Darwin-L Message Log 5: 41–70 — January 1994

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 January 1994. 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 5: 41-70 -- JANUARY 1994
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DARWIN-L
A Network Discussion Group on the
History and Theory of the Historical Sciences
_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:41>From abrown@independent.co.uk  Sun Jan  9 07:12:26 1994

From: Andrew Brown <abrown@independent.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 94 21:48:51 GMT
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Langdon vs. Tuomistu, Brown and Occam's shaving foam

Finn Rasmussen cheerfully admits to not having read Morgan's books: I'd
rather he did so before having a go at her theory.

I quite take his point about parsimonious explanations. That is what
attracts me to her theory. At the core of it lies the observation that
there are a number of human characteristics, of which the most obvious
are aubcutaneous fat and the arrangement of our hair, which have many
parallels among aquatic and shore-dwelling animals and none on the
savannah. The most parsimonious explanation is surely that these are
adaptations to a semi-aquatic mode of life.

So far, I am still waiting for someone to put forward a more elegant
explanation based on evolution a long way from water.

Andrew Brown

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:42>From NEIMANF@YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU  Sun Jan  9 07:40:17 1994

Date: Sun, 09 Jan 94 08:39:23 EST
From: Fraser Neiman <NEIMANF@YaleVM.CIS.Yale.edu>
Organization: Yale University C∧IS
Subject: Re:  Aquatic apes revisited
To: Multiple recipients of list <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>

Greetings,

The old issue of how we evaluate scientific knowledge claims has
surfaced again in the linguistic and aquatic ape threads on this
list.  I don't have anything novel to say on this topic.  But
perhaps it is worth pointing out that the discussion to date has a
rather empiricist flavor.  By that I mean that it fails to
acknowledge that theories about the way the world works and, more
to the point here, hypotheses about history that are constructed on
the basis of those theories, are fundamentally underdetermined by
facts (empirical evidence).  I mention this not to suggest that
there is no telling whether Renfrew or Morgan are right.  I think
there is.  Rather I want to remind folks that the ability of an
hypothesis to account for evidence in a parsimonious fashion is not
the only criterion on which its worth is judged.

The additional set of considerations, which often prove crucial,
involves the fit of the hypothesis or theory with other theories or
hypotheses about the way the world works.   The continental drift
case illustrates this nicely.  The original formulation by Wegener
did not win general acceptance NOT because it did not fit with the
facts.  It nicely fit all kinds of facts, including the
complementary shapes of the continental margins and agreement in
the distribution of fossils and geological formations on opposing
shores.   But it did not fit with other theoretical notions about
the way the geophysical world worked.  It offered no theoretical
mechanism.  The invention of plate tectonics remedied this defect
and acceptance quickly followed.

The "consilience of inductions" runs in two directions, one
empirical and the other theoretical.   I wonder if this goes some
way to explaining the difficulties that Morgan encounters among
card-carrying paleoanthropologists, and the ensuing lack of
resolution between the professionals and the outsiders.  Although
the argument is conducted in terms of "facts" much of the
professional position arises from an unarticulated lack of
agreement between the hypothesis and the rest of their
understanding about Plio-Pleistocene hominoid evolution and
evolution in general.

For example one thing that strikes me about the aquatic ape
hypothesis is that it is a "functional package" explanation.  It
attempts to explain a large suite of traits in terms of positive
feedback linkages among them in the context of a single selective
prime mover.  Now this kind of explanation has an long history in
paleoanthropology, most conspicuously in the hands-tools-reduced-
canines-brain-bipedalism package that goes right back to Darwin.
Scientific progress in paleoanthroplogy over the last 25 year has,
to a large extent, consisted in uncoupling the traits in this
package.  More generally, we have come to understand that
evolutionary histories caused by natural selection are quirky and
historically contingent processes.  Morgan's functional package
runs afoul of this more general understanding.

Clearly historical linguists have a similar kinds of problems with
Renfrew.  But the bi-directional consilience argument cuts both
ways in this case.  European history happened only one way.  The
question is how did it happen?   We are going to have a much better
chance of getting it right, if we follow the lead of Renfrew,
Cavalli-Sforza, Ammerman, et al. and begin seriously to look for
inductive consilience among historical hypotheses constructed from
theory in different disciplines.  The unfortunate tendency is for
practitioners in archaeology and linguistics to send immediately
for the game warden and have the poachers hauled off the estate.
I think a more profitable attitude might be to recognize that the
correct interpretation of the archaeological and linguistic records
is going to have to agree with the correct interpretation of the
genetic record, and vice versa.  This does not mean that Cavalli et
al. are right.  I think they _have_ pointed the way to an important
methodological opportunity.  Although they may not have exploited
it in an entirely satisfactory fashion.

Best,

Fraser Neiman

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:43>From ad201@freenet.carleton.ca  Sun Jan  9 09:35:59 1994

Date: Sun, 9 Jan 1994 10:39:20 -0500
From: ad201@freenet.carleton.ca (Donald Phillipson)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Method

Bayla Singer (bsinger@eniac.seas.upenn.edu) wrote Jan  8

|Mike salovesh raises the question of how to deal with what might be called
|'inspired guesses.'
|Well, how do we deal with, e.g., Lucretius and atomic theory?
|
|The ideal (normative?) way is to accept an idea as a hypothesis until
|it is rigorously proven by accepted methods.  Coming back to Wegener:
|I clearly remember gazing, in my elementary school years (late 1940s),
|at the map of the world and thinking how well South America would fit
|into Africa, etc.  How much credit should I get, who not only didn't
|publish, but had not the foggiest idea that I should even -think-
|about a way such movement could possibly have happened?
|
|We can take my daydreams as one end of a spectrum: Wegener and the
|brilliant-guesser linguists went further, but in the judgement of
|their disciplinary peers not quite far enough.

You suggest the plausible but now discarded idea that the process of
creation/invention (i.e. thinking a genuinely novel thought) and the
process of proof (that it is true) are or ought to be related.
Repeated empirical failures have led to most scholars abandoning the
proposition.

The historical record suggests no no one gets credit for sheer
originality.  Credit comes for "making a contribution" i.e.
integrating the novel idea with the rest of the discipline, or else
for solving disciplinary problems.  Being right is (usually) necessary
but not sufficient.

Inspired guesses that do not integrate with at least some other
knowledge are a non-category.  The classic example is Velikovsky's
guess that Venus was hot when astronomers thought it was cold.  (1) He
could not provide data or reasoning to show why he might be right
(and he was right);  (2) His proposition Venus=hot could not be linked
to the rest of planetary science at that date.  So he was right, but
his "contribution to science" was zero.

Atomism in Lucretius' day was an interesting but philosophical idea --
not a "disciplinary topic" or a "research problem" in any branch of
what we now call science.  (It became a disciplinary topic only for
Newton and a research problem in 1800, cf. Dalton.)  Continental drift
was in 1910 probably scorned because it was too simple to be
plausible, but no less because it solved no current problem in
geophysics -- even though "problems" in narrative sciences like
palaeontology and geophysics are much less clearly demarcated than in
experimental sciences like chemistry.

When Wegener suggested South America fitted into Africa, he got no
credit because he was proposing a true solution to what had not yet
become a disciplinary problem.  When you were daydreaming the
identical idea, you were not at "one end of a spectrum" with
geophysicists.  You were not a player in their game, so no one would
have accepted your idea (if published) even as a hypothesis.

|                                  There were many incandescent
|electric light bulbs developed before Edison's, and he himself
|developed many improvements afterward, to the point where it is
|extremely difficult for the knowledgeable historian to say "this is
|'the' light bulb patent."

There was only one equally bright and long-lasting lamp, Joseph
Swan's, a year earlier.

Whether "knowledgeable" or not, the discipline-oriented historian has
to define `the' in terms of the current discipline, rather than in
terms of either Edison or novelty.  Her criteria might be launching an
industry that did not exist before, providing the commercial or
material basis for a new technology, reducing house fires (from gas
lamps) etc.  Good criteria could also be used elsewhere in the
discipline, to identify `the' critical invention in mediaeval warfare
or aviation or city planning.

