Darwin-L Message Log 5: 71–100 — 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: 71-100 -- JANUARY 1994
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DARWIN-L
A Network Discussion Group on the
History and Theory of the Historical Sciences
_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:71>From delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu  Thu Jan 13 16:32:15 1994

Date: Thu, 13 Jan 1994 14:16:05 -0800 (PST)
From: Scott C DeLancey <delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Sally Thomason suggests (Tue, 11 Jan 1994) that, given what we know
about interlinguistic influence (the various phenomena traditionally
rather imprecisely referred to as "borrowing"), we wouldn't expect
it to confuse the issue of genetic relationships among languages:

> 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.

In theory, this is true; as Sally (who, after all, wrote the book
on the subject) puts it:

> 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.

In practice, particularly in the Greenbergian context
with which this thread started, I don't think it is, i.e. I disagree
that:

>    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.

Empirically, it has freaquently been, and continues to be, a stumbling
block.  For some celebrated cases, e.g. the relationships or lack of
them among Chinese and various Southeast Asian languages (Vietnamese
and languages of the Hmong-Mien and Tai-Kadai families), further work
has largely succeeded in unravelling the problem (though respectable
and otherwise sensible scholars still try and reopen the issue every
now and then).  Others, e.g. the problem of the parentage of Japanese,
or of the relationship between Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic, remain open
and controversial.  The problem which recurs again and again is that
we find two languages with some substantial amount of what appears
to be common vocabulary, that, if they are indeed related, are related
so distantly that more conclusive evidence of relationship has been
obscured over time.  When, as (at least arguably) in the case of
Japanese, there is evidence of this sort linking the language to
two distinct genetic stocks, there is indeed a stumbling block in
the effort to establish relationship.  I don't think that, at least
in the case of animals, there could be any biological parallel to
this situation.
     And precisely this argument is prominent in discussions of
Greenberg's work.  Much of his evidence can be discarded on various
grounds--bad data, erroneously transcribed data, misanalyzed forms,
etc.  And undoubtedly a considerable proportion of what's left
represents chance resemblance.  Greenberg's answer is that even
so, he has enough data that there will still be enough left to
prove his claims.  The problem is that it is still not possible to
eliminate borrowing as an explanation for at least some of these
data--so the possibility of borrowing again represents a stumbling
block.

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:72>From sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu  Thu Jan 13 20:46:54 1994

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 94 21:50:15 -0500
From: Sally Thomason <sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu>

Scott DeLancey makes good points about the problem of
distinguishing chance from genetic relationship from
borrowing in languages that are distantly related, if
at all.  When I said that it is usually possible to
make the distinction between borrowing and inheritance,
I had in mind situations in which there's still enough
evidence available -- it's true, as Scott says,
that time obscures the difference.  It's quite possible
that, at time depths around (say) 10,000 years, one could
prove the existence of a historical connection between two
languages, but not the nature of that connection.  And
this is presumably quite different from the situation
in biology.  In historical linguistics, the decay and
ultimate disappearance of systematic correspondences in
related languages is what places a time limit on the
possibility of establishing family relationships.

   Sally Thomason
   sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:73>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Thu Jan 13 23:25:27 1994

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 00:31:16 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Administrative notes
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

We have been troubled by an assortment of network problems since the holidays.
There have been problems with mail coming from bitnet addresses to ukanaix,
and also local mail delivery problems at my own uncg site.  The bitnet trouble
at ukanaix has been reported and I am hoping that it will be taken care of
soon.  The local delivery problems at uncg have been fixed.  If anyone sent
me a private message in the last couple of weeks and has not yet had a reply
please write again; it is very likely that I did not receive your message.

The December message log is available for retrieval from either ukanaix or
the experimental Darwin-L gopher.  To retrieve the log from ukanaix send the
following message to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu:

     GET DARWIN-L 9312

Alternatively you may gopher to rjohara.uncg.edu (152.13.44.19) and
look in the directory "Monthly Darwin-L Logs".

I thank you all for your continuing interest, and apologize for the
occasional pothole we encounter out here on the information superhighway.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:74>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Fri Jan 14 00:02:13 1994

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 01:08:11 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Help for the Irkutsk Botanic Garden (fwd from TAXACOM)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

This message just appeared on TAXACOM, and while it is a bit off our topic
of comparative studies in the historical sciences I think it is a worthy
cause.  If any of the members of Darwin-L can provide assistance they should
get in touch with Dr. Kuzevanov directly at the address below.

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

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

<Forwarded message: From Victor Ya.Kuzevanov (VIC@BOGARD.IRKUTSK.SU)

May I ask you to give us some help in order to get a very necessary
information for our Irkutsk Botanic Garden, if available. Some Siberian
enthusiastic scientists and environmentalists are going to restore the
Garden after many years of its destruction. Several scientists and me
have shifted from the Academical Institutes to Botanic Garden last year
and now we urgently interested in different supporting materials useful
for reviving of Irkutsk Botanic Garden (see attached info) and for the
new environmental policy in Siberian Region near the Baikal Lake.

There are some of our needs:

1) Email and post address list of other Botanic Gardens all over the
world as well as seed companies.

2) Info on botanists/programmers involved in BG-Base and
TROPICALIS-Base information system.

3) any support in order to get Tropical Plants Identification Manuals and
Botanical descriptive literature with color pictures, Zyxell-type
Fax-Voice-Modem (with MNP5), IBM-type NoteBook computer, color scanner to
scan pictures and maps, color printer, A4-format copying xerox machine,
software Paradox 4.0, some plant growth regulators (IAA, BAP, GA3), seeds
of different colorful American flowers to be exposed in our Botanic
Garden.

4) the memorandum and resulted documents of the "Earth Summit in
Rio -1992" concerning biodiversity and international efforts to save
rare, endemic, and endangered plants, to save natural Siberian flora and
fauna of such fragile ecosystems near the Baikal Lake - well known world
heritage.

Any other information on environmental problems concerning plants would
be appreciated. Let me know what kind of botanical and ecological
information from Siberia and Baikal Lake region you may be interested
in. Thank you in advance. Sincerely yours,

Victor

Dr.Victor Ya.Kuzevanov, Director
Botanic Garden of the Irkutsk State University
Koltsov Street, 93
P.O.Box 1457, Irkutsk
664039, RUSSIA

Phone: 7-(3952)-435836
Fax: 7-095-4202106(International) or 7-3952-332238(Local)
Telex: 231511 PTB SU  Attention IGU KUZEVANOV
Email: vic@bogard.irkutsk.su

