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Darwin-L Message Log 6: 70–104 — February 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 February 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.”
-----------------------------------------------
DARWIN-L MESSAGE LOG 6: 70-104 -- FEBRUARY 1994
-----------------------------------------------
DARWIN-L
A Network Discussion Group on the
History and Theory of the Historical Sciences
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:70>From sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu Sun Feb 13 10:00:32 1994
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Today in the Historical Sciences
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 94 11:00:30 -0500
From: Sally Thomason <sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu>
Our ever-informative leader Bob O'Hara asks if there's a
good source of biographical information on historical linguists.
Two come to mind, though I'm not sure the first one gives days
of birth & death:
1. Holger Pedersen's LINGUISTIC SCIENCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
(I forget the date of publication -- early in this century,
in Danish as I recall, and then it was translated into English;
much later, in the early or mid 1960s, it was reprinted under
the rinky-dink and misleading title THE DISCOVERY OF LANGUAGE)
...Pedersen's book is good bedtime reading, and contains lots
of information about the people who developed historical ling.
in the 19th century. One of its most charming features is the
set of photographs of the major players in the Junggrammatiker
movement -- but unfortunately the pictures were taken long after
their Sturm & Drang period, with the result that the young
firebrands of the 1870s gaze out with the grave dignity of age,
long gray beards and all.
2. Thomas Sebeok, indefatigable editor and compiler (and a combatant
in some controversies, notably the one about whether nonhuman
animals have already, or can be taught, something resembling
human language...Sebeok's answer is an emphatic No), published,
some years back, a collection of linguists' obituaries (I *think*
they were all obituaries); some of these, maybe most of them, are
historical linguists, since before the 1950s or even 1960s most
linguists were historical linguists, so of course most dead
linguists were historical linguists well into the 1960s and beyond.
3. A third source, but not a very handy one, is the Linguistic Society
of America's journal LANGUAGE, which publishes obituaries of
past LSA presidents (and in the past, I believe, published some
obituaries of non-past-presidents too, back when there were a lot
fewer linguists than there are nowadays). The journal was founded
in 1924, with the Society, I think -- someone can correct me if
the journal didn't get going until 1925....but I don't know if
they started publishing obituaries that early.
Sally Thomason
sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:71>From mahaffy@dordt.edu Sun Feb 13 14:50:40 1994
Subject: whale sounds and phonemes (fwd)
To: Address Darwin list <Darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 14:54:00 -0600 (CST)
From: James Mahaffy <mahaffy@dordt.edu>
I posted the message asking about whale language to the marine mammal
list and received this reply. I work in Carboniferous swamps and North
West Iowa snow, so any response should be to the author not me.
James F. Mahaffy
Forwarded message:
> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 08:04:33 GMT+1200
> Sender: Marine Mammals Research and Conservation Discussion
> <MARMAM@uvvm.bitnet>
> From: "David A. Helweg" <PSY_DHELWEG@CCNOV1.AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
> Organization: University of Auckland
> Subject: whale sounds and phonemes
> To: Multiple recipients of list MARMAM <MARMAM@uvvm.bitnet>
>
> From the point of view of someone interested in cetacean
> acoustics, I would also enjoy the opportunity to read about
> sperm whale "phonemes."
>
> It is interesting, and sometimes useful, to make comparisons
> between animal vocalizations and human language, which at times
> may include borrowing concepts/terminology from other disciplines
> such as linguistics. This includes identifying sound "parcels"
> as "phonemes," with its implications of recombinatorial potential
> and semanticity. However, caution is in order in extending the
> analogy between animal vocalizations and language. A reference
> that gives some insight into the complexity of the issue is:
>
> Roitblat, H.L., Herman, L.M. & Nachtigall, P.E. (1993). "Language
> and communication: comparative perspectives." Hillsdale, NJ:
> Erlbaum.
>
> kia ora!
> -------------------------
> David A. Helweg
> Department of Psychology//University of Auckland
> Private Bag 92019//Auckland, New Zealand
> FAX (64) (09) 373-7450
> email psy_helweg@ccnov1.aukuni.ac.nz
--
James F. Mahaffy e-mail: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Biology Department phone: 712 722-6279
Dordt College FAX 712 722-1198
Sioux Center, Iowa 51250
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:72>From CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu Sun Feb 13 19:25:24 1994
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 94 19:25 CDT
From: Tom Cravens <CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
To Sally's recommendations of portraits of historical linguists can be
added:
Tagliavini, Carlo. 1972 [6th ed.]. Le origini delle lingue neolatine.
Bologna: Patron.
T. offers photos and brief surveys of the major contributions not only of
Romanists (some of which, such as F. Diez, G.I. Ascoli, W. Meyer-Luebke,
belong in any dictionary of heroes and founding fathers of historical
linguistics) but also a number of Indo-Europeanists. He also gives
excellent annotated bibliography. An earlier edition is available also in
Spanish translation (Mexico DF, 1968 -- still in stock a couple of years
ago).
Tom Cravens
cravens@macc.wisc.edu
cravens@wiscmacc.bitnet
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:73>From IKW4GWI@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU Mon Feb 14 00:50:54 1994
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 22:50 -0800 (PST)
From: Jack Kolb <IKW4GWI@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU>
Subject: (COPY) Re: Popular science and 19th century women
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
For a fascinating contemporary treatment of this practice, see the
"Insects" section of A. S. Byatt's most recent fiction, _Angels and
Insects_.
Jack Kolb
IKW4GWI@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:74>From SPAMER@say.acnatsci.org Mon Feb 14 08:42:16 1994
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 9:45:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Earle Spamer <SPAMER@say.acnatsci.org>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: RE: Rafinesque
It really strikes me that when the subject of Rafinesque comes up, there
are more interjected comments in discussions like *I can't remember just
where*, or *citation uncertain*. This is all part of the Rafinesque
mystique.
There is a story about Rafinesque that I would like to ascertain once and
for all whether it is true or not. (I suspect it is an apocryphal
Rafinesquism, however.) Rafinesque, according to this story handed down
without citations, in his various scientific classifications is supposed
to have gone so far as to have applied scientific names to lightening.