This is the ideal/normative view.  However, like all the humanities
and social sciences, the discipline of history is not under the
material or social constraints that make the natural sciences both
uniquely productive and 99% unanimous in their conclusions.
Linguistics is obviously polyvalent like the social sciences, not
convergent like astronomy, physics, chemistry, etc.  (Scope for a
serious debate here, whether (1) all disciplines are on the same
"spectrum" with experimental physics at one end and sociology at the
other, or (2) humanities and social sciences are a (or two) species
different from the natural sciences, and should not be allowed to
claim the NS's privileges, e.g. that discoveries in one field (say
linguistics) are likely to apply in another (say sociology.)

None of this means we don't need inspiration, guesses, etc.  But we
need not waste time looking for parallels between methods of discovery
(or original invention) and methods of proof (that something is true).
Part of what makes history of science fascinating is the prospect of
discovering more about both invention and proof.

--
 |         Donald Phillipson, 4050 Hall's Road, Carlsbad           |
 |      Springs, Ont., Canada K0A 1K0; tel: (613) 822-0734         |
 |  "What I've always liked about science is its independence from |
 |  authority"--Ontario Science Centre (name on file) 10 July 1981 |
------------------------------ Cut here ------------------------------

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<5:44>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sun Jan  9 12:50:56 1994

Date: Sun, 09 Jan 1994 13:56:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Arguments in science
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

The following comes to us from Peter Stevens (p_stevens@nocmsmgw.harvard.edu).

Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)

---------------------------------

As we work through arguments about aquatic apes, over-optimistic ornithologists
and lapsed linguists, we may take heart from, or despair over, the case of
William Sharp Macleay.  Proponent of the ultimately discarded idea of
Quinarianism, he acknowledged that he might well be wrong, but that progress in
the discipline would result from the activities of those who disproved his
thesis as being false (I am sorry, I do not have the text here).  The botanist
A.-H. G. de Cassini made a similar comment about -his- ideas.  And of course
the arguments Macleay stirred up were integral to the distinction between
analogy and affinity.  Also, the number of people who refer to Macleay's ideas
directly or indirectly is quite large (as far as I know, no study had been
carried out).  Finally, if you want a good example of ad hominem arguments in
particular, and pure vituperation in general, read some of Macleay's papers...

Of course, one might reply to Macleay, was it really -necessary- for change
that we should have had to spend time and energy in disproving your ideas?
Hull's discussion (in "Science as a Process") about over how to use
developmental data in deciding on which characters were advanced and which
primitive is perhaps relevant here.  Lundberg withdrew from the debate, and so
could be seen as leaving the field to Nelson.  However, I cannot see that the
numerous papers addressing the question over the next decade or more led to
that much clarification of the argument.

I am also reminded of the story of Paul Mangelsdorf, a central figure in
developing our knowledge of corn (maize) breeding, who is said to have
complained how much effort it had taken him in disproving the suggestion that
Edgar Anderson (an ideas man) had made almost in passing that maize was known
in SE Asia before it could have been arrived there aided by europeans.

There is no real conclusion to all this, except that life would be very boring
without any arguments!  At the same time, there has to be balance within a
discipline between people who push ideas on shaky or no data, theoreticians,
fact-gatherers who disdain theory (of course, they are likely to be subtly, but
no less deeply in thrall to unarticulated theories), etc.  Perhaps I am wrong,
but for all our discussion, we do not seem to be that much closer in
prescribing the optimal situation for change in science.

P. F. Stevens.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:45>From WILLS@macc.wisc.edu  Sun Jan  9 16:53:37 1994

Date: Sun, 09 Jan 94 16:54 CDT
From: Jeffrey Wills <WILLS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Greenberg and other controversial beliefs
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

	I want to thank Bob O'Hara for suggesting Sibley as a parallel for
Greenberg. At the heart of the matter, I think, is the same methodological
problem with these "Buckshot Methods": not that the method is controversial
or eccentric, but that there is no method. No method, by which I mean no one
besides these inspired few could reproduce the same results. And yet why are
his "results" of such interest to certain anthropologists and others? In the
case of Greenberg (I cannot speak for Sibley), I think the method works this
way:
	1) you start with the fruits of the discipline's work. You don't
challenge demonstrated connections, but try to move on to new terrain. What G.
observes from past work is that--golly gee gosh--most language families are
contiguous.
	2) Taking this insight of contiguity (never expressed nor perhaps
realized consciously) G. hypothesizes super-families.  How does this
hypthothesis arise? Because of substantial work making lots of little
connections between families? No--that hardly exists. Rather Greenberg's
search for superfamilies is theory-driven rather than data-driven (as Wegener
might have been). Of course, Greenberg is not starting entirely from scratch:
he has Sapir's six superstocks for North America and the undemonstrated
hypothesis of other big groupers. In fact, so far G. has done nothing new--
unless he would actually try to argue/prove his supergroups. This leads to:
	3) A naked theory without data is a public scandal. Lest he
be arrested for indecent exposure (and because he genuinely believes in these
superfamilies) G. looks for cognates in these hypothesized kin. It is as this
stage that the points of Victor Golla and others about probability in sets of
large random data take over. G's method is really one of randomness; with
unlabeled data sets I think he would/could create entirely different families.
In fact Lyle Campbell (Language 64.606-9) elegantly plays G's game ("method"
would be to misunderstand the matter) and finds striking matches of Penutian
(one of G's West Coast assemblages) and Finnish.
	It is at this stage that Greenberg makes his "contribution". But alas,
Campbell documents frequent significant problems with G's data in practically
every category you can name: sound-and-meaning isomorphism, borrowing,
semantics, unmatched segments, onomatopoeia, lack of grammatical similarities,
distributional oddities, repeated cognates, false cognates, erroneous
reconstructions, erroneous morphological analysis and even spurious forms. It's
obvious that G. enjoys matching up words in dictionaries (a harmless sport) but
to pretend he is engaged in linguistics without good knowledge of his data set
is not so harmless.

	To return to my question: why do the results of this non-method method
appeal to others in anthropology or genetics? Because G's "results" are really
nothing more than his assumptions: that people living near each other once
spoke the same language (let's call them Group A) and that  group B next to
Group A must have originally spoken the same language (supergroup AB) etc.
Remember that Greenberg's main thesis in Lang.in Am.(p. 38) is that "all the
languages of the Americas, except those of the Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut groups,
fall into a single vast assemblage."  G's "breakthrough" is to demonstrate the
linguistic unity of a large hemispheric group who naturally share overlaps in
culture and genetics. How can you go wrong? In fact, I should have preceded
this message by a sample poll of the non-linguists on Darwin-L: How many of you
think all the languages in the Americas are ultimately related to each other?
Thinking that "Amerindian" is ultimately united is hardly counter-intutitive
because in fact it is the linguistic expression of a non-linguistic assumption
(neighbors are related). In one sense the real achievement of linguistics has
been to identify surprising, non-adjacent language groups (Finno-Ugric, or the
connection of Yurok and Wiyot on the West Coast to the rest of the Algonquin
family).
	In reference to the comments on the profit of controversial theories,
remember that Greenberg's classification in essence has been known since 1956
and has neither won acceptance nor stimulated any significant research.

