Darwin-L Message Log 5: 186–233 — 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: 186-233 -- JANUARY 1994
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<5:186>From SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu  Thu Jan 27 17:45:06 1994

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: "Gerard Donnelly Smith"  <SMITGM@hawkins.clark.edu>
Organization: Clark College, Vancouver WA, USA
Date: 27 Jan 94 15:48:38 PST8PDT
Subject: re language adaptation

The adaptation of song by birds in an attempt to overcome the
dampening effects of thick forests sounds plausible for birds. Can we
then postulate that thickly forested topography influenced human
speech in the same manner?  No, because human's form much tighter
social units than birds.  We probably didn't need langauge sounds
that penetrated the forest depths in order to attract mates, our
close-knit social units made it easy to communicate desire.

Concerning climate and language:  First let me point out that I am
not a linguist, nor an anthropologist.  Just merely an English
teacher at a small community college who enjoys learning and
discussion.  Now, my two-cents.  If the theory concerning Germanic
consonants has validity, then Inuit langauge should also contain hard-
short consonants, and predominately short vowels.  If langauge can be
affected by climate, then polar bears shouldn't growl and acrtic
wolves shouldn't howl since they might freeze their tongues.

Someone stated that one of my post was rather obvious, but remember
for the novice, nothing is obvious.  So, let me hazard several
syllogism while attempting to keep my foot out of my mouth, and
attempting not to shoot my self in the foot.

If human langauge is affected by climate, then animal langauge should
be also.  If animal languge can adapt to topography, then we might
propose that human langauge can be influenced by topography.  In the
alps, large horns are blown to spread news.  In Africa, drums were
used to carry messages far beyond the range of the human voice.
Apparently, humans attempt to compensate for distance by using tools.
Then might not it follow, that we consciously chose sounds for their
range as well as their emotive value.  For example, if I am angry I
am instinctively more likely to growl, than to giggle.  If I wish
someone on the other side of the woods to hear me, I might
consciously choose more penetrating words, or the harsher sounds my
vocal chords can procude, rather than the softer tones.  If I dwell
in a humid climate, I might not need as many penetrating sounds since
sound carries better through the thicker atmosphere.  I can clearly
recall more clearly hearing the distant train (our farm was three
miles from the tracks) on humid days, than on hot dry days.

Apparently we can argue that the enviroment does shape language, now
whether or not that environmental influences is then recorded and
passed on through the genes, I am not qualified even to speculate.

"If a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again.  I
would know that a fool follows it, for a knave gives it."

Dr. Gerard Donnelly-Smith            e-mail: smitgm@hawkins.clark.edu
English Department, Clark College

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:187>From hantuo@utu.fi  Thu Jan 27 17:45:51 1994

To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: hantuo@utu.fi (Hanna Tuomisto)
Subject: re: DARWIN-L digest 130
Date: 	Fri, 28 Jan 1994 01:54:07 +0200

Michael Alvard wrote:
>I don't see a problem at all.  It could simply mean that from an evolutionary
>point of view indivduals in teh technologically developed world who reproduce
>less than folks in the less developed nations are less fit, and are being
>selected against by natural selection.

I agree in principle. But I don't think there needs to be any form of
'natural' selection 'against' anybody here. Rather, I see this as a typical
case where the fate of human genes depends less on the properties of the
genes themselves than on memes. The main reason why technologically
developed countries have low birth-rates seems to be a combination of two
things: people prefer to have few children, and they have the means to
control the number of children they get. Therefore the reproduction rate is
not dependant on genetic fitness, but it is a result of a concious choice
made by each individual on the basis of cultural values and economical
possibilities. And since cultural values are not inherited but learned, the
situation as such should not have any effect on human evolution.

Of course, some hereditary things may be so strongly correlated with the
cultural/economical situations, that they behave as if they were selected
for or against.  For example, it so happens that almost all people in
developing countries have black hair. It would seem far-fetched to claim
that black hair as such increases the 'fitness' of these people, but still
the proportion of black-haired people in the human population is increasing
rapidly. The same applies to any genetically heritable characteristics that
happen to be common among people from developing countries but are rare
among people from the industrialized countries. When differential
reproduction prevails, the overall genetic heritage will eventually
converge towards those populations that increase fastest, even though the
reasons for that increase would have no genetic basis whatsoever.
Afterwards, of course, the common types will be labeled as the 'successful'
ones.

The situation gets a lot more complicated when the spread of cultural and
economical aspects is looked at, because these are not transferred in a
simple Mendelian fashion. Therefore it would be useless to try to find
"genetic determinants" of "undevelopment". Many cultural practices differ
between industrialized and non-industrialized countries, but I don't
believe that genes have got anything to do with it.

Hanna Tuomisto
hantuo@utu.fi

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:188>From BURGHD@utkvx.utk.edu  Thu Jan 27 18:34:51 1994

Date: Thu, 27 Jan 1994 19:43:18 -0500 (EST)
From: BURGHD@utkvx.utk.edu
Subject: DEVELOPMENT
To: DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

I am another silent member that should come out.  My interests are in
comparative behavior, ontogeny, chemoreception, and play among other areas,
including the history of ethology and comparative psychology.

In reading with interest the recent discourse on constraints and
development, I did not notice mention of an important book by Gilbert
Gottlieb, INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION: THE GENESIS OF NOVEL
BEHAVIOR, Oxford Univ. Press, 1992.

Gordon M. Burghardt
Department of Psychology
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-0900

ph: 615-974-3300, fax: 615-974-3330, e-mail: BURGHD@utkvx.utk.edu

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<5:189>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Thu Jan 27 23:20:13 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 00:31:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: "Adaptation" before 1800, and the direction of adaptation
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Ron Amundson asks about uses of "adaptation" and cognates before 1800.  Here's
one example I just spotted that comes from David Hume's _Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion_, published posthumously in 1779.  I found it in a textbook,
so can't give a better citation unfortunately.  Hume's aim is to attack the
argument from design, and in this passage he is stating that argument in order
to set it up for his attack.

  Look round the world: Contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will
  find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite
  number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree
  beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain.  All these
  various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each
  other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever
  contemplated them.  The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all
  nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human
  contrivance -- of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence.

Certainly the general concept of adaptation -- the apparent fit between
organisms and their environments -- is as old as the argument from design,
which is pretty old.  How widely the word "adaptation" was used in the
early literature, though, I couldn't say.

Ron also writes:

>One of the points I'd planned to make is that Darwin gave the first
>principled argument by which the direction of adaptation (i.e. in an
>environment/organism adaptive fit, what was adapted to what?) could be
>finally determined.

This is an interesting point, I think.  I suspect that the word "direction"
here has historically been understood both temporally and also philosophically.
Natural theologians could possibly have said X is adapted to Y, even though
both X and Y were created at the same time.  The evolutionary innovation is
to say X is adapted to Y because Y existed first and X subsequently changed
in such a way as to be adapted to Y.  In one of my papers I distinguish what
I call "state explanations" from "change explanations", and claim that change
explanations become possible with temporal/evolutionary thinking, whereas
state explanations predominated in pre-evolutionary discussions of adaptation.
One of the interesting things, however, is that state explanations have
continued to be common in evolutionary biology.  In order to give good change
explanations (X is adapted to Y because Y existed first) you have to have a
well extablished chronicle of events: you have to know that Y did in fact
exist first, and that the putative adaptive change in X occurred at the time
when it became associated with Y.  One of the most significant consequences
of the development of cladistic systematics is that such chronicles can now
be provided, and so change explanations can be constructed with a degree of
precision never before possible.  This is having an enormous impact on studies
of ecology and behavior, and is virtually revolutionizing the study of
evolutionary adaptation.  Two extended treatments of the topic are:

Brooks, Daniel R., & Deborah A. McLennan.  1991.  _Phylogeny, Ecology, and
  Behavior: A Research Program in Comparative Biology_.  Chicago: University
  of Chicago Press.

Harvey, Paul H., & Mark D. Pagel.  1991.  _The Comparative Method in
  Evolutionary Biology_.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

But there are now dozens of short papers on the theory and practice of this
kind of work.  The paper of my own that distinguishes state explanations from
change explanations and talks about the importance of the event chronicle is:

O'Hara, Robert J.  1988.  Homage to Clio, or, toward an historical philosophy
  for evolutionary biology.  _Systematic Zoology_, 37:142-155.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:190>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Thu Jan 27 23:38:33 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 00:49:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Language, adaptation, and bird song
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

This comes from Peter Cannell (sipad002@sivm.si.edu) who was having trouble
posting it.