However, in the Rafinesque sources available to me, I have only been able
to find passing references to lightening-like phenomena. Under the
subject of "Atmology" in Rafinesque's (1815) ANALYSE DE LA NATURE (p. 16)
I find only the following brief passage (which I quote from Cain's 1990
English translation [TRYONIA no. 20, p. 114]) [sic, including the ellipsis,
which is part of Rafinesque's original]:
"And among the principal luminous Meteors may be counted, Lightning
flashes, thunderbolts, falling Stars, Will o' the wisps, Lithopyres or
flaming Stones, Globes of Fire, Halos, Parhelia, Aurora borealis, the
Rainbow . . . . ."
Does anyone have insight on whether Rafinesque went further than this,
and applied "genera" and "species" names to these phenomena?
Earle Spamer
___ ____________________________________________________
| _ | Earle E. Spamer
\ / \ / Academy of Natural Sciences
| | | | 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
\__ _/ \/ Philadelphia, PA 19103-1195
\ / Interested in Voice (215) 299-1148 (EST)
v the Grand Canyon? FAX (215) 299-1028
________________________________________________ spamer@say.acnatsci.org ___
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:75>From mahaffy@dordt.edu Mon Feb 14 11:04:19 1994
Subject: Paleontology scholarly lists
To: Address Darwin list <Darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 11:07:34 -0600 (CST)
From: James Mahaffy <mahaffy@dordt.edu>
Geologists and paleontologists,
Back in October I posted an question asking about scholarly lists in
paleontology. It appears that there is a lack of lists or news groups.
There were several people that asked to share what I found so I include
that below.
If you are interested in Carboniferous (my interest) or Cretaceous
palynology, Robert Ravn up in Anchorage, Alaska (907) 346-2142 has a
nice data base of sapore taxa and rather extensive bibliography that can
be run on an IBM machine and at least used to be free.
There does not seem to be a lot on the network. I list what I found from
others and at the end list a couple of fairly good places to go to if you
have gopher.
#1 Bob Plotnick seems to sum it up best
From: plotnick%Plotnick.GEOL.UIC.EDU@UIC.EDU
To: James Mahaffy <@UIC.EDU:mahaffy@dordt.edu>
Subject: Re: List servers in Paleontology
Jim: As far as I am aware, the only newsgroups that touch on paleontology
are sci.geology, sci.bio.evolution, and (a bizarre one!) talk.origins.
My gopher ("Paleontological Society") is a start in that direction,
but I really didn't want to moderate a newsgroup. - Roy Plotnick
Geological Sciences, U. Ill. Chicago, 312-996-2111.
#2 (from John Mathews
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 93 05:19:16 EDT
From: "John V Matthews Jr." <af763@freenet.carleton.ca>
To: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Subject: Usenet and paleontology
James:
I too have searched usenet for a space on paleontology and paleoecology.
I will be interested to see what response you get from your posting on
Darwin-L. In the meantime you might want to check on the paleoecology
activities at the Geological Survey of Canada. You can get a sense of
what we are up too by telneting "freenet.carleton.ca", logging on as a
guest or visitor (whichever one is in the logon instructions) and typing
"go gsc" at the "==>" prompt. Please feel free to leave and comments in
the comment area, which also appears in usenet as "ncf.set.gsc".
*****************************************
JOHN MATTHEWS
matthews@cc2smtp.emr.ca; af763@freenet.carleton.ca
#3 And from David Lipps (if you are interested in mollusks yuckk -
sorry)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 13:08:43 PDT
From: Jere Lipps <jlipps@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU>
To: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Subject: Paleo
David Lindberg at UC Museum of Paleo runs a mollusk list that has lots of
paleo.
#4 Trevor mentions a paleobotany list and it is professional but not
too active. I subscribed.
From: Trevor Hill <IWTH@giraffe.ru.ac.za>
Organization: Rhodes University
To: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 18:21:27 GMT+0200
Subject: Palaeo-servers
So far the only one that I have come across is
listserv@vax.rhbnc.ac.uk which is for Palaeobotany.
Can subscribe by entering Subscribe PALAEOBOTANY. Have been able to
get hold of the INQUA newsletters (pollen stuff) via gopher which I
have found really helpful - if you are interested I can try to work
out how I actually got to it. Hope this is of some help to you -
think ya isolated you should try to do this from South Africa.
Best of luck
Trevor Hill
Rhodes University
Grahamstown, South Africa.
Finally there are a few places I found on gopher and set bookmarks to. I
include that information from my gopher file. Just gopher to the host
and then go down to the path to find the right menu.
#
Type=1
Name=Fossils
Path=1/standards/iapt-ncu/fossils
Host=huh.harvard.edu
Port=70
#
Type=1
Name=Other Geology Gophers
Path=1/Other/Geology
Host=ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU
Port=70
#
Type=1
Name=Earth Science Resources (GeoGopher)
Path=1/EarthScienceRes
Host=dillon.geo.ep.utexas.edu
Port=70
--
James F. Mahaffy e-mail: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Biology Department phone: 712 722-6279
Dordt College FAX 712 722-1198
Sioux Center, Iowa 51250
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:76>From MNHAN125@SIVM.SI.EDU Mon Feb 14 14:20:15 1994
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:56:20 -0500 (EST)
From: MNHAN125%SIVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU
Subject: FISH BONES
To: DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
I have just written a lab in comparative osteology, and want to know one
thing: can anybody give me a count of the bones of a single species of fish?
ANY fish? I have stumped a few people, so I turn to you, my colleagues on
this vast information highway, for any assistance you can give. And God
Help Me if this doesn't get past the moderator.
Gary P. Aronsen
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:77>From CSM@macc.wisc.edu Mon Feb 14 16:13:07 1994
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 14:29 CDT
From: Craig McConnell <CSM@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Physical sciences list
To: DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Greetings!
I'm sure there must be a list for historians of the physical sciences. Can one
of you net-wonders direct toward them?