	Alternative Theories for REALLY BIG LANGUAGE FAMILIES.
	It has been reasonably suggested several times on this list that the
best way to drive out Folly is to ignore it and promote Truth instead. But here
is my dilemma (although other linguists on this list may wish to give me reason
for hope): I don't think we will ever have the data we need to answer these
questions about languages more than a few thousand years before their
documentation. Language mutates at a sufficiently fast rate that there is very
little embedded in it which gives evidence of its origins after a few thousand
years.
	Unlike anthropologists who can hope to discover cultural artifacts or
palaeologists who can hope to discover fossils and use genetic analysis, we
have no reason to think there was any recorded language (and certainly not a
significant amount of it) much earlier than we have found it (dates varying by
region).  I think the SuperGrouper language game is like asking: "What was the
origin and the subsequent historical distribution of marriage rites?" A
fascinating question, which we will never stop asking, for which we have
contemporary cross-cultural evidence galore. We can even think it likely that
all hominids had mating rites or that there was monogenesis or polygenesis of
such rites and we can even hope to discover a few artifacts which we might plug
into these theories, but to graph a full "tree" of marriage rites or language
or other evanescent facets of human culture would need whole new categories of
evidence. Anyone out there with the Great Galactic Sonograph should please
speak up.
	Perhaps I have a bad attitude, but given this data deficit, how would
you suggest we try to advance alternative theories for matters on which we have
no evidence or even reasonable expectation of evidence?
		Sincerely,
			Melancholy in Madison.

Jeffrey Wills
wills@macc.wisc.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:46>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sun Jan  9 18:56:18 1994

Date: Sun, 09 Jan 1994 20:02:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: A positive and workable idea for the historical linguists
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Dear Melancholy in Madison:

A couple of comments first, and then a positive idea.

It does seem to be a difference between systematics and historical linguistics
that the linguists will sometimes claim that certain major language families
are either not historically related, or that the evidence that they are can
never be recovered.  Systematists, in contrast, tend to assume that everything
is related (there is only one tree of life), and that it's just a matter of
figuring out what these historical relationships are.  That being the case,
it may be difficult for some of the systematists to understand criticism of
Greenberg et al. on the grounds of non-relationship of the languages, because
it is one of the routine assumptions of our field that "non-relationship"
doesn't really exist; it's all a matter of more and less close relationship.
The geographic points (which I was quite pleased to see) also tend to run
counter to our common assumptions.  This is _not_ to say that we are right
and the linguists are wrong; it is only by way of pointing out how each of our
disciplines is inclined to approach the problem.  Wallace wrote a classic paper
in 1855, as he was trying to develop his ideas on evolution, in which he
proposed what is now usually called "Wallace's Law": "Every species has come
into existence coincident in both space and time with a pre-existing closely
allied species."

But now a positive idea in response to Victor's original question of what the
non-specialists would like to see from the historical linguists; things that
might promote the field as a whole.  What I would like to see is a large wall
chart, maybe three or four feet square, professionally done, that illustrates
the history of the Indo-European languages.  I could and would use such a
chart in some of my courses in evolutionary biology to show the parallels
between the two fields, and maybe some of the linguistics societies could get
together and promote this as a great thing for school and college classrooms.
What this chart should show is PIE at the root, with a list of sample words
alongside the root, and as you go up the tree the changes in these words are
traced (numerals, kinship terms, etc.).  Thus when I look at the tips of the
branches I would see the selected words in English, French, Russian, etc.,
and would be able to trace back all of their transformations.  This chart
should be packed with information, and should not bejust a sketch.  In the
corners you could have a simplified version of the tree imposed on a map to
show migration routes.  The main tree will of course have some reticulation
in it, representing borrowing, etc.  (When I use the word "tree" I don't
mean something that is rigidly bifurcating; I just mean a genealogical diagram
that shows an estimate of the history.  If some of that history is reticulate
that's fine; it's still mostly a tree.)  The French branch, for example, would
have a set of dotted lines crossing over to the English branch around the time
of the Norman Conquest, and this would carry indications of the types of
language elements that were most likely to be transferred and the ones that
were most likely to remain unaltered.  It would take a lot of work to produce
such a chart, but I think it would be well worth it from the view of both
pedagogy and proselytizing.  Put this chart in every elementary and high
school classroom where an Indo-European language is spoken, and pretty soon
there'll be more little historical linguists running around than you'll know
what to do with.  ;-)  If such a chart in fact already exists, I want to know
about it.

I make the above suggestion in the knowledge that I should be able to give you
an equivalent chart showing, say, the phylogeny of the vertebrates, but I
cannot.  This is something on my list of someday-projects.  Smithsonian Press
publishes a not-so-great chart of animal evolution.  The real models to follow
for style and professionalism are the geologic time scales you can get from
Cambridge University Press, for example, or professionally done periodic
tables of elements.  The Cambridge geologic time scale is $14.95, and comes
nicely folded in a sturdy plastic envelope (ISBN 0-521-39880-0).  Just right.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:47>From GOLLAV@axe.humboldt.edu  Sun Jan  9 18:58:40 1994

Date: Sun, 9 Jan 1994 17:04 PST
From: GOLLAV@axe.humboldt.edu
Subject: Greenberg & Renfrew (one last time)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

One final posting on Greenberg and Renfrew, and then I promise to hold
my peace.

Donald Phillipson writes:

>  The historical record suggests no one gets credit for sheer
>  originality.  Credit comes for "making a contribution" i.e. integra-
>  ting the novel idea with the rest of the discipline, or else for
>  solving disciplinary problems.  Being right is (usually) necessary
>  but not sufficient.  Inspired guesses that do not integrate with at
>  least some other knowledge are a non-category.

And Fraser Neiman writes:

>  The unfortunate tendency is for practitioners in archaeology and
>  linguistics to send immediately for the game warden and have the
>  poachers hauled off the estate.  I think a more profitable attitude
>  might be to recognize that the correct interpretation of the archaeo-
>  logical and linguistic records is going to have to agree with the
>  correct interpretation of the genetic record, and vice versa.  This
>  does not mean that Cavalli et al. are right.  I think they _have_
>  pointed the way to an important methodological opportunity.  Although
>  they may not have exploited it in an entirely satisfactory fashion.

Phillipson's observation holds for Greenberg, Renfrew, and for others of
their ilk, EVEN IF they are "pointing the way to an important methodo-
logical opportunity.  As the Wegener case shows, even a well-argued and
potentially productive hypothesis can still fail to "make a contribution"
if it does not cross the threshold of connectedness with the body of already
accepted hypotheses at the time.  Greenberg and Renfrew are egregiously
short on such connectivity.

I regret the following ad hominem remarks, but it is necessary to make them
to show this particular problem in the clearest light.  The root cause
of Renfrew's and Greenberg's failure to gain acceptance for their ideas --
Cavalli Sforza is another matter -- is that they are lazy.  They have indeed
glimpsed certain possibilities and syntheses.  But they have laid their work
on the table in the shoddiest of states, with little attention to the
historical details as they are understood by informed specialists.

Scott DeLancey and Jeffrey Wills have already described Greenberg's sins of
ommission and commission in the comparative vocabularies of _Language in the
Americas_.  Let me cite a typical gaffe of Renfrew's.

In the article he published in the January issue of _Scientific American_,
he explains the dispersal of the "Na-Dene" language stock as one of the
"climate-related dispersals" of the late Holocene.  By this he means that,
like the expansion of the Eskimo-Aleuts along the Arctic coast, or of other
language families in Siberia, the Na-Dene expansion was probably motivated
by the opening up of an ecological niche on the northern periphery of
human settlement.  The initial Na-Dene dispersal, he believes,  represents
"an early adaptation to the tundra environment." --  Plausible enough to the
non-specialist, but the "Na-Dene" language family is a historic relationship
linking Athabaskan, Eyak, and Tlingit (some--including Greenberg--also add
Haida).  Of these Na-Dene subgroups, only Athabaskan has a "tundra" location;
the other languages are deeply entrenched in Northwest Coast environments.
Renfrew presumably derives the latter from the former, by social mechanisms
unspecified.  While the origins of Northwest Coast populations are far from
clear (here is where genetics may have a lot to say), this is certainly
not the most likely scenario.

