Darwin-L Message Log 4: 1–25 — December 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 December 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 4: 1-25 -- DECEMBER 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 December 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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:1>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Wed Dec  1 00:08:27 1993

Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1993 01:16:27 -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, especially those who have recently
joined us.  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
three months old, and we have more than 500 members from nearly 30 countries.
I am grateful to all of you for your interest and your many contributions.
In the early days of our list many people sent short introductory messages
describing the nature of their interest in the historical sciences.  If any
of our newer members would like to introduce themselves in this way they
are most welcome to do so; others who wish to remain in the background and
just listen in on our discussions are perfectly welcome to do that as well.

Several subscribers have asked me to remind everyone to please sign their
messages with a name and e-mail address, since many older mailing systems
show only "Darwin-L" as the source of each message.  In the absence of a
signature these members have no way of identifying the particular person
behind any of the messages that go out to the group as a whole.  I have
also been asked to announce that subscribers who will be away from their
computers during the upcoming holiday season in many countries may wish to
take advantage of the "postpone" command described below to temporarily
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The following are the most frequently used listserv commands that Darwin-L
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In each case leave the subject line of the message blank and include no
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   SUBSCRIBE DARWIN-L <Your Name>

   For example: SUBSCRIBE DARWIN-L John Smith

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If you feel burdened by the volume of mail you receive from Darwin-L you may
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When you wish to resume regular mail delivery send either the DIGEST or
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For a comprehensive introduction to Darwin-L with notes on our scope and on
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   INFO DARWIN-L

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:2>From SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu  Wed Dec  1 14:32:52 1993

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: "Gerard Donnelly Smith"  <SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu>
Organization: Clark College, Vancouver WA, USA
Date: 1 Dec 93 12:30:11 PST8PDT
Subject: linguistic drifts or "imbalances"

The gaps or imbalance you refer to, I believe equal linguistic
drift and usually are associated with venacular expressions moving
into dominance, aberrant spellings becoming acceptable, influx of
foreign words due either to conquest or trade, and coinage for new
technology or concepts. These equal the common causes for
linguistic evolution in any language.

The agreement errors which some associate with the gender awareness
caused by political correctness are, as Greg Mayer, points out much
older.  I've been teaching grammar for 15 years and ran into this and
similar errors in agreement from the beginning.  The problem arises
in your inablity to differentiate group nouns and pronouns from
singular ones, especially concerning "everyone" and "everybody".
When "everyone" (every person) is one word it reguires the singular
pronoun, whereas when "every one" is two words it requires the plural
pronoun or noun, as in "Every one of the students."  Most folks don't
realize that there are two versions of this pronoun, thus the error
arises.

Other drifts which I've been trying to reverse include: "alot" used
for "much", "more" or  "many."  The use of "its" and "it's"
interchangeagly.  The use of "ain't" for "is not",  "was not", "will
not," etc. The use of "gonna" for "going to."

Who knows when these non-idiomatic expressions and agreement errors
began, but their origins can be traced to dialect differences,
and truncations of words and phrases in speech.  When we speak we
contract expressions, then these contracted expressions creep into
the written language.  Purists try to stem the tied, albiet quite
fruitlessly.

It may be fruitful to consider changes in the written language
according to these verbal influences.  I can't think of the text off
hand, but studies have been conducted of these "drifts" by noting
their first appearance in written texts.

These errors or aberrances are not often harmful, but they can be
when specificity and clarity are required.  My advice to avoid these
comes is echoed by George Orwell in "The Politics of the
English Language", by Francis Vesey called DECLINE OF THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1920) and, of course, by Noam Chomsky.

Dr. Gerard Donnelly-Smith    e-mail: smitgm@hawkins.clark.edu
English Department           phone:  206-699-0478
Clark College
Vancouver, WA  98663

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:3>From GGALE@VAX1.UMKC.EDU  Wed Dec  1 16:34:34 1993

Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1993 16:36:32 -0600 (CST)
From: GGALE@VAX1.UMKC.EDU
Subject: Science Studies archive and services @ kasey.umkc.edu
To: HTECH-L@SIVM.Bitnet, HASTRO-L%WVNVM.bitnet@vm42.cso.uiuc.edu,
    darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu, sci-tech-studies@ucsd.edu,
    HPSST-L%QUCDN.bitnet@vm42.cso.uiuc.edu, HOPOS-L@UKCC.BITNET

The University of Missouri-Kansas City sponsors an electronic archive
called Science Studies. Archived material covers a wide range of
disciplines, including history, philosophy, and sociology of science, science
education, and other related areas. Several electronic texts of wide interest
are available, including Fuller and Raman's STS Curricular Guide.
Additional topics include job offerings, meetings, e-lists, and pedagogical
information.

Gopher service (named after the mascot of the University of Minnesota,
which developed the gopher interface) is extremely easy to use. One of the
easiest ways to reach the UMKC gopher is simply to type  gopher
kasey.umkc.edu at your main prompt (=the  $  or whatever other symbol
appears immediately after you have logged on to your mainframe
computer). If your computer service has installed the gopher software, you
will immediately have the UMKC root gopher screen show up on your
display. Simply arrow-down to  Science Studies, do a
carriage-return, and you're there. If you find something you'd like to
download, typing  s  will save it to your mainframe account. Further
information about accessing gopher service is included below.

Recent additions to kasey include the text of Oxford University's
Tutorial Guide to the Philosophy of Science, announcements of postdocs
in various science studies fields, news of several meetings and jobs, and,
in the directory /Other E-sources and Archives, compilations of Net
resources for Physics, Biology, Economics and Philosophy. In the directory
/E-lists will be found a rich trove of information, particularly involving
the activities of HOPOS (the history of philosophy of science working
group) and Darwin-L (the working group for the historical sciences).

Suggestions or material for posting may be sent to George Gale,
ggale@vax1.umkc.edu. Organization officers or other 'responsible parties'
(agency officials, for example, or search/program committee members)
having material of interest to the wider Science Studies community may
submit it to the address below. In addition we *strongly* encourage
members of this list to submit syllabi to kasey's Pedagogy Archives. Mail
disks to the address listed below, or send a plain text e-mail containing
the syllabus to the address listed in the first sentence of this paragraph.