Thanks,
--Craig (csm@macc.wisc.edu)
Craig S. McConnell, (608) 238-1352
Internet: csm@macc.wisc.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:78>From princeh@husc.harvard.edu Mon Feb 14 17:18:17 1994
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 18:06:04 -0500 (EST)
From: Patricia Princehouse <princeh@husc.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: extragenetic inheritance
To: Multiple recipients of list <darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Thanks to Laura Bishop (as always, correct, appropriate and tactful), I
now realize that the hyena genitalia article was not _Nature_ but
_Science_. The correct reference is:
Yalcinkaya, T. M., et al. 1993. "A mechanism for virilization of female
spotted hyenas in utero" _Science_ (June 25, 1993) v260 n5116, p1929-31.
Thanks,
Patricia Princehouse
Princeh@harvard.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:79>From sctlowe@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au Mon Feb 14 17:38:00 1994
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 09:03:49 +1000 (EST)
From: Ian Lowe <I.Lowe@sct.gu.edu.au>
Subject: Coming out of the closeted modem
To: DARWIN-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
The emergence of other antipodeans has encouraged me to reveal my
existence, as we were all recently encouraged to do. I was inspired to
respond to the discussion of the invisible hand. Just as most Marxists do
not appear to have read Marx any more thoroughly than most Christians
appear to have read the teaching of the one they follow, so most of the
flat-earth economists who talk about the invisible hand clearly have a
very superficial acquaintance with the writings of Adam Smith. Smith saw
himself primarily as a moral philosopher, but even in the Wealth of
Nations he revealed a much more sophisticated understanding of markets
than most modern neo-classical economists. He noted the inevitable
tendency of merchants to collude to raise prices and suppress wages, for
example, and saw a crucial role for government in regulating the economic
exchanges between unequal parties. This would be a much better world if
the economists who are in plague proportions in advisory roles to
English-speaking governments had actually read a bit more of Adam Smith.
Of course, it would be better still if they had read Galbraith and
Schumpeter, but it is probably unrealistic to expect the twentieth century
to have impacted on their intellectual carapaces... For those interested
in Smith, my colleague Athol Fitzgibbon has a major work on his thinking
in press - Cambridge University Press later this year, methinks.
My name is Ian Lowe and I am a lapsed physicist who has been primarily
interested in the politics of science and technology for the last twenty
years or so. I work at Griffith University in the Australian city of
Brisbane, about half-way up the east coast. For Americans, it is about the
same latitude as Miami, with a similar climate and vegetation; the
human fauna doesn't have the same age profile, mercifully! It is the rainy
season now, so it is difficult to concentrate! For Europeans, it is much
closer to the equator than anywhere in Europe, being analogous to the
moister parts of north Africa...
Despite our part of Australia being commonly known as
the Deep North and usually having the sort of politicians Americans
associate with their southern states, Griffith University is unique in
this country in requiring all science students to undertake a compulsory
first year course in Science, Technology and Society. This includes the
history and philosophy of science, the sociology of the scientific
community, the politics of science and the role of science and technology
in the economy. Lots of room for what are still seen as seditious ideas
by some of the scientists, though the program has now been running for
twenty years! I also convene a second year course on the modern
industrial state, extending from its historical origins to the political
problems involved in trying to steer it away from the current, palpably
unsustainable, course of development. Other courses in such areas as the
social impact of the biomedical sciences, the role of technology in
economic development and the ethical implications of scientific work allow
those students who are so inclined to make STS their major within the
science degree. Many do; most of the more blinkered scientists still do at
least one of our options. As I have also recently been landed with the job of
being Head of the School of Science, I have an opportunity to impose my
scurrilous ideas on the science program more generally. Watch this space!
My morning engagement with Darwin-L is a source of inspiration; long may it
continue! My e-mail address is I.Lowe@sct.gu.edu.au; for snail-mail,
School of Science, Griffith University, Nathan 4111, Australia. The
telephone is 61 7 875 7610, but remember we are GMT + 10 hours!
Ian Lowe
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:80>From ad201@freenet.carleton.ca Tue Feb 15 06:56:41 1994
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 07:56:37 -0500
From: ad201@freenet.carleton.ca (Donald Phillipson)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: FISH BONES
> can anybody give me a count of the bones of a single species of fish?
Several museums e.g. Canadian Museum of Nature maintain
"zooarchaeological" departments expressly for this, i.e. reference models
of any likely species. It should be easy to find out what US museums have
this function.
--
| 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 |
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:81>From margaret@ling.edinburgh.ac.uk Tue Feb 15 09:37:35 1994
From: Margaret Winters <margaret@ling.edinburgh.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 94 15:00:34 GMT
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: invisible hand
For anyone who is interested in R. Keller's adaptation/interpretation
of the invisible hand explanation for language change, there is (for
those who do not read German easily and/or don't want to read a full
book on the subject) a paper by him in English in a volume edited by
Thomas Ballmer called _Linguistic Dynamics: discourses, procedures
and evolution_ (Berlin: deGruyter, 1985). The paper is a good summary of
the theoretical issues in the full book, but does not do any linguistic
case studies.
Forgive me if I ask a question that may have been answered in the last
week or so (I was busy being snow-bound in NY for a couple of days and
read the Darwin-L items rather quickly to catch up when I got back --
actually only two days later than planned), but has there been much
thinking about invisible hand explanations in other historical areas,
other than economics and linguistics, that is. Keller's book has
stirred some interest among historical linguists; I heard two papers
about it (W. Wurzel and A. Bittner, both of eastern Berlin) at the
historical linguistics conference in Los Angeles in August. Consensus
seems to be that there are interesting ideas there to be tested
on a great deal of data before any real judgment is made about the
value of the theory to language change.
Margaret Winters
margaret@ling.ed.ac.uk
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:82>From GGALE@VAX1.UMKC.EDU Tue Feb 15 13:35:35 1994
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 13:35:04 -0600 (CST)
From: GGALE@VAX1.UMKC.EDU
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 149
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Re: lists for history of physical science, you should check out the descript-
ions of HOPOS-L and HTECH-L in the "E-lists" directory of gopher kasey.umkc.edu
which is available via your nearest friendly neighborhood gopher server.
Altho' neither of those is specific to hist. of physical science exactly,
to my knowledge, they're as close as it gets.
Hope this helps.