This, however, is a small embarrassment compared to what comes next.  To
explain the wide dispersal of Athabaskan speech communities throughout much
of Western North America -- including enclaves on the Pacific coast of Oregon
and California as well as the Navajo and Apache of the Southwest -- Renfrew
invokes another mechanism, "elite dominance," by which he means military
conquest and similar agressive expansions of populations.  I cite the
passage in full (p.120):

>  Later, when climate or ecological factors rendered the area [i.e.,
>  the "tundra"] less hospitable to them, they moved south.  Some speakers
>  of Proto-Na-Dene penetrated as far as Arizona and New Mexico.  Elite
>  dominance, amplified by horeseback riding, accounts for the presence
>  of the cultures related to this language group throughout much of the
>  continent.

This howler, I think, gives the game away.  Renfrew is so profoundly
ignorant of North American culture history that he believes (a) that the
Athabaskan expansion of ca. 700-1200 AD was part of the "Proto-Na-Dene"
expansion of 2000 to 2500 years earlier (to cite the usual glottochronological
estimates); and (b) that this was accomplished by Genghis-Khan-like mounted
horse warriors, when every schoolchild, at least in the United States, knows
that the horse was brought to the Western Hemisphere by Europeans after 1492.

In other words, Renfrew couldn't be bothered to look up some elementary
facts in a desk encyclopedia before commiting his "new synthesis" to writing
in a journal that has a circulation in the millions.

The sad truth is, both Renfrew and Greenberg have taken advantage of their
considerable seniority (both Renfrew and Greenberg are well past 60
and heaped with academic honors) to publish and publicize some half-baked,
overweening claims to significant breakthroughs.  In so doing, they have not
only failed to gain acceptance for what might well be "true" hypotheses, but
have brought a certain odor of disrepute on the whole enterprise of
interdisciplinary prehistory.

Historical science must be cumulative, and new hypotheses and syntheses
must work hard to integrate with previous schemata.  Historical facts will
not go away or change their color to suit the integrating fad of the day, and
most of the hypotheses we work with in one generation will be equally "true"
(or "false") in the next.  A meaningful and productive marriage of genetics,
archaeology, and historical linguistics can only be the product of years of
research, by teams of researchers confident of the worth of the enterprise
and respectful of every shard of data.  Arrogant balderdash, promulgated
largely in a journalistic mode, cannot speed this process, and may indeed
significantly retard it by stirring the anger and resentment of the very
individuals on whose specialized work it must build.

Victor Golla
Humboldt State University
Arcata, California  95521
gollav @ axe.humboldt.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:48>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Mon Jan 10 00:20:18 1994

Date: Mon, 10 Jan 1994 01:26:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 10 -- Today in the Historical Sciences (*Special Edition*)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

JANUARY 10 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES (*SPECIAL EDITION*)

1794 (200 years ago today): JOHANN GEORG ADAM FORSTER, Anglo-German natural
historian, geographer, anthropologist, and illustrator, dies at Paris, France.
This special edition of Today in the Historical Sciences commemorates the
bicentennial of Forster's death, and reproduces the complete sketch of his
career by Michael E. Hoare from the _Dictionary of Scientific Biography_.
Forster, who sailed around the world on the _Resolution_ with James Cook from
1772 to 1775, might be pleased to know that tonight he is making the circuit
again, this time through a network of wires at the speed of light.

  [Johann Georg Adam] Forster was the oldest son of Johann Reinhold Forster
  and Justina Elisabeth Forster.  A precocious child, he was first educated
  by his father and acquired from him a lively and practical interest in
  natural history, as well as a thorough grounding in the numerous
  philological disciplines and languages which Johann Reinhold had mastered.
  In 1765 he accompanied his father on the survey of the German colonies on
  the Volga steppes and, for a short period while in Russia, attended the
  Petrisschule founded by the eminent geographer A. F. Busching.  In 1766 he
  went to England with his father and in 1767 published his first work, a
  translation of M. V. Lomonosov's history of Russia.  By the age of thirteen
  he had a command of most of the major languages of Europe.

  While his father was in Warrington, Lancashire, Forster was apprenticed to
  a merchant in London.  In the autumn of 1767 he joined his father at the
  Dissenters' Academy, where he continued his own studies and assisted with
  the instruction.  He also aided his father in the translation of
  Bougainville's _Voyage autour du monde_.  When the elder Forster received
  the commission to sail on Cook's second voyage (1772-1775), he insisted
  that his son accompany him as assistant and artist.  Afterward the younger
  Forster published his first major work, _A Voyage Round the World_ (London,
  1777).  As a result of this work, issued without official sanction, Forster
  became engaged in a spirited polemic with William Wales, the astronomer on
  the voyage, over the ethics of publishing an independent narrative in
  defiance of the Admiralty.  The _Voyage_, although deliberately lacking the
  systematic and scholarly presentation of geographic and scientific material
  found in his father's _Observations_, started a new genre ably developed
  later by Alexander von Humboldt, whom Forster influenced greatly by his
  work and ideas.  In 1776 the Forsters issued _Characteres generum
  plantarum_, and in 1777 the younger Forster was elected a fellow of the
  Royal Society.

  Although his preference was to continue his studies in England, Forster
  was forced by his family's circumstances to seek positions for himself and
  his father in Germany, and in 1779 he was appointed professor of natural
  history at the Collegium Carolinium in Kassel.  He was soon in contact
  with the prominent men of science and letters in Germany, including J. F.
  Blumenbach, G. C. Lichtenberg, and S. T. Sommering.  Forster was
  particularly attracted by the intellectual climate of Gottingen.  In 1784
  he was appointed to the chair of natural history at Vilna, Poland, and the
  following year he married Therese Heyne, daughter of the eminent Gottingen
  philologist C. G. Heyne. Forster collaborated with Lichtenberg in editing
  and writing the _Gottingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur_,
  and he also published extensively in the _Gottingische Anzeigen von
  gelehrten Sachen_.

  In Vilna, although isolated from the mainstream of European thought,
  Forster strove to correspond with men of science throughout Europe.  In
  1786 he published his M.D. dissertation (conferred by Halle), _De plantis
  esculentis insularum Oceani Australis commentatio botanica_ (Berlin-Halle)
  and _Florulae insularum Australium prodromus_ (Gottingen).  The latter work
  was seen by Forster as the basis for a more comprehensive botanical work on
  the Pacific area, the "Icones plantarum in itinere ad insulas Maris
  Australis...."  He also intended to publish a major study of European
  exploration in the Pacific.  In 1787 Forster published at Gottingen
  _Fasciculas plantarum Magellanicarum_ and _Plantae Atlanticae_.  J. D.
  Hooker, in his later work on the botany of the _Erebus_ and _Terror_
  voyages, drew critically on the work of the Forsters, who in turn were
  indebted to Daniel Solander, Cook's _Endeavour_ botanist.  Apart from his
  botanical work Forster's main contributions to the natural history of
  Cook's second voyage were his drawings and, later, his philosophical and
  geographic essays.  In 1786 he engaged in a polemic with Kant over his
  theory of the origins of man.

  In 1787, prevented by war from taking up an appointment as naturalist to a
  Russian expedition, Forster returned to Gottingen; and in October 1788 he
  was appointed librarian at the University of Mainz.  Between March and July
  1790, accompanied by Humboldt, he traveled to England via the Rhineland and
  the Low Countries.  His most important prose work, _Ansichten vom
  Niederrhein_ (Berlin, 1791-1794), was a penetrating account of his journey
  with Humboldt.  During the Mainz period his interest and writing turned more
  to social history and politics.  He became absorbed in the French
  administration which governed Mainz from October 1792.  In March 1793,
  Forster went as a Rhineland deputy to the National Convention in Paris,
  where he died of illness aggravated by scurvy contracted during the
  _Resolution_ voyage.

  Forster wrote of himself in 1789: "Natural science in its broadest sense
  and particularly anthropology have been my occupation hitherto.  What I
  have written since my voyage is closely related to that."  Cook's voyages
  opened up new areas of investigation to men of science in Europe.  Forster,
  the universal scholar, was a remarkable apologist for the new era of
  scientific discovery.  Fully alive to all the great movements of his day
  and in contact with the most eminent men in Germany and abroad, Forster,
  who had been well schooled by his father, did much to convey to the
  parochial world of German science and letters the significance of the great
  contemporary advances in the geographic and biological sciences -- in some
  of which disciplines German-speaking scientists were destined to have a
  profound influence in the ensuing century.

