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Darwin-L Message Log 7: 1–30 — March 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 March 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 7: 1-30 -- MARCH 1994
------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:1>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Mar 1 00:14:12 1994
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 1994 01:17:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: List owner's monthly greeting
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Greetings to all Darwin-L subscribers. On the first of every month I send
out a short note on the status of our group with a reminder of basic commands.
Darwin-L is now six months old, and we have more than 500 members from nearly
30 countries. I am grateful to all of you for your interest and your many
contributions.
The Darwin-L gopher archive is open to all subscribers on rjohara.uncg.edu
(numeric address 152.13.44.19). There were a few early snags with the gopher
software, but a new release (Gopher Surfer 1.0b5) appears to have fixed these
problems. The Darwin-L gopher contains the logs of our past discussions,
several bibliographies of interest to historical scientists, and gateways to
a variety of other interesting network resources. Pay a visit and bring your
friends.
The following are the most frequently used listserv commands that Darwin-L
members may wish to know. All of these commands should be sent as regular
e-mail messages to the listserv address (listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu),
not to the address of the group as a whole (Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu).
In each case leave the subject line of the message blank and include no
extraneous text, as the command will be read and processed by the listserv
program rather than by a person. To join the group send the message:
SUBSCRIBE DARWIN-L <Your Name>
For example: SUBSCRIBE DARWIN-L John Smith
To cancel your subscription send the message:
UNSUBSCRIBE DARWIN-L
If you feel burdened by the volume of mail you receive from Darwin-L you
may instruct the listserv program to deliver mail to you in digest format
(one message per day consisting of the whole day's posts bundled together).
To receive your mail in digest format send the message:
SET DARWIN-L MAIL DIGEST
To change your subscription from digest format back to one-at-a-time
delivery send the message:
SET DARWIN-L MAIL ACK
For a comprehensive introduction to Darwin-L with notes on our scope and
on network etiquette, and a summary of all available commands, send the
message:
INFO DARWIN-L
To post a public message to the group as a whole simply send it as regular
e-mