether theirs or not, is well taken.

      Dave, slinking back into lurkerland...

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:37>From J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU  Sat Nov  6 05:39:58 1993

Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1993 6:43:36 -0500 (EST)
From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU (JOHN LIMBER)
Subject: RE: Teaching the historical sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

>This coming semester I am going to be teaching a new undergraduate course on
the historical sciences..."

IF you want to take up language----

Here are some good places for students to begin--Pedersen is a classic and
Leibniz' letters are remarkable.

Brinton, D. G. (1885). The philosophic grammar of American languages, as set
forth by William von Humboldt, with the translation of an unpublished memoir by
him on the American verb. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,
22.

Fraser, R. (1977). The Language of Adam: On the Limits and Systems of
Discourse. New York: Colombia University Press.

Pedersen, H. (1931/1962). The Discovery of Language (John Webster Spargo,
Trans.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Waterman, J. T. (1974). Leibniz on Language Learning. Modern Language Journal,
58, 89.

Waterman, J. T. (1978). Leibniz and Ludolf on Things Linguistic:  Excerpts from
Their Correspondence. Berkelely: University of Californian Press.

	John Limber, Psychology, University of New Hampshire

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:38>From c.lavastida1@genie.geis.com  Sat Nov  6 09:53:59 1993

From: c.lavastida1@genie.geis.com
Date: Sat,  6 Nov 93 15:49:00 BST
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: scientific and popular exp

Most of the time, rejection means the idea doesn't stand up.
 ----------
That is not quite true, as far as scientific ideas (I am not talking about
astrology); someone mentioned Kuhn's Revolution...earlier. It is his thesis
that before a new paradigm is accepted the old paradigm must undergo major
structural failures; this makes it quite possible, even likely, that many
good hypothese will be rejected out of hand due to insufficient weakness in
the current paradigm. I am not a biologist or a paleontologist, but it is my
understanding that Darwin's own anti-Lammarckism  and ignorance of genetics
eventually was discarded and Wallace's narrower conception of natural
selection accepted. During a period of roughly 75 years, any hypotheses,
scientific or not, that did not conform to the Darwinian theory in toto was
not entertained.
 Carlos.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:39>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu  Sat Nov  6 11:32:24 1993

Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1993 10:22:59 -0600 (CST)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: Teaching the historical sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