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

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

I suspect that the work of Eugene Morton, at the National Zoo, Smithsonian
Institution, might be relevant to all this interesting discussion of the
adaptation of language.  His work is on evolutionary ecology of bird
vocalization, and he did a thesis many years ago on ecological adaptation
of bird vocalizations, and has worked on that topic since.  His conclusions
have always been that yes there are ecological (not necessarily regional)
influences on bird "language."

Peter F. Cannell
Science Editor, Smithsonian Institution University Press
sipad002@sivm.si.edu
voice: 202/287-3738 ext. 328    fax: 202/287-3637

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<5:191>From ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu  Fri Jan 28 01:26:39 1994

Date: Thu, 27 Jan 94 21:35:07 HST
From: Ron Amundson <ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: what evolution is...

> In reading a recent post to the sci.bio.evolution newsgroup I came
> across an introductory essay by Chris Colby (colby@bio.bu.edu).  It
> included the following:
>
> >WHAT IS EVOLUTION?
> >
> >Evolution is a change in the gene pool of a population over time. A
> >

deletions-----

>         My question to the good members of the Darwin list is; when did
> this identification of evolution with changes in gene frequencies become
> entrenched/started/is it changing?
>
>         My sense in reading of Darwin and other 19th century writers is
> that evolution is precisely concerned with changing morphology and the
> notion of a "tree of life."
>         I am not as happy about the triumphant move that makes evolution
> coextensive with gene frequency changes as the current story seems to be.
> I wonder if this is another move in the hegemonic accretion of terms by
> molecular biology/genetics or if this idea has a different historical
> origination.
>
>         Was the identification of evolution with gene frequencies the key
> insight (or trade) that made the new synthesis possible and the one that
> left the developmental view out (Ron Amundson?).
>
>         Thanks,
>                 Jeremy

Jeremy --

Ron Amundson says yes to the final two questions, but we all know what
a crank he is.

The classical dating of the gene-frequency "definition" of evolution
is Dobzhansky's 1937 _Genetics and the Origin of Species_, p. 11:

"Since evolution is a change in the genetic composition of
populations, the mechanisms of evolution constitute problems of
population genetics."

I've pestered some wiser heads than I about this dating.  Lindley
Darden suggested that some pre-Synthesis geneticists might have said
something along similar lines, T.H. Morgan for example.  Frankly I
haven't yet chased down her hints.  (Provine's book on the history of
population genetics is literally hanging over my head as I type, but I
haven't reread it for that purpose.)

For a refreshingly (to me) divergent approach, consider the following:

Van Valen, Leigh, (1974), "A natural mode for the origin of some
higher taxa," Journal of Herpetology 8: 109-121.

     "It is useful to regard evolution as the control of
development by ecology.  Genes are sufficiently flexible that,
for the most part what is selected for will occur.  We can
therefore ignore genes (although  not the general existence of
heritability) and see if we are appreciably the worse.  Function,
via adaptation, is involved in details, but although other areas
like causal physiology and paleontology may suggest mechanisms
they don't provide them.  The emphasis is therefore on the
phenotype, on the level where adaptation occurs.  And the
phenotype is development."  (p. 115)

Colby's summary is actually quite a nice, but very mainstream, account
of evolutionary theory for (say) undergraduates and readers of
alt.talk.origins.  (The Usenet evolution/creation discussion group.)
Hell, some of my best friends are mainstream.  Wouldn't want my kid to
marry one, though.

Cheers,

Ron Amundson
ronald@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:192>From carey@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu  Fri Jan 28 04:46:25 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 05:54:06 -0500 (EST)
From: Arlen Carey <carey@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>
Subject: tools, evolution (my LAST posting on the topic)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Ms. Lerner states:
	>I was replying to _your_ suggestion that humans
	>evolve to be more compatible with modern technology.

I suggested this?!?  Not unless evil aliens temporarily took over my helm.
I do make mistakes but I don't think I made this one.  If so, I apologize.

I did have a pertinent off-line discussion with a fellow list reader.  A
copy of the corespondence follows for further clarification of the
issue:

----------Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 12:54:15 +0800 (WST)

On Thu, 27 Jan 1994, Arlen Carey wrote:

> Your message on the darwin-l list makes sense to me.  Perhaps i overstated
> my point.  My primary intention was to make a point similar to yours; namely,
> that the tech diffs between societies do not necessarily (nor probably)
> have fitness implications.  To whatever extent genes contribute a capacity
> for tool usage, i'd guess the trait to be more or less uniformly distributed,
> with phenotypic differences being owed mainly to envoronment variation.
>
> Since I'm a sociologist with very limited formal training in such matters,
> i ask you:  does this perception make sense?

I would say that you have it right on!  The way I would look at it is that
any variation in the capacity for tool usage would be distributed amoung
populations as a within-population variability.  In that it would be like
almost ALL genetic traits in humans -- there will be greater variation
WITHIN populationas than BETWEEN populations.  Here, stuff like the old
"racial" traits are, in fact, clinal and in any case repesent a
fundamentally insiginficant part of the genome.  The kind of
"interbreeding" we see happening in most multi-ethic societies today is
also NOTHING new.  The clear exceptions to what I describe here, specific
evolved moprhological and physiological traits, such as the various
heamoglobin variants leading to malarial tolerance or a propensity to
produce lactase are rather uncommon, probably quite well understood, and
easily explained by ONGOING selection within a particular region).

Best Regards,
Dave

--
	Dave Rindos		  arkeo4@uniwa.uwa.edu.au
	Australian Foundation for Archaeological Sciences
    20 Herdsmans Parade    Wembley   WA    6014    AUSTRALIA
    Ph:+61 9 387 6281 (GMT+8)  FAX:+61 9 380 1051 (USEST+13)

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<5:193>From buchignani@hg.uleth.ca  Fri Jan 28 06:21:23 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 05:21:26 MST
From: Norman Buchignani <buchignani@hg.uleth.ca>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: RE: "Adaptation" before 1800, and the direction of adaptation

re: the specific use of the word "adaptation" before 1800. I just consulted
my personal database on intellectual discourse on race/human variation
(which includes notes), and no specific examples came up. I found
a lot between 1800 and 1830; the history of the notion, however,
goes back a long way. Europeans were well aware, for example of
West Africans' adaptive resistence to local diseases in the 1600s.

Norman Buchignani

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<5:194>From ferragu@imiucca.csi.unimi.it  Fri Jan 28 07:05:18 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 94 14:13:27 +0100
From: Ferraguti Biodip <ferragu@imiucca.csi.unimi.it>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: history of adaptation

Ansewring to a request by Ron Amundson some days ago about the
concept of "adaptation" before 1800. I think that the work Buffon
did on the subect mus be taken into account. In the section enti-
tled "De da degeneration des animaux" (soory to the French for the
missing accents!) he introduces the "degeneration" of animals
which has somtehing to do with adaptaion of animals to different
environments. It is known that Buffon is often not very "linear"
in his concepts, but the following quotation from the mentioned
section (Volume XIV of his Histoire Naturelle...) is quite clear:

"Aussi le chien, sur lequel la nourriture ne paroit avoir que
de legers influences, est neammoins celui de touls les animaux
carnassiers dont l'espece est plus variee; il semble suivre
exactement dans ses degradations les differences du climat; il
est nu dans les pays les plus chauds, couvert d'un poil epais
et rude dans les contres du Nord, pare d'une belle robe soye-
use en Espagne, en Syrie, ou la douce temperature de l'air chan-
ge le poil de presque tous les animaux en une sorte de soie.
Mais independammant de ces varietes exterieures qui sont pro-
duites par la seule influence du climat..."

Marco ferraguti
Dipartimento di Biologia
26, Via Celoria
20133 Milano, Italy

ferragu@imiucca.csi.unimi.it

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<5:195>From coon@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU  Fri Jan 28 07:58:32 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 09:06:59 EST
From: coon@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU
To: DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: ONE MORE INTRO

	Although I have posted before I have tended to lurk.  My graduate
training was in anthropology and linguistics.  I have tended to specialize
in historical/comparative linguistics with special interests in Northwest
Coast, Uto-Aztecan and Jivaroan languages.  I am increasingly interested
in the history of the sciences.  Beyond those I am interested in political
economy, human evolution (especially H. erectus), the evolution of birds,
paleontology, early Buddhism, and history in general.  Basically, I just
want to know how things got to be the way they are (or are perceived to
be) today.
************************************************
Roger (Brad) Coon            "Better to have one
COON@IPFWCVAX.BITNET          freedom too many,
COON@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU    than to have one
                              too few."