George
ggale@vax1.umkc.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:83>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Feb 15 15:15:24 1994
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 16:17:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Language and geology
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
I am pleased that several people with geological backgrounds have introduced
themselves to the group in the last few weeks, because although we have not
yet had much discussion of it on Darwin-L, geology is of course one of the
premier historical sciences, and was Whewell's main exemplar of "palaetiology."
Some of our geologists and linguists might be interested in a fascinating book
that recently appeared that examines the many parallels that were drawn in the
19th century between these two fields:
Naumann, Bernd, et al. (eds.). 1992. _Language and Earth: Elective
Affinities Between the Emerging Sciences of Linguistics and Geology_.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (Studies in the History of Language Sciences,
vol. 66.)
It is a symposium volume with papers in English and German on a variety of
19th-century linguists and geologists, including Schlegel, Grimm, Lyell,
Whitney, Fuchsel, Werner, Darwin, and Hutton. (And it is outrageously
priced.) As a sample of the kind of comparisons these early authors made,
consider John William Donaldson in 1850:
"The study of language is indeed perfectly analogous to Geology; they both
present us with a set of deposits in a present state of amalgamation which
however may be easily discriminated, and we may by an allowable chain of
reasoning in either case deduce from the _present_ the _former_ condition,
and determine by what causes and in what manner the superposition or
amalgamation has taken place." (_The New Cratylus; or Contributions Toward
a More Accurate Knowledge of the Greek Language_. London. From the second
edition, 1850:14.)
And geologists will recognize the allusion in this linguistic title:
Johnes, Arthur James. 1843. _Philological Proofs of the Original Unity and
Recent Origin of the Human Race, Derived from a Comparison of the Languages
of Asia, Europe, Africa, and America; being an inquiry how far the
differences in the languages of the globe are referrible to causes now in
operation_. London: John Russell Smith. (Second edition, 1846.)
The allusion is to Charles Lyell, whose influential _Principles of Geology_
(1830-33) was titled in full: _Principles of Geology, being an attempt to
explain the former changes of the earth's surface, by reference to causes now
in operation_. "Causes now in operation" is the idea behind the geological
principle of "uniformitarianism" or "actualism", which was applied widely in
linguistics at the time. There is even a recent historical monograph on
uniformitarianism in linguistics:
Christy, Craig. 1983. _Uniformitarianism in Linguistics_. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins. (Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 31.)
If anyone comes across conscious applications of similar geological ideas in
fields other than linguistics I would be interested to hear about them.
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:84>From mahaffy@dordt.edu Tue Feb 15 23:10:57 1994
Subject: Whale "speech" (fwd)
To: Address Darwin list <Darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 23:10:36 -0600 (CST)
From: James Mahaffy <mahaffy@dordt.edu>
For those interested in whale speech this message was forwarded to me.
It is outside my area of expertise, so correspondence should probably be
directed to the literature they suggest or the original posters.
James F. Mahaffy
Forwarded message:
> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 00:47:36 -0400
> From: Lindy Weilgart/ Hal Whitehead <HWHITEHE@ac.dal.ca>
> Subject: Whale "speech"
> To: mahaffy@dordt.edu
>
> It is best to check the original literature on this one. Sperm whale
> social sounds (patterned series of clicks called "codas") off the Galapagos
> Islands could be categorized into 23 fairly discrete types. There seemed
> to be a degree of order in the way these codas were used. Sequential
> analysis revealed that certain coda types were more likely to follow
> particular other coda types, indicating that codas were not produced in
> a random manner. Anyway, the reference is Weilgart, L. and Whitehead, H.
> 1993. Coda communication by sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) off the
> Galapagos Islands. Can. J. Zool. 71: 744-752.
> Lindy Weilgart
--
James F. Mahaffy e-mail: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Biology Department phone: 712 722-6279
Dordt College FAX 712 722-1198
Sioux Center, Iowa 51250
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:85>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Thu Feb 17 21:28:23 1994
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 22:31:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: February 17 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
FEBRUARY 17 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1794 (200 years ago today): KAREL BORIWOJ PRESL is born at Prague,
Czechoslovakia. Presl's interest in natural history will develop in his
youth, and at the age of eighteen he will publish a study of the cryptogams
of Bohemia. He will receive his medical degree in 1818 but will practice
only briefly, preferring instead to take a curatorial position at the National
Museum in Prague. An opportunity to study a large collection of plants from
South America and the Far East will confirm Presl in his interest in ferns,
and in 1836 he will publish _Tentamen Pteridographiae_, one of the most
comprehensive studies of pterydophytes to appear during the early 1800s.
At his death in 1852, Presl's collections, containing many specimens of
rare ferns, will be bequeathed to Charles University in Prague.
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).
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:86>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sat Feb 19 22:20:17 1994
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 1994 23:23:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: February 19 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
FEBRUARY 19 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1792: RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON is born at Tarradale, Scotland. Following
a period of military service as a young man, Murchison will lead a life of
leisure until 1824 when he will become interested in geology. His inherited
wealth will allow him to devote himself entirely to science during subsequent
years, and he will pioneer the use of fossils in the correlation of strata.
Travelling extensively through much of Europe, and serving several times as
president of the Geological Society of London, Murchison will concentrate
his investigations on some of the oldest strata then known, in the hope of
geologically locating the origin of life. His great monograph _The Silurian
System_ (London, 1839) will set a standard for geological research, but it
will eventually lead him into a bitter dispute with Adam Sedgwick over the
location of the boundary between the Silurian and Sedgwick's older Cambrian
System. Increasingly inflexible in his views, Murchison will aggressively
reject both Agassiz's glacial theory and Darwin's theory of descent, and late
in life will become a patron of geography, participating in the founding of
the Royal Geographical Society and contributing financially to Livingstone's
African expeditions. He will be made a baronet in 1866, and will die in
London in 1871.
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).
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:87>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Feb 20 00:18:34 1994
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 1994 01:21:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: February 20 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
FEBRUARY 20 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1835: "This day has been remarkable in the annals of Valdivia for the most
severe earthquake which the oldest inhabitants remember. -- Some who were at
Valparaiso during the dreadful one of 1822, say this was as powerful. -- I can
hardly credit this, & must think that in Earthquakes as in gales of wind, the
last is always the worst. I was on shore & lying down in the wood to rest
myself. It came on suddenly & lasted two minutes (but appeared much longer).