> In addition to talking about the history and methods of the historical
> sciences I would like to include several practical exercises in which the
> students will be given some complex object or situation and will be asked to
> reconstruct the sequence of events that produced that object or situation.
	I teach an ecology course in which one element of the field
portion of the laboratory is landscape interpretation: inferring the
history of plant communities.  I do not teach this as a separate lab
exercise, but rather it is an aspect that recurs in a number of field
situations, and thus I cannot provide a "canned" lab; in any event, what I
do in Wisconsin would not be directly applicable to North Carolina anyway.
The species composition and physiognomy of the vegetation of any site tell
us much about current conditions at the site, but we can also infer much
about the history of the site, and even about its future.  Let me give
four examples to illustrate the approach.
	1) Many species of trees have different growth forms depending on
the environmental conditions around them during their period of growth.
Because trees are long lived, we can infer what conditions were like
during the earlier life of the tree.  Trees with large, spreading,
spherical crowns are often "open grown", that is grown with light reaching
them from all sides (as would be the case if they were growing in an open
field).  Finding a large open grown tree within a forest allows one to
infer that the area had previously been a field, which, in the eastern
U.S., allows the further inference that prior to the field an original
forest had been cleared.
	2) On a recent visit to a lowland prairie we noted that the
prairie had formed on an extinct lake bed (had we been geologists, we
would have determined the position of the ancient lake shore ourselves,
rather than relying on our topo maps).  A railroad ran along the ancient
shore line, and we knew, from other sources, that prairie and other fire
resistant plants often persist along railroad tracks after they have been
otherwise extirpated by development.  Along the railroad we found typical
prairie herbs and grasses and fire resistant trees, forming a narrow strip
of savanna, and evidence of fires on the trunks of the trees.  Since the
locomotives (one went by while we were there) rarely spew burning embers
and coals anymore, we speculated about the frequency of fire under current
conditions, when the fires we had found evidence of had occurred, and
whether when fires were more frequent if the strip had been pure prairie
rather than savanna, but we could not firmly answer these questions
without taking tree cores and checking railroad records.  In Wisconsin
most prairies are maintained by fires, and in the lowland prairie proper
we found much evidence of fire on the few trees and human-implanted posts
we found, and in the prairie shrubs.  From a post implanted at the
entrance of a trail we were able to infer that winds blew mostly from the
northeast during fires on the basis of the different extent of charring on
the sides of the post.  The depth of charring also gave us some idea of
the severity of the fire.  Live prairie shrubs grew from the same spot as
burned ones, showing the fire had killed above ground portions of the
plants, but that the below ground parts had survived and regrown.  In
fact, the burned portions were the same height as the live ones, so we
could infer that the last fire had occurred in the time it takes them to
grow that high, and that if fires occur with a regular frequency, we were
due for another one.  Had we cut down a live shrub at its base and counted
the rings, we could have converted the fire frequency from units of shrub-
height to years.
	3) Just as old, large trees can help us infer the past, seedlings
and saplings can help us predict the future of the site.  Although it is a
great oversimplification, it is sometimes not a bad first approximation,
and makes a good laboratory exercise, to assume that the probability of a
tree species growing into the canopy is proportional to its prevalence as
a sapling.  Based on this assumption, a very simple Markov model can be
used with data on abundance in the canopy and sapling layers to predict
the future history of the forest.  If forests of known age are available,
predictions so generated can be compared to their actual species compositions.
	4) Tree falls create light gaps that fast growing, shade
intolerant species tend to grow in, and inferences concerning the history
of a small site can be made using this knowledge.  When a spruce dies and
falls, it creates a light gap that is likely to be colonized by paper
birch, a fast growing, short-lived tree.  When you find a a cluster of
three or four mature paper birch growing roughly in a row in a spruce
forest, you know that a spruce (now decomposed) fell, and along what
compass direction it fell, several decades ago.
	These are just a few examples. To do this sort of ecological
history requires much knowledge of the natural history (sensu lato) of the
species involved: their preferences for soils, light, moisture, temperature,
their life span, their growth characteristics, etc.  It also helps to know
local geology and physiography.  I have used these historical inferences
as just part of other exercises; you could, without too much difficulty, I
think, create exercises centered on the historical aspects.
	Unfortunately, I do not know of any published works that take this
field-oriented approach to historical reconstruction of vegetation history
as their central theme.  There may well be some; I am a zoologist and
could easily be ignorant of what botanists have written.  The Peterson
Field Guide to Eastern Forests has a little bit on this, and so might the
Sierra Club regional field guides.  There is a good reference for the
Markov approach to predictive history: Horn, H.S. 1975. Markovian
processes of forest succession. pp. 196-211 in M.L. Cody and J.M. Diamond,
eds. _Ecology and Evolution of Communities_. Harvard Univ. Press,
Cambridge, Mass.  There are numerous works on the use of pollen records
for inferring vegetation history, but this is a longer time scale approach
based on the sub-fossil record.  Because it also has much on the use of
all sorts of data other than pollen for the inference of historical events, I
recommend E.C. Pielou. 1991. _After the Ice Age_., Univ. of Chicago Press.

Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:40>From CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu  Sat Nov  6 13:44:12 1993

Date: Sat, 06 Nov 93 13:46 CDT
From: Tom Cravens <CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Teaching the historical sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Bob, for reconstructing events, students could also be presented with
problems requiring rule ordering in phonological history. A simple example:

In the development from Latin to Spanish, /t/ between vowels normally
evolved to /d/. Given a proto-form COMITE, describe the changes,
in chronological order, which led to the consonants of Spanish conde.