Kasey also offers direct gopher link to the International Philosophy
Preprint Exchange, at Chiba University, Japan. Philosophy of science
holdings in the IPPE archive are growing at an accelerating pace; members
of this list are especially encouraged to submit drafts of papers or
comments on already-archived papers to the Exchange. If you would prefer
to have your work prepared for submission by George Gale, please send a
*plain text* via disk or e-mail to him. US mail address: Dept. of
Philosophy, University of Missouri, Kansas City MO 64110. E-mail:
ggale@Vax1.umkc.edu.

For those who don't have local gopher access, it is possible to use telnet to
access distant gophers. To use the list below, simply telnet either the
alphabetic or the numerical site-designator (col. 1 or col. 2), and sign in
using the password indicated (col. 3). The root gopher screen should open
display; use arrows and carriage returns to navigate the gopher net. Col. 4
gives the location of the designated sites. Because it is often easier to use
a site whose local time is off-peak/off-business hours, you might choose
to telnet a site on a different continent than yours.
   panda.uiowa.edu   128.255.40.201 panda North America
   gopher.msu.edu    35.8.2.61    gopher  North America
   gopher.ebone.net  192.36.125.2   gopher  Europe
   info.anu.edu.au   150.203.84.20  info  Australia
   gopher.chalmers.se  129.16.221.40  gopher  Sweden
   tolten.puc.cl   146.155.1.16   gopher  South America
   ecnet.ec      157.100.45.2   gopher  Ecuador
   gan.ncc.go.jp   160.190.10.1   gopher  Japan

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:4>From fisk@midway.uchicago.edu  Wed Dec  1 18:19:58 1993

Date: Wed, 1 Dec 93 18:23:22 CST
From: magnus fiskesjo <fisk@midway.uchicago.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: hist of archaeology

On Hobbes and Locke, and their view of the original condition of Men, I wish
to thank Messieurs Kenny and Richardson for their lucid comments. By the way,
I have also located an interesting (or so it seems) book entitled SOCIAL
SCIENCE AND THE IGNOBLE SAVAGE by a certain mr. Meek. It discusses precisely
these issues and was issued in 1975, I believe, by Cambridge University
Press - you may all wish to take a look at it. Any comments on that book? (I
have barely started it myself). - However this barely addresses my original
question, which was whether one might say that archaeology developed
differently at least in part due to the relative strength of enlightenment
thinking on unilinear evolution from bad to good, which appears COMMON to
both Locke and Hobbes, as well as to certain Frenchmen of the enlightened
era, as opposed to the Everyone-has-their-own-culture-and-it-is-equally-'good'
approach of Herder. I am still trying to find out just how Herderian Danes such
as Thomsen and Worsaae were when they invented what they invented of Danish and
European archaeology. Any comments?

Magnus Fiskesjo
Univ of Chicago
fisk@midway.uchicago.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:5>From laudan@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu  Wed Dec  1 23:39:03 1993

Date: Wed, 1 Dec 93 19:42:27 HST
From: Rachel Laudan <laudan@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
To: darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: NEH Summer Seminar

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES SUMMER SEMINAR FOR COLLEGE TEACHERS.
June 13-July 22 1994. Rachel Laudan will offer a six-week seminar, IMAGES OF
SCIENCE 1789-1914, at the University of Hawaii. The seminar will focus on
scientists' promotion of science as a progressive, value-free, objective
enterprise, and on their audience's reaction to this image. Stipends of $3200
are available. Applicants must be citizens or permanent residents of the
United States. Application deadline is March 1, 1994. Application materials
and further information available from the Director, Dr. Rachel Laudan,
General Science, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822. Fax:
808-956-4745. Email: Laudan@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu.

To Darwin members: I have had a long term interest in the historical
sciences, from geology (FROM MINERALOGY TO GEOLOGY), to the history of
geology, to a current project on scientists' histories of science in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. although the seminar will not focus on
the historical sciences, it will be deeply informed by my interest in them.
Do contact me if you would like further information. Best wishes, Rachel Laudan

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:6>From CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu  Fri Dec  3 14:31:34 1993

Date: Fri, 03 Dec 93 14:32 CDT
From: Tom Cravens <CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: linguistic drifts or "imbalances"
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

It may be of some interest to the List that 'drift' is (sort of) a
technical term in linguistics, attributed to Edward Sapir, who wrote:

"Language moves down time in a current of its own making. It has a drift.
If there were no breaking up of a language into dialects, if each language
continued as a firm, self-contained unity, it would still be constantly
moving away from any assignable norm, developing new features
unceasingly and gradually transforming itself into a language so
different from its starting point as to be in effect a new language."
(Sapir, Edward. 1949 [1921]. Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace. p. 150.)

The implication is that 'drift' refers primarily to structural
(phonological, morphological, syntactic) realignments--internally
motivated for the most part, and evincing linguistic change--, rather
than lexical additions from external sources, with only lexical
repercussions.

An article examining the history and acceptance of the term is:

Malkiel, Yakov. 1981. Drift, slope, and slant. Language 57.535-570.

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:7>From sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu  Fri Dec  3 17:23:13 1993

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: linguistic drifts or "imbalances"
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 93 18:26:41 -0500
From: Sally Thomason <sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu>

 The term "drift" is so vague that it isn't surprising if
nonlinguists find it unclear; it isn't what Gerard Donnelly
Smith has in mind, though.  I haven't been keeping up with
postings lately, so maybe other linguists have discussed
drift already.  I'm sorry if I'm repeating things.

 Imbalances (a loose term that is mainly an abbreviation for
a lot of different structural conditions) in a linguistic system
are, ultimately, things that are hard to learn because they're
irregular, or hard to hear, or whatever. A hole in a pattern
can also be an imbalance: an example that has , I think, been
mentioned here before is the new second person plural pronoun
that appears in various dialects -- not always the same form,
but always the same function, to disambiguate 2nd person
reference: yunz (here in Pittsburgh), y'all (for some Southern
speakers), etc.

 But many structural imbalances are not gaps in patterns.
Irregular forms, especially those that aren't very commonly used,
are often vulnerable to regularization.  So, for instance, most
young Americans have only _dreamed_ as the past tense of _dream_;
the new past is still competing with the old irregular past tense
_dreamt_ for many English speakers.  Another recent example of
regularization is the plural of _cow_: now it's _cows_, but it
used to be something like "ki" (I forget just what the vowel
would have been in Modern English) -- or, rather, it would have
been "ki" (or so) if _kine_ hadn't been formed instead, with the
same suffix as in _oxen_.