Politically incorrect and proud of it.
Niquimictitoc inana Bambi.
************************************************

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<5:196>From princeh@husc.harvard.edu  Fri Jan 28 09:31:28 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 10:23:35 -0500 (EST)
From: Patricia Princehouse <princeh@husc.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: Adaptation/Buffon
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

On Fri, 28 Jan 1994, Ferraguti Biodip wrote:

> Ansewring to a request by Ron Amundson some days ago about the
> concept of "adaptation" before 1800. I think that the work Buffon
> did on the subect mus be taken into account. In the section enti-
> tled "De da degeneration des animaux"
>
> "Aussi le chien, sur lequel la nourriture ne paroit avoir que
> de legers influences, est neammoins celui de touls les animaux
> carnassiers dont l'espece est plus variee; il semble suivre
> exactement dans ses degradations les differences du climat; il
> est nu dans les pays les plus chauds,

	I've recently been translating Linnaeus' _Cynographia_ (1753) and
thought it might be of interest that (in accord with the Buffon here) he
lists the hairless breeds as coming from warm climates, calling the
variety _Canis Aegyptius_ and indicates that it has skin "black like the
moors". I think surely this came from literature prior, perhaps Ray.
Maybe Amundson is already aware of this.

Patricia Princehouse
Dept Paleontology, MCZ
Harvard
Princeh@husc.harvard.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:197>From mpinschm@s850.mwc.edu  Fri Jan 28 09:49:15 1994

From: mary pinschmidt <mpinschm@s850.mwc.edu>
Subject: Re: what evolution is...
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 94 11:00:08 EST

My best guess is with the publication of Julian Huxley's "The New
Synthesis" in the 1950's.

Mary Pinschmidt, Professor of Biology, Mary Washington College

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:198>From buchignani@hg.uleth.ca  Fri Jan 28 11:23:53 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 08:19:34 MST
From: Norman Buchignani <buchignani@hg.uleth.ca>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: RE: historyy of adaptation

Marco Ferraguti appropriately notes Buffon's thesis of species
degeneration as a function of environment--a most sensitively felt
point among New World intellectuals. This of course was a theoretical
formulation of a long held folk notion of the degenerative potential
of environment when working on the human form. However, it seems
to me this is, if anything, a theory of maladaptation rather than
adaptation as Buffon couched his arguments (as per the Ferraguti quote;
see also his discussion of Inuit, etc.) in explicitly degenerationist
terms. The more general theory of environmental determinism around
since ancient times seems to me to include both positive adaptation
to the environment, as well as degeneration.

Norman Buchignani

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:199>From BOTCFNR@vm.uni-c.dk  Fri Jan 28 12:13:56 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 94 17:18:27 DNT
From: Finn <BOTCFNR@vm.uni-c.dk>
Subject: Re: Kemke and French snakes
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Sally Thomaason cited Kemke for stating that "God spoke Swedish, Adam Danish
and the snake French". Evidently, Eve spoke French too. This hypothesis
explains why Adam never quite got the message. The reaction of God that
everything that fun is equivalent to sin is compatible with recent
Danish views on Swedish-speaking persons.
                                 Finn N Rasmussen, Dane.
                                (Botanical Lab, Univ. Copenhagen.)

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:200>From PICARD@Vax2.Concordia.CA  Fri Jan 28 12:48:10 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 13:50:28 -0500 (EST)
From: MARC PICARD <PICARD@Vax2.Concordia.CA>
Subject: Re: question
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

	Morty Kessel asked the following question:

Can a linguist out there explain the congruence of :
who, what, where, when, why and (w)how :-)

All these forms are ultimately derived from the Indo-European root *kwo-,
a stem of relative and interrogative pronouns. In Latin and Romance, the
corresponding forms generally begin in QU-, e.g. Latin QUID, QUOD, French
QUI, QUE, QUOI, QUAND, etc.

Marc Picard

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:201>From TOMASO@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu  Fri Jan 28 13:53:42 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 13:19:40 -0600 (CST)
From: TOMASO@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 131
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

This post concerns the current thread on Tools and Evolution.

A related discussion is currently occuring on ANTHRO-L (@UBVM).  Being involved
in that one, I thought I might contribute something to this one.

At the core of this argument are a few simple themes:  technology (or, less
broadly, cultural materials), adaptation, and culture.  The question then,
seems to hinge on one of the many (and old) definitions of what culture might
be:  "Man's (sic) extrasomatic means of adaptation"

This definition warrants some deconstruction.  First of all, it was authored at
a time when the term 'man' actually meant '_Homo sapiens_', but also alludes to
the very much male centered view of tool use and its effect on the species that
was prevalent at the time.  While it is equally easy to produce a more or less
convincing coevolutionary argument for female tool use and the evolution of the
species, or both sex's use of tools, for that matter, what is the sense?

In place of 'extrasomatic' read 'conscious'.  The rest of the definition is
self-explanatory, if you know your evolution.

If this definition has any utility, then what does it tell us about 'stopping
evolution'.  We can read its implications at least two ways:  'We no longer
need biological evolution, since we adapt culturally' (and I admit this sounds
/ is ridiculous) or 'we effect the process of selection by means of culture'.
I hold that the latter statement has some merit.

On ANTHRO-L, there is currently a debate concerning whether cultural materials
are even part of culture.  The positions expressed have ranged from social
evolutionary to post-modern, but the fact that the debate is even occuring is
very interesting.  To be blunt, several of the writers seem obsessed with the
idea that cultural materials are not a component of cultural materials.  Why is
this?  Is there a fear that we might start having to make statements like "all
animals that make tools have culture"? or "Culture can be expressed in relation
to concrete objects"? - What do we do, in this case, with the fact that many of
these 'tool-using animals' actually have rather complex social organizations.
Does this mean that social/cultural anthropologists should really consider
reading primate behavioral studies?  Or even studies of carnivore behavior?

If you've gotten this far into this post, perhaps you will even have the
patience/tenacity to try to grapple with this question:  What if we reduce the
argument and invert it such that we can look at culture itself as nothing more
than a kind of dynamic technology, or an 'apparatus of adaptation'?

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

Matt Tomaso
Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin

INTERNET:
	TOMASO@UTXVMS.CC.UTEXAS.EDU
	TOMASO@GENIE.GEIS.COM

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:202>From rbrandon@acpub.duke.edu  Fri Jan 28 14:21:31 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 15:29:23 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: rbrandon@acpub.duke.edu (Robert Brandon)
Subject: what evolution is

First a brief introduction.  I am a philosopher of biology at Duke.
My interests span most of population biology.  Creighton asks when the
identification of evolution with change in gene pool took place, and what,
if anything, it had to do with the hegemony of molecular biology/genetics.
I've written on this ('Evolution' Phil. Sci. 45(1978), pp. 96-109).  The
earliest reference I found making this identification was Dobzhansky in 1937
(Genetics and the Origin of the Species).  Thus the definition in question
comes out of, and is still current in, population genetics.  It is entirely
independent of molecular genetics.  My 1978 article attempts to give a genetic
definition of evolution that is more satisfactory than change in gene
frequency.  Nowadays I would prefer something like the following:  evolution is
any change in the distribution of heritable characters over generational time.

                                                                Cheers,
                                                                Robert Brandon

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:203>From loring@maroon.tc.umn.edu  Fri Jan 28 19:46:54 1994

From: loring@maroon.tc.umn.edu
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 19:43:43 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 127
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

A posting a while back had to do with music and meaning, leading to the
BBC - Beethoven's 5th commentaries.

I remember a few years back hearing about work by Bill Holm on boxelder
bugs, including poetry and music (I don't know if he did any entomology!).
 The music drew on the notes BEB (for BoxElder Bug).  This is the same
Bill Holm who later wrote "Coming Home Crazy", about teaching in China.
All of this is oblique to the stated purpose of the list, but it's fun anyway.