Answer:

Easy bits:
	1) voicing /t/ > /d/			comide
	2) syncope (loss of unstressed -i-)	comde
And a couple of sharp students eventually will add (not in these words):
	3) assimilation of /m/ to the point
	of articulation of /t/		conde

Once they've done a few of these, you then could assign reconstruction
of proto-forms, thus time using cross-dialect comparison: Given Italian
catena, Spanish cadena, Portuguese cadeia, French chaine, reconstruct
the single form from which all four evolved.

These can be done with any language family, of course. Romance is easy,
given the Latin source, the fact that some forms will be meaningful
to students, and that examples are readily available (e.g. Boyd-Bowman, Peter.
1980. _From Latin to Romance in sound charts_. Washington: G'town U Press),
but workbooks exist which contain material from a wide range of languages,
including some which students will never have heard of.

Tom Cravens
cravens@macc.wisc.edu
cravens@wiscmacc.bitnet

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:41>From ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu  Sat Nov  6 15:02:55 1993

Date: Sat, 6 Nov 93 11:06:24 HST
From: Ron Amundson <ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Teaching the historical sciences

Bob and List:

  To the excellent examples already given of activities
teaching historical sciences, I'll add a poorly remembered one.
I saw it on a science television program in which principles of
epidemiology were taught to a high school class.  It's probably
unusable as is, unless a biologist/epidemiologist reader
recognizes it and fills in some blanks.

  Each student was given a petri dish with medium.  One dish
had been infected with some bacterium, but no one knew which one.
There was a sequence of interactions among the students,
amounting to the exchange of petri-dish swabbings.  These took
place over some time, to allow a newly infected petri dish to
grow enough bacteria to pass on to future "acquaintances".
Records of the sequences of interactions were kept; not every
dish interacted with all other dishes.

  The dishes were stored, and after a period of time, examined
for infection.  The task was to reconstruct the sequence of
infections (and thus the originally infected dish) from the known
sequence of interactions and the final pattern of infected
dishes.

  This is not _pure_ historical reconstruction, of course, but
the reconstruction of one kind of historical information (passing
of infections) from another (the known sequence of interactions).
One can think of various complexities which might be introduced -
- e.g., only some of the interactions might be recorded, some
interactions might be one-directional, or the actual infection
might be introduced (unbeknownst to the students) to one dish at
some point _during_ the sequence of interactions rather than at
the beginning.  It would seem that the interaction sequence ought
to be controlled somewhat by the instructor -- some patterns of
interactions would make the pattern of infections
unreconstructable (if all dishes were infected or if only two
were and neither had interacted with any other dishes).

  The idea looked intriguing to me, and I'm sorry I can't give
a bibliographical source.  For all I know, it's a standard lab
exercise in epidemiology.  Perhaps someone else can supply more
details.

Ron Amundson
ronald@uhunix.bitnet
ronald@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:42>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu  Sun Nov  7 08:31:59 1993

Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1993 09:37:23 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy John Ahouse)
Subject: Re: Teaching the historical sciences

Bob,
    If you have access to Macintosh computers then I would strongly
recommend using MacClade with your students.  This program allows you to
explore cladistic reconstructions very easily.

 - Jeremy

 Jeremy John Ahouse
 Biology Dept. & Center for Complex Systems
 Brandeis University
 Waltham, MA 02254-9110

 (617) 736-4954
 email: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu
 Mail from Mac by Eudora 1.3.1 RIPEM/PGP accepted.

 "Si un hombre nunca se contradice, sera porque nunca dice nada"
     - Miguel de Unamuno

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:43>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sun Nov  7 13:41:51 1993

Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1993 14:48:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: November 7 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

NOVEMBER 7 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1817: JEAN ANDRE DELUC dies at Windsor, England.  Born in Geneva in 1727,
Deluc had emigrated to England following a business failure in 1773.  A
Biblical geologist, he had published many works that attempted to demonstrate
"the conformity of geological monuments with the sublime account of that
series of the operations which took place during the Six days, or periods
of time, recorded by the inspired penman."