Michael E. Hoare in the _Dictionary of Scientific Biography_ (New York).

Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
network discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.
For more information about Darwin-L send the two-word message INFO DARWIN-L to
listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu, or gopher to rjohara.uncg.edu (152.13.44.19).

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:49>From abrown@independent.co.uk  Mon Jan 10 04:22:39 1994

From: Andrew Brown <abrown@independent.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 94 09:40:00 GMT
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Greenberg and other controversial beliefs

I'd just like to thank Jeffrey Wills for a post which makes very clear to
non-specialists a specialist's objections.
Andrew Brown

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:50>From PLHILL@Augustana.edu  Mon Jan 10 14:32:55 1994

From: PLHILL@Augustana.edu
Organization:  Augustana College - Rock Island IL
To: <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 1994 14:34:57 GMT-500
Subject: parsimony

    Finn Rasmussen claims that parsimonious hypotheses must also be
the least fantastic.  This is clearly a mistake.  Copernicus'
geokinetic universe was arguably (not certainly) more parsimonious
than its geostatic competitors.  It was also far more fantastic in
its implications, chiefly in the physics of motion.  One can easily
imagine circumstances in which belief in ghosts would afford the most
parsimonious explanation of various puzzling phenomena.  The
hypothesis might still be rejected precisely because it is fantastic,
meaning (roughly) that it is so difficult to integrate with the rest
of what we believe.
    Rasmussen is also wrong about the Church's attitude toward
geocentrism.  It did not prefer this theory because its "centrism"
mirrored Church structures.  Copernicus was also a centrist, a solar
centrist, and that would have done just as well so far as theocratic
politics was concerned.  Even if this had been the Church's
motivation, why does Rasmussen think this would make the alternative
"unscientific" or (much more absurdly) "dangerous?"  There is no
obvious reason why political and/or religious analogies should always
be useless to science.

David K. Hill
Augustana College
Rock Island, IL

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:51>From J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU  Mon Jan 10 16:28:42 1994

Date: Mon, 10 Jan 1994 17:30:38 -0500 (EST)
From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU (JOHN LIMBER)
Subject: seeking examples of "train of thought" metaphor
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

I'm looking for metaphoric uses (or criticisms) of the expression "train of
thought" in regard to human consciousness and language and would
appreciate any examples anyone might be aware of or come across.
 Below are some examples to give you an idea of what I'm looking
for.

 Darwin--to take an example relevant to this list--used this phrase in his
discussion of the origin of language (1) and remarks on consciousness and
habit (2). Others using it include Reid (3) and Hobbes (4).  (Don't assume I
already know anything!  I've just begun thinking about this systematically
and any ideas, interpretations or leads would be appreciated.)
	Thanks,
  John Limber, psychology, University of New Hampshire
*************

(1)"As the voice was used more and more, the vocal organs would have been
strengthened and perfected through the principle of the inherited effects of
use...but the relation between the continued use of language and
development of the brain, has no doubt been far more important....we may
confidently believe that the continued use and advancement of this power
would have reacted on the mind itself, by enabling it and encouraging it to
carry on long trains of thought." (Origins, 1871)

(2) "The possibility of two quite separate trains going on in the mind as in
double consciousness may really explain what habit is... (M notebook)

(3)"Such trains of thought discover themselves in children about two years
of age...I think we may perceive a distinction between the faculties of
children two or three years of age and those of the most sagacious brutes."
(Reid, 1812/1969)

(4) ""By the Trayne of Thoughts I understand that succession of one thought
to another...to distinguish it from Discourse in Words." (Hobbes, 1651)

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:52>From hantuo@utu.fi  Mon Jan 10 18:28:22 1994

To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: hantuo@utu.fi (Hanna Tuomisto)
Subject: re: DARWIN-L digest 115
Date: 	Tue, 11 Jan 1994 02:31:31 +0200

Fraser Neiman wrote that to become accepted, a hypothesis needs to fit not
only the evidence but also other theories. Indeed, this is one of the main
ways how science guarantees that the views about the world that finally get
accepted are coherent. We do not want to accept a bunch of hypothesis, even
if each of them fits some facts, if the total picture becomes fragmented
and internally inconsistent.

Since all new hypothesis are evaluated against the previously accepted
ones, it is very difficult to get such a hypothesis accepted that would
require the modification of "what we already know". Of course this is how
it should be. But scientific knowledge is not absolute, and therefore we
should not categorically refuse to check on those established theories.
They might benefit from being updated.

As to the "functional package" explanations of human evolution, there are
some crucial differences between the "hands-tools-reduced canines -brain
-bipedalism" package and the packages discussed by the aquatic theory. The
"hands-tools-etc." package is a very artificial one. All these traits are
considered as important changes towards hominization, but that is the main
reason why people started to consider them together. Because this
combination of traits is not found among other animals, we do not know if
it actually is a functional package or not. The aquatic theory lumps traits
into a package on entirely different grounds, namely because of their
co-occurrence in other animal species. And since these other animals are
(semi)aquatic, we have some reason to believe that the package indeed is
adaptational and evolved in a certain ecological situation. Consequently,
the selection pressures would have acted on each of the traits separately,
but simultaneously. Thermoregulation in wet conditions? Develop fat and get
rid of hair. Locomotion in water? Become bipedal and develop a diving
ability. Breathing in water? Avoid it, and develop concious control over
breathing and a way to close the nasal passage instead. The old
"hands-tools-" sequence has no such ecology to go with it. Therefore all
the traits depend mainly on each other, and the evolution of new traits is
explained by the existence of the old ones. The result is rather shaky,
though, and the sequence of events is far from clear.

Hanna Tuomisto
hantuo@utu.fi

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:53>From jsutton@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au  Mon Jan 10 18:39:49 1994

Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 11:34:37 +1100 (EST)
From: John Sutton <jsutton@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au>
Subject: Re: seeking examples of "train of thought" metaphor
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Re: John Limber's query on "trains of thought"

I can't offhand think of this expression earlier than Hobbes. But one
related, and less metaphorical, use was in associationist physiological
psychology: "trains of motions in the animal spirits" were the mechanism
by which trains of thought occurred, and could be adapted to various
metaphysics of mind. This phrase was used by Locke in the ESSAY 4th
edition (II.33) and parodied by Sterne: and I suspect that it was already
current in C17 animal spirits theory. One implication of both metaphors with
which later writers would get uneasy was that mind/brain processes may
escape conscious control and exceed the ministrations of the will.

John Sutton
History Philosophy & Politics
Macquarie Uni
NSW 2109
jsutton@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:54>From SWIJTIN@ucs.indiana.edu  Mon Jan 10 19:27:02 1994

Date: Mon, 10 Jan 94 20:30:23 EST
From: "ZENO G. SWIJTINK" <SWIJTIN@ucs.indiana.edu>
Subject: RE: seeking examples of "train of thought" metaphor
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

The Old OED gives:

1690 LOCKE Hum. Und. II, xiv par. 3.

A train of Ideas, which constantly succeed one another
in his Understanding.

Zeno Swijtink
HPSC, Indiana University
swijtin@ucs.indiana.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:55>From SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu  Mon Jan 10 20:10:52 1994

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: "Gerard Donnelly Smith"  <SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu>
Organization: Clark College, Vancouver WA, USA
Date: 10 Jan 94 18:10:19 PST8PDT
Subject: music and meaning

Would anyone on darwin-l wish to discuss music and meaning in regards
to poetics, semiotics, semantics?  I've just finished John Shepherd's
book MUSIC AS SOCIAL TEXT and found his theories exciting. I wrote my
doctoral dissertaion, "Sound Foundations: Music, Lanauge and Poetry,"
exploring the connection between sound and meaning in poetry and now
wish to pursue a dialog concerning the social implications of sound
beginning with music as a symbolic structure. A semiotic analysis, I
believe might uncover a "code" which regulates the generation of
musical meaning.  This "code" would have economic, cultural,
metaphysical, as well as social imperatives.  Let me begin with an
example I recall from youth.  I can't recall the exact commercial,
but it involved a cold remedy.  When the commercial began,
the notes "Da-da-da-DA" from Beethoven's Fifth would sound.  After
several exposures to the combination of sound, image and text, I
associated Beethoven's lietmotif with cold medicine.