The rocking was most sensible; the undulation appeared both to me & my servant
to travel from due East. There was no difficulty in standing upright; but the
motion made me giddy. -- I can compare it to skating on very thin ice or to
the motion of a ship in a little cross ripple.
"An earthquake like this at once destroys the oldest associations; the
world, the very emblem of all that is solid, moves beneath our feet like a
crust over a fluid; one second of time conveys to the mind a strange idea of
insecurity, which hours of reflection would never create. In the forest, a
breeze moved the trees, I felt the earth tremble, but saw no consequence from
it. -- At the town where nearly all the officers were, the scene was more
awful; all the houses being built of wood, none actually fell & but few were
injured. Every one expected to see the Church a heap of ruins. The houses
were shaken violently & creaked much, the nails being partially drawn. -- I
feel sure it is these accompaniments & the horror pictured in the faces of
all the inhabitants, which communicates the dread that every one feels who
has _thus seen_ as well as felt an earthquake. In the forest it was a highly
interesting but by no means awe-exciting phenomenon. -- The effect on the
tides was very curious; the great shock took place at the time of low-water;
an old woman who was on the beach told me that the water flowed quickly but
not in big waves to the high-water mark, & as quickly returned to its proper
level; this was also evident by the wet sand. She said it flowed like an
ordinary tide, only a good deal quicker. This very kind of irregularity in
the tide happened two or three years since during an Earthquake at Chiloe &
caused a great deal of groundless alarm. -- In the course of the evening there
were other weaker shocks; all of which seemed to produce the most complicated
currents, & some of great strength in the Bay. The generally active Volcano
of Villa-Rica, which is the only part of the Cordilleras in sight, appeared
quite tranquil. -- I am afraid we shall hear of damage done at Concepcion.
I forgot to mention that on board the motion was very perceptible; some below
cried out that the ship must have tailed on the shore & was touching the
bottom." (Charles Darwin's _Beagle_ Diary, 20 February 1835.)
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).
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:88>From RJOHARA@iris.uncg.edu Sun Feb 20 22:57:16 1994
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 00:00:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: RJOHARA@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: "Natural history" and "botany"
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Peter Stevens and others were discussing the possible connotations of
the terms natural history and botany (and whether the second is usually
included in the first, historically speaking). I note in passing that
the sketch of Linnaeus in the _Dictionary of Scientific Biography_ by
Sten Lindroth begins: "During his lifetime, Linnaeus exerted an influence
in his fields -- botany and natural history -- that has had few parallels
in the history of science."
I also note in the context of out discussion of vitalism, alchemy, and
related doctrines, another passage in the sketch: "Linnaeus applied his
botanical knowledge in the three-volume _Materia medica_ (1749-1763) and
sought medical profundity in the peculiar _Clavis medicinae_ (1766). Filled
with number mysticism and based upon speculations about 'marrow' and 'bark,'
_Clavis medicinae_ is almost incomprehensible in its classification of
diseases according to complaints deriving from maternal marrow or paternal
bark substance." Peter's own work on Linnaeus is quite fascinating, and I
cite a recent example of it here for those who haven't seen it:
Stevens, P. F., & S. P. Cullen. 1990. Linnaeus, the cortex-medulla
theory, and the key to his understanding of plant form and natural
relationships. _Journal of the Arnold Arboretum_, 71:179-220.
I wonder if "Clavis" (key) has any special or hidden connotation in L's work?
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:89>From WILLS@macc.wisc.edu Mon Feb 21 20:51:27 1994
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 20:50 CDT
From: Jeffrey Wills <WILLS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Reconstructing backwards
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
One point of difference between biological and linguistic method which
arose a few weeks ago concerned assumptions on the unity and singularity
of the tree(s). That is, biologists assume a single tree of life--the question
is just where specific lifeforms go on it--whereas linguists reconstruct
multiple trees--so the question is which tree a language goes on at all. Hence
the linguistic question "Is A related to B?" seems foolish to biologists for
whom an affirmative answer is obvious and the question is really "How closely
related is A to B?" or "Is A more closely related to B or to C?".
A follow-up question. Linguists only have the end branches of their
trees and have little hope of ever finding evidence of the roots, but I assume
that biologists have more confidence in their ability to describe initial,
primordial, primitive, vel sim. life and probably an approximate (even if
rough) story line starting from simple cells on up. Question: does knowledge
about the root make a difference in method in reconstructing the tree?
My guess is that biologists can combine their reconstructions of early
stages with data of later stages to bias their conclusions of which later forms
show inheritances and which innovations. Linguists, on the other hand,
usually have no way of deciding which of two early variants is inherited
(conservative, etc.) and which is an innovation. That is to say, we have no
useful idea of what proto-World might look like and cannot group languages
or language families on the basis of shared variation from it.
Or are the gaps in the tree of life large enough to create aporia too?
Jeffrey Wills
wills@macc.wisc.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:90>From sturkel@cosy.nyit.edu Mon Feb 21 21:28:38 1994
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 22:31:12 -0500
From: sturkel@cosy.nyit.edu
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: FISH BONES
Number of Fish bones?
Alfonso L. Rojo published a Dictionary_of_Evoltionary_Fish_Osteology
CRC Press, 1991. I'm not sure that he has a specific count, but it
may be possible to reconstruct a species from his listing.
spencer turkel
New York Institute of Technology
Dept. Life Sciences
STURKEL@COSY.NYIT.EDU
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:91>From jsutton@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au Wed Feb 23 03:07:21 1994
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 19:47:52 +1100 (EST)
From: John Sutton <jsutton@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Introductions are welcome
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Introduction ...
After long enjoying this list as a lurker I now have time & motivation (a
question) to introduce myself: my work is in history (C16-C18) of science,
especially medicine, physiology, neuroscience, and in history & philosophy of
psychology and cognitive science, and I'm fascinated by the apparent
success of the interdisciplinarity elicited here so far mainly between
evolutionary theorists & historical linguists.
Question ...