1913 (80 years ago today): ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE dies at Broadstone, Dorset,
England.  Co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the principle of natural
selection, Wallace had been an extensive traveller and a prolific writer on
topics ranging from evolution and spiritualism to astronomy and vaccination.
His most enduring work will be his several volumes on historical biogeography:
"If we take the organic productions of a small island, or of any very limited
tract of country, such as a moderate-sized country parish, we have, in their
relations and affinities -- in the fact that they are _there_ and others are
_not_ there, a problem which involves all the migrations of these species and
their ancestral forms -- all the vicissitudes of climate and all the changes
of sea and land which have affected those migrations -- the whole series of
actions and reactions which have determined the preservation of some forms and
the extinction of others, -- in fact the whole history of the earth, inorganic
and organic, throughout a large portion of geological time."  (_Island Life_,
second edition, 1892.)

Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.  For
information send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:44>From c.lavastida1@genie.geis.com  Sun Nov  7 15:30:47 1993

From: c.lavastida1@genie.geis.com
Date: Sun,  7 Nov 93 21:08:00 BST
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Teaching the historical sc

 "Si un hombre nunca se contradice, sera porque nunca dice nada"
     - Miguel de Unamuno
 -----------
 Sounds like Fray Luis de Leon to me, quoting Alfonso el Sabio.
 Carlos.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:45>From WIKSTROM_N@mist.tele.su.se  Mon Nov  8 06:45:37 1993

Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 13:46 GMT+0200
From: wikstrom_n@botan.su.se
Subject: early waterbaby
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

"Treschow, the acute Norwegian thinker and Minister in his Ider
till menniskosl{ktets filosofi, infers from several physiological
reasons that the genus before its appearance as man, in its shape
and way of life mostly resembled the Walrus, of which it is said
that he is the only animal, from the eye of which, like in man, tears
fall. He also remarks that in its vicinity are found, among aquatic
animals, the most highly developed representatives of the highest
land-animals, such as the Sea-monkey, the Sea-lion, the Sea-bear
etc.."
(This citation is from "Naturens Perfectibilitet" an address given
by Elias Fries at the general assembly of Scandinavian Scientists
at their Meeting in Copenhagen in 1847.
In all probability, Fries' citation refers to N. Treschow, Elementer
til Historiens Philosophie i forelaesninger holdne Vinteren 1806-
1807, Copenhagen 1811, an early example of idealistic
evolutionism in Scandinavia. Treshow may have been the first to
propose such a watery origin for mankind from physiological
grounds. That the weeping walrus was still current around the turn
of the century is witnessed by Lewis Carroll as well as Elias Fries.)

H-E Wanntorp

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:46>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu  Mon Nov  8 08:15:15 1993

Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 09:20:28 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu,
    bill@dorrit.as.utexas.edu (William H. Jefferys)
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy John Ahouse)
Subject: Re: Teaching/MacClade

>#If you have access to Macintosh computers then I would strongly
>#recommend using MacClade with your students.  This program allows you to
>#explore cladistic reconstructions very easily.
>
>Where can this be obtained?
>
>Bill

Bill asked me this question as private mail but I thought the list might
like to know the answer...

IUBio gopher site has both the old Freeware MacClade and a demo version of
the one available from Sinaur.  The Sinaur version is very nicely done and
the manual is also a good text on using parsimony.

(Many folks pair this program with PAUP  for the Mac (for searching for
minimum evolution reconstructions, the file formats are shared between the
two programs).

    - Jeremy

p.s. Here is the readme file from the IUBio gopher site...

The following items relating to MacClade version 3.04 are contained on
this ftp site:

macclade.304.update.package.hqx:  this contains an updater that allows one
   to convert MacClade versions 3.0, 3.01, 3.02, and 3.03 into version
   3.04.  This contains both a program updater, as well as the latest
   versions of the Help file, some Example files, and the Supplement to
   the Book.  (this file is about 444 Kb - once extracted, the contained
   files are about 518Kb)

macclade.304.demo.hqx:  this contains a demonstration version of MacClade
   3.04.  It is like the real thing, except that it cannot save or print,
   and is limited to small matrices.  (this file is about 685 Kb - once
   extracted, the contained files are about 1.2 Mb)

Both of these files are binhexed.  If your software for downloading these
files do not automatically de-binhex them, you will need a program
that can de-binhex them. (FTP programs like Fetch and gopher programs like
Turbogopher automatically de-binhex; utility programs like Compact Pro
or Stuffit can de-binhex as well.)