 Still another type of "imbalance" is often considered a
trigger for sound change -- things that are hard to hear, such
as final syllables in long words which are stressed on the initial
syllable.  (Well, maybe I'm using the term "imbalance" more
broadly than some other linguists might.  My point is that the
notion covers a heterogeneous bunch of phenomena. There are others
besides the ones I've mentioned.)

 The idea behind drift, in historical linguistics, is this:
if a language A is in the process of splitting, or has recently
split, into two daughter languages B and C, B and C have of course
inherited all the structures of A, including the hard-to-learn
things -- patterns with gaps, hard-to-hear sounds, irregular
forms, etc.  Because they have inherited the same structures,
and because changes that are motivated in part by difficulty
of learning are often quite similar, we are likely to find a
sizable number of identical, or very similar, changes in B and C.

 This fact has methodological implications.  Our Comparative
Method, by means of which we can reconstruct (parts of) an
unattested, i.e. literally prehistoric, parent language of a family
of related languages, assumes -- among other things -- that
features shared by all the daughter languages can safely be
reconstructed for the parent language.  Obviously, the results of
changes due to drift, that is, changes that occur AFTER B and C (the
only daughter languages of A) have diverged independently from A,
are not features that were present in A; so such features have
the potential of misleading us into reconstructing things for
A that A didn't have.  Sometimes we can find evidence that
will keep us from making this mistake: for instance, the so-called
"yers" of late Proto-Slavic were extra-short vowels that underwent
very similar changes in the various Slavic languages.  But the
results of those changes, while similar, differ in detail from
language to language; so we know that they post-dated the
splitting of Proto-Slavic into the various Slavic languages.
Sometimes, though, we don't have such evidence from differences
in the details of changes, and so we are bound to reconstruct
some things for a proto-langauge (parent language of a family)
that it didn't have.  No way to check.  And, of course, we
are also unable to reconstruct some things for a proto-language
that it DID have -- things that have been lost in all the
daughter languages, maybe due to drift.  Our methods have
limitations.  But isn't that true in all the historical sciences?

 Sally Thomason
 sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:8>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sat Dec  4 23:29:15 1993

Date: Sun, 05 Dec 1993 00:35:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Ancestral and derived character states in systematics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

This is a belated second installment in answer to some questions Lynn
Hanninen asked several days ago about systematics.  I tried in the first
reply to distinguish between phylogenetic (historical) inference and
classification, and here will try to describe the difference between
ancestral and derived character states.  Although I will describe these
concepts as they are used in systematics, I think the general ideas will be
very clear to philologists as well.  As always, this is a brief summary;
many things said here could be qualified and expanded upon.

Systematists reconstruct phylogeny on the basis of _character_ data.  What
is a character?  A character is _an observed difference from which we infer
an evolutionary event_.  The two "sides" of the difference are the character
_states_.  (Characters may have more than two states, but for purposes of
exposition I will consider only two-state characters.)  For example, if we
were to examine the 300 or so species of woodpeckers, we would notice many
differences among them, such as the fact that some of the species are
four-toed while others are three-toed.  "Number of toes" in this case would
be a character, and its states would be "four" and "three".  If woodpeckers
are a clade (a whole branch of the evolutionary tree) then it is likely that
the ancestral woodpecker was either four-toed or three-toed, and that at
some point during the history of the woodpecker clade one branch changed
from one state to the other (an evolutionary event).  The original state for
the clade as a whole is the _ancestral state_, and the innovation that now
occurs in a portion of the entire clade is the _derived state_.  In this
particular case we believe that "four-toed" is the ancestral state of the
character "toe number" in woodpeckers, so the transformation went like this:
four-toed --> three-toed.  This does not mean that there are no more four-
toed woodpeckers; there are.  What it means is that when we look at the
species we see today, any particular pair of four-toed species are not
necessarily more closely related to one another than either is to the
three-toed branch, because the ancestral four-toed state may _retained_
anywhere in the tree.  Thus _similarity_ is not the criterion of historical
relationship; it is similarity in _derived states_ that is evidence of
relationship (the similarity among the three-toed species, in this example).

A couple more examples: In the case of mammals, laying a shelled egg is the
ancestral state, and live birth is the derived state, of a character we
might call "mode of reproduction".  The monotremes (Spiny Anteater,
Duck-billed Platypus) retain the ancestral state, while most other mammals
exhibit the derived state (live birth).  Notice from this example that the
designation of a character state as ancestral or derived is always dependent
upon the level in the tree we are talking about (mammals, in this case), and
is not some absolute attribute of the state itself.  Laying a shelled
egg is a _derived_ state for the tetrapods (the four-legged vertebrates),
because for the tetrapods as a whole the ancestral state is usually
considered to be the unshelled "amphibian" egg (like a frog or salamander
egg); but the shelled egg is an _ancestral_ state of the mammalian clade.

A number of synonyms for these terms are in common use: "primitive" or
"plesiomorphic" are sometimes used in place of "ancestral"; "apomorphic" is
sometimes used in place of "derived".  Thus "a plesiomorphy" is an ancestral
character state, and "an apomorphy" is a derived character state.  We could
speak of the three-toed condition as being an apomorphy of one sub-clade of
woodpeckers, or of the woodpecker clade as a whole being plesiomorphically
(ancestrally) four-toed.

I hope that is of some help, but I know that these ideas can be very
difficult to absorb from prose.  A few minutes with a piece of paper and
some tree diagrams can bring it all into focus, however.  One of the most
important things anyone can do when studying systematics is to get in the
habit of "tree thinking", because all the terms and concepts of modern
systematics are defined in the context of evolutionary trees.  When you are
confronted with a systematic concept or term you always want to ask yourself
"How does this relate to the tree?"  When told about any organismal
attribute you always want to ask yourself "How is it distributed on the
tree?"  (It might require a major research project to answer that question,
of course, but that is the question that is of systematic interest.)