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

Brief information on the Botanic Garden
of the Irkutsk State University

     The Botanic Garden of the Irkutsk State University (BG-ISU), created
in 1941, today occupies 27.08 hectares of the Sverdlovsk region of Irkutsk
city (70 kilometers west of Lake Baikal). It is the single site of plant
introduction in Eastern Siberia and categorized by law as a nature
preserve within the city of Irkutsk.
     The principle tasks of BG-ISU are plant introduction, the training
of university students, schoolchildren and the general population, and the
improvement of the ecological situation. BG-ISU works to save the
genetically-diverse flora of Eastern Siberia by adding to its collection of
living plants and studying their biology. With the existing collection, an
assortment of plants better adapted to local and other climatic and
ecological conditions, BG-ISU endeavors to increase the amount of green
areas in the city and to improve the environment. BG-ISU carries out
educational activities regarding nature preservation and botanical
knowledge. BG-ISU is the only botanic garden in Central Siberia included in
the International Nomenclature of Botanic Gardens (beginning in 1953) and a
member of the Network of Botanic Gardens of Russia.
     BG-ISU maintains and studies a collection of 1,300 live plant species
and varieties from various regions of the world (estimated value of 3 million
rubles at 1991 prices). BG-ISU is a center of training and practical study
for students of the Biological and Soil, Geological, Geographical, and
Chemical Faculties of Irkutsk State University, at which staff members
give lectures and carry out research. In the past five years, students at
BG-ISU have completed 1 doctorate, 6 master's and 8 bachelor's degrees.
Courses and workshops are held regularly for student pharmacologists of the
Irkutsk State Medical Institute, students of the Irkutsk State Pedagogical
Institute, summer students of the Irkutsk Pharmacological College, as well
as for school teachers. School groups also make frequent field trips. In the
past five years, staff members have published 14 articles and 7 conference
abstracts in Russian publications. Once every two years, BG-ISU issues a
seed list, "Delectus of the Irkutsk Botanic Garden", as part of its
international seed exchange program.
     Currently, BG-ISU is organized into four sections:
1. Section of Dendrology. Occupies about 8 hectares. Maintains and studies
approximately 300 species of woody plants and bushes, including both local
Siberian flora and flora of the former Soviet Union and world.
2. Section of Wild Flora and Preservation of the Genefund. Occupies about 1
hectare, on which over 300 species are maintained. Consists of three
collections: systematicum, medicinal plants, and rare and endangered plants
of Eastern Siberia.
3. Section of Flowering and Decorative Plants. Over 500 species are
maintained in a field and 2 greenhouses (1000 square meters and 200 square
meters).  Tropical and subtropical cultures are included.
4. Section of Horticultural plants. Occupies about 2 hectares. Over 200
species and varieties of fruiting and other cultivated plants.
     At the moment, BG-ISU is registered as a branch of the university,
but it expects to become an independent entity within the some next
years. The staff includes 29 members (incl.4 PhD's): 3 administrative
workers, 12 biologists, 3 senior and 2 junior lab workers, 4 gardeners,
and 4 guards. Presently, the University provides only for BG-ISU
operating expenses and staff salaries (average $40 per month). Financial
support for BG-ISU restoration and beautification was discontinued over 5
years ago. The material base of BG-ISU does not meet modern or current
demands, as it lacks the following: 1) Machinery for soil treatment, 2)
Transport ability, 3) Elementary equipment for botanical, physiological,
and soil research, 4) Sewerage system. The physical infrastructure of
BG-ISU is in poor condition. The perimeter fence remains broken in
several spots because the university is not able to provide funds for its
repair. Nearby residents trespass on the grounds of BG-ISU constantly,
leading to frequent destruction and theft of valuable plants. The one
guard per 24 hour period allowed by the university's budget cannot patrol
27 hectares adequately. Especially destructive are teenagers who build
fires in the midst of a relict pine forest situated on BG-ISU territory.
Four years ago, almost 1.5 hectares of the forest were designated for
cutting by the administration of the city of Irkutsk to build a highway
and homes. At least 0.25 hectares have been cut and the completion of one
building has seriously damaged the biocenosis of the forest. Both a hot
water pumping station and a power station for city trolleybuses now run
through BG-ISU. Lawns and natural fields were harmed by construction
machinery. Building materials and trash litter the forest as a result of
the construction. A temporary order of stay exists for the forested area
not yet cut. Beginning in 1981, almost 60 percent of valuable tropical
and subtropical plants died every winter due to accidents that resulted
from a dangerously constructed heating system. This system has been
repaired as one of the first acts of the new management of BG-ISU,
financed independently from the university.
     Unfortunately, the break-up of the Soviet Union has forced
fundamental changes in the system supporting botanical, ecological, and
biotechnological research, shortage has come, and we have to look for any
collaboration/support from international sources.

     At present BG-ISU is looking for collaboration in:

1) GENE BANK PROJECT for rare and endemic Siberian plants conservation
(seed banking, collections, etc),

2) making of COMPUTER DATA BASE (Paradox 3.5, scanning of color
pictures∧maps) of plant genetic resources in Siberia as a part of Gene
Bank Project,

3) botanical expeditions (+ecological tourism) around the Baikal Lake
to save endangered plants,

4) clonal propagation (fruit-trees, etc) and genetic transformation of
plants,

5) seed exchange and/or seed production,

6) publishing of attractive brochures and photo-cards on Siberian
flowering plants.

Every help would be appreciated.
    Thank you.

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:75>From john.wilkins1@udev.monash.edu.au  Fri Jan 14 01:31:31 1994

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 18:32:59 +1000
From: John Wilkins <john.wilkins1@udev.monash.edu.au>
Subject: On neoDarwinism 2
To: Darwin-L <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>

On neoDarwinism 2
Thanks to Bob O'Hara, Ron Amundson and Dave Rindos for their responses.

I was perhaps a bit restrictive in using the term "neoDarwinism". I meant to
refer to that amorphous gathering of relative orthodoxies in currency today
rather than the synthesis c. 1945 or earlier. I was indoctrinated to the view
"selection ueber alles" and find it uncomfortable when someone makes the
claim that, as I recall Brooks and Wiley to say (book not to hand), selection
is less important than other forces/states/processes in determining
evolutionary change. I can accommodate Punk Eek into my limited worldview,
since it's effectively a refinement, as Bob said, on neoDarwinian mechanisms
(founder theory and all that), but B∧W seem to relegate selection to a
particularly minor role. Not only do they seem to claim that variation and
selection trajectories are constrained, but that the state spaces force
directional (nay, progressive) trajectories on evolution. Selection seems
merely to knock out the extreme failures.

I'm not au fait with the 19thC orthogeneticists, but what I have read, eg, in
Hull's treatment of the period (_Darwin and his critics_ U Chicago P, 1973)
seems to suggest a close parallel. I'd be interested to hear what the
distinction is. I'd die for that annoted bibliography, too 8-)

In the end, perhaps I'm one of those Dave referred to, corrupted by an
ancient dispute whose time is now past.

BTW: this arises in the context of wanting to support a "Darwinian" model of
theory change in science, the gospel according to Hull (_Science as a
process_ U Chicago P 1988) for my MA. To do that, I need to know what bounds
a Darwinian theory has. It seems to my non-biologist's eye that selection is
a pretty fundamental mechanism in evolutionary theory, despite all the
qualifications and glosses. I'd be interested (by direct email if that's more
appropriate) in anyone's views on that, too.

Cheers

John Wilkins - Manager, Publishing
Monash University, Melbourne Australia
Postal Address: Wellington Road, Clayton 3168 AUSTRALIA
Internet: john.wilkins@udev.monash.edu.au
Tel: (+613) 565 6009  Fax: (+613) 565 6029

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:76>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu  Fri Jan 14 10:16:31 1994

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 11:21:45 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy Creighton Ahouse)
Subject: Re: On neoDarwinism 2

>On neoDarwinism 2
>Thanks to Bob O'Hara, Ron Amundson and Dave Rindos for their responses.
        Yes, thank you and also to John Wilkins.

>I was indoctrinated to the view
>"selection ueber alles" and find it uncomfortable when someone makes the
>claim that, as I recall Brooks and Wiley to say (book not to hand), selection
>is less important than other forces/states/processes in determining
>evolutionary change.

        I am fascinated by these kinds of discussions.  It is always the
case that there are enough dark corners around the new synthesis that
"alternate" suggestions (not "selection ueber alles", not simple linneage
bifurcation, not Weismann doctrine consistent, etc...) can be made to fit.
And few inclusionists are as honest about their indoctrination as John is.

        Still I want to inject this discussion with a little David Raup.  A
good review of what I will describing is Raup's _Mathematical Models of
Cladogenesis_ in Paleobiology 11(1), 1985, pp42-52.  The bottom line from
this work, for me, is that trivial models of cladogenesis result in
patterns that match some examples of paleontological data.  Here is a quote
from that paper.

        "Any monophyletic group, or clade, owes its existence to the
interplay of two processes: lineage branching (speciation) and lineage
termination (species extinction).  If the incidence of branching exceeds
termination, the clade will survive and perhaps flourish, but if
termination exceeds branching for a sufficient time, extinction of the
clade is inevitable."

        From this description Raup and Sepkowski (and others) played with
simple  models (= homogeneous in time => extinction and speciation rates
are constant in a group).  And found that some of the branching diagrams
thus generated were difficult to separate from known records.  Does this
mean that micro-evolution and selection as prime mover are defunct notions?
No.  But it does suggest (require?) a more sophisiticated approach to
telling the tale of current abundance and distribution.  And in that story
the primacy of selection may not be the best organizing principle.

        - cheers,

        - Jeremy

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

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:77>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Fri Jan 14 10:18:01 1994

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 11:23:51 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Origin of "drift" in linguistics and genetics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

The following comes from Jon Marks (jmarks@yalevm.cis.yale.edu); it is an
interesting followup, I think, to some discussions we had a month or so ago.