These files are self-extracting archives.  Starting them up and choosing
Extract will cause them to automatically be extracted into their usable
format.

For technical information regarding MacClade, contact clade@arizona.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:47>From FULTRD@ooi.clark.edu  Mon Nov  8 10:09:04 1993

To: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu, darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: FULTRD@ooi.clark.edu
Organization: Clark College, Vancouver WA, USA
Date: 8 Nov 93 08:08:11 PST8PDT
Subject: Re: Teaching the historical sciences

Re: a book that works on time discovery, some years ago we used
*Rising from the Plains* in a freshman seminar at Rocky Mountain
College to good effect.

RDFulton
Fultrd@ooi.clark.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:48>From staddon@psych.duke.edu  Mon Nov  8 10:38:10 1993

Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 11:41:26 EST
From: staddon@psych.duke.edu (John Staddon)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re:  Teaching the historical sciences

Let me plug my new short book as a supporting text for a course on the
historical science.  It deals at some length with the Darwinian metaphor
as well as giving a brief history of behaviorism.  Info follows:

BEHAVIORISM: Mind, Mechanism and Society
by John Staddon

London: Duckworth, 1993. $9.85

ISBN 0 71562488 1

Distributed in the US by
Focus Information Group
PO Box 369
Newburyport MA 01950

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:49>From hbpaksoy@history.umass.edu  Mon Nov  8 13:02:09 1993

Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1993 14:00:03 -0500
From: hbpaksoy@history.umass.edu
Subject: book announcement
To: darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

          Book Announcement:

           CENTRAL
            ASIAN
          MONUMENTS

         H. B. Paksoy, Editor

          Table of Contents:

        H. B. Paksoy "Kuyas Ham Alav"
       Peter Golden "Codex Comanicus"
    Richard Frye "Narshaki's The History of Bukhara"
        Robert Dankoff "Adab Literature"
        Uli Schamiloglu "Umdet ul Ahbar"
        Kevin Krisciunas "Ulug Beg's Zij"
   Audrey L. Altstadt "Abbaskuluaga Bakikhanli's Nasihatlar"
    Edward Lazzerini "Gaspirali Ismail Bey's Tercuman"
     David S. Thomas "Yusuf Akcura's Uc Tarz-i Siyaset"

         ISBN: 975-428-033-9

       LC CALL NUMBER: DS329.4 .C46 1992
   SUBJECTS: Asia, Central--Historiography.
       Asia, Central--Literatures--History
     and criticism.  Asia, Central--Language

       US$20 + $8 International airmail

           1992
         The ISIS Press
           Istanbul

     Orders: Isis Press, Semsibey Sokak 10
       81210 Beylerbeyi Istanbul
            Turkey

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:50>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Fri Nov 12 12:00:21 1993

Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 13:07:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Files available, and 500th subscriber
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Greetings to all.  At some time the the last couple of days Darwin-L got
its 500th subscriber.  The growth of our group has been much more rapid
that I had ever expected, and I am grateful to all of you for your interest
and your many contributions.

We now have two more files available in the list archives: the file 9310 is
the edited log of all posted messages for the month of October, and the
file bmcr.report describes the project Jeff Wills and I had mentioned that
applies the techniques of cladistic analysis to a problem in manuscript
genealogy.  These files may be retrieved by sending a message of this form
to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu:

   GET DARWIN-L filename

   For example: GET DARWIN-L 9310

   Or: GET DARWIN-L BMCR.REPORT

Newer members who wish to review earlier postings may also get the file 9309
which contains the September posts.  For more information about the available
listserv commands send the message INFO DARWIN-L to our listserv address.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:51>From CLADE@mozart.biosci.arizona.edu  Fri Nov 12 13:22:28 1993

Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 13:22:28 -0600
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: CLADE@mozart.biosci.arizona.edu (MacClade Tech Support)
Subject: MacClade Updater

A MacClade updater (to convert versions 3.0, 3.01, 3.02, or 3.03 to version
3.04) is available from the following anonymous ftp sites:

felix.embl-heidelberg.de
    Directory: /pub/software/mac

ftp.bchs.uh.edu
    Directory: /pub/gene-server/mac

ftp.bio.indiana.edu
    Directory: /molbio/mac

onyx.si.edu
    Directory: /macclade

While the exact name of the file varies from site to site, it is
something like "macclade.304.updater.hqx".