The question of how, practically, one distinguishes the ancestral from the
derived states of a character is another question entirely, and one that
I won't address here.  I will however follow this message with a collection
of some stray quotations and references that touch on the notion of ancestral
and derived character states in systematics and philology, in the hope that
they may be of interest to some people.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:9>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sat Dec  4 23:35:49 1993

Date: Sun, 05 Dec 1993 00:42:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Ancestral and derived states: interdisciplinary historical notes
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Here are some notes on the history of the distinction between ancestral and
derived character states in systematics and philology.  I had intended to
organize this material a bit better, but haven't had the time yet.  This
topic might in fact be a very nice one for a short historical paper.  With
that possibility in mind I'd be grateful for any additional references
anyone may know that discuss the history of these ideas, particularly in
philology.


Systematics

In contemporary systematics, the distinction between ancestral and derived
character states is often traced to Hennig (1966), and while it is very
true that this distinction didn't really catch fire until the 1960s, there
are several few earlier examples of its use.  Robin Craw has written a very
nice paper (1992) that traces some of these earlier uses, as well as
Hennig's modern influence.  (It was Hennig who coined the terms "apomorphy"
and "plesiomorphy".)  The most thorough exposition of the ancestral/derived
distinction I have seen in the early systematic literature comes from Peter
Chalmers Mitchell; Craw discusses him, and I have also commented on his work
(O'Hara, 1988).  Here's a sample from one of Mitchell's later works:

  "Characters have to be judged as well as counted, if it be intended to use
  them for estimating the relative degree of affinity between animal types.
  No anatomist doubts but that Man retains many primitive characters;
  Anthropoid Apes, Old-World Monkeys, American Monkeys, Tarsius, and Lemurs
  also retain many primitive | characters.  It is reasonable to assume that
  the common ancestors of all these animals possessed all the primitive
  characters retained by any of them.  And so it is not surprising to find
  any primitive character in any descendant of a common stock, but there is
  no reason to suppose that, because any two have retained the same primitive
  character, they should for that reason be judged more nearly related than
  either may be with some other descendant of the common stock.  Primitive
  characters may be useful for the description or definition of a group --
  they have no value for assigning degrees of affinity.  These considerations
  ought to be commonplaces in zoological argument, but they are often
  forgotten, and I think they have been entirely forgotten by Professor
  Wood-Jones in the imposing list of common characters that he has drawn up
  for Man and Tarsius.  Fortunately they have been remembered by Mr. Pocock,
  and Professors Hill and Elliot Smith, and the considerations they adduce
  have disposed of Professor Wood-Jones's argument that Tarsius has special
  relation to the ancestry of Man.  It may not be a Lemur, but it is no
  nearer to Man than to other Primates."  (Mitchell, 1919:496-497)


Philology

In stemmatics (the reconstruction of manuscript genealogy) a derived
character state is simply an "error", or more precisely an "indicative
error", and the ancestral state is the sought-for "original reading".  In
historical linguistics a derived state is often called an "innovation", and
an ancestral state a "retention". Here are a couple of extracts that
comment on the ancestral/derived distinction in philology:

  "Some of these interdisciplinary influences [among the historical
  sciences], which are part of general intellectual history, were
  acknowledged explicitly, as when August Schleicher proclaimed himself a
  Darwinist of sorts (Hoenigswald 1963; Koerner 1978).  Other influences --
  probably far more genuine -- existed within the personalities of the
  practicioners in the form of well-assimilated modes of thinking, too
  deeply ingrained even to be specifically discussed, as when the same
  Schleicher transferred the principle of the exclusively shared copying
  error from manuscript work to linguistics, where it surfaced as the
  principle of shared innovation." (Hoenigswald, 1990:442)

  "In 1884 came K. Brugmann's work in which we have the most influential
  (cf. Dyen 1953, 1978), though not the first, statement of the requirement
  that account be taken not of shared properties (which could, after all,
  be retained properties) but of shared innovations -- a requirement, as
  we have seen...with its own historical interest, doctrinal as well as
  practical.  It has sometimes been held (Watkins 1966; Markey 1976) that
  signigicant retentions should be accorded the same standing.  We must,
  however, remember that retentions and innovations are not independent
  phenomena but converses.  An innovation is a non-retention, and while
  shared retentions are compatible with a subgrouping, innovations are
  indicative of one."  (Hoenigswald, 1990:443)


References Cited

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

Dyen, Isidore.  1953.  Review of Malgache et Manjaan by Otto Ch. Dahl.
Language, 29:577-590.

Dyen, Isidore.  1978.  Subgrouping and reconstruction.  Pp. 33-52 in:
Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honor of Archibald A. Hill (M. A.
Jazayeri, E. Polome, & W. Winter, eds.).  Vol. II.  The Hague: Mouton.

Hennig, Willi.  1966.  Phylogenetic Systematics.  Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.  (Original edition in German, 1950.)

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

Hoenigswald, Henry M.  1990.  Language families and subgroupings, tree model
and wave theory, and reconstruction of protolanguages.  Pp. 441-454 in:
Research Guide on Language Change (Edgar C. Polome, ed.).  Trends in
Linguistics, Studies and Monographs, 48.  Berlin & New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.

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

Markey, Thomas L.  Germanic Dialect Grouping and the Position of Ingvaeonic.
Innsbrucker Beitrage zur Sprachwissenschaft 15.  Innsbruck: Institut fur
Sprachwissenschaft der Universitat Innsbruck.

Mitchell, Peter Chalmers.  1919.  [Discussion on the zoological position and
affinities of Tarsius.]  Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London,
1919:496-497.

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

Watkins, Calvert.  1966.  Italo-Celtic revisited.  Pp. 29-50 in: Ancient
Indo-European Dialects (Henrik Brinbaum & Jaan Puhvel, eds.).  Berkeley:
University of California Press.


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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:10>From sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu  Sun Dec  5 07:52:35 1993

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Ancestral and derived character states in systematics
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 93 08:56:04 -0500
From: Sally Thomason <sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu>

Bob O'Hara's clear and interesting explanation of ancestral
and derived character states in systematics is easier for
linguists to understand than he might have expected, because
the criterion matches our criterion for subgrouping in a language
family tree: shared innovations provide evidence for subgrouping,
shared inherited features don't.  Same principle exactly.
His egg examples are more fun than our stop > fricative
changes (for instance), though.