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

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

I'm new to Darwin-L, and have been quite interested in the discussion of
genetic and linguistic evolution for the last week.  I'd like to raise a
different historical question.  A few weeks ago I was reading Edward Sapir's
(1921) "Language," which includes a chapter on language "drift", an excerpt
of which I have appended.  It struck me as extraordinarily similar
conceptually to "genetic drift", as formulated and adopted into the shifting
balance theory of Sewall Wright.  The earliest use of the term I can find
is in Wright, ca. 1929.  I know Sapir taught at Chicago in the late 1920s, as
did Wright.  Does anyone know about the origins of the term "genetic drift"?
Might it be a case of diffusion from linguistics to population genetics?
Coincidence?  Something else?
       --Jon Marks
       Dept. of Anthropology, Yale University
       (jmarks@yalevm.cis.yale.edu)

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.  Now dialects
arise not because of the mere fact of individual variation but
because two or more groups of individuals have become
sufficiently disconnected to drift apart, or independently,
instead of together.  So long as they keep strictly together, no
amount of individual variation would lead to the formation of
dialects.  In practice, of course, no language can be spread over
a vast territory or even over a considerable area without showing
dialectic variations, for it is impossible to keep a large
population from segregating itself into local groups, the
language of each of which tends to drift independently.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:78>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Fri Jan 14 13:41:59 1994

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 14:47:46 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Neodarwinism, and the attribution of "importance" to historical events
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Neither my friend Professor Amundson nor anyone else should ever worry about
contradicting anything I say here, and as leader I am much more often fearful
than fearless, I assure you.  I think my reaction to claims about the decline
of neodarwinism or the "synthetic view" has two sources at least.  Since I
was a graduate student during the 1980s, I learned about things like punk eq,
developmental constraints, etc., etc. from the beginning, and they were never
"new" ideas for me in the sense of ideas that contradicted a well-established
set of beliefs I had previously held.  They all seemed perfectly sensible and
reasonable within their domain, just as most of Ernst Mayr seems sensible to
me within its domain also.  I was certainly never indoctrinated into
"selection uber alles" as John Wilkins says he was, and I'm always surprised
when I find out that some people were.  This may have something to do with
the fact that higher-level systematics has always been my focus rather than
population biology, and so I just never studied neodarwinian selection theory
as well as I should have.  ;-)  The second possible cause of my reaction is
that, being historically inclined I more often see continuity among ideas
("this work is an interesting and valuable addition to our understanding of
evolution") rather than ruptures ("neodarwinism has been overthrown!").  This
may also be a function of personality for all I know too.

But let me try to draw out of this particular case an interesting observation
relating to historical theory.  When we read or write history we are
accustomed to seeing different levels of importance assigned to different
historical events.  Thus the fact that Darwin read Malthus one day was
important, whereas the fact that he read, say, Milton the day before was not.
If the events we are speaking of (Darwin's reading of Malthus and Darwin's
reading of Milton) are well back in the past, we are able to assign
importance to these events with some confidence.  Darwin's reading of Malthus
was an important event because it provided information and insight that
contributed to the development of the idea of natural selection, which he
later proposed as the principal mechanism of evolution, and which has been
extremely influential in science in the last hundred or so years.  Darwin's
reading of Milton was not an important event because nothing we regard as
important happened as a consequence of it.

Consider what happens, however, when we describe events that are current or
very recent (as opposed to temporally remote), and try to assign importance
to them.  Is the notion of punctuated equilibrium, for example, a
revolutioanry contribution to contemporary science, or is it a minor gloss on
evolutionary theory?  (Is it Darwin's Malthus or Darwin's Milton?)  Now in a
very real sense it is not possible to answer this question in the present: it
depends on how the world goes in the future.  If the idea takes over,
generates publications, leads to new conclusions and the rejection of old
ideas, causes Departments of Punctuated Equilibrium to be established in
universities, if it gets written up in whole text books and talked about in
coffeehouses, then it will be correct to say that it was a revolutionary
idea.  But if it sort of dies out, and gets mentioned in a couple of
paragraphs in neodarwinian textbooks, then it will be correct to say that it
was a minor gloss on what we already knew.  As time goes on one may have a
greater or lesser sense that one or the other of these futures is coming
true, but certainly at the time the idea was proposed it was not really
possible to say which one it would be.

This general problem is sometimes called in the philosophy of history the
problem of future contingents: the recognition that attributions of
importance or value to particular past events (or conversely of unimportance
or valuelessness) depends upon knowledge of the future which we may not have.
Arthur Danto discusses the problem in his book _Narration and Knowledge_
(Columbia Univ. Press, 1985), a book I recommend highly to people who may be
interested in the philosophical aspects of historical understanding.  Here's
a sample from Danto:

  I may refer to my favorite candidate as our next president, and though she
  may indeed be that, it will have been false that she was that if she in
  fact fails to win the election.  I shall call such predicates, which are
  true of objects and events at a given time only if certain objects and
  events occur at a time future to them and faling which they are
  retrospectively false, _narrative predicates_.  When we apply them to
  present objects, we are making a _special_ claim on the future, different
  indeed from that made by the use of non-narrative future-referring
  predicates.  (pp. 349-350)

There is a very interesting paper by Rouse that will connect this observation
with what we were talking about above.  The paper is:

  Rouse, J.  1990.  The narrative reconstruction of science.  _Inquiry_,
    33:179-196.

Rouse claims that scientists cast their own understandings of their fields in
a sort of narrative form (first came Darwin, then rejection of selection,
then the Synthesis and the revival of selection, etc.).  I think it is
the case that we each of us also tacks on to this narrative a set of
expectations about the future course of our respective fields, and it is from
this set of future expectations that we make the assignments of value that we
do to particular ideas or theories.  I think most of the proposed
alternatives to the Synthetic view are interesting but not especially
revolutionary, because I don't think they are going (as time marches on) to
have an especially major effect on our thought.  Another person might
disagree.  Likewise I think that cladistic systematics is indeed one of the
most important developments in twentieth-century science, because I foresee
as a result of it an enormous number of transformations in thinking that have
just barely begun.  Others may and have disagreed with this, because they
think it will fizzle out into nothing.

To put a question out for our group, let me ask whether in historical
linguistics people have referred to particular events in the history of
language as "important changes", "key innovations", or the like.  It is
traditional to refer to various events in evolutioanry history, such as the
origin of jaws in vertebrates, as "key innovations" which made a big
difference in subsequent history.  Such attributions of importance are
clearly narrative predicates of the kind described by Danto.  I am wondering
if they are widespread throughout the historical sciences.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:79>From KIMLER@social.chass.ncsu.edu  Fri Jan 14 14:13:34 1994

From: KIMLER@social.chass.ncsu.edu
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 15:22:16 EST5EDT
Subject: Re: NeoDarwinism debates

I hasten to post this _before_ Ron Amundson provides his
bibliography of recent developmentalist challenges to the Modern
Synthesis, because I don't want it to be seen as discussing
particular, individual cases of research and interpretation.  Rather,
this is a general historical and analytical comment about the scope
and defense of NeoDarwinism.  The issue has some relevance for the
comparisons of biological evolution to linguistics and other Darwin-L
topics.  Put most bluntly, the argument in the founding of the modern
theory (roughly, 1930s) was about (1) the control of the direction of
evolution, and (2) the adequacy of natural selection to direct
change.  The second point was demonstrated in population genetics
theory and practice, and I don't believe that any serious challenge
has yet denied that demonstration.  Organismic selection has been
supplemented by other mechanisms that could also be operating, or
especially by other levels at which selection could or does work.