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:56>From WILLS@macc.wisc.edu  Mon Jan 10 20:11:13 1994

Date: Mon, 10 Jan 94 20:11 CDT
From: Jeffrey Wills <WILLS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: A positive and workable idea for the historical linguists
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Bob O'Hara points out an important difference between systematics and
historical linguistics:

>It does seem to be a difference between systematics and historical linguistics
>that the linguists will sometimes claim that certain major language families
>are either not historically related, or that the evidence that they are can
>never be recovered.  Systematists, in contrast, tend to assume that everything
>is related (there is only one tree of life), and that it's just a matter of
>figuring out what these historical relationships are.  That being the case,
>it may be difficult for some of the systematists to understand criticism of
>Greenberg et al. on the grounds of non-relationship of the languages, because
>it is one of the routine assumptions of our field that "non-relationship"
>doesn't really exist; it's all a matter of more and less close relationship.
>The geographic points (which I was quite pleased to see) also tend to run
>counter to our common assumptions.  This is _not_ to say that we are right
>and the linguists are wrong; it is only by way of pointing out how each of our
>disciplines is inclined to approach the problem.  Wallace wrote a classic
>paper in 1855, as he was trying to develop his ideas on evolution, in which he
>proposed what is now usually called "Wallace's Law": "Every species has come
>into existence coincident in both space and time with a pre-existing closely
>allied species."

Some comments: I think most linguists would subscribe to Wallace's Law. Our
problem is that borrowing between distantly-related or "unrelated" languages
can often give the illusion of close relationship (especially to those working
mainly by lexical equivalences). Biologists also have the problem of
convergence, but for language this seems to be a much more common phenomenon.
As a result, linguists treat adjacent languages with some caution if systematic
reflexes cannot be shown.  The fundamental difference, as O'Hara rightly points
out, is in the assumption about possible "non-relationship". Demonstrating that
language A has more features in common with B than any other language doesn't
necessarily do much if you are always suspecting non-relation. The comparative
method in a sense relies on process of elimination (ruling out universals and
borrowing) and borrowing is most easily eliminated in the case of languages
which have been separated for some time.  In short, Language varieties arise
coincident in space and time but their genetic affiliation is most easily
demonstrated when they are no longer coincident.

A question: Are there major consequences from including/excluding possible
"non-relationship"? What differences are created by assuming that all the
jigsaw pieces on the table come from one puzzle rather than from several? Is
this just a possibility in human culture systems (like the tree of writing
systems or legal systems) or is non-relationship a question in other historical
sciences too?

Jeffrey Wills
wills@macc.wisc.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:57>From RSOLIE@smith.smith.edu  Tue Jan 11 06:35:36 1994

Date: 11 Jan 1994 07:40:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: RSOLIE@smith.smith.edu
Subject: Re: music and meaning
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

And that same Beethoven motive, of course, was once associated with Victory
in war because (I guess) ..._  is Morse code for "V."

Ruth Solie
rsolie@smith.smith.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:58>From barbieri@dogon.geomin.unibo.it  Tue Jan 11 07:19:43 1994

Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 16:37:30 +0300
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: barbieri@dogon.geomin.unibo.it
Subject: Re: music and meaning

>And that same Beethoven motive, of course, was once associated with Victory
>in war because (I guess) ..._  is Morse code for "V."
>
>Ruth Solie
>rsolie@smith.smith.edu

Wrong. The Beethoven motive was at the beginning of the BBC broadcast to
the occupied territories. We, here in Italy, remember it very well.

R. Barbieri
Roberto Barbieri

Dipartimento di Scienze Geologiche
Universita' di Bologna
Via Zamboni 67
40127 Bologna Italy

Voice  +39-51-354548
Fax +39-51-354522

Email  barbieri@geomin.unibo.it

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:59>From mahaffy@dordt.edu  Tue Jan 11 07:31:31 1994

Subject: Fair to Desmond & Moore?
To: Address Darwin list <Darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 07:36:46 -0600 (CST)
From: James Mahaffy <mahaffy@dordt.edu>

I would like to include a reference to Desmond and Moore in a annotated
bibliography I am going to hand out this semester.  However, since I have
only had time to read of couple of chapters and am not a historian, i
would appreciate feedback on the annotation that I include below.
Have I hit both the strengths and weaknesses of the book.

Thanks,
---
Desmond, A. and Moore, J. 1991 Darwin: The Life of a Tormented
Evolutionist Warner Books, New York 808 pages, I have only read
parts of this fascinating and widely acclaimed biography of Darwin
but that reading and a number of reviews give me a good feeling for
the book.  The book, written by two leading Darwin scholars, will
give you a real sense of Darwin and his time.  In fact what makes
the book unique is their seeing Darwin in terms of his social
position, the influence of his family and the social context of the
time.  To show the effect of these influences and make them real
(both of which they powerfully do) they write as if they knew what
was influencing Darwin and going through his mind, and flush out
historical details where needed.  This in fact makes the book to
some extent a historical fictionalized novel. Although well
footnoted, sometimes I would like to have known what is fact and
what is conjecture.  For instance, did Grant (a teacher that
influenced Darwin in his undergraduate days) actually go on walks
with Darwin (it is logical - but there is is no proof in the book
that their connection occurred in this manner).   Still there is a
mass of documented detail and their style makes Darwin and his
situation live.  I am sure every Dordt student would appreciate
"indignation" at a friend being confined to the college for the
rest of the semester because he fell asleep on Darwin's couch after
a hike in the wilds and missed curfew. This is a good biography but
every biologist should still read for himself some of what Darwin
wrote.  Pick up and look at the book On the Origin of the Species
by Means of Natural Selection from our library to feel the force of
his arguments and the type of logical presentation he makes.
Darwin provided a mechanism that scientists could use to explain
origins with out the supernatural to a world that to a large extent
was ready to explain it that way, but in the empirical sciences, he
could not have changed the paradigms of his time without some force
to his argument.   Even those  of us who walk in a different
paradigm believing in a God who creates and sustains this world
should still understand the present neoDarwinian theory and its
historical origins. This book, Darwin,  is not in library but you
are more than welcome to borrow my copy.
--
James F. Mahaffy                   e-mail: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Biology Department                 phone: 712 722-6279
Dordt College                      FAX 712 722-1198
Sioux Center, Iowa 51250

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:60>From parkerd@ucsu.Colorado.EDU  Tue Jan 11 11:29:27 1994

From: PARKER  DOUGLAS RAY <parkerd@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Subject: Re: Greenberg & Renfrew (one last time)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 10:32:48 -0700 (MST)

As an archeologist who works in the state of Colorado, I must make a
comment. The Athapaskan peoples on the plains were there when
Coronado arrived. His exploration of the southern plains reveals that
Athapaskan peoples were in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma at that
time 16th century. Another point, The Dismal River Culture is
prehistoric Athpaskan, and they are found throughout eastern Colorado
up to the 17th century. Sometime in the late 16th or early 17th is
the earliest that Athpaskan speakers could have entered the
Southwestern United States Region.

Douglas Parker
Department of Anthropology
University of Colorado at Boulder
PARKERD@UCSU.COLORADO.EDU

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:61>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Tue Jan 11 12:07:48 1994

Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 13:13:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

We seem to be having a problem with mail posted to the list from bitnet
addresses.  Two or three messages have been sent to the ukanaix administrator
describing the problem, but I have not yet had a response.  Anyone who is
trying to post from a bitnet address and isn't having any luck may forward the
bounced message to me (Bob O'Hara, darwin@iris.uncg.edu) and I will post it.