I'm wondering if help is available on the following problem, where I have
next to no knowledge of the interdisciplinary fields I need:
the notion of SUPERPOSITION is a hot topic in new connectionist models of
distributed memory, leading as it does to the threat of catastrophic
INTERFERENCE between the items superposed (in this case patterns of
activation or implicit distributed representations). It has been
transferred to cog. sci. from physics & mathematics, and in some cases in
geometry & physics seems to be defined as in fact excluding interference,
requiring that the original identity of the superposed items is retained,
so to speak, in the mix. Superposition seems to be a theoretical principle
in a bewildering variety of sciences as well as physics: geology, archaeology,
linguistics, anthropology, information theory, architecture, biology (in what
areas?).
Can anyone help me with
a) the interdisciplinary history of the related notions of superposition,
interference, & distribution
b) how they do relate across contemporary sciences - are there contexts in
which superposition leaves open the possibility that the superposed items
may be obliterated or irretrievably altered, or is must the emergent
mixture always have the original ingredients still distinct/
distinguishable/ reseparable?
c) instances of these concepts in early experimental psychology, or early
interest in psychological phenomena of crosstalk, blending, or
interference among memories?
Hope this makes some sense, & isn't too far off the list interests.
John Sutton
Philosophy
Macquarie Uni
Sydney
NSW 2109
jsutton@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:92>From HOLSINGE@UCONNVM.BITNET Wed Feb 23 07:12:33 1994
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 07:56:12 -0500 (EST)
From: "Kent E. Holsinger" <HOLSINGE%UCONNVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Reconstructing backwards
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Jeffrey Wills raises an interesting question:
> I assume that biologists have more confidence in their ability to describe
> initial, primordial, primitive, vel sim. life and probably approximate (even
> if rough) story line starting from simple cells on up. Question: does
> knowledge about the root make a difference in method in reconstructing the
> tree?
The answer: Yes or no, depending on who you talk to. Some cladists have
argued that the *only* information fossils provide is additional information
on the pattern of character state distributions. The fact that a particular
fossil is 45 million years old provides no additional information about the
sequence of evolutionary events. In fact, they would go so far as to argue
that we should not make *any* assumptions about the evolutionary process,
deducing our hypothesis of relationships *only* from the pattern of shared
characteristics.
Evolutionary systematists a la Mayr and Simpson, on the other hand, make
extensive use of evolutionary scenarios in the process of building
phylogenetic trees. My impression (I'll be interested to see if other
biologists share it) is that the tendency is to exclude hypotheses about
the underlying evolutionary process while building trees, except where we
have *independent* reasons for modeling that process in a particular way (e.g.,
molecular sequence data). The reason, at least in part, is that we expect to
use these trees in *tests* of evolutionary scenarios and hypotheses about the
evolutionary process. If we have included a particular scenario as part of
our justification for choosing one tree as the best representation of history,
it becomes (almost, not quite) circular to test our hypothesis using that
tree.
-- 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 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:93>From edkupfer@MIT.EDU Wed Feb 23 13:46:44 1994
From: edkupfer@MIT.EDU
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Joint Atlantic Seminar in the History of Biology
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 94 14:46:58 EST
*** This notice was sent via snail-mail to many history of science
departments. We have extended the deadline for abstract submissions. For
those on multiple history of science server lists, many apologies for the
duplications
_____________________________________________________________________
CALL FOR PAPERS
JOINT ATLANTIC SEMINAR IN THE
HISTORY OF BIOLOGY
APRIL 1-2, 1994
MIT
The thirtieth annual meeting of the Joint Atlantic Seminar in the
History of Biology will be held April 1-2, 1994, sponsored by the Program in
Science, Technology and Society at MIT. The meeting includes an informal
reception Friday evening, presentation of papers on Saturday, and a dinner
on Saturday evening.
This is an opportunity for graduate students and other recent
scholars to explain their research to an informed and friendly audience.
Those wish to present a paper should send its title and a brief description
(100-200 words) no later than March 1st. Preference will be given to
graduate students, but all are welcome to submit a paper. Those whose
papers have been accepted will be notified by March 10th.
Some support for graduate student travel is available, thanks to the
support of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology.
Additionally, there is housing for graduate students. Please indicate if
you are applying for either housing or travel monies.
You can mail abstracts to Prof. Lily Kay, Program in Science,
Technology and Society, MIT, E51-201D, Cambridge MA 02139. Or, you can
email Eric Kupferberg, edkupfer@mit.edu. For questions that
require immediate answers, call Phylls Klein, 617-253-0457.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:94>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Wed Feb 23 15:11:58 1994
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 16:14:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: February 23 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
FEBRUARY 23 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1863: CHARLES JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN is born at Sullivan, Ohio. Chamberlain will
study botany and zoology at Oberlin College, and after spending several years
as a school teacher and administrator he will enter the University of Chicago,
where in 1897 he will receive the first doctorate in botany awarded by that
institution. Chamberlain will come to specialize in the study of cycads, and
will apply histological and cytological methods in an effort to understand
their evolutionary history. His comprehensive work _Gymnosperms: Structure
and Evolution_ will appear in 1935, and over the course of his career he will
assemble in the botanical garden at Chicago the most comprehensive collection
of living cycads in the world.
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).
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:95>From bsinger@eniac.seas.upenn.edu Wed Feb 23 18:06:43 1994
From: bsinger@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Bayla Singer)
Subject: Biodiversity workshop
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 94 19:06:57 EST
I thought this might be of interest to some darwin-l readers --- bayla
--------------------------------------------------------------------8<--
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 19:13:30 +0000
From: Patricia de Oliveira <patricia@FTPT.BR>
Subject: Workshop Information (Web/Gopher)
To: Multiple recipients of list MUSEUM-L <MUSEUM-L@UNMVMA.BITNET>
Dear All,
For those of you who want to follow the workshop "Linking Mechanisms for
Biodiversity Information" now going on at Base de Dados Tropical,
Campinas, SP, Brazil, we have structured a special gopher and web document
for this purpose. Available information includes: . Programme . List of
Participants . Background Information . On-line Contributions (messages
sent to biodiv-L) . Workshop Session Summaries and Reports . Documents for
the Workshop Proceedings.