I feel pretty humble about introducing myself to all you luminaries.  I am
a superannuated linguistics graduate student at Minnesota, who spent hours
reading National Geographic as a child, dreamed of becoming an
archeologist or anthropologist, studied Classical Greek and
Latin, and was raised by a geologist. With a
sense of awe I follow the conversations on the list among folks who have
actually been out there digging up really old stuff!!!
(both literally and figuratively)

Anne Loring

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:204>From FINCKELM%ESUVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU  Fri Jan 28 19:52:54 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 19:59:14 -0600 (CST)
From: Elmer Finck <FINCKELM%ESUVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Self Introduction
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

I am a behavioral ecologist, who joined the list because I am interested
in phylogenetics.  The diversity of the group has kept me signed onto
the list.  My research interests are in grassland bird and mammal diversity,
reintroduction of grassland animals into the tallgrass prairie, and habitat
selection.   The importance of knowing the history of an organism has always
fascinated me.  Later, EJF

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:205>From azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu  Fri Jan 28 20:40:44 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 94 20:49:14 CST
From: "asia z lerner" <azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re:  tools

	Comments on the action of selection in human populations have
	incorporated the concept of "fitness" (as in -- my paraphrase--
	"3rd-world populations are more fit than populations in developed
	countries, because they have more children").  Fitness is a
	measure of an individual allele's reproductive success in a particular
	environment, relative to other versions (alleles) of that gene.
	 [....]
	      %                                                           %
	      #     James D. Felley, Computer Specialist                  #

It seems to me that this definition is specifically geared towards
inter-species selection, but what about intra-species competition?
Species A could very well cause the extinction of species B because
it posesses genetic coding for traits that species B does not, in
principle, have, which according to the above definition would prevent
the possibility of competition.

Asia

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:206>From azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu  Fri Jan 28 20:43:15 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 94 20:51:46 CST
From: "asia z lerner" <azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: tools

	Are we slower, etc. than the apes? Granted, it is not fair to compare
	Olympic athletes to run-of-the-mill apes, nor should we consider only
	American couch potatoes. The athletes are self-selected to be atypical
	of our species. The couch potatoes are reflective of an undemanding
	lifestyle made possible by culture but not a genetic adaptation to
	culture. Anthropological has been explicit in arguing that humans have
	_more_ stamina than other mammals. We may not be as fast as a gazelle,
	but I don't have the impression that we lag much behind apes. Does
	anyone have any hard data on this?

Body fat? I remember that humans have more of it than apes from AAT, were this,
as I understand, playes a major role as a proof of the theory.

Asia

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:207>From GRB%NCCIBM1.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU  Fri Jan 28 21:06:32 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 21:01 -0500 (EST)
From: George Buckner <GRB%NCCIBM1.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 131
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

As one with a background in cultural anthropology, I want to second
the view proposed by Matt Tomaso:

> At the core of this argument are a few simple themes:  technology (or, less
> broadly, cultural materials), adaptation, and culture.  The question then,
> seems to hinge on one of the many (and old) definitions of what culture might
> be:  "Man's (sic) extrasomatic means of adaptation"

(text deleted)...

> In place of 'extrasomatic' read 'conscious'.  The rest of the definition is
> self-explanatory, if you know your evolution.
>
> If this definition has any utility, then what does it tell us about 'stopping
> evolution'.  We can read its implications at least two ways:  'We no longer
> need biological evolution, since we adapt culturally' (and I admit this
> sounds / is ridiculous) or 'we effect the process of selection by means of
> culture'.  I hold that the latter statement has some merit.

(text deleted)...

> If you've gotten this far into this post, perhaps you will even have the
> patience/tenacity to try to grapple with this question:  What if we reduce
> the argument and invert it such that we can look at culture itself as nothing
> more than a kind of dynamic technology, or an 'apparatus of adaptation'?

The conscious (and intelligent) mind is an apparatus of adaptation for
the individual. Culture extends from this to become the apparatus of
adaptation for the group (which can further serve the adaptation for
the individual). Biological evolution hasn't been replaced but extended,
and this extension loops back, via our culture and the changes on the
physical environment which it imposes, to effect biological evolution.

By the way, where do I sign on to ANTHRO-L ?

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% George Buckner                                                    %
% GRB@NCCIBM1.BITNET                                                %
% 72510.2216@COMPUSERVE.COM                                         %
% LEEWARD@AOL.COM                                                   %
% "Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders    %
%  what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of."            %
%                                       -They Might Be Giants       %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:208>From azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu  Fri Jan 28 21:23:52 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 94 21:32:21 CST
From: "asia z lerner" <azlerner@midway.uchicago.edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re:  tools, evolution (my LAST posting on the topic)

	Ms. Lerner states:
		>I was replying to _your_ suggestion that humans
		>evolve to be more compatible with modern technology.

	I suggested this?!?  Not unless evil aliens temporarily took over my
	helm.

Unlikely supposition. My appologies, then. Somebody made that comment, though,
and I think that was what I was reacting to.

Asia

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:209>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Fri Jan 28 22:37:53 1994

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 23:48:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 28 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

JANUARY 28 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1694 (300 years ago today): PETER COLLINSON is born at London, England.  The
son of a Quaker merchant in London, Collinson will himself become a successful
London merchant and a skillful gardener, and will develop a special interest
in the cultivation of exotic plants.  He will become a leading supplier of
garden plants to the English aristocracy, and will support several travelling
collectors including Mark Catesby and John Bartram, who will send to Collinson
many living specimens from their explorations in North America.  As a result
of his support for Catesby, Collinson will join the circle of naturalists and
collectors around Sir Hans Sloane, and Sloane will sponsor his election to the
Royal Society in 1728.  Elected later to the Society of Antiquaries and to the
scientific academies of Uppsala and Berlin, Collinson will die in 1768 and be
buried in the Quaker cemetery in Bermondsey.

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).

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:210>From mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca  Sat Jan 29 10:01:53 1994

From: mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca (Mary P Winsor)
Subject: Dobzhansky's definition
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (bulletin board)
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 1994 11:10:57 -0500 (EST)

Thanks, Robert Brandon, for identifying source of gene-change
definition of evolution.  The guess at Julian Huxley was off the mark:
- his book Evolution: the Modern Synthesis (which was 1942, not the
'50s) draws heavily from Dobzhansky (as well as from JBSHaldane's "The
Causes of Evolution" which I have recently been studying).  Just to
keep the record straight.
I think I introduced myself a while back; I'm an historian of
systematics at the Univ. of Toronto.
Polly Winsor  mwinsor@epas.utoronto.ca

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:211>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sat Jan 29 17:16:41 1994

Date: Sat, 29 Jan 1994 18:27:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 29 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

JANUARY 29 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1688: EMANUEL SWEDENBORG is born at Stockholm, Sweden.  Swedenborg will grow
up in Uppsala and will study humanities at Uppsala University.  His interests
will soon turn to the sciences, and he will travel to London where he will
study mathematics, astronomy, and geology in association with Edmund Halley
and John Woodward.  In 1716 Swedenborg will be appointed an assessor for the
Swedish Board of Mines, and will establish a short-lived scientific journal,
_Daedalus hyperboreus_, the first journal of its kind in Sweden.  Swedenborg's
researches in cosmogeny will lead him to argue in _Om jordenes och planeternas
gang och stand_ (_On the Course and Position of the Earth and the Planets_,
1718) that the earth had orbited the sun at a faster rate in earlier times.
Entering the debate about the geological history of Scandinavia in 1719,
Swedenborg will marshal evidence from geology and biogeography to argue in
_Om watnens hogd och forra werldens starcka ebb och flod_ (_On the Level of
the Seas and the Great Tides in Former Times_) that Sweden had previously been
covered entirely by water and had risen up out of the sea.  Always a grand and
wide-ranging thinker who maintined an active interest in theological as well
as scientific problems, Swedenborg will increasingly come to suffer from
hallucinations and delusions, almost certainly brought about by severe manic-
depression.  The religious interpretations he will give to these experiences
will lead him to abandon his scientific work and devote himself entirely to
theology and prophecy.  He will die in March of 1772 and be buried in the
Uppsala Cathedral, a few steps from the site where his countryman Linnaeus
will be buried six years later.  The religious followers Swedenborg will win
during his later years will establish The Church of the New Jerusalem in 1787
to keep his spiritual doctrines alive.

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).

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:212>From sturkel@cosy.nyit.edu  Sat Jan 29 20:49:40 1994

Date: Sat, 29 Jan 1994 21:59:35 -0500
From: sturkel@cosy.nyit.edu
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 131

I was wondering why we have so quickly rejected future biological
evolution of humans.

It would be easy to imagine that after we begin to colonize the
milkyway the immenseness of space will create barriers to gene
flow which could easily lead to genetic barriers to gene flow.