This comes from Kent Holsinger:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the course of an interesting exchange between Jeffrey Wills and Bob O'Hara
about systematists and linguists attitudes about relationships, Jeffrey makes
the following observation:

    Borrowing between distantly related or "unrelated" languages can often
    give the illusion of close relationship ... Biologists also have the
    problem of convergence, but for language this seems to be a much more
    common phenomenon.

I think there is an important observation lurking here.  The appropriate
biological example is *hybridization* not *convergence*.  Hybridization between
species can lead to the appearance of characters in one species that were
"borrowed" from another species in a way that seems exactly analogous to the
way in which English "borrowed" many words from French following the Norman
invasion.  (I'm a biologist, not a linguist, so I may have missed something
important.  If so, please correct me.)

Hybridization also causes problems for biological systematists.  When there
is hybridization, relationships cannot be expressed as a tree.  They are
reticulate.  In sexually reproducing species, for example, it's not possible
to describe the relationships among individuals in a population as a tree
because the indvidual genealogies are connected in many complex ways.

The reason hybridization doesn't impose an insuperable burden on biological
systematists is that biological evolution is *mostly* non-reticulate once
you get above the level of species.  Jeffrey Wills argument would suggest
that reticulation is much more prevalent in language evolution than in
biological evolution, especially at higher levels.  If biologists had the
same degree of reticulation to worry about, I'm sure we'd have many of the
same misgivings.

-- Kent

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Kent E. Holsinger            Internet: Holsinge@UConnVM.UConn.edu |
|  Dept. of Ecology &           BITNET:   Holsinge@UConnVM           |
|    Evolutionary Biology, U-43                                      |
|  University of Connecticut                                         |
|  Storrs, CT   06269-3043                                           |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:62>From BOTCFNR@vm.uni-c.dk  Tue Jan 11 18:52:54 1994

Date: Wed, 12 Jan 94 01:11:30 DNT
From: Finn Rasmussen <BOTCFNR@vm.uni-c.dk>
Subject: Fantastics and parsimony
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

David K Hill wrote that it is wrong that the most parsimonious explanations
are also the least fantastic. OK, - I actually mentioned the heliocentric
world view as an exception. I would still think that it works as a rule  of
thumb. The "established scientific" explanations of various phenomena are
often a good deal more parsimonius than the alternatives suggested by popu-
lar fantasy writers. But it is of course difficult for the readers to decide
if von Daeneken is a new Copernicus or just another crank.
  The reason why I think that political/religious analogy is a more dangerous
source of inspiration is that it make people wish that one particular expla-
ation is true, rather than just wishing to know a parsimonious explanation.
  May be some the historically oriented list members can explain what was at
the core of the heliocentric/geocentric world view controversy.
                Finn Rasmussen, Botanical Lab, Copenhagen.

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<5:63>From sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu  Tue Jan 11 19:31:23 1994

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 94 20:34:44 -0500
From: Sally Thomason <sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu>

Kent Holsinger brings up the issue of frequency of hybridization
in language history, as opposed to biological evolution.  It's true
that it's a lot easier (and more common) for languages to borrow
features than for "a little" hybridization to occur in biological
species (as far as I know); but hybridization to the point that
the branchings in a linguistic family tree become obscured seems to be
rare.  That is: slight to moderate linguistic borrowing -- not
just words, but also sounds, syntax, and even some word structure
-- doesn't obliterate the main lines of descent of a language;
and when borrowing becomes so extreme that the main lines of
descent are seriously obscured, there are usually clues in the
structure of the language.  Most often, the vocabulary doesn't
match the grammar, in a seriously mixed language -- that is,
the vocabulary and grammar can't both be traced to the same
historical source.  In my view, when this happens you can't
put the mixed language in a family tree at all, and it isn't
related (in the sense of descent with modification) to any of
its source languages.  The best-known examples are pidgin and
creole languages, like Tok Pisin (a.k.a. Melanesian Pidgin
English), whose vocabulary comes almost entirely from English
but whose grammar can't be traced to English at all.  Other
striking examples are mixed languages like Michif, whose
noun phrases are French and whose verb phrases (and most of
the syntax) are Cree (an Algonquian language, Canada).

   So I don't think reticulation, to use the biological terminology
Kent Holsinger was using, is too likely to be a stumbling block --
at least not often -- in the effort to establish relationships
among languages.  As in biology, linguistic evolution is, as far
as I can tell, mostly non-reticulate...as long as you're
dealing with completely separate languages and not dialects of
the same language, and as long as you are looking at languages
as wholes rather than at individual
linguistic features taken separately.

   Sally Thomason
   sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:64>From sctlowe@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au  Wed Jan 12 00:04:53 1994

Date: Wed, 12 Jan 1994 16:01:28 +1000 (EST)
From: Ian Lowe <I.Lowe@sct.gu.edu.au>
Subject: Beethoven's 5th and the BBC
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

My memory is that Roberto Barbieri, who pointed out that the opening notes
of Beethoven's 5th Symphony opened BBC news broadcasts during World War
II, and Ruth Solie, who noted that three dots and a dash are Morse code
for V [for victory], are both right.  In other words, the music was
chosen to open the news broadcasts because of the happy coincidence with
the Morse code symbol for the letter V.  The motif became a symbol of
resistance - and one it was impossible to suppress, being the work of a
great German composer!

I confess to having been quite young at the time, but I read that
explanation in the 1940s...

Ian Lowe
[neither a musicologist nor an expert in codes!]

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:65>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Wed Jan 12 17:41:59 1994

Date: Wed, 12 Jan 1994 18:47:58 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Status of anti-neo-Darwinism?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

The following comes from John Wilkins, who was having trouble posting
it from his site.    -- Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I recently read _Evolution as entropy_ by Brooks and Wiley (second edition
1988). As much as my abysmal lack of math will permit, I understand that they
are making a fairly strong non-neo-Darwinian claim: to wit, that selection is
not the most important factor in directional change; but instead that the
possibility spaces created by the present configuration of a system
(organism, species, population, ecology) constrains the direction in which
that system may develop. This is overtly orthogenetic, although not
neo-Lamarkian in the sense that there is no anticipatory mechanism for
variation.

Not being a biologist, I am interested to hear from them what the status of
these views is, whether the strong selectionist program is now withering or
if we now have two strong competitors for evolutionary explanation.

Cheers

John Wilkins - Manager, Publishing, Monash University,
Wellington Road, Clayton, Victoria 3168 [Melbourne] Australia
Internet: john.wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au
Tel: (+613) 905 6009; fax: 905 6029
*******
Monash neither knows, nor approves, of what I say

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:66>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Wed Jan 12 18:07:13 1994

Date: Wed, 12 Jan 1994 19:13:03 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 12 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

JANUARY 12 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1778: WILLIAM HERBERT is born at Highclere, Hampshire, England.  A junior
member of an aristocratic family, Herbert will study at Eton and Oxford, and
then take a seat in the House of Commons.  Leaving politics for the ministry
in 1814, Herbert will move to the parish of Spofforth in Yorkshire, where he
will remain for the rest of his life.  An interest in botany will lead Herbert
to become a skilled horticulturalist, and his extensive studies of plant
hybrids will form the basis of part of Darwin's discussion of hybridism
and sterility in the _Origin of Species_ (1859).

Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
network discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.
For more information about Darwin-L send the two-word message INFO DARWIN-L to
listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu, or gopher to rjohara.uncg.edu (152.13.44.19).

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:67>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Wed Jan 12 22:43:49 1994

Date: Wed, 12 Jan 1994 23:49:40 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Re: Status of anti-neo-Darwinism?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

It's been a while since I've looked at the Brooks and Wiley work on evolution
and entropy, but I just wanted to put in my two cents on John Wilkins's more
general question about the status of "neodarwinism."