Most current or recent "challenges" to the adequacy of Darwinism
have attempted to put some real substance into the vaguely
articulated, usually invoked caveat that there exist "constraints" on
the full randomness of variation.  This issue must, however, be
expressed in terms that capture the essence of modern Darwinism, or
else people talk past each other.  Anyone who watches the debates
from the outside will notice a maddening inability to clearly define
camps, or opposition. Punctuated equilibrium, for instance, is
suggested by some adherents to be a radical overthrow of conventional
Darwinism, but seen by other adherents as just a necessary wrinkle on
standard theory, elevating to notice pieces that were undervalued.
That, of course, is a line taken by many critics of punctuated
equilibrium as well.  The same general situation, it seems to me,
exists for "developmental constraints." Traditional Modern Synthesis
proponents say, oh sure, we've always admitted that.  Some
developmentalists say, o.k., but now take us seriously.  Others claim
to be radical and overthrowing NeoDarwinism [it seems that getting
notice by claiming to be a radical is a recurrent theme on Darwin-L].

To this historian, one way out of conceptual confusion is to step
back and use different labels, to highlight the underlying issue.
In this case, there already exist labels used by the biologists
themselves in first arguing the issue.  At Oxford, Edward Poulton in
the early 1900s identified the problem in the process of evolution
as control of its direction, and called it Externalism versus
Internalism.  The selectionists were thus posed against
orthogeneticists, because the latter used internal rules of
direction, no matter what their particular mechanism (genetic,
developmental, inherent life-spans of species or higher taxa).  The
new Mutationstheorie and Mendelism were both Internalist: they
granted the control of evolution to internal directors, making
selection at best a minor refiner of species traits.  The only
Externalist competitor to natural selection was Lamarckism, which
was being rejected by both selectionists and internalists.
Internalists lost the early round because they couldn't identify the
rules or cellular mechanisms, nor explain how ecological adaptation
came about from internally driven directions.

The possibilities still are externalist natural selection and a
number of internalist mechanisms suggested to be powerful enough to
be the true director of evolution.  I submit that the Synthesists
knew that there had to be practical constraints (cf. Fisher's
argument for the necessity of gradualism, if you want an ironic
twist), but that (1) their rhetorical enterprise was rescuing
selection from nearly complete neglect, and (2) the fields of
developmental biology and genetics could provide no good cases of
overwhelming the importance of selection.  The job for modern
challengers to the primacy of selection is provide cases. How much
can be made explicit about rules, to force the issue beyond generic
statements on the existence of constraints?  I'm rather skeptical of
most claims of being radical or revolutionary, and in this case am
not sure that NeoDarwinism is being overthrown anyway. Selection has
been demonstrated to be powerful.  Expansive, still consistent theory
can incorporate when and where other biological processes step in to
be more important as the "director."  There will always need to be a
selectionist caveat among internalists: in what ways are internal
rules a matter of selective processes at molecular or cellular levels
(a question posed by Weismann, by the way)?  Biologists have figured
out by now that it's a terribly messy world.

On a related point, Poulton in the 1890s, and then his intellectual
successor E. B. Ford in the 1930s, used the existence of
developmental constraints to argue FOR selection as the most
important director.  They both worked on the coloration of
butterflies, and problems of convergence.  Internalists wanted to
explain similar colors in different species by invoking parallel
physiological or genetic rules.  Poulton and Ford examined a few
cases of similar colors appearing in taxonomically unrelated species,
found the biochemical nature of the color, and showed how each had a
different biochemical lineage but had been molded to mimetic
convergence by natural selection.  Though giving up an infinitely
plastic supply of variation and molding, they still needed selection
to explain why the species fit the world in particular ways.

Where's the connection for non-biologist readers of the List?  It
seems that most historical processes need to be examined with the
dualism of internal rules and external circumstances.  Identifying
oneself as internalist or externalist is a way of quickly evoking
what one thinks the primary or exclusive directing mechanism.  If you
believe it's of course both, then call yourself an historian!

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:80>From HOLSINGE@UCONNVM.BITNET  Fri Jan 14 19:25:28 1994

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 08:09:07 -0500 (EST)
From: "Kent E. Holsinger" <HOLSINGE%UCONNVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Sally Thomason suggests that one difference between linguistic evolution and
biological evolution is the "decay and ultimate disappearance of systematic
correspondences."  Actually, the same thing happens in biology.  If biologists
limit themselves to an analysis of morphological features, for example, it is
often difficult to determine which structures are homologous with one another.
Consider the difficulty of comparing a mammal, an insect, a sponge, a
liverwort, and a flowering plant based only on morphological features.  It
would be very difficult to construct a tree representing their relationships
correctly without the use of ultrastructural data or molecular sequence data.
The morphologies are so different that they are no longer even comparable.

Even with molecular sequence data there is "decay and ultimate disappearance
of systematic correspondences."  After all, there are only four bases in DNA
and if the number of mutational events that separate two lineages increases
the longer they are separated from one another, the sequences will eventually
become randomized with respect to one another.  Long before they become
randomized they pose difficult problems for practical analysis.

-- 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                                           |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:81>From HOLSINGE@UCONNVM.BITNET  Fri Jan 14 19:54:53 1994

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 07:56:57 -0500 (EST)
From: "Kent E. Holsinger" <HOLSINGE%UCONNVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Scott DeLancey raises an interesting point:

      The problem which recurs again and again is that we find two languages
      with some substantial amount of what appears to be common vocabulary,
      that, if they are indeed related, are related so distantly that more
      conclusive evidence of relationship has been obscured over time.

This problem isn't that dissimilar from those that biological systematists
sometimes face, whether in plants, animals, or bacteria.  In fact, in some
ways it is the same problem.

A recent example concerns the evolution of bats.  All zoologists agree (I
think, I'm a botanist) that there are two major groups of bats -- the microbats
and the megabats.  Most zoologists have also agreed that the microbats and
megabats share a more recent common ancestor with one another than they do
with any other group of animals.  The evidence is drawn from details of
skeletal anatomy (and more recently from molecular sequences).  Pettigrew
suggests, however, that one group of bats (the megabats as I recall, but
someone please correct me if my memory fails me) shares a more recent
common ancestor with primates than with the other group of bats. Pettigrew
bases his conclusion on detailed studies of neural anatomy.

Both hypotheses can't be right.  So zoologists have to make a choice.  If they
choose Pettigrew's approach, they explain the resemblances in skeletal anatomy
among bats as the result of convergent adaptation to flight.  If they choose
the traditional interpretation, they explain the resemblances between one group
of bats and primates in neural anatomy as convergent adaptation of the visual
system.

I'm not sure what processes would produce convergence in vocabularies, but it
appears that the problem Scott DeLancey is describing is similar in many ways
to the one I've just described, except perhaps that linguists do not yet have
a comprehensive theory that they could use to explain the convergences.

-- 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                                           |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:82>From DEWAR%UCONNVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU  Sat Jan 15 18:58:18 1994

Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 19:41:48 -0500 (EST)
From: Bob Dewar <DEWAR%UCONNVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Neodarwinism, and the attribution of "importance" to historical
 events
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Bob O'Hara asked about "key events" in the historical sciences in general, and
in historical linguistics in particular.  As an archaeologist, I must note that
archaeology and paleoanthropology have often seemed to focus on little else.
Paleoanthropological accounts have long focussed on such events : the first use
of tools, the origin of language, the origin of bipedalism, the "Agricultural
Revolution", the "Urban Revolution", etc.  What is interesting about these
proposed key events is that their interpretation differs to the extent that
they are predicated to belong to a single, ancestral population, or are
sufficiently recent to have evolved in parallel in differing populations. The
"Agricultural Revolution" was initially defined forthe Near East, at a time
when that area was regarded as the "Cradle of Civilization".  Now that
agriculture is known to have developed in several places at different times,
and probably through some what different circumstances, it is less common to
hear of it described as a "revolution", and in fact it is more often described
as a process, and not an event.

ROBERT E. DEWAR                   OFFICE PHONE 203 486-3851
DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY        OFFICE FAX   203 486-1719
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT         BITNET:  DEWAR@UCONNVM
STORRS, CT 06269                  INTERNET: DEWAR@UCONNVM.UCONN.EDU

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:83>From ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu  Sat Jan 15 21:07:50 1994

Date: Sat, 15 Jan 94 17:11:08 HST
From: Ron Amundson <ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Preface to Biblio on development and evolution

DEVELOPMENTAL CRITIQUES OF NEODARWINISM:

PREFACE

This message is a sort of preface to the annotated bibliography
on developmental critiques of mainstream "neoDarwinian"
evolutionary theory.  A few orienting comments.