  Sally Thomason
  sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:11>From CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu  Sun Dec  5 21:03:08 1993

Date: Sun, 05 Dec 93 21:05 CDT
From: Tom Cravens <CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Ancestral and derived character states in systematics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

One major problem with the tree in historical linguistics is that it can
describe closer links than general principles would allow. A grossly
clumsy example...

Rumanian and Sardinian, both descended from (spoken) Latin, share some
striking and hard-to-explain phonological developments. These are not
found in other Romance speech types. In spite of the fact that out-of-the-way
Rumania and Sardinia are prime suspects as relic areas, there is no
reason to believe that the developments are fossilizations of a common
earlier stage (other than the observation--used to feed a circular argument--
that they are peripheral areas and do share the features in question).
If we were to construct a tree of descent based on these features alone,
Rumanian and Sardinian would find themselves arranged in a way that would
suggest far greater affinity than is the case.

Now, few linguists would want to construct a tree on the basis of one feature,
but it is quite possible to choose a number of features (on purpose or by
accident) which would still motivate a tree diagram showing commonality
of innovations, and thus suggest close relation in linear descent, when in
fact the convergence of changes appears to be quite accidental, not even
traceable to the momentum of drift. Curtis Blaylock once called this "the
tyranny of the Stammbaum", and it's a minor plague in (some forms of)
historical linguistics.

My question is, how do other historical sciences which employ the tree
avoid this trap?

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:12>From Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca  Mon Dec  6 20:28:53 1993

Date: Mon, 6 Dec 93 18:32:12 -0800
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca (Michael Kenny)
Subject: Re: List owner's monthly greeting

This note is in response to Dr. O'Hara's invitation that new subscribers to
the List introduce themselves and their interests.

I am in the Dept. of Sociology/Anthropology at Simon Fraser University near
Vancouver, B.C., and am currently occupied with a crossover project between
anthropology and social history. To wit a study of the so-called
"Poughkeepsie Seer" -- Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910) -- a clairvoyant
progressivist mystic who acquired a considerable following in the mid years
of the 19th century through his "Harmonial Philosophy." When first tuning
into to this list, I encountered a discussion of the "palaetiological
sciences"; Davis used this term when trying to place himself relative to
the intellectual currents of his age. In his "Nature's Divine Revelations"
(1847), he said the following:

"It is the office of palaetiological sciences to set forth general truths
in the departments of astronomy, geology, anatomy, physiology, &c., all as
in perfect harmony with each other, and as forming a general and undeniable
proof of the united chain of existences, and binding the whole together as
one grand BOOK...the only authentic and eternal Book of truths, which is
inspired by the Original Designer, the First Cause."

Davis's scheme is evolutionary and teleological, from the beginning in 1847
positing, among other things, the mutability of species (Davis says that he
was in fact accused of cribbing from Chamber's Vestiges of the Natural
History of Creation, and denied it vehemently). Infinite Progress was
Davis's theme, and he  deployed the science of the day, geology,
astronomy,biology, electromagnetism, etc. to reinforce his points. The
Spiritualist movement claimed scientific status, mediumistic communication
supposedly "proving" personal survival of death (Ben Franklin was virtually
a patron saint, and often returned from the dead himself).

So, my theme is popularized evolutionary thought in the mid to later years
of the 19th Century. I would be much interested in communicating with
anyone involved in such issues, or with social historical aspects of
popularized 19th Century science in general.

Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca
Dept. of Sociology/Anthropology
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C.  V5A 1S6

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:13>From @VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU:RMBURIAN@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU  Mon Dec  6 20:40:02 1993

Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1993 21:40:44 -0500 (EST)
From: "Richard M. Burian" <RMBURIAN%VTVM1.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: PSA 1994
To: hopos-l@ukcc.uky.edu, Sci-Tech-Studies BB <sci-tech-studies@ucsd.edu>,
    darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu, mersenne@mailbase.ac.uk,
    l-math@math.uio.no, philosoph@vm1.yorku.ca,
    hpsst-l%qucdn.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU

 For some of you, this will be a repeat message, but it is some months
since it has been on the net, and the number of papers submitted for the
1994 PSA meeting, joint with the history of science society and 4S is
not yet very great.  What follows is the call for papers.  Please note
the deadline of January 3 for submissions.  If you have inquiries about
this call, plese address them to me personally, not to the bulletin
boards at the address given below.  Thank you, and I look forward to
your submissions!             Dick Burian


  CALL FOR PAPERS

  THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE ASSOCIATION
  FOURTEENTH BIENNIAL MEETING
  CLARION HOTEL, NEW ORLEANS, OCTOBER 14-16, 1994

  The Fourteenth Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science
  Association will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, October 14-16,
  1994.  This meeting will be held jointly with the History of Science
  Society and the Society for Social Studies of Science, thus offering
  an opportunity for papers with an interdisciplinary focus to reach a
  broad audience of scholars concerned with the workings and nature of
  science.  The program committee would like to encourage the submission
  of papers especially suited to this occasion as well as papers falling
  within the philosophy of science, more narrowly conceived.

  Contributed papers may be on any topic in the philosophy of science.
  Maximum length is 5000 words, counting footnotes and references.  If
  the text includes tables or figures, an appropriate number of words
  should be subtracted from the limit.  Two copies, each including a 100
  word abstract and a word count should be submitted in double-spaced
  typescript.  Format and citation style should match those of
  Philosophy of Science.  (See a recent issue for details.)  Papers
  will be blind refereed; therefore, the author's name and institutional
  affiliation should appear on a separate page.  Hard copy of
  submissions must reach the chair of the program committee by 3
  January, 1994.  Accepted papers will be published prior to the meeting
  in PSA 1994, Vol. 1.  A finished manuscript (one hard copy and one on
  floppy disk, the latter produced using any standard word processor)
  must be submitted within three weeks of acceptance.  Notification
  about the status of submissions should be received in late February.
  Authors of accepted papers are expected to present abbreviated
  versions of their papers, with a time limit of 20 minutes (plus
  discussion).  The Philosophy of Science Association has no funds
  to support travel to the meeting.