"Neodarwinism" refers to the general understanding of the evolutionary process
that developed first in the period of the "Modern Synthesis" of the 1930s and
1940s.  A tiny sketch of the relevant history would go like this: after 1859
most people accepted the theory of descent but relatively few accepted natural
selection as the mechanism of evolutionary change; fewer and fewer as we
approach 1900.  By 1900 natural selection was very unpopular but descent was
universally accepted.  Round about the 1930s a number of lines of evidence
converged from genetics, biogeography, and population systematics that caused
natural selection to be accepted as the principal mechanism of evolutionary
change once again.  This convergence of a variety of lines of evidence was
called the "Modern Synthesis", and it is usually associated with the work of
people like Mayr, Dobzhansky, Wright, Fisher, Haldane, Simpson, Stebbins, and
many others.  "Neodarwinism" is the term that is usually applied to the views
of this period: "darwinism" because it represented a revival of natural
selection as the principal mechanism of change, and "neo" because it did
replace or discard certain elements of Darwin's own views, most notably
Darwin's belief in "soft inheritance" (Lamarckian inheritance).

In the last ten or twenty years, however, a number of people who have made
an assortment of discoveries have declared as a result of their work that
"neodarwinism is dead!"  The problem with this is that neodarwinism isn't
some singular proposition that can be declared true or false; it's a whole
constellation of work that includes most of 20th-century population genetics,
the rejection of soft ("Lamarckian") inheritance, the notion that speciation
usually requires geographical isolation (allopatry), the adoption of
"population thinking" and the rejection of essentialism, and on and on.
The claim that neodarwinism has been proven false is somewhat like saying:
"Senator X was elected by a majority of the people in his state, but we have
proof that Senator X is an embezzeler.  Thus democracy is a complete failure
as a system of government, because embezzelers are elected to office under
democracy."

"Ah, but the fact that the third position in a DNA codon can drift randomly
and is not subject to selection destroys the whole neodarwinian edifice!"
I don't see how such a claim can be defended when in the very paragraph in the
_Origin_ where Darwin defines natural selection he speaks of variations which
are neither useful nor injurious remaining as a fluctuating element within any
population.

"Ah, but some speciation is not allopatric!"  Of course.  Is that a death-blow
to the modern synthetic theory of evolution?  Hardly.

"Ah, but what about punctuated equilibrium!"  A "minor gloss on neodarwinism"
as someone recently said.

"Ah, but organismal variation is constrained within certain limits; organisms
don't vary equally in all directions and so can't be molded like clay!"  Yes,
that's right.  Did anybody ever really believe otherwise?  (If anybody did
believe otherwise, well, I'm sure the Synthesis folks got a few things wrong
here and there, like we all do.  No big deal.)

Now, are there specific and interesting questions that can be asked about any
of these particular points?  Absolutely.  Just what conditions must be met for
sympatric speciation to occur?  What is the nature of the the constraints on
variation and how do they themselves vary across taxa and through time?  How
important is random drift in populations of different structures and sizes?
All of these are very interesting and valuable questions one may ask.  But
each one of these questions must be framed in a very specific manner.  For a
really good example of interesting questions within the neodarwinian framework
take a look at George C. Williams new book _Natural Selection_ (Oxford Univ.
Press, 1992).  I think Williams's discussion of the notion that particular
taxa have their variation constrained by "bauplans" is particularly good.

Some time last semester _Time_ magazine had a cover story about dinosaurs with
the bold headline "Dinosaurs: Everything you know about them is wrong!"  One
of my students looked at me with a sort of worried look when he saw it and
said "Everything I know is wrong?" I told him not to worry; it's how they sell
magazines.  I guess I feel the same way about "Neodarwinism is dead!": it's an
eye-catcher for sure, but by itself I'm not sure it's a whole lot 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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:68>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Thu Jan 13 00:06:28 1994

Date: Thu, 13 Jan 1994 01:12:23 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 13 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

JANUARY 13 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1794 (200 years ago today): PROSPER GARNOT is born at Brest, France.  As
an assistant surgeon in the French navy, Garnot will sail under Duperrey
on the _Coquille_ during its circumnavigation of the globe (1822-1825).
In the company of the naturalist Rene-Primevere Lesson, Garnot will collect
extensively along the coasts of South America and in the Pacific, although
many of his specimens will be lost in a shipwreck in July of 1824.  With
Lesson he will author the zoological section of the voyage's report, _Voyage
autour du monde execute par order du roi sur la corvette La Coquille pendant
les annees 1822-1825_, which will be published in Paris between 1828 and 1832.

Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
network discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.
For more information about Darwin-L send the two-word message INFO DARWIN-L to
listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu, or gopher to rjohara.uncg.edu (152.13.44.19).

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:69>From ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu  Thu Jan 13 02:32:42 1994

Date: Wed, 12 Jan 94 22:36:00 HST
From: Ron Amundson <ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: On critiques of "neoDarwinism"

I shudder to question the opinions of our fearless leader in this
enterprise, but I think Bob O'Hara's appraisal of the criticisms of
neoDarwinism is too defensive.  There are indeed serious critics of
mainstream post-Synthesis evolutionary biology, and they're not just
out to gather Time magazine headlines -- in fact most of them get no
press at all.  This is not to say that science reportage on the issues
is _conscientious_... reporters are after sexy stories, after all.
But there are critics of varying degrees of contentiousness who claim
that mainstream evolutionary studies have systematically ignored
certain important topics of study.  The Brooks and Wiley
self-organizing-systems approach is one avenue of criticism; another
(my favorite) is the underrepresentation of embryological and
developmental-biological knowledge in mainstream evolutionary studies.

I'm reluctant to start email debates on the subject in Darwin-L,
both because I'm involved in plenty of them outside of Darwin-L,
and also because D-L is too important a forum to be clogged with
debates of this complexity.  But I will gather an annotated
bibliography of (what I see to be) the important developmentalist
literature critical of current mainstream evolution theory, and
post it to D-L.  And I'll ( at that time) invite any real
masochists to read a couple of my own recent ramblings on the
topics.

BTW, "orthogenetic" is a very misleading term to apply to the Brooks
and Wiley approach -- even if they do use it themselves.  Reduced
ranges of variation and biased probabilities of certain trajectories
is not very similar to what the great 19th c. orthogeneticists meant
by the term.

Finally, in the true historical spirit of Darwin-L, I will note that
the term "neoDarwinism" originally referred to Weismann's version of
Darwinism, which did indeed distinguish germ line from soma line
cells, and so rule out use-inheritance.  But that was all 50 years or
so before the Synthesis.  It is, of course, appropriate and customary
to refer to the results of the Modern Synthesis as "NeoDarwinism".  I
mean, hell, they're our words, aren't they?  (Linguists may have views
on that bit of armchair arrogance.)

Cheers,

Ron Amundson
Univ. of Hawaii at Hilo
ronald@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu
ronald@uhunix.bitnet

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:70>From ARKEO4@FENNEL.WT.UWA.EDU.AU  Thu Jan 13 03:32:43 1994

Date: Thu, 13 Jan 1994 17:37:39 +0800 (SST)
From: ARKEO4@FENNEL.WT.UWA.EDU.AU
Subject: RE: On critiques of "neoDarwinism"
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

On:
> Date: Thu, 13 Jan 1994 02:40:08 -0600
> From: Ron Amundson <ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
noted, very much in passing,
> Finally, in the true historical spirit of Darwin-L, I will note that
> the term "neoDarwinism" originally referred to Weismann's version of
> Darwinism, which did indeed distinguish germ line from soma line
> cells, and so rule out use-inheritance.
which of course is relevant, pretty much, only to ONE of the 4/5/6/? [take
your pick] Kingdoms.

I wonder how much this old, and only occasionally relevant, idea about the
nature of genetics and hereditability has affected all of our ideas about
the "fundamental" nature of evolutionary processes?

Dave Rindos,
back thinking about somatic selection . . .
which might well be relevant to the recent fascinating discussion on the
nature of linguistic change, and even the original post which prompted the
reply quoted above.

_______________________________________________________________________________
Darwin-L Message Log 5: 41-70 -- January 1994                               End