In my earlier post, disagreeing with Bob O'Hara's views on how
seriously neoDarwinism was being attacked, I did not mean to
suggest that Bob was likely to be thin-skinned on disagreements
like this, and I apologize for giving that appearance.  My feeble
attempt at humor in referring to our "fearless leader" or some
such was meant in the context of the entirely well-deserved high
regard which he has from the members of Darwin-L, and also to the
unusual civility of the list.  (Gosh, people, we could have just
a _little_ flame warfare once in a while -- it seems almost a
misuse of the Internet to be so congenial.  <smileyface,
smileyface>)

Anyhow, a couple of comments on the Bibliography.  It is
primarily oriented towards criticisms of neoDarwinism which come
from embryologists and developmental biologists.  There is some
mention of Brooks and Wiley kinds of approaches, but it is
limited.  The approach I'm interested in comes primarily from
people who work with real nuts and bolts of organic development
-- developmental mechanical issues things like tissue
interactions, centers of ossification, etc.

It is very plausibly argued (citations in the Bibliography) that
the post-Modern Synthesis evolutionary tradition (herein called
neoDarwinism) has systematically ignored embryological issues.
This may be partly the fault of the embryologists themselves, and
their disinterest in the Synthesis.  Whoever is to blame, the
current state of neoDarwinism 1) doesn't require embryological
details for any noticable pressing problems, and 2) has no "gaps"
within its theoretical apparatus into which embryology would fit.

The way I tell the story, neoDarwinism has developed (beginning
with Darwin, but gaining steam after the Synthesis) a toolbox of
quasi-rhetorical methods of depicting developmental details as
irrelevant to evolution.  These "dismissive tactics" do not deny
any specific developmentalist claims; they rather depict
(virtually) _any_ developmental facts as irrelevant to evolution.
To some extent, developmentalists  have done similar things --
they have rhetorical ploys, too.  But since they are trying to
gain entry to a scientific domain now ruled by another "party,"
their devices don't appeal to the mainstream of evolutionary
biologists.

As has already been discussed in Darwin-L, neoDarwinians
acknowledgement lots of imperfections.  Claims are typically of
the form "Of course adaptation isn't perfect: here's the list of
15 reasons why.  We already accept them.  What's to argue about?"
While these defenses are successful against most generic "anti-
adaptationist" critics, they do nothing to make embryology
relevant to evolution.  I consider the important issue not as
whether or not adaptation is perfect -- all agree it is not.  The
important issue (to the people being discussed) is whether the
theoretical content of developmental biology is taken as relevant
to the evolutionary process.

In a (currently under-review) paper called "Two Concepts of
Constraint:..." I have argued that developmentalists and
neoDarwinians actually mean completely different things by
"constraint."  In this way, I try to account for the phenomenon
so frustrating to neoDarwinians -- no matter how much adaptive
imperfection the neoDarwinians accept, the developmentalists
still keep attacking them.  Because of this, the two sides seem
not even to understand what they are disagreeing about.  It is
especially inadequate to conceive of the debate as between
perfectionists and imperfectionists.

The Bibliography follows.

Cheers,

Ron Amundson
Univerisity of Hawaii at Hilo
Hilo, HI    96720-4091

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:84>From ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu  Sat Jan 15 21:11:10 1994

Date: Sat, 15 Jan 94 17:14:24 HST
From: Ron Amundson <ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Biblio on developmentalist critiques of neoDarwinism

                          ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

                  Developmental Critiques of NeoDarwinism

I'll start with something everyone has presumably already read:

     Gould, S. J., and R. C. Lewontin (1979), "The Spandrels of
     San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the
     Adaptationist Programme",  Proceedings of the Royal Society
     of London B205: 581-598.

This is somewhere between the most important paper of the past 50
years, or a miserable batch of hogwash -- both opinions have been
expressed.  I'm on the favorable side.  But the paper has been a
decidedly mixed blessing for developmentalism.  It mentioned so
many alternatives to "adaptationism" that developmentalism got
lost in the shuffle.  In this way it contributed to the
unfortunate tendency noted in my previous post of considering the
issue merely one of the degree of adaptive perfection.  A better
Gould paper on the developmental alternative is:

     Gould, S. J. (1980), "The Evolutionary Biology of
     Constraint", Daedalus 109: 39-52.

The general philosophical disinterest in developmentalist
approaches can be seen from the papers in Dupre 1987; most of the
factors invoked in the Spandrels paper were discussed, with the
exception of developmentalism.

     Dupre, J., (1987), The Latest on the Best: Essays on
     Evolution and Optimality.  Cambridge MA:  MIT Press.

Now let me get a couple of developmentalist but abstract
approaches on the table; the current hot topic along the Brooks
and Wiley line is Kauffman:

     Kauffman, Stuart A., (1993), Origins of Order.  Oxford,
     Oxford University Press.

     Kauffman, S., (1983), "Developmental Constraints:  Internal
     Factors in Evolution", in B. Goodwin, N. Holder, and C.C.
     Wylie (eds.), Development and Evolution, p. l95-225.
     Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

See also:

     Bechtel, W. (ed.) (1986), Integrating Scientific
     Disciplines.  Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

Bechtel has a nice section on development and evolution, though
the cases are of this abstract (i.e. non-nuts and bolts) type.
Kauffmann, William Wimsatt, and Bruce Wallace (see below) have
papers, with a commentary on the trio of papers from Richard
Burian.  (Sorry I've lost the titles of some of the papers.)

Next, some work on the history of the relation between the
Synthesis and embryology.  The best introduction is:

     Hamburger, V. (1980), "Embryology and the Modern Synthesis
     in Evolutionary theory", in Mayr and Provine, (1980), The
     Evolutionary Synthesis.  Cambridge: Harvard University
     Press.

But cf.:

     Wallace, B. (1986), "Can Embryologists Contribute to an
     Understanding fo Evolutionary Mechanisms?" in Bechtel, op.
     cit.

Mayr himself in (1980) takes a somewhat different view from
Hamburger.  Comparing Wallace with Hamburger (the target of
Wallace's criticism) is a wonderful demonstration of the contrast
of explanatory interests between developmentalism and
neoDarwinism.  Hamburger says the Synthesis treats development as
a "black box."  Wallace responds (in effect) that development
_deserves_ to be put in a black box.

For arguments that a new Developmental or Embryological Synthesis
is needed to unify embryology and neoDarwinism:

     Horder, T.J., (1989), "Syllabus for an Embryological
     Synthesis," in D. B. Wake, and G. Roth, eds., Complex
     Organismal Functions:  Integration and Evolution in
     Vertebrates, Chichester, John Wiley and Sons.

     Gilbert, S. F., (1991), Developmental Biology, Third
     Edition, Chap. 23.  Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.

Gilbert is a generally excellent text.  It's hard for me to
imagine someone reading Gilbert and continuing to believe that
evolution is the sorting of alleles.

The canonical discussion of developmental constraints is:

     Maynard Smith, J., R. Burian, S. Kauffman, P. Alberch, J.
     Campbell, B. Goodwin, R. Lande, D. Raup, and L. Wolpert
     (1985)  "Developmental Constraints and Evolution",  The
     Quarterly Review of Biology 60: 265-287.

This is an excellent introduction to the topic, but it's far too
congenial and cooperative for my tastes.  Not all of the
"constraints" discussed are developmental, and it's hard to see
from this paper why the issue of constraints is still such a hot
one.  Burian does make one of the very few contributions from
philosophers to this issue, however.  But the best philosophical
contribution to date is:

     Smith, Kelly C. (1992), "Neo-Rationalism versus Neo-
     Darwinism: Integrating Development and Evolution", Biology
     and Philosophy 7, 431-451.

Smith (a Darwin-L reader, natch) distinguishes "process
structuralists" (the radicals who want to throw neoDarwinism
out) from "general structuralists," (advocates, I suppose, of a
new Synthesis).  Most of his discussion is of the process
structuralists.  This is a somewhat odd approach since so few
philosophers are familiar with _any_ kind of structuralist.  But
along the way, many of the grounds for developmentalist criticism
of neoDarwinism get discussed.  For examples of the radicals (I
think both of the following would both be considered process
structuralists):

     Goodwin, B. C., (1984), "Changing from an Evolutionary to a
     Generative Paradigm in Biology", in J. W. Pollard (ed.),
     Evolutionary Theory.  New York: John Wiley and Sons.