If you are using a program
like Fetch or Turbogopher to acquire this file, these programs will
automatically convert this file into a self-extracting archive, which
you can double-click in the Finder to extract the contents.  If you
are not using such a program, then the file will come to you as an
BinHex file, and you will need to de-binhex it using software such
as DeBinHex, Stuffit, or CompactPro.  You will then have a self-
extracting archive.

Please address any queries about this updater to
 clade@arizona.edu

=================================================
MacClade Technical Support

FAX: (602)621-1150   e-mail:  clade@arizona.edu
=================================================

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:52>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sun Nov 14 15:32:57 1993

Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1993 16:40:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: November 14 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

NOVEMBER 14 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1797: CHARLES LYELL is born at Kinnordy, Forfarshire, Scotland.  After making
preparations for a career in law, Lyell's interests will turn increasingly
toward geology, and his _Principles of Geology_ (1830-1833) will become one
of the foundational works on the historical sciences published during the
nineteenth century: "When we study history, we obtain a more profound insight
into human nature, by instituting a comparison between the present and former
states of society.  We trace the long series of events which have gradually
led to the actual posture of affairs; and by connecting effects with their
causes, we are enabled to classify and retain in the memory a multitude of
complicated relations -- the various peculiarities of national character --
the different degrees of moral and intellectual refinement, and numerous other
circumstances, which, without historical associations, would be uninteresting
or imperfectly understood.  As the present condition of nations is the result
of many antecedent changes, some extremely remote and others recent, some
gradual, others sudden and violent, so the state of the natural world is the
result of a long succession of events, and if we would enlarge our experience
of the present economy of nature, we must investigate the effects of her
operations in former epochs."  (_Principles of Geology_, vol. 1, 1830.)

Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.  For
information send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:53>From chladil@geo.geol.utas.edu.au  Sun Nov 14 23:32:52 1993

From: Mark Chladil <chladil@geo.geol.utas.edu.au>
Subject: Darwin and beetles
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 93 16:36:21 EST

We would like to use a quote often attributed to Darwin that goes like:

What do your studies tell you about the mind of God?
Darwin: That He had an inordinate fondness for beetles.

The trouble is that we need to know
1. What was the quote exactly?
2. Who asked the question?
3. What is the exact citation for this quote?

Please reply to me directly at: mark.chladil@geog.utas.edu.au.
If there is interest I'll post a summary back to the list
Thankyou in advance
Mark Chladil

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:54>From zorc@hippo.ru.ac.za  Mon Nov 15 00:42:03 1993

From: zorc@hippo.ru.ac.za (Mr RJ Chambers)
Subject: Re: Darwin and beetles
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 08:45:07 +0200 (EET)

Mark Chladil writes:

> We would like to use a quote often attributed to Darwin that goes like:
>
> What do your studies tell you about the mind of God?
> Darwin: That He had an inordinate fondness for beetles.
>
> The trouble is that we need to know
> 1. What was the quote exactly?
> 2. Who asked the question?
> 3. What is the exact citation for this quote?
>
> Please reply to me directly at: mark.chladil@geog.utas.edu.au.
> If there is interest I'll post a summary back to the list
> Thankyou in advance
> Mark Chladil

If you paruse through this years "Natural History" in which Gould writes
a regular essay, you will find one on just such a subject; my copies are
at home, but if no-one else beats me too it, I'll let you know soon.
Actaully, I think the quote originates from Haldane!
--
Richard Chambers - Zoology Department - Rhodes University
Internet: zorc@hippo.ru.ac.za  Telephone: (0461) 22023 xt 524