  Address inquiries and submissions to:
  Richard M. Burian, Chair
  1994 PSA Program Committee
  Center for the Study of Science in Society
  Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
  Blacksburg, VA 24061-0247   Telephone:  (703) 231-6760
  E-mail:  RMBURIAN@VTVM1.BITNET   or    VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU

  In addition to Professor Burian, the Program Committee consists of:
  David Gooding (University of Bath), Gary Hatfield (University of
  Pennsylvania), Don Howard (University of Kentucky), Helen Longino
  (Rice University), Miriam Solomon (Temple University), and James
  Woodward (California Institute of Technology).

  Non-members who wish to receive registration information should
  contact the PSA in the summer of 1994 at the following address:
  PSA Business Office
  Department of Philosophy
  503 South Kedzie Hall
  Michigan State University
  East Lansing, MI 48824-1032
  Telephone:  (517) 353-9392

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:14>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Mon Dec  6 22:45:46 1993

Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1993 23:52:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Introductions, and historical spiritualists
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

(Now that's a catchy subject header. :-)

Many thanks to Michael Kenny for his very interesting introduction.  Other
subscribers who haven't introduced themselves are most welcome to do so.
Right after the list began we had a large round of introductions, and it
was fascinating to see the range of interests represented here.  Anyone who
would like to glance through some of those early messages can retrieve the
September log file by sending the message

   GET DARWIN-L 9309

to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu.  The file is quite large, and will be
sent to you as regular e-mail in several segments.

With regard to Michael's interesting palaetiological spiritualist, Andrew
Jackson Davis, it occurred to me to ask whether any of these people who
claimed to be communing with spirits did so specifically for the purpose of
historical inquiry.  My stereotype of these things is that the spirits were
supposed to predict the future, or some such thing; but were they ever used
to provide supposedly factual information about the past?  For example, did
any historians try to contact, say, the spirit of Julius Caesar in order to
ask him what his real reasons were for crossing the Rubicon?  Had he been
suspicious of Brutus before the assasination?  It is instructive to remember
that Alfred Russel Wallace was a proponent of spiritualism, though I know
very little about his views on the subject.  Perhaps Michael or one of our
historians could tell us more.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:15>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Mon Dec  6 23:49:07 1993

Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1993 00:55:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Different meanings of "drift"
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Following along on the discussion of drift I began to get the feeling that
the term was being used differently by the linguists and the evolutionary
biologists, and sure enough, that seems to be the case.  Checking in my newly
acquired copy of Raimo Anttila's _Historical and Comparative Linguistics_
(John Benjamins, 1989) I find the following definition:

  "In linguistic change, an observable tendency toward a goal is known as
  _drift_.  As in biology, it takes a form of complex synchronization, for
  example, loss of inflection with increased use of prepositions and word
  order in English.  It is also understandable why two related languages can
  go different ways.  If they both start out from a particular imbalance,
  say, a 'hole' of some kind in any level of grammar, one may fill it, the
  other may eliminate the odd term.  Or they can independently resort to the
  same remedy, and the result will look as if it had been inherited in both."
  (p. 194)

While the phenomena described here are clearly recognizable to an evolutionary
biologist, the definition of drift here is almost the _opposite_ of what
evolutionary biologists mean by drift.  Evolutionary biologists usually
contrast drift with natural selection, drift being a process of random change
in the absence of selection, and selection being a process of directed change
"toward a goal" (a local adaptive peak).  One of the standard textbooks on
evolutionary biology (Futuyma) defines genetic drift as "Random changes in the
frequencies of two or more alleles or genotypes within a population", and
although the term drift was not used by Darwin as far as I know, and although
he didn't know anything about modern genetics, the basic idea of drift, as
something to be contrasted with change through selection, was clear to him I
think.  Here's an extract from the _Origin of Species_ (1st ed., p. 81):

  "This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious
  variations, I call Natural Selection.  Variations neither useful nor
  injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left a
  fluctuating element...."

Is there a linguistic term for purely random, non-directed change in language,
corresponding to our sense of drift?  (Linguistic drift is like drifting in a
strong current, maybe.)

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:16>From GA3704@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU  Tue Dec  7 07:49:56 1993

Date: Tue, 7 Dec 93 07:49:39 CST
From: "Margaret E. Winters" <GA3704@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: drift

I like Bob O'Hara's characterization of drift (linguistically
speaking) as being carried along by a current.  What is interesting
from the point of view of the history of linguistics (even recent
history) is that Sapir (1921) spoke of the drift of individual
languages (the loss of `whom' as part of the loss of inflectional
endings in general, for example), while others talk of drift
within a family (Robin Lakoff in her dissertation) or Sally
Thomason in her posting here about splits.  To carry it a step
further, Theodora Bynon, in her book in the red Cambridge series
(yes, that is how linguists often identify this series of
books on relatively basic topics), puts drift in her chapter on
non-genetic change and implies that the term can be used to
talk about change in geographically proximate languages which
don't come from a common source.

As a rule, historical linguistics doesn't like to think about
random change and, in fact, pushed by work in sociolinguistics
about the non-randomness of variation as  long as we can find
enough factors, would probably deny pure randomness.  The
closest we would come (help! Tom, Sally....) would be a class
of sound changes which are unconditioned; that is, there are
no circumstances that can be identified as motivating the
change.  One example might be Latin /u/ > French /y/ where
the /y/ is the sound in words like `rue', street or like
the German `u"' - with an umlaut.  This change happened
in every phonetic environment in French.  However even here
we can talk about structural conditioning since Latin /o:/
(long /o/) became /u/ and may have pushed the original Latin
/u/ forward to /y/.  As I said, historical linguistics doesn't
really look at a class of random changes - even meaning change
is being studied more and more in ways that remove the feeling
that meanings just shift, for no reason, all over the place.

             Long-windedly,
             Margaret Winters
             <ga3704@siucvmb.siu.edu>

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:17>From David.Simpson@bmu.uib.no  Tue Dec  7 11:15:04 1993

Date: Tue, 7 Dec 93 18:18:09 CET
From: "David N. Simpson" <David.Simpson@bmu.uib.no>
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Introduction

I am relatively new to the list and apologise for not introducing myself
earlier.  I am currently working on a doctorate in archaeology at the
University of Bergen, Norway.  My general interests include establishing
stronger links between data/observation, methodology, and culture history
theory/epistomology in stone age archaeology.