     Lovtrup, S. (1987), Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth.
     London: Croom Helm.  [Is Lovtrup a process stucturalist,
     Kelly?  He's certainly a radical.]

Finally, I'll end up with a simple reading list of
developmentalist literature to browse.

     Bonner, J. T. (ed.) (1982), Evolution and Development. New
     York: Springer-Verlag.  See esp. Pere Alberch,"Developmental
     Constraints in Evolutionary  Processes",

     Goodwin, B. C., N. Holder, and C.C. Wylie, (1983),
     Development and Evolution.  Cambridge: Cambridge University
     Press.

     Holder, N. (1983), "Developmental Constraints and the
     Evolution of Vertebrate Digit Patterns", Journal of
     Theoretical Biology 104, 451-471.

     Rachootin, S. P., and K. S. Thomson (1981), "Epigenetics,
     paleontology, and evolution" in G. G. E. Scudder and J. L.
     Reveal, eds., Evolution Today. Pittsburg, PA: Hunt
     Institute.  [An especially entertaining and wide-ranging
     read, but hard to locate.]

     Shubin, N.H., and Alberch, P. (1986), "A Morphological
     Approach to the Origin and Basic Organization of the
     Tetrapod Limb", Evolutionary Biology 20: 319-387.

     Stearns, S.C. (1986), "Natural selection and fitness,
     adaptation and constraint", in D.M. Raup and D. Jablonski
     (eds.), Patterns and Processes in the History of Life.
     Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

     Thomson, K. S. (1988), Morphogenesis and Evolution.  New
     York: Oxford University Press.

     Wagner, G.P., (1988),"The Influence of Variation and of
     Developmental Constraints on the Rate of Multivariate
     Phenotypic Evolution", Journal of Evolutionary Biology 1:
     45-46.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:85>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sun Jan 16 00:46:30 1994

Date: Sun, 16 Jan 1994 01:52:33 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 16 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

JANUARY 16 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1894 (100 years today): ALEKSANDER FEDOROVICH MIDDENDORF dies at Khellenurme,
Estonia.  Middendorf received his medical degree from Dorpat University in
1837, and continued his studies of natural history in Germany and Austria.
During 1839 he travelled with von Baer to the Kola Peninsula, and in 1843 and
1844 he explored Siberia under the auspices of the St. Petersburg Academy of
Sciences, a trip that led to the founding of the Russian Geographical Society.
In the report on his Siberian expedition, _Reise in den aussersten Norden und
Osten Sibiriens wahrend der Jahre 1843 und 1844_ (St. Petersburg, 1848-1875),
Middendorf made a number of important observations on the nature of species
and on biogeographical patterns in the polar region.

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).

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:86>From PGRIFFITHS@gandalf.otago.ac.nz  Sun Jan 16 18:06:43 1994

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: PGriffiths@gandalf.otago.ac.nz
Organization: University of Otago
Date: 17 Jan 1994 13:12:49GMT+1200
Subject: Re: Developmentalism Bibliography

I was glad to see Ron Amundsen's bibliography appearing on the list. I
believe that a reintegration of developmental ideas into evolutionary theory
is, indeed, the most important current challenge to 'neo-darwinian'
orthodoxy.  However, there are two clearly distinguishable kinds of
developmentalist critique.  One emphasises developmental constraint, and is
well represented by the bibliograpy just posted.  The other, however, is
centered on a rejection of 'dichotomous accounts of development' which
assume that the fundamental distinction in developmental theory is between
genic and non-genic accounts of development. It suggests a larger
'developmental system' which is the real unit of study. I thought I might
offer a short bibliography directed more towards this strand.  The following
are in historical order, but Susan Oyama's work, and especially her book
'The Ontogeny of Information', should be singled out as seminal for many of
the later authors.

D.S Lehrmann "Critique of Konrad Lorenz's Theory of Instinctive Behaviour",
Quarterly Review of Biology, XXVIII (1953):337-363;   "Semantic & Conceptual
Issues in the Nature-Nurture Problem", in his Development & the Evolution of
Behaviour (W.H Freeman: San Francisco,1970): 17-52.

G Stent "Strength and weakness of the genetic approach to the development of
the nervous system" in W.M Cowan, ed., Studies in Developmental Neurobiology
(Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1981),

R.C Lewontin, Human Diversity (Scientific American Press: 1982); "The
organism as the subject and object of evolution", Scientia, CXVIII (1983):
65-82.

S Oyama The Ontogeny of Information, (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge,
1985); Ontogeny & the Central Dogma, in M.R Gunnar & E Thalen, ed, Systems &
Development,  (Lawrence Earlbaum: Hillsdale, N.J, 1989).

T.D Johnston, "The Persistence of Dichotomies in the Study of Behavioural
Development", Developmental Review, VII (1987): 149-182.

T.D Johnston, and G Gottlieb, "Neophenogenesis: a developmental theory of
phenotypic evolution," Journal of Theoretical Biology,  CXLVII (1990):
471-495.

H.F Nijhout, "Metaphors and the role of genes in development,"  Bioessays,
XII (1990): 4410-4446.

R.D Gray, "Death of the Gene: Developmental Systems Strike Back," in P.E
Griffiths, ed, Trees of Life: Essays in Philosophy of Biology (Kluwer:
Dordrecht, 1992): 165-209.

L Moss, "A kernel of truth? On the reality of the genetic program", in D.L
Hull, M Forbes and K Okruhlik, eds, Philosophy of Science Association
Proceedings 1992  Vol.1: 335-248.

Paul E Griffiths
Department of Philosophy
University of Otago
P.O Box 56, Dunedin,
New Zealand

Tel: (03) 479-8727
Fax: (03) 479-2305

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:87>From Arno.Wouters@phil.ruu.nl  Mon Jan 17 03:44:48 1994

Date: Mon, 17 Jan 1994 10:48:06 +0100
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: Arno Wouters <Arno.Wouters@phil.ruu.nl>
Subject: Re: Biblio on developmentalist critiques of neoDarwinism

Thanks for compiling this bibliography. Are there any objections against
making the bibliography (and the preface) available on our department's
philosophy gopher (gopher.phil.ruu.nl)?

Arno Wouters

--
Arno Wouters
Dept. of Philosophy, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
Phone: +31 30 53779;  Fax: +31 30 532816.
Email: Arno.Wouters@phil.ruu.nl

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:88>From delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu  Mon Jan 17 11:46:36 1994

Date: Mon, 17 Jan 1994 09:28:15 -0800 (PST)
From: Scott C DeLancey <delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Kent E. Holsinger pursues the question of parallels and non-parallels
between biological systematics and genetic linguistics, describing a
situation in which two subgroups of bats share "details of skeletal
anatomy (and more recently from molecular sequences)", but one of them
shows resemblances to primates in details of neural anatomy, creating
a problem in classification.  This is indeed reminiscent of the problem
of a language like Japanese, with apparent affinities to both Altaic and
Austronesian (which are themselves not related at any detectable level).
I think there are differences, though, which are worth exploring (if
only to see whether I misunderstand the biological case).  Kent says:

> I'm not sure what processes would produce convergence in vocabularies, but it
> appears that the problem Scott DeLancey is describing is similar in many ways
> to the one I've just described, except perhaps that linguists do not yet have
> a comprehensive theory that they could use to explain the convergences.

There is no imaginable process that would produce convergence in
vocabularies.  Similarities in vocabulary beyond what can be expected
by chance can only reflect common inheritance (i.e. genetic relationship)
or borrowing.  Vocabulary and details of morphological structure
(critically including not only patterns of structure but actual forms)
play a role analagous to molecular sequences more than to morphological
patterns, the difference being that vocabulary, at least, is very easily
borrowed, even between unrelated languages.
     I see the linguistic analogue to the kinds of morphological
similarities which can in principle be considered to reflect convergence
in biology as being typological similarities--type (rather than details)
of morphological structure, parallel syntactic constructions, case marking
patterns, etc.  Because they can so easily arise by "convergence"
(though that term is not much used), these sorts of similarities
carry very little weight in determining linguistic relationships.
     (I think historical linguists sometimes find biological arguments
about cladistic vs. phenetic taxonomy confusing, since only cladistic
classification has ever been recognized as a worthwhile or interesting
pursuit in historical linguistics).