To reach our gopher point your gopher client to:
gopher.ftpt.br 70
or web:
http://www.ftpt.br/ws/linking.html
We will send another message latter during the day talking
about the workshop proceedings and we really wish to encourage
the participation of all interested.
Please remember also that all contributions sent to biodiv-l
(BIODIV-L@ftpt.br) will be discussed with the workshop participants.
Thanks, Dora
-----------------------------------------------------------
Dora Ann Lange Canhos E-mail: dora@bdt.ftpt.br
Base de Dados Tropical Tel: +55 192 427022
Fundacao "Andre' Tosello" Fax: +55 192 427827
-----------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:96>From GGALE@VAX1.UMKC.EDU Wed Feb 23 22:28:40 1994
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 22:28:50 -0600 (CST)
From: GGALE@VAX1.UMKC.EDU
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 155
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
John Sutton raises some interesting questions about 'superposition' and its
possible interdisciplinary radiation. I can say nothing about the latter
point (beyond noting that superposition, like other wave-notions, e.g.,
resonance, 'vibrations', etc., is ripe/rife for/in extensions beyond their
initial domain).
Waves, unlike material particles, may be in the same place at the same time.
Imagine two talented folks perched at opposite ends of a rope of just the
right texture, density, and tension. If both rapidly jerk the rope just
right, simultaneously, two travelling waves of unique shape proceed from
each end toward one another. From the first contact of the two leading-edges
of the travelling waves (think of them as moving geometrical distortions to
the original figure of the rope) the two travelling waves are superposed.
Depending on the relations between each wave's rising and ralling elements,
the risings and fallings will either add to or subtract from each other.
This is interference. The waves pass through each other, maintaining
their 'identity' (such as they are) at every moment, until they emerge as
individuals again.
So far as I understand the situation (and I have only the elementary
understanding you see before your eyes), nothing is lost nor gained of the
original character (amplitude & wavelength) of the two initial waves.
I don't know if this is any help. Hope so.
George
ggale@vax1.umkc.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:97>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu Thu Feb 24 16:46:38 1994
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 17:48:54 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy Creighton Ahouse)
Subject: Re: Reconstructing backwards
I think that cladistics is in part in the situation that Popperian
falsification fell/wandered/was thrust into. The basic ideas were/are
crystaline and beautiful. Now with all of the work making the tacit
assumptions of different methods explicit much of the easy insight
insisting on the importance of shared derived characters gets muddied.
I am not sure that the lack of penetration with the evolutionary
taxonomists was due to their blinkered pig ignorance or their prescient
immediate understanding that a detailed hypothesis of evolution was implied
by methodology used to implement the cladistic insight.
Initially the criteria that lead to skipping information about the
details of the roots and using fossil/amber... individuals as just another
terminal taxon was that this treatment would not mislocate them (in terms
of most recent shared ancestor) and there was no reason to privelege them.
There was also the (important) recognition that in a bounded branching
process (where the probablity of having and ancestor is exactly 1 and the
probability of having descendants is < 1) that the chances of a particular
fossil actually "being" the direct ancestor to anything extant was slim
indeed.
Jeffrey's initial question about the knowledge of the details of
the tree come into play in the claim that linneage eveolution is a
branching process that proceeds by splitting off, bifurcations (rather than
many simultaneous new originations), by the insistence that there is a
continuity in the ancestor descendent relation (that they would share even
more ancestral characters), and then in the use of many particular pieces
of information; mitochondrial DNA (used in Eve hypothesis because it is
maternally passed), super-oxide dismutase (used in looking at protist
evolution because its function is vital and seems to be available early),
hemoglobin genes to look at mammal groups... there are many others. I
don't know if knowledge of the root can be said in these cases to help
choose the traits under consideration or if it is really the other way
round that a certain level of stability is required so that we can
compare... and this feeds back on itself (like using flower part characters
to define angiosperm families, or jaw parts for understanding major
divisions in the tetrapods).
In these details lie all of the monsters...
- jeremy
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:98>From MNHAN125@SIVM.SI.EDU Fri Feb 25 13:14:29 1994
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 1994 12:12:07 -0500 (EST)
From: MNHAN125%SIVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU
Subject: Structuralism and evolutionary theory
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
First, a brief intoduction: I am a graduate student at George Washington
University in Washington DC. My major is anthropology, but I have been in-
creasingly drawn into issues of evolutionary theory, morphology, and
systematics.
I am currently taking a course in theory in socio-cultural anthropology.
In this course, we have been discussing the merits and faults of structuralism
as a theoretical orientation. One student asked if one could define evolution
in a structralist arguement, with oppositions, reductionism, and hidden meaning
A brief search of the literature did not find any examples of this kind of
self-examination by evolutionary theorists or any applications of structuralist
thinking to a scenario, i.e. the evolution of flight.
Is there a study of evolutionary theory which tries to define the structure
of our inquiries into the past? I thought it was an interesting problem, as it
would not only demonstrate the way we think about evolution, but how we ask
questions and what answers we are looking for. I realize that this might not
be a simple question, or one that can be defined by a structuralist paradigm,
but I was curious to know what insights or references the group might have.
Gary P. Aronsen
P.S. thank you to all who gave me information about the number of bones in
fish skeletons (yes, that was me who needed that information). I am still
working on it, an may even write an NSF grant to count all of the bones of all
of the fish in all of the world (mad, you say? That's what they said about John
Cleve Symmes Jr., and look what happened to him!).
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:99>From ANWOLFE@ECUVM.CIS.ECU.EDU Fri Feb 25 15:13:45 1994
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 94 16:10:31 EST
From: ANWOLFE@ECUVM.CIS.ECU.EDU
Subject: Re: Structuralism and evolutionary theory
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
See "Sociobiology and Creationism: Two Ethnosociologies of
American Culture" in American Anthropologist 84:580, 1984 by
JP Gray and LD Wolfe. Linda Wolfe
_______________________________________________________________________________
<6:100>From TOMASO@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu Sat Feb 26 13:49:33 1994
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 1994 13:49:21 -0600 (CST)
From: TOMASO@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 157
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
George and others:
I suspect that this might be one of the texts in your sociocultural
anthro history of thought class. But, in any case, the closest thing to
contextualizing of the evolutionary mode of thought that I know of is George W.