In this case, the technology has allowed for the evolution,
similar to the effects of various gene pools after the invention

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:213>From GGALE@VAX1.UMKC.EDU  Sat Jan 29 22:35:09 1994

Date: Sat, 29 Jan 1994 22:42:41 -0600 (CST)
From: GGALE@VAX1.UMKC.EDU
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 133
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Darwinners--
I missed much of the discussion on tools + evolution [= both cultural and
biological] with a smoked modem, so I don't know whether or not the following
point might already have been made. If so, I apologize.

Some wise teacher of mine (whose identity is now lost to access) once pointed
out to me that biological evolution (as then conceived!) required verrrrry
long intervals of time to work its effects. [Admittedly, newer ideas might
intervene against this notion, putting in its stead tens of thousands rather
than millions of years.] Cultural, esp. technological, evolution, on the
other hand, counts trends on the fingers of only several hundreds of hands.
The received dates on the 'Neolithic Technological Revolution' center on
10K-8K BCE. Physics dates from about 500 years ago. Wireless from 100 yrs.
ago. Information technology from 35-40 years ago.
In other words, biological evolution is very low level noise against an
extremely strong signal put out by technological evolution.
Note that this version of the story in no ways denies the existence of biolog-
ical evolution. It merely denies its relative significance.
Am I out-of-date (or worse, out-of-touch) in continuing to lend credence to
this interpretation of the interaction(s) between the two processes?

George Gale
ggale@vax1.umkc.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:214>From loring@maroon.tc.umn.edu  Sun Jan 30 01:24:24 1994

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 01:29:01 -0600 (CST)
From: loring@maroon.tc.umn.edu
Subject: Who, what, where, when, etc, Re: DARWIN-L digest 132
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

      Morty Kessel asked the following question:

"Can a linguist out there explain the congruence of :
who, what, where, when, why and (w)how :-)"
	and Marc Picard responded:
"All these forms are ultimately derived from the Indo-European root *kwo-,
a stem of relative and interrogative pronouns. In Latin and Romance, the
corresponding forms generally begin in QU-, e.g.Latin QUID, QUOD, French
QUI, QUE, QUOI, QUAND, etc."

My two-cents'-worth addition:
Did you all notice that not all those English WH- words actually begin
with the same -sound-?  Some (HOW, WHO) begin with a [h] sound, the rest with
a [w] or [hw] (depends on the speaker & the occasion) sound.  Here's how
that worked out.

The Indo-European consonant [kw] is what linguists call co-articulated:  that
is, it involves the simultaneous use of two separate parts of the vocal
apparatus in its production.  The [k] part is made in what is referred to
as the "velar" place: the back part of the tongue is raised to touch the
soft palate, far back at the top of the mouth.  The [w] part involves
rounding the lips.

Indo-European branched off into a number of varieties of language,
including among others the "pre-Latin" ancestor of Latin and its children (the
Romance languages French, Spanish, etc.); and the "Germanic" ancestor of
German, English, etc.

Latin and its Romance children retained the [kw] of Indo-European; those
forms in Latin and French that are spelled with QU- at the beginning are
pronounced with the [kw] sound.  Spanish has it, spelled CU-  in "cuando"
("when").

Before splitting into English, German, etc., the early Germanic language
underwent a number of changes in the consonants
it inherited from its Indo-European ancestor; one was a change from [k] to
the sound now represented in German orthography as "ch", and in the
International Phonetic Alphabet as [x], called a velar fricative: instead
of stopping airflow completely, as for [k], friction is created between
the tongue and the soft palate. This sound was a part of very early
English(leaving its traces in some spelling fossils: "GH" was one spelling
convention used to represent the sound) , but eventually was lost,most often
shifting to [h].  So, now we hear [hw] where Indo-European had [kw], at
least some of the time and for some people, in  "WHAT", "WHEN", "WHERE",
"WHY". But [h] is an easy sound to lose. For some of us, all or some of the
time, we now use just [w] to begin those words. The [hw] pronunciation is
on the way out.
Why is that we now hear just [h], not [hw] or [w], at the beginning of "WHO"
and "HOW" in everyone's speech? This likely has to do with an intolerance
for having adjoining sounds that are too much alike. The vowels in these
words are similar to [w] in requiring lip rounding. Loss of the [w] was
reasonable to make articulation easier.

(In our sibling language German, these interrogatives generally are spelled
with "W" at the start, and pronounced with [v](not exactlylike English [v];
this, too, can be explained in terms of very reasonable sound changes,
something like [kw]-->[xw] (that change already mentioned)-->[w](not
really more friction involved)-->[v](not really quite like English [v]))

I don't know what Sanskrit interrogatives look like.  Sanskrit, not being
Germanic, didn't undergo the [k] -> [x] consonant change; and being Indo-
european, started out with the same [kw] as Germanic and pre-Latin.  A
Sanskrit scholar is needed to fill us in.

What I find fascinating about language change is the diversification that
can result when different changes occur in what starts out as the "same"
language.  There are a variety of sound changes that are "reasonable".  In
regard to the discussion about language-environment co-influences,
one could look for correlations between environmental conditions and type
of sound changes in the language in different regions.  Seems unlikely,
but, hey, good scientists don't go around arbitrarily ruling out wild
speculations, do they?

Hope this hasn't been too boring.

Anne Loring
Minnesota linguistics grad student

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:215>From dasher@netcom.com  Sun Jan 30 12:28:53 1994

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 10:38:05 -0800
From: dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: questions in IE

I'm no Sanskrit scholar, but here's what a dictionary says:
	who     kas / kaa
	what    kim
	where   kwa, kutra
	when    kadaa
	how     katham

The relatives begin with ya-.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:216>From fwg1@cornell.edu  Sun Jan 30 12:43:32 1994

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 13:48:02 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: fwg1@cornell.edu (Frederic W. Gleach)
Subject: Culture, material and otherwise

An introduction, in the spirit of the times: I am an historical
anthropologist, also interested in the history of anthropology and related
disciplines (in history, of course, I include everything up to and
including tomorrow).  While I have considerable experience in archaeology,
and a smattering of linguistics and physical anthropology, my work centers
on questions of that great anthropological abstraction, culture.  In more
specific terms, I study native North America--particularly Algonquian
groups-- and its relations to the now-dominant immigrant populations, which
means I also study colonial European cultural history.  Collateral
interests include religion, authority, trade, and warfare as they are
culturally constructed in particular contexts.  I should also note that I
left ANTHRO-L at the end of the year because I was tired of being swamped
by badly written, self-indulgent, meaningless postings while trying to
follow one of the few interesting arguments.  Thanks to Bob O'Hara (and
DARWIN-L participants!) for running a list that is open in mind and spirit
and consistently interesting!

Now to business.  On 28 Jan Matt Tomaso (who should not be seen as included
in my condemnation of ANTHRO-L!) wrote:

>If you've gotten this far into this post, perhaps you will even have the
>patience/tenacity to try to grapple with this question:  What if we reduce the
>argument and invert it such that we can look at culture itself as nothing more
>than a kind of dynamic technology, or an 'apparatus of adaptation'?

This, I think, is a rather limited view of culture.  The way I use it,
culture is the means by which meaning is created, by which perception is
turned into conception (the argument follows Sahlins in _Culture and
Practical Reason_, and is related to the linguistic and semiotic work of
folks such as Peirce, Saussure, and Sapir).  Items of material culture are
thus manifestations and/or instantiations of culture, and can be read as
such; they encode culture in a material form.  My favorite classroom
example here is a medieval German/nineteenth-century Sudanese sword that I
have, through which one can "read" ideas of technology (metallurgy, the
physics of edged weapons), social interaction (trade patterns,
inheritance), and aesthetics (European as compared to Sudanese), among many
others.  All of these kinds of meanings--culturally- constructed,
context-specific--can be "read" if you know the "language."

Note that this use of culture does not necessarily negate a biological
role.  Chomsky's work is interesting here, suggesting that structures of
the brain may shape the ways meaning can be constructed.  This is NOT the
old biology=culture argument.

I just noticed the time, and have to run, but let me just say for now that
I see no benefit to impoverishing culture by treating it in a mechanistic
way as a "technology" or an "apparatus."  There are other conceptions of
reality out there that we as anthropologists are supposed to deal with that
can only be seen as wrong or impoverished if one takes this view.  The
inclusive definitions/understandings of reality of native America, for
instance.  I would argue that we need these other perspectives not just to
study, but to actually learn from.  But for now I'll turn the podium over
to others. . . .

*****************************************************************************
Frederic W. Gleach                      I long ago decided that anything that
fwg1@cornell.edu                        could be finished in my lifetime was
                                        necessarily too small an affair to
Anthropology Department                 engross my full interest.
Cornell University
(607) 255-6779
                                        --Ernest Dewitt Burton
*****************************************************************************

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:217>From idavidso@metz.une.edu.au  Sun Jan 30 15:27:58 1994

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 08:36:25 +0700
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: idavidso@metz.une.edu.au (Iain Davidson)
Subject: Re: Who, what, where, when, etc, Re: DARWIN-L digest 132

>      Morty Kessel asked the following question:
>
>"Can a linguist out there explain the congruence of :
>who, what, where, when, why and (w)how :-)"
>        and Marc Picard responded:
>"All these forms are ultimately derived from the Indo-European root *kwo-,
>a stem of relative and interrogative pronouns. In Latin and Romance, the
>corresponding forms generally begin in QU-, e.g.Latin QUID, QUOD, French
>QUI, QUE, QUOI, QUAND, etc."

Anne Loring replied in fascinating detail, but isn't the question more
demanding (!):

Why do all questions begin with this sort of phoneme (these sorts?)?  Is
there a case in historical linguistics for some single common question root
(or two)?

I guess I should introduce myself.  I am an archaeologist, worked on the
Upper Palaeolithic of Spain, prehistoric exploitation of animals, then
Australian prehistory moving into study of prehistoric paintings.  since
1987 I've been working with, psychologist Bill Noble on the problem of
languge origins, trying to sort out what one can say with minimal
speculation.

My interest in this topic stems from Premack's observation about one of his
language-trained chimps that these chimps "do not seem to question their
own ignorance", and Duean Rumbaugh had a similar phrase for his early
results.  So the fundamental questions could be said to be a basic
difference between humans and chimps.

Curiously, Kanzi, the bonobo working with Sue Savage Rumbaugh has proved to
be as adept at "language" use as a child up to the age of 18 months.  Of
course it is arguable that that is the age at which our children start the
interminable round of w questions.  Yet Kanzi does not have the w questions
on his lexigram board.  I can understand why you would not want a chim or
bonobo asking questions with the same ferocity as a child, but it seems to
me it might be crucial for a non innatist view of language emergence.

Iain Davidson
Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351
AUSTRALIA
Tel (067) 732 441
Fax      (International) +61 67 73 25 26
                (Domestic)       067 73 25 26

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:218>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sun Jan 30 15:37:49 1994

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 16:48:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: January 30 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

JANUARY 30 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1707: GEORG DIONYSIUS EHRET is born at Heidelberg, Germany.  Apprenticed to
his uncle as a gardener, the young Ehret will travel widely in Germany and
will come to know many of the country's leading horticulturalists.  His skill
as an artist will bring him to the attention of the botanist Christoph Jacob
Trew, under whose patronage Ehret will travel around Europe collecting and
illustrating plants and increasing his circle of supporters.  Ehret will be
employed by Linnaeus in 1737 to illustrate the _Hortus Cliffortianus_, and
will work for a time in the botanical garden at Oxford University after his
emigration to England in 1740.  He will be elected to the Royal Society of
London in 1757, and Linnaeus will name the genus _Ehretia_ in his honor.

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).

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:219>From sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu  Sun Jan 30 16:06:30 1994

To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Who, what, where, when, etc, Re: DARWIN-L digest 132
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 94 17:15:02 -0500
From: Sally Thomason <sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu>

   Iain Davidson asks, wrt those Indo-European interrogative
pronouns, why all these question words begin with the same phoneme.
In many languages (and language families), of course, they don't
-- in Montana Salish, for instance, `who' is suwe and `what' is
stem' and `where' is chen'.  But in Proto-Indo-European, there was
this single interrogative pronoun root beginning in *kw (which, as
was pointed out earlier, was a single phoneme, not a sequence of
[k] and [w]).  The root occurred with different vowels -- as did
many roots in PIE, though not usually with this particular semantic
differentiation -- and with different following consonants, i.e.
suffixes, depending on case, gender, part of speech, etc.  So, for instance,
the -s of Latin quis `who' and Sanskrit kas `who' and Greek tis `who'
is a nominative singular masculine ending.  The -d of Latin quid/quod
`what', English what, and ...I think...originally Sanskrit cid (in
the attested language this is an emphatic particle, not the pronoun)
is the old PIE nominative-accusative neuter singular suffix.  And
so forth.  The set of interrogative/relative pronouns remains in
most branches of the Indo-European family, and the forms are
transparently related by regular sound changes.

   I probably knew once (but don't any more) why the Sanskrit word
for `what?' is kim rather than cid (pronounced "chid"): the regular
sound change for PIE *kw gives a palatalized "ch" before front
vowels, including [i].  So kim doesn't fit phonetically (and the
suffix -m doesn't fit, either, in a Sanskrit pronoun -- the more
usual pronoun type has -d); that means it's probably analogic, to
the other forms with k, which is the normal reflex (descendent
sound) from *kw except before a front vowel.

   I think the dictionary form given earlier for Sanskrit `where',
kwa, must be wrong, because Sanskrit had no [w], and no [kw].
The glossary in Lanman's Reader gives kva alternating with kua,
and in the latter form the u is accented, so it would have been
two syllables.  (There are other instances of adverbial forms
based on the pronoun root *kwV -- where V = some vowel,
unspecified -- that have a vowel u, i.e. as if from PIE *kwu;
both of these Sanskrit forms, kva and kua, would fit into that
set, as would kutra, the other form given for `where'.)

   Sorry for all the picky detail.  It does get complicated.
Of course, that's why it appeals to (some of) us: it's like a
jigsaw puzzle, trying to get all the pieces to fit in.  But
the main answer to Iain Davidson's question is that the single
PIE pronoun root *kwV- is a fact about PIE, not about languages
in general (though there are no doubt other families with
similar related sets of interrogative pronominals).

  Sally Thomason
  sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:220>From idavidso@metz.une.edu.au  Sun Jan 30 16:33:03 1994

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 09:41:31 +0700
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: idavidso@metz.une.edu.au (Iain Davidson)
Subject: Re: Who, what, where, when, etc, Re: DARWIN-L digest 132

Sally Thomason writes with her usual cogency:

>   Sorry for all the picky detail.

That is what good arguments derive from!

 It does get complicated.
>Of course, that's why it appeals to (some of) us: it's like a
>jigsaw puzzle, trying to get all the pieces to fit in.  But
>the main answer to Iain Davidson's question is that the single
>PIE pronoun root *kwV- is a fact about PIE, not about languages
>in general (though there are no doubt other families with
>similar related sets of interrogative pronominals).

Now we are getting somewhere?  Are there other families with
similar related sets of interrogative pronominals?  And if there are, where
are they and what is their history?

Iain Davidson
Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351
AUSTRALIA
Tel (067) 732 441
Fax      (International) +61 67 73 25 26
                (Domestic)       067 73 25 26

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:221>From delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu  Sun Jan 30 17:45:02 1994

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 15:34:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Scott C DeLancey <delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: Who, what, where, when, etc, Re: DARWIN-L digest 132
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

On Sun, 30 Jan 1994, Iain Davidson wrote:

> Why do all questions begin with this sort of phoneme (these sorts?)?  Is
> there a case in historical linguistics for some single common question root
> (or two)?

And Sally Thomason almost immediately replied:

>the main answer to Iain Davidson's question is that the single
>PIE pronoun root *kwV- is a fact about PIE, not about languages
>in general (though there are no doubt other families with
>similar related sets of interrogative pronominals).

And Iain again:

>Now we are getting somewhere?  Are there other families with
>similar related sets of interrogative pronominals?  And if there are, where
>are they and what is their history?

Indeed there are others--I can think of a couple of examples offhand,
and I suspect it's a pretty common pattern.  The history seems
pretty straightforward--you have a single interrogative, meaning something
like 'what' or 'which', and the others are constructed as this interrogative
plus a noun establishing the appropriate domain, so you get 'which place'
for 'where', 'which person' for 'who', etc.  As, for example, in Thai:

	?aray 	   'what'
	khray	   'who'             (cp. khon 'person')
	myaray	   'when'            (mya 'time, occasion')
	thawray    'how much/many'   (thaw 'quantity')
	yangray    'how'             (yang 'manner, way')

	nay        'which'
	thii nay   'where'           (thii 'place')
	yangngay   'how'             (yang 'manner, way')

	etc.

Tibeto-Burman is another example; all the interrogative words that
reconstruct for the proto-language began with *k-, probably related
to a still-identificable interrogative particle #ka, except for 'who',
which reconstructs as *su and isn't related to the rest of the set.

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:222>From idavidso@metz.une.edu.au  Sun Jan 30 18:17:45 1994

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 11:26:13 +0700
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: idavidso@metz.une.edu.au (Iain Davidson)
Subject: Re: Who, what, where, when, etc, Re: DARWIN-L digest 132

Scott DeLancey writes:

in reply to my question

>>Now we are getting somewhere?  Are there other families with
>>similar related sets of interrogative pronominals?  And if there are, where
>>are they and what is their history?
>
>Indeed there are others--I can think of a couple of examples offhand,
>and I suspect it's a pretty common pattern.  The history seems
>pretty straightforward--you have a single interrogative, meaning something
>like 'what' or 'which', and the others are constructed as this interrogative
>plus a noun establishing the appropriate domain, so you get 'which place'
>for 'where', 'which person' for 'who', etc.  As, for example, in Thai:
>
>        ?aray      'what'
>        khray      'who'             (cp. khon 'person')
>        myaray     'when'            (mya 'time, occasion')
>        thawray    'how much/many'   (thaw 'quantity')
>        yangray    'how'             (yang 'manner, way')
>
>        nay        'which'
>        thii nay   'where'           (thii 'place')
>        yangngay   'how'             (yang 'manner, way')

Thanks.  I think the hunt may be on.  Point is that the historical
linguistic stuff that was so roundly criticised before may be hugely
influence by the historical particularities of particular languages.  What
we have in these  interrogative pronominals is something that is a
fundamental feature of the behaviour of those creatures that first used
language.  Plotting their history and relationships might be a manageeable
and meaningful task.

Iain Davidson
Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351
AUSTRALIA
Tel (067) 732 441
Fax      (International) +61 67 73 25 26
                (Domestic)       067 73 25 26

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:223>From delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu  Sun Jan 30 18:53:31 1994

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 16:52:49 -0800 (PST)
From: Scott C DeLancey <delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: Who, what, where, when, etc, Re: DARWIN-L digest 132
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Iain Davidson comments on my example of a Thai interrogative set
somewhat parallel to the Indo-European one:

> Thanks.  I think the hunt may be on.  Point is that the historical
> linguistic stuff that was so roundly criticised before may be hugely
> influence by the historical particularities of particular languages.  What
> we have in these  interrogative pronominals is something that is a
> fundamental feature of the behaviour of those creatures that first used
> language.  Plotting their history and relationships might be a manageeable
> and meaningful task.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but conclusions may be being
jumped to.  The process I referred to by which sets like these may
develop is a pretty normal aspect of language use--we see it in English
when we need a new interrogative that we don't have inherited from
Indo-European (e.g. _which way_, _how much_), and new forms can in
principle develop any time (currently _what time_ is beginning to
encroach on the turf of _when_, e.g. _What time should I pick you
up?_)  There's nothing particularly prehistoric about this process.
The Thai forms that I gave as examples are pretty shining new, and
probably developed within the last 1,000 years or so.  (I could check
on this, but it would take a little while).  Even the Indo-European
paradigm that we started with isn't that old--it reconstructs for
Proto-Indo-European, but even guessing that it had already been
around for a long time by then wouldn't make it more than maybe
10,000 years old--nowhere near coeval with "those creatures that
first used language".

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:224>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sun Jan 30 19:49:27 1994

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 21:00:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Moore's _Science as a Way of Knowing_
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Erast Parmasto asks about the new book _Science as a Way of Knowing_ by John
Moore.  I don't have a copy of the book myself but I saw a copy at a meeting a
while ago and know a bit about its history.  Moore is a senior zoologist
(herpetologist) who served for many years on the education committee of the
American Society of Zoologists.  About 10 or so years ago he established an
annual symposium at the ASZ meetings called "Science as a Way of Knowing",
which was designed to present up-to-date reviews of various concepts in
biology for the use of high school and college biology teachers.  A different
topic was covered each year: the first was evolution, others were genetics,
behavior, development, etc.  Moore oversaw the whole series for several years,
and then turned it over to other people on the ASZ education committee, and it
still continues today.  I participated in the "Science as a Way of Knowing --
Biodiversity" symposium a year ago.  All of the SAAWOK symposia have been
published in the journal _American Zoologist_; the biodiversity one should be
out any day now.

Moore's book, I think, is an expanded version of his own contributions to the
SAAWOK project, concentrating primarily on evolution and general biological
concepts.  I would probably disagree myself with some of his views, but as I
have spent more time teaching I have come to appreciate the practical value
books that are well organized and comprehensive whether I agree with them or
not, and I suspect that Moore's book would fit into this category.  Certainly
useful for a teacher of evolution if not necessarily for students.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:225>From idavidso@metz.une.edu.au  Sun Jan 30 20:48:52 1994

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 13:57:19 +0700
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: idavidso@metz.une.edu.au (Iain Davidson)
Subject: Re: Who, what, where, when, etc, Re: DARWIN-L digest 132

>Iain Davidson comments on my example of a Thai interrogative set
>somewhat parallel to the Indo-European one:
>
>> Thanks.  I think the hunt may be on.  Point is that the historical
>> linguistic stuff that was so roundly criticised before may be hugely
>> influence by the historical particularities of particular languages.  What
>> we have in these  interrogative pronominals is something that is a
>> fundamental feature of the behaviour of those creatures that first used
>> language.  Plotting their history and relationships might be a manageeable
>> and meaningful task.
>
>I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but conclusions may be being
>jumped to.  The process I referred to by which sets like these may
>develop is a pretty normal aspect of language use--we see it in English
>when we need a new interrogative that we don't have inherited from
>Indo-European (e.g. _which way_, _how much_), and new forms can in
>principle develop any time (currently _what time_ is beginning to
>encroach on the turf of _when_, e.g. _What time should I pick you
>up?_)  There's nothing particularly prehistoric about this process.
>The Thai forms that I gave as examples are pretty shining new, and
>probably developed within the last 1,000 years or so.  (I could check
>on this, but it would take a little while).  Even the Indo-European
>paradigm that we started with isn't that old--it reconstructs for
>Proto-Indo-European, but even guessing that it had already been
>around for a long time by then wouldn't make it more than maybe
>10,000 years old--nowhere near coeval with "those creatures that
>first used language".

I might back out of this right now, but I am sure there is something here
which is of importance.

Iain Davidson
Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351
AUSTRALIA
Tel (067) 732 441
Fax      (International) +61 67 73 25 26
                (Domestic)       067 73 25 26

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:226>From CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu  Sun Jan 30 21:02:10 1994

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 94 21:10 CDT
From: Tom Cravens <CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Who, what, where, when, etc, Re: DARWIN-L digest 132
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

In response to Iain Davidson, may I ask what was so roundly criticized
before? (That's not meant the way it probably sounds; I'm just curious.)
The PIE (and other) interrogators are a reflection of a common development
in language history. I know embarrassingly little of the (P)IE history, but
it appears that kw- would once have had lexical meaning (i.e. kw- + vowel
would actually have been a self-contained word), and eventually came to be
interpreted as a question-forming particle in combination with other words
('place', 'time', etc.) as Sally suggested. After a period of transparency,
during which the two bits would have been analyzable, they came
to be understood as a single entity. This is totally normal in language
change (witness th- in thence and wh- in whence, which, for a sensitive
minority, may still carry some meaning, but for others are opaque; analyzable
meaning of 'thence' and 'whence' is just about lost; also, all the tw-
of two, twain, twin, betwixt, between [thus the--today pedantic--distinction of
'between' and 'among' ). In light of the IE developments, what would
be surprising (or at least interesting) would be to find a
language with a full series of unrelated question-words, no? (Oh my, this
really does read like a diatribe; it isn't, believe me!)