I am presently working on a "case study" addressing lithic technology using
a set of small sites on the island of Flat|y on the west coast of Norway.
The sites in question span the mesolithic ("hunting period") - neolithic
("agricultural period") chronological boundary.

The study will (hopefully) result in:  technological descriptions of the
stone tool assemblages collected from Flat|y, intra-site distribution
studies (use of space on the site), new perspectives on regional settlement
pattern (were the people sedentary or mobile, if mobile what factors
affected their movements), and go on to look at several cultural
historical problems specific to southern Norway.

To do this I am using a method called "refitting" and am exploring the
potential of a new approach being developed in France referred to as the
"cha!ne op!ratoire" (hope some of those characters did not get butchered too
badly).  To explain what these involve would take a little more time than
I have right now, so I can get back to it later.

Just wanted to make an introduction and thank the group for some stimulating
discussion.

             Dave
----------------------------------------------------------------
David Simpson
Historisk Museum           e-mail: david.simpson@bmu.uib.no
Haakon Sheteligs pl. 3      phone: (47) 55212933
5007 Bergen                   fax: (47) 55322878
Norway
-----------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:18>From mcglynn@cheshire.oxy.edu  Wed Dec  8 10:01:19 1993

From: mcglynn@cheshire.oxy.edu (Terrence Peter McGlynn)
Subject: yet another introduction
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (Darwin-l mailing list)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 93 8:03:17 PST

Greetings! I just signed on a couple days ago, and here is the little
bit that you might want to know about me:

I'm inbetween my undergrad and graduate studies in evolutionary biology
and ecology.  My generalized research interests include biogeography,
the application of evolutionary theory to conservation practice,
plant-insect interactions, and the evolution of life histories,
especially eusociality.

My interests, as they relate to this discussion, are in the history
of the development of evolutionary theory - who, what, and especially
why.  For instance, in the tail end of the discussion that I had seen
about "drift", as biologists we see it as genetic drift, a more random
cause of evolution in smaller populations due to, basically, genetic
"sampling error" from generation to generation.  Anyway, Darwin never
said anything about drift, and couldn't because he did not even know
about the nature of heredity from one generation to the next.  He knew
it existed, but agreed to a "blending theory" rather than the mendelian
genetics that had been discovered, but only by one person.  However,
Darwin clearly emphasized that there may have been other such causes
of evolution that he was ignorant of, and speculated along the lines
of drift.

That was a tangent; don't worry, it's not a common occurrence.
I look forward to some good discussion!

-Terry
--
Terrence P. McGlynn      Associate Student of Biology
7925 Ellenbogen Street   Occidental College Biology Department (sort-of)
Sunland, CA  91040-2261  phone:(818)352-5242  internet: mcglynn@oxy.edu
"Take a page from the red book--and keep them in your sights" -Neil Peart

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:19>From diane@ling.edinburgh.ac.uk  Wed Dec  8 10:22:34 1993

Date: Wed, 8 Dec 93 15:48:31 GMT
From: D Nelson <diane@ling.edinburgh.ac.uk>
Subject: Extinction
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Before I post my query for discussion, a brief introduction: I am
currently working on a PhD in the syntax and morphology of Finnish at
the University of Edinburgh.  My main research interests are in
synchronic syntax, but I am becoming increasingly intrigued by
diachronic linguistics, especially in the context of general theories of
evolution (this I can partly credit to reading this list!)

Anyway, this seems like an obvious place to post this query:

In linguistics the term "extinct" is used to describe languages of which
there are no longer native speakers. Thus Latin is extinct, and so is
Motor, a language formerly spoken in Siberia. But extinction of a
language can occur in two ways: either the last known native speaker
dies, and the language becomes moribund (as in the case of Motor) - in
which case extinction is an event rather than a process - or the
language evolves into another language or languages, as Latin did.
Because the second type of extinction is processual, it is only in deep
hindsight that a language can be declared "extinct".

What is the definition of "extinct" in both historical linguistics and
in evolutionary biology? Is it valid to draw parallels between
extinction of a language and extinction of a species? Do geneticists
have a separate term equivalent to "moribund" to describe species which
reach evolutionary "dead ends"? At what point can a species be declared
extinct if it evolves into another species?

In terminological confusion,

Diane Nelson
diane@ling.ed.ac.uk

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:20>From Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca  Wed Dec  8 11:12:22 1993

Date: Wed, 8 Dec 93 09:15:09 -0800
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca (Michael Kenny)
Subject: Re: Introductions, and historical spiritualists

In reply to the question about whether historians ever used the spirits of
departed luminaries in their own research, I don't know of such cases among
academically inclined historians. However, knowledge of past events was an
essential feature of so-called 'test seances,' in which the purported
spirits were asked to deliver "veridical" messages, i.e. information about
things which only that spirit could have known about in life. As for the
rest, spirit pronouncements generally pertain to things metaphysical, and
sometimes to correct the record: as when Jesus returns to clarify what his
original message really was before mystics got hold of it and changed it
into this son-of-God business.

Andrew Jackson Davis's spirits (particularly the character named 'Galen,'
the ancient physician) were concerned to outline the social geography of
the SummerLand, the true nature of disease, and metaphysical truths
concerning the relation between scientific discovery and infinite progress.
Always Science is a part of it, since the aim of the game was to establish
spiritual principles on scientific grounds. Evolution therefore is no
stochastic process, but rather the expression of an imminent telos (isn't
that how Wallace saw it? I will certainly check).

Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca

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<4:21>From mcglynn@cheshire.oxy.edu  Wed Dec  8 11:40:50 1993

From: mcglynn@cheshire.oxy.edu (Terrence Peter McGlynn)
Subject: extinction
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (Darwin-l mailing list)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 93 9:42:27 PST

There is a definite analogy between linguistics and evolution regarding
the types of extinction.

In the formation of new species (this is really going somewhere), there
are two general types of events, called anagenesis and cladogenesis.
The latter is where a species "branches off" a currently existing species,
while former indicates such an evolutionary conversion of one species
over time.

In such a process of conversion, there is no well-understood rule to
delineate when a species changes from one to another, which would make
the first one extinct.  The definition of a biological species (which
always argued by many, but is the best model we have now) rests upon
reproductive isolation -- if an individual cannot reproduce with another,
for behavioral or physiological reasons, then they are not in the same
species.