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:89>From J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU  Mon Jan 17 19:02:59 1994

Date: Mon, 17 Jan 1994 20:05:21 -0500 (EST)
From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU (JOHN LIMBER)
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Scott Delancy writes:
>There is no imaginable process that would produce convergence in
vocabularies.  Similarities in vocabulary beyond what can be expected
by chance can only reflect common inheritance (i.e. genetic relationship)
or borrowing...."

I'm not sure what counts as "imaginable" but how about the following?
1. phonetic symbolism
2. acquistion processes gently favoring "simple" forms over complex ones.
3. Zipf's Law--the more frequent concepts tend to have shorter forms
4. interactions of (3) and (4) with other factors.

While I don't imagine these are very important in any direct way, they might
well make assessing "Similarities in vocabulary beyond what can be expected
by chance" very tricky indeed. What is "chance" anyway?

   John Limber, Psychology, University of New Hampshire

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:90>From sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu  Mon Jan 17 21:26:54 1994

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 94 22:29:59 -0500
From: Sally Thomason <sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu>

John Limber raises some interesting points wrt Scott DeLancey's
claim that "There is no imaginable process that would produce
convergence in vocabularies", but these points don't affect
the validity of Scott's claim.  Since a language is likely to
have 20 or 30 phonemes (or more), favoring simple forms over
complex ones or having shorter forms for more frequent concepts
won't produce enough chance similarities to make any difference:
the combinatory possibilities for 20 or 30 phonemes will be too
great, even after you build in sequencing constraints (on
consonant clusters and vowel sequences, for instance), in words
of typical lengths -- at least 3 phonemes long, say.  (Note too
that acquisition processes can't favor simple forms over complex
ones all the time, or words would simplify into minimality, which
they clearly don't, in ANY language; only grammatical items
like prepositions and other such particles are very likely to get
reduced.  Lexical items, such as nouns and verbs, are
more likely to be stressed, and stress tends to protect a word
from drastic phonetic reduction.)  Phonetic symbolism is another
matter: most linguists would agree that you might find occasional
convergences due to sound symbolism.  But the overall effect on
the vocabulary from such a process will be slight: examples aren't
all that easy to find, and the prospect of significant overhaul
of any language's vocabulary through such a process is, well,
unimaginable (in the real world of human language).

   Limber is right, however, to point to the slipperiness of
the notion of "chance".  Non-historically-connected
similarities in parts of words, at least, do occur in quantities
that make randomness unlikely.  For instance, many languages
have no syllables (and therefore no words) ending in consonants;
every syllable ends in a vowel.  Tongue-tip sounds like t d n r
are very frequent at the ends of words, in a wide variety of
unrelated languages, and they turn up in grammatical suffixes
(e.g. case endings on nouns, person/number endings on verbs) in
so many languages that one might suspect them of being historically
stable, relatively speaking, in that position.  Many languages
lack consonant clusters, and those that have them are most likely
to have only clusters like pr-, gl-, ty-, and the like, rather than
"heavy" clusters like st-, tk-, etc.  Tendencies like these cause
linguists to think in terms like ease of pronunciation, and ease of
learning more generally, in the search for explanations.  But again,
they don't justify any prediction about general vocabulary
convergence, because there is no evidence at all that such a thing
occurs, except -- in a sense -- through borrowing, and that
isn't what evolutionary biologists mean by "convergence".

   Sally Thomason
   sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:91>From hantuo@utu.fi  Tue Jan 18 03:31:33 1994

To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: hantuo@utu.fi (Hanna Tuomisto)
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
Date: 	Tue, 18 Jan 1994 11:32:50 +0200

Sally Thomason made a number of points about the convergence of
vocabularies in unrelated languages, and they made a lot of sense even to a
layman like myself. I can very well imagine that phonetic constraints
produce similarly structured words independently in different languages.
This could perhaps be considered analogous to e.g. structural convergence
in biological organisms due to environmental constraints. However, even if
the form of words could 'converge' in this way, I cannot imagine any
mechanism how the meaning of the words could do the same. Therefore it
seems that the most likely fate of such similar but independently evolved
words is that they mean entirely different things, and hence do not
contribute to the similarity of vocabularies.

As a native speaker of Finnish, I'm familiar with plenty of jokes that make
use of the similarities in the structure of words in Finnish and Japanese.
In the style of: "What's a supermarket in Japanese? Of course 'Mokomaki
kamakasa'". In Finnish this means more or less 'such a heap of things'.
I've got no idea if any part of it means anything in Japanese, but I hope
it's nothing offensive.

Some South American indian languages, notably Quechua, seem to share quite
a few words with Finnish. As far as I know, these similarities are based on
no historical relationship between the languages. The words I know have
entirely different meanings in the two languages, like 'runa' or 'ruuna',
which means 'people' in Quechua but 'gelding' in Finnish. But I've heard
that these two languages actually do share words that have the same meaning
as well. Does anyone on the list know how common such shared words are? And
has someone analyzed them to see what is behind this coincidence?

Hanna Tuomisto
hantuo@utu.fi

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:92>From GOLLAV@axe.humboldt.edu  Tue Jan 18 05:37:45 1994

Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 03:44 PST
From: GOLLAV@axe.humboldt.edu
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Sally Thomason writes, re: Scott DeLancey's assertion that "there is no
imaginable process that would produce convergence in vocabularies":

>  Phonetic symbolism is another matter: most linguists would agree that
>  you might find occasional convergences due to sound symbolism.  But
>  the overall effect on the vocabulary from such a process will be
>  slight....

This is the received wisdom, but one wonders.  Empirical investigation of
phonetic symbolism has largely been carried out by psychologists and
psycholinguists.  Comparative linguists have been content to assume (as
Sally indicates) that its effects are marginal and of no great concern in
the sorting out of languages into families and stocks.  But I recently
came across an anthropology dissertation that takes a rather different
view:

Ciccotosto, Nick.  Ph.D., U. of Florida, 1991.  Sound Symbolism in Natural
Languages.  301 pp.

According to the abstract (Dissertation Abstracts International 53(2):
541-A), Ciccotosto challenges the "Saussurean assumption" that the phonetic
structure of morphemes is generally arbitrary.  Using a large data sample
from "virtually all known language phyla," he tests a series of sound-
symbolic hypotheses on 16 items of "core vocabulary. . . routinely used by
linguists to trace genetic relationship among language phyla."  The positive
results are "striking" and lead C. to believe that sound symbolism "must
have evolutionary adaptive value."

Unfortunately, I haven't yet gotten hold of a copy of this dissertation,
and can't comment on how convincing C.'s data are.  But it seems to me
that this is a topic well worth investigating.  Any fair test of a claim
of historical relatedness between languages should exclude resemblances
that can be explained by established phonetic-symbolic processes.  Yet
historical linguists by and large operate with only an anecdotal under-
standing of phonetic symbolism, and some choose to ignore it entirely.

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:93>From ANWOLFE@ECUVM.CIS.ECU.EDU  Tue Jan 18 07:36:32 1994

Date: Tue, 18 Jan 94 08:39:26 EST
From: ANWOLFE@ECUVM.CIS.ECU.EDU
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: Multiple recipients of list <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>

Nick Ciccotosto's dissertation is available from the company that
sell dissertations on microfilm.  But you can of course purchase
a hard copy.  Linda Wolfe

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:94>From Lombardi@goodall.uncg.edu  Tue Jan 18 08:20:23 1994

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 17:24:37 -0500 (EST)
From: Julian Lombardi <Lombardi@goodall.uncg.edu>
Subject: Inheritance
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Does the term 'inheritance' have universal meaning when applied across the
various historical sciences.  Would anyone care to provide a working
definition?