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:227>From loring@maroon.tc.umn.edu  Mon Jan 31 02:08:51 1994

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 01:21:41 -0600 (CST)
From: loring@maroon.tc.umn.edu
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 134
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

>From a recent posting, re the interrogatives found in human languages:

"What we have in these interrogative pronominals is something that is a
fundamental feature of the behaviour of those creatures that first used
language.  Plotting their history and relationships might be a manageeable
and meaningful task.. .
Iain Davidson"

An early commentary from the same writer noted that there is no place on
the sign board used by bonobos and chimps for any of the "Wh-" question
words, and remarked on the observation that these animals do not seem to
possess the attribute of questioning (or words to that effect)

We've already seen the tendency for a language to
have a "family" of question-words, similar in sound
(like the examples given from Indo-European languages and from
Thai), but there is something else to consider.  Cross-language similarities
in form of question-words are usually due to common ancestry; that
is, there is nothing inherently interrogative about the Indo-European [kw]
sound that is found (mutated by sound changes) in question-words in
languages of that family.
Is there, however, something universally interrogative about -intonation-?
There are two characteristic questioning intonations in American English,
one for wh-questions, and one for yes-no questions (try humming "Are you
going home?" and "what is that noise?"  The distinction probably won't show up
for British speakers, but it should for Americans)  These
intonation patterns for questions allow us to identify the difference
between "Got a new watch." and "Got a new watch?"  My question is whether
_all_ human languages utilize interrogative intonation patterns, which
are enough alike as to enable even nonspeakers of a language to discern that a
question is being asked, just from patterns of pitch.
And now, we can move on to animals. Do they use question intonation in
their "vocalizations"?  Do we anthropomorphize our dogs' and cats' whines
and meows, to interpret them as inquiries as it suits us?  Do these
animals actually "ask" each other questions via intonations?
Can they tell that _we_ are asking questions?  How would we tell?

This is in the spirit of inquiry into the nature of the intellect.  I
would bet money that people can easily be found who will swear that their
cats say "Meow?" and who claim that these cats are asking questions (or
making requests).  I would argue that of course people think that; people
expect intelligent others to ask questions, and if they think their cats
are intelligent, they think their cats ask questions.

(By the way, the words "request", "inquire" and "question" contain that
unchanged
Indo-European [kw]; that's because English borrowed the words from Latin)

Anne Loring
Minnesota
linguistics grad student (with philosophy and cognitive science minors!)

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:228>From GOLLAV@axe.humboldt.edu  Mon Jan 31 02:40:57 1994

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 00:51 PST
From: GOLLAV@axe.humboldt.edu
Subject: Re: Who, what, where, when, etc.
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Here's some more data.  In Hupa, an Athabaskan language of Northwest
California, the interrogative-indefinite pronouns form a phonologically
marked set very much like the IE *KW- forms:

                diy-di  "what?"        diy-who'  "something"
                dan-di  "who?"         dang-who'  "someone"
                daay-di "where?"       daay-who'  "somewhere"
                daxwee-di  "how?"      (no parallel form)
                danLang-di "how many?" ( "    "      "  )

There are parallel forms in some other Athabaskan languages, although it
is unclear if these  d- formations go back to Proto-Athabaskan.  In any
event, I suspect that these are more likely to be analogical reformations
than reflections of some "interrogative/indefinite" proto-morpheme *d-.
I also suspect that analogical sets of this sort are not uncommon, and that
the IE *KW- formations ultimately have such an origin.

This is akin to the sound symbolism I was going on about a week or so ago.
Phenomena like these are partly historical (at recent time-depths, at least)
and partly psychological.  The further back you go--the broader the sample
of languages--the less important the historical component becomes.

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

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:229>From ad201@freenet.carleton.ca  Mon Jan 31 09:48:32 1994

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 10:56:28 -0500
From: ad201@freenet.carleton.ca (Donald Phillipson)
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Scientific quotations

Help is requested in verifying sources for the following quotations,
which have so far defeated my efforts.  Thanks in anticipation.

#1 Joseph Priestley (1786) attrib. by John Dvorak (computer
columnist:)  "In completing one discovery we never fail to get an
imperfect knowledge of the others of which we could have no clear idea
before, so that we cannot solve one doubt without creating several new
ones."

#2 Ernest Renan (quoted by a UBC historian, unable to provide the
source when asked):  "To forget: I will venture to say, to get one's
history wrong, are essential factors in the making of a nation."

#3 Machiavelli (attrib. to The Prince by radio broadcaster Lister
Sinclair, 24 Jan. 1992): "The course of world history stands outside
of virtue, blame and justice."

#4 Kant: "Ideas without percepts are empty:  sensations without ideas
are blind."  This should be in the Critique of Pure Reason
(Transcendental Aesthetic):  but I could not find it.

#4 Francis Bacon (1561-1626) attrib. by Alan Mackay in the unpublished
2nd edition of Scientific Quotations: "Never any knowledge was
delivered in the same order it was invented."

#5 Francis H. Crick, Mackay ibid:  "No theory can fit all the facts,
because not all the facts are right."

#6 Karl Popper in Conjectures and Refutations (cited by S. Zuckerman
in From Apes to Warlords, p. 335, giving no page in Popper):  "In the
search for knowledge, we are out to find true theories, or at least
theories which are nearer than others to the truth -- which
correspond better to the facts; whereas in the search for theories that
are merely powerful instruments for certain purposes, we are, in many
cases, quite well served by theories which are known to be false."

#7 J.D. Bernal, J.D. (1939):  "It is one of the hopes of the science
of science that, by careful analysis of past discovery, we shall find
a way of separating the effects of good organization from those of
pure luck, and enabling us to operate on calculated risks rather than
blind chance."  This is quoted by Gleick in his Genius (Feynman
biography, p. 315) citing p. 1 of R.S. Root-Bernstein'a Discovering...
Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge (Harvard, 1989).  So it ought to be
in The Social Function of Science (1939):  but I have not found it.

--
 |         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 |

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:230>From BRUSH%UCONNVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU  Mon Jan 31 10:13:26 1994

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 11:16:26 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Brush <BRUSH%UCONNVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Introduction
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Science as a way of thinking was first published as a series in AMERICAN
ZOOLOGISTS. You might find that series in your library

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:231>From ad201@freenet.carleton.ca  Mon Jan 31 11:50:31 1994

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 12:58:33 -0500
From: ad201@freenet.carleton.ca (Donald Phillipson)
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Intros.

Advertisements for oneself....

Science reporter in 1960s, history research at the National Research
Council of Canada in the 1970s, professional training at the Montreal
Univ. Institute for History and Science Policy in the 1980s, teaching
associate at Queen's University's engineering faculty and Concordia
University's Science and Human Affairs Programme.

Standing interests:
(1)  History of science and technology, specializing in Canada;
(2)  Westernization and "cultural imperialism;"
(3)  Dynamics of knowledge (cf. Derek Price and Eugene Garfield);
(4)  History of ideas, i.e scientific contributions to general culture
and cultural elements in science.
(5)  Chamber choir singing.
(6)  Fly fishing.

--
 |         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 |

_______________________________________________________________________________

<5:232>From CSM@macc.wisc.edu  Mon Jan 31 14:25:10 1994

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 94 14:33 CDT
From: Craig McConnell <CSM@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Chimp Sign Boards
To: DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

Hi--

Would somebody please provide clarification on this for me:

In regards to the lack of "wh-" words on chimp sign boards, discussed by Anne
Loring et.al., doesn't this lack tell us more about the linguists that made the
boards than it does about the chimps that use them?

(By way of introduction, I am a graduate student in History of Science in
Madison Wisconsin.  I study 19th and 20th century physics and dabble in 19th
and 20th century biology.  I posted a message to the list many months ago, and
have been watching since).

--Craig McConnell (csm@macc.wisc.edu)

Craig S. McConnell, (608) 238-1352
Internet:  csm@macc.wisc.edu

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<5:233>From jacobsk@ERE.UMontreal.CA  Mon Jan 31 20:52:17 1994

From: jacobsk@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Jacobs Kenneth)
Subject: Changing taxonomies of gems, minerals, etc.
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 21:58:14 -0500 (EST)

A student of mine, in pursuing changing attitudes (from the Greeks
to the 19th century) towards fossils has noted that the broader
classifications of rocks, gems, minerals, etc. into which fossils
were placed seem to vary without any discernible pattern.  That is,
whether between classifiers within a given time period, or across time
periods, sorting criteria can often appear to be wholly arbitrary
and capricious in one system (e.g., lapidaries in which the stones are
all sorted alphabetically according to their Latin name), while in another
there is some semblance of internal logic (e.g., stones are classified by
degree of resemblance to one of the twelve stones of the Pectoral of
the High Priest in Jerusalem).

Does anyone have any references for works which have dealt with the
changes in the logic behind such classifications?

Thanks in advance

Ken Jacobs                           Voice: (514) 343-6490 [Office]
Assoc. Prof.                                (514) 685-2349 [Home]
Departement d'anthropologie          FAX:   (514) 343-2494
Universite de Montreal               e-mail:  jacobsk@ere.umontreal.ca
CP 6128 / Succ. 'A'
Montreal PQ
H3C 3J7  Canada

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Darwin-L Message Log 5: 186-233 -- January 1994                             End