It makes a lot of sense at one moment in time, but when the factor of time is
involved, it's very confusing trying to determine what could or could not
reproduce with another organism.  I'm definitely not a paleontologist, but
it looks like fossilized organisms are called different species when there
is a significant enough structural change.  However, the type of
slow change from one species to another is probably much less common from
the "branching" evolution, because usually new species arise in very small
populations that are isolated from a larger one... this is getting very
biological.  In short, when did homo erectus become homo sapiens?  That's
probably an equivalent question to when did Latin become Spanish.

--
Terrence P. McGlynn      Associate Student of Biology
7925 Ellenbogen Street   Occidental College Biology Department (sort-of)
Sunland, CA  91040-2261  phone:(818)352-5242  internet: mcglynn@oxy.edu

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<4:22>From princeh@husc.harvard.edu  Wed Dec  8 14:20:51 1993

Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1993 14:15:03 -0500 (EST)
From: Patricia Princehouse <princeh@husc.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: extinction & splitting heirs
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

On Wed, 8 Dec 1993, Terrence Peter McGlynn wrote:

> There is a definite analogy between linguistics and evolution regarding
> the types of extinction.

Definite, perhaps, but very superficial.

> it looks like fossilized organisms are called different species when there
> is a significant enough structural change.

Yes, fossil species are based primarily on morphological differences
(Steven Spielberg notwithstanding).

> slow change from one species to another is probably much less common from
> the "branching" evolution, because usually new species arise in very small
> populations that are isolated from a larger one...

I understand you to be saying here that anagenesis is much less common
than cladogenesis -a view which has become very popular in the past 10
years, but is problematic for analogy with language since languages are
never "reproductively isolated" (so to speak) from each other, while
species are seen as "temporally bounded entities" (to cite the litany).

> In short, when did homo erectus become homo sapiens?  That's
> probably an equivalent question to when did Latin become Spanish.

I see at least 3 important differences here:

1) We know that Latin is ancestral to Spanish, but we do NOT know that
_Homo erectus_ (especially in the strict sense - the Indonesian fossils)
is ancestral to _H. sapiens_

2) Even if _H.e._ is ancestral, that doesn't necessarily mean that a large
erectus population somehow magically turned into a large population of
_H.sapiens_. Erectus (especially in the broad sense) was a fairly long
lived species and might have given rise (by branching) to _Hs_ at any
time, only to die off later and have its range overrun by the younger
species (producing a continuous fossil record in that range but not one
reflecting evolutionary history).

3) As mentioned above, Spanish could have been formed by crossing Latin
with other languages (surely there was influx to some extent), but a
daughter species arises from only one parent (with very minor exceptions
of very special cases of retro-virus insertion of functional gene
sequence).

The analogy would kind of work for tracking morphological change between
subspecies, but if one finds that microevolution =\= macroevolution, then
it doesn't work so great for species change.

-Patricia Princehouse, Princeh@Husc.Harvard.Edu

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<4:23>From mcglynn@cheshire.oxy.edu  Wed Dec  8 15:16:19 1993

From: mcglynn@cheshire.oxy.edu (Terrence Peter McGlynn)
Subject: extinction and speciation
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (Darwin-l mailing list)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 93 13:15:55 PST

Points of clarification:

It appears that the analogy of biological extinction has a tighter fit
than those of speciation analogies.

The two types of lingual extinction are equivalent to those in evolution,
although biologists rarely refer to anagenesis as an extinction event,
even though in effect it is.

I invoked the types of speciation to describe how anagenesis=extinction
in both the lingual and ecological fields.  Regarding the _H.erectus_
matter, there clearly are better examples of anagenesis. Although at
this branch in the tree there may have been cladogenesis, the gradual
brain size increase over the last few million years is a good argument
for gradualists.

Basically, the analogy works for extinction, but not as well for
speciation.

for consideration: Does gene flow (exchange among groups) have the same
type of role in evolutionary biology as inter-language exchange has
in linguistics?

Terry McGlynn
mcglynn@oxy.edu

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<4:24>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu  Wed Dec  8 16:17:53 1993

Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1993 15:48:32 -0600 (CST)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: Extinction
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

The distinction between the annihilation of a lineage and its
evolving into something else has long been recognized in biology. When a
species changes sufficiently so that its descendants are called a new
species, the ancestral species has undergone pseudoextinction.  When a
lineage is wholly wiped out, leaving no descendants, it is said to be
extinct.  There are some more subtle distinctions to be made (e.g. whether
the descendants are one or more species, and whether the ancestor may
persist alongside its descendants), but the present one will do for many
circumstances.  If (as some people claim) _Homo erectus_ evolved into
_Homo sapiens_, then _Homo erectus_ has undergone pseudoextinction;
passenger pigeons are extinct.  Latin, has therefore, undergone
pseudoextinction, whereas Tasmanian (I believe) is extinct.  Often, it is
neither important nor practical for a paleontologist to determine whether
a lineage has undergone extinction or pseudoextinction.  In such cases,
the species are referred to simply as being extinct.

Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<4:25>From delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu  Wed Dec  8 16:42:46 1993

Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1993 14:40:21 -0800 (PST)
From: Scott C DeLancey <delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: extinction and speciation
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

On Wed, 8 Dec 1993, Terrence Peter McGlynn wrote:

> It appears that the analogy of biological extinction has a tighter fit
> than those of speciation analogies.
>
> The two types of lingual extinction are equivalent to those in evolution,
> although biologists rarely refer to anagenesis as an extinction event,
> even though in effect it is.

Actually, neither do linguists, in my experience.  It sounds really
odd to me to refer to Latin as an extinct language; the
traditional phrase "dead language" sounds much better.

> for consideration: Does gene flow (exchange among groups) have the same
> type of role in evolutionary biology as inter-language exchange has
> in linguistics?

I don't see how it could.  It is more analogous to what's called
"dialect borrowing", i.e. exchange between dialects of one language
or between closely- related languages.  The difference is that you
can get inter-language effects between *any* two (or more) languages
that are in contact, regardless of how similar or dissimilar they
are, and that these can be very fundamental effects that radically
alter the shape and organization of a language.

Scott DeLancey			delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA

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Darwin-L Message Log 4: 1-25 -- December 1993                               End