==============================================
Julian Lombardi (lombardi@iris.uncg.edu)
Department of Biology
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412-5001  USA

Voice: 910/334-5391 extension 54
FAX: 910/334-5839

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:95>From junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu  Tue Jan 18 10:13:09 1994

Date: Tue, 18 Jan 94 11:13:09 EDT
From: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu (Peter D. Junger)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Inheritance

In message <B7C493705C2@goodall.uncg.edu> Julian Lombardi
(lombardi@iris.uncg.edu) writes:

>Does the term 'inheritance' have universal meaning when applied across the
>various historical sciences. Would anyone care to provide a working
>definition?

I don't think that it does.  To those of us who study the Common Law
"inheritance" means acquiring real property (but not goods or chattels
or other personal property) from a decedent as an heir rather than as
a devisee under a will or by purchase (which doesn't mean what you
think it does).

I doubt that any other historical science could make use of this definition.

Ciao,

--Peter

Peter D. Junger

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:96>From HOLSINGE@UCONNVM.BITNET  Tue Jan 18 12:03:50 1994

Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 07:53:05 -0500 (EST)
From: "Kent E. Holsinger" <HOLSINGE%UCONNVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Scott DeLancey writes:

> There is no imaginable process that would produce convergence in
> vocabularies.  Similarities in vocabulary beyond what can be expected by
> chance can only reflect common inheritance (i.e. genetic relationship)
> or borrowing.

Now I'm confused.  I suggested the parallel with convergent evolution because
Sally Thomason seemed to suggest that borrowing (hybridization as we biologists
would call it) is extremely limited between distantly related languages.  Her
comments were, as I recall, offered in response to my suggestion that perhaps
linguistic evolution is more reticulate than biological evolution.  She was
arguing (and I *thought* Scott agreed with her) that reticulation wasn't the
correct explanation.  Well, if reticulation isn't the answer, then convergence
is the only alternative I can think of.

What am I missing?

-- 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                                           |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:97>From CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu  Tue Jan 18 12:56:52 1994

Date: Tue, 18 Jan 94 13:00 CDT
From: Tom Cravens <CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

I've been off list for a month, so have missed much, but here's two
cents worth on lexical resemblance across languages (with apologies for
any repetition of what Scott or Sally may have said).

The alternative to convergence at least (I must admit ignorance of
reticulation) is fortuitous happenstance. Every language has a
limited phonological inventory, and internal constraints on combining
them. The more two language have similarities in inventory and similar
constraints, the more likely it is that words will exist with similar or
identical form, and *very* occasionally, by the purest of accident except in
the case of sound symbolism and such, words with coincident form may turn
out to have similar meaning.

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:98>From delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu  Tue Jan 18 13:06:53 1994

Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 10:54:52 -0800 (PST)
From: Scott C DeLancey <delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

On Tue, 18 Jan 1994, Kent E. Holsinger wrote:

> Now I'm confused.

We may be talking at cross purposes here.

> I suggested the parallel with convergent evolution because
> Sally Thomason seemed to suggest that borrowing (hybridization as we
> biologists would call it) is extremely limited between distantly related
> languages.

This isn't reliably true, and I don't think it's what Sally was saying.
I think her point was that as a historical linguist trying to trace the
lineage of languages, you can usually (given adequate data) identify
borrowing.  The standard (and empirically fairly robust) assumption in
historical linguistics is that even in languages which have borrowed
large amounts of vocabulary (e.g. English) it is always possible (given
adequate data) to trace one primary line of descent--e.g. English, despite
having something like 50% non-Germanic vocabulary, is clearly a Germanic
language that has borrowed from Romance languages, not the other way
around.

> Her comments were, as I recall, offered in response to my suggestion that
> perhaps linguistic evolution is more reticulate than biological evolution.
> She was arguing (and I *thought* Scott agreed with her) that reticulation
> wasn't the correct explanation.  Well, if reticulation isn't the answer, then
> convergence is the only alternative I can think of.
>
> What am I missing?

We may be experiencing some confusion here about what we are trying to
explain.  Linguistic evolution is clearly more reticulate than biological
evolution; again, I think Sally's remarks were more oriented to the
problem of determining genetic relationships than to the question of
what kinds of histories languages, as opposed to species, may have.
     So we may have shifted a bit off the original topic.  If "reticulation
isn't the answer, then convergence is the only alternative" -- to
what question?

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:99>From sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu  Tue Jan 18 14:23:25 1994

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 94 15:25:52 -0500
From: Sally Thomason <sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu>

   I'm not sure just why we are confused, Kent Holsinger and I,
about the notions of convergent evolution vs. hybridization --
but it must have to do, at some level, with different ways of
talking about these things in our different disciplines.  I also
don't remember exactly how I phrased my earlier posting about
language mixture (hybridization), but it's quite possible that I
was unclear or even (in my effort to avoid technical linguistic
terms that only linguists could love) misleading.  It's like
this: borrowing between separate languages (as opposed to borrowing
between dialects) usually takes place without causing any
disruption in the family tree -- the main lines of descent are
normally quite clear, provided (and this was what Scott was talking
about) that the relationships are shallow enough chronologically
that you can find systematic correspondences in all grammatical
subsystems, including, crucially, the basic vocabulary.  But
borrowing can and sometimes does produce more extreme effects,
under the right kinds of social circumstances (fairly unusual
social circumstances, as far as historical linguists can tell
-- but stories I've heard lately about language contacts in
East Africa make me a bit dubious about that conventional
wisdom).  There are (in my view) no limits whatsoever on what
CAN be transferred from one lg. to another; I have counterexamples
to all the proposals that have been made along those lines, at
least all the proposals I've seen.  But that's not the usual sort
of situation; and in more ordinary social circumstances, normal
transmission of a whole lg. from one generation to the next gives
you, eventually, a fairly tidy family tree, at time depths up to
-- roughly -- somewhere between 5000 and 10,000 years.

   All that is quite different from convergent evolution.  Basically,
what I think Scott is saying, and what I know I'm saying, is this:
there isn't any convergent evolution in the sense that unrelated lgs.
get more similar, *without* borrowing, to the point where they look
as if they're related.  The reason is that, for such a situation
to exist, you'd have to get convergence in sound/meaning chunks
-- i.e. in vocabulary -- and that just doesn't happen to any
significant degree.  (I haven't seen the dissertation Victor
Golla mentioned, about sound symbolism, but I think there really
is sufficient evidence to rule out sound symbolism as the source
of widespread systematic correspondences in whole words.  I wouldn't
expect the picture to change even iss of sound symbolism has
has been greatly underestimated.)

   It *is* true that typological characteristics -- the kinds of
sound features that I talked about in my previous posting, and also
word-structure and sentence-structure features (e.g. word order,
presence of suffixes rather than prefixes, ....) -- appear widely
in unrelated languages.  It's also true that such similarities
have been taken as evidence for relatedness, for instance in the
Uralic & Altaic languages.  That's more like convergent evolution,
but there's a big difference: as soon as you start looking at
sound/meaning chunks, especially basic vocabulary, the picture
changes dramatically.  (Actually, people still argue about whether
Uralic and Altaic languages are related -- these families include
Finnish and Hungarian among the Uralic lgs., and Turkish and
Mongolian among the Altaic lgs. -- but no one nowadays would take
their word-order patterns, vowel-harmony rules, and other
structural features to be primary evidence for such a relationship.
The vocabularies do not match anywhere near as closely as some
of the structure does.  It's possible that borrowing is the source
of some of those structural similarities, and there are quite a
few people who no longer even believe that Altaic is a valid
family, so there are lots of complications.)

   I'm sorry to have been unclear before, and even sorrier if
(as I suspect) I'm not much clearer this time.  Probably someone
else should take over.  My remaining question would be about what
Kent has in mind in saying "Well, if reticulation isn't the
answer, then convergence is the only alternative" -- my question
is, answer to what?

    Sally Thomason
    sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:100>From CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu  Tue Jan 18 14:44:18 1994

Date: Tue, 18 Jan 94 14:47 CDT
From: Tom Cravens <CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Systematics and linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Sorry to be a pain, but I've missed a lot and am interested in the
discussion.  Could someone give a quick (and dirty, if necessary)
definition of 'reticulate' as being used here?

Thanks,

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

_______________________________________________________________________________
Darwin-L Message Log 5: 71-100 -- January 1994                              End