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:55>From WENKE@MAX.U.WASHINGTON.EDU  Mon Nov 15 05:22:14 1993

Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 03:25:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: WENKE@U.WASHINGTON.EDU
Subject: Re: Darwin and beetles
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

It wasn't Darwin:  J. B. S. Haldane said it. See American Naturalist
Vol. 95 (1959), pp. 145-59.
  Gould (In An Urchin In the Storm, p. 180) uses the phrase
"is said to have answered" this question from a group of
theologians, so it might not be traceable to an exact time or
questioner.
Rob Wenke
Anthropology
U. of Washington

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:56>From staddon@psych.duke.edu  Mon Nov 15 07:14:20 1993

Date: Mon, 15 Nov 93 08:17:35 EST
From: staddon@psych.duke.edu (John Staddon)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re:  Darwin and beetles

The quote is from JBS Haldane, I think -- not Darwin (though he did like
to collect beetles).  JS

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:57>From @VM1.NoDak.EDU:PX53@SDSUMUS.SDSTATE.EDU  Mon Nov 15 10:05:50 1993

Date: Mon, 15 Nov 93 11:10:16 CST
From: PAUL J JOHNSON <PX53@SDSUMUS.SDSTATE.EDU>
To: <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject: Re: Darwin and beetles

Regarding the origin of Haldane's note, misattributed to Darwin, the
following was extracted from a correspondence published in ANTENNA,
1991, vol 16(1): 86-87. The correspondent is R.C. Fisher, University
College - London.

"John Maynard Smith told me that he thinks Haldane may have originally
used it in one of his Radio broadcasts, as he had found no record of
it in any of Haldane's collections of essays."  According to Authur
Cain, Fisher quotes the latter:  "It was Haldane, not Huxley, and he
told me the story himself.  I don't know where you'll find it in print,
if indeed it was ever printed.  Some solemn ass asked him what could
be inferred of the work of creation (putting any such question to
Haldane was just asking for trouble) and got the crushing reply `an
inordinate fondness for beetles'.

Cheers,
Paul

Paul J Johnson
SDSU Insect Museum
South Dakota State University
Box 2207A
Brookings, South Dakota 57007 USA
e-mail: px53@sdsumus.sdstate.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:58>From SHANKSN@ETSUSERV.EAST-TENN-ST.EDU  Mon Nov 15 10:06:09 1993

From: <SHANKSN@ETSUSERV.EAST-TENN-ST.EDU>
Organization: East Tennessee State University
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 11:04:58 GMT-5
Subject: grad school

Folks, I have a friend who is interested in pursuing grad studies in
philosophy of biology (with major interests in ethology).  Can any of
you recommend any programs which might cater to these interests?

Please reply off-list to:

Shanksn@Etsuserv.East-Tenn-St.Edu

Cheers,
Niall Shanks

_______________________________________________________________________________

<3:59>From leh1@Lehigh.EDU  Mon Nov 15 11:46:57 1993

Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 12:30:29 EST
From: leh1@Lehigh.EDU (Lynn E. Hanninen)
Subject: phenetics vs cladistics vs evol. class.
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Hi!
I'm a grad student sitting in on a grad course in -systematics.-  I'm a psych
major with little formal training in biology, taxonomy, etc.  I'm reading a
book about principles of sytematics in zoology (by Mayr?).  It's a tad
confusing; the jargon confuses me.

Could some kind soul BRIEFLY summarize the MAJOR differences between
phenetics, cladistics & evolutionary classification?
Also, please define (simply):
holophyletic
autamorphy

What is the difference between derived and ancestral characters?

You can reply privately if you like to leh1@lehigh.edu

thanks (sorry if I sound ignorant; I'm trying!)

lynn

**************************
Lehigh office: rm. 221, CU #17
office phone #: (215) 758-3662
home phone #: (215) 758-1367

e-mail: leh1@lehigh.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________
Darwin-L Message Log 3: 1-59 -- November 1993           End