Stocking's _Victorian Anthropology_ (1991, Free Press/McMillan). Be forwarned
that Stocking's approach is historicist and relativist - so he bemoans the
reductionism of claims that social evolutionism was unified and directed enough
to be considered a paradigm, and he certainly would argue that terms such as
'structuralist', 'positivist', etc. mask a lot of heterogeneous discourse. In
other words, Stocking is anti-reductionist. I personally like his book, but
it is rather slow.
Stocking, I think, would argue quite strongly against the 'presentist'
argument that evolutionism can be seen as evidence of structuralist thinking,
or bounded within the structuralist paradigm. His reasoning, I
speculate, would be that structuralist argumentation had not been formally
explicated while Tylor, Wallace, Spencer, etc. were doing their work - and so
to call their argument structuralist is to argue by analogy or metaphor.
Another point that becomes quite clear in his book is that much of the
oppositions and correspondences posed by evolutionists and 'genists alike
during the 18th century could hardly be recognized as oppositions today. In
other words, they seem illogical in our present context. Stocking wants to
provide the contextual details that are missing from 'presentist' arguments in
order to provide a rich textual background for the concepts of evolutionism.
I think he succeeds.
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Matt Tomaso
Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
INTERNET:
TOMASO@UTXVMS.CC.UTEXAS.EDU
TOMASO@GENIE.GEIS.COM
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<6:101>From ZINJMAN@uog.pacific.edu Sun Feb 27 22:16:06 1994
From: ZINJMAN@uog.pacific.edu
To: MNHAN125%SIVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU, darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Structuralism and evolutionary theory
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 94 20:17:12 PST
Perhaps the works by Misia Landau on "science as storytelling"
(with focus on paleoanthropology) would be informative? See Chapter
2 in Roger Levin's BONES OF CONTENTION (1987) for a discussion on
Landau's works and the reactions of the paleoanthropological community.
Gary Heathcote
Anthropology Lab
University of Guam
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<6:102>From phlkcs@gsusgi2.gsu.edu Mon Feb 28 08:51:33 1994
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 08:51:46 -0500 (EST)
From: "Kelly C. Smith" <phlkcs@gsusgi2.gsu.edu>
Subject: Re: Structuralism and evolutionary theory
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Gary,
As you probably know, "structuralism" is one of those words that means
many things to many people. However, there is a school of biologists
that calls itself the "process structuralists". They are structuralist
in the sense that they believe that there are hidden structures
(generative laws) behind the processes of development and evolution which
explain much of the apparent random variation. If you are interested, I
review some of the literature in my 1993 "Neo-rationalism vs. Neo-Darwinism",
_Biology and Philosophy_, 7(4), 431-51 (reprints avail.).
Kelly Smith
phlkcs@gsusgi2.gsu.edu
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<6:103>From anemone@UNO.CC.GENESEO.EDU Mon Feb 28 11:00:31 1994
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 09:30:08 -0500 (EST)
From: anemone@UNO.CC.GENESEO.EDU (Robert L. Anemone)
Subject: Structuralism and evolutionary theory
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
>Perhaps the works by Misia Landau on "science as storytelling"
>(with focus on paleoanthropology) would be informative? See Chapter
>2 in Roger Levin's BONES OF CONTENTION (1987) for a discussion on
>Landau's works and the reactions of the paleoanthropological community.
>
>Gary Heathcote
>Anthropology Lab
>University of Guam
Good suggestion, but why not go to the source:
Misia Landau (1991) "Narratives of Human Evolution", published by Yale
University Press.
A really interesting book that applies Propp's poststructuralist
methodology (used by Propp in an analysis of Russian Folktales) to
paleoanthropological theories on the origins of humankind (e.g., Darwin,
Keith, Elliot-Smith, Dart, Tobias and Johanson).
Bob Anemone
Anthropology
SUNY at Geneseo
anemone@uno.cc.geneseo.edu
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<6:104>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Mon Feb 28 20:34:15 1994
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 21:37:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: New list on genealogical database formats (fwd from NEW-LIST)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Here's an announcement of a new list for discussion of genealogical database
formats. I thought it might be of interest to some Darwin-L members.
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
--begin forwarded message--------------
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 16:26:18 CST
From: Cliff Manis <cmanis@csf.com>
Subject: NEW: GEDCOM-L - GEnealogical Data COMmunications
GEDCOM-L on LISTSERV@NDSUVM1.BITNET
or LISTSERV@vm1.nodak.edu
The GEDCOM-L list is for the discussion of most any info pertaining
to the enhancement of the GEnealogical Data COMmunications (GEDCOM)
data format.
It is an unmoderated list for the discussion of ideas concerning how
Genealogical Data is now stored in GEDCOM data files, and how GEDCOM
may be changed or enhanced to help programmers take advantage of the
many new ways to interface their paper files with a computer program
which will handle all their information, and store it in a useful
way.
Topics such as standardization in the future will be a main concern,
and any reasonable suggestions are welcome. This list is open to
anyone wishing to SUBSCRIBE and especially those who are developers
of Genealogical Software. Discussion of topics specific to the
problems of the current specifications, and why there are so many
different 'so-called' standards at present, are encouraged. Topics
on this list may include any aspects of the GEDCOM Data format and
its development for future users of Genealogical software..
Archives of GEDCOM-L are kept in weekly files. You may obtain a
list of those files by sending the command
INDEX GEDCOM-L
in the BODY of e-mail to LISTSERV@NDSVUM1 when using BITNET or to
LISTSERV@vm1.nodak.edu on the Internet.
To subscribe, send the following command in the BODY of mail to
LISTSERV@NDSUVM1 from BITNET or to LISTSERV@vm1.nodak.edu on the
Internet:
SUB GEDCOM-L firstname lastname
For example:
SUB GEDCOM-L Cliff Manis
All mail sent to either GEDCOM-L@NDSUVM1 or GEDCOM-L@VM1.NODAK.EDU
will be distributed by LISTSERV to every subscriber of the GEDCOM-L
list.
Owner: Cliff Manis cmanis@csf.com
--end forwarded message----------------
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Darwin-L Message Log 6: 71-104 -- February 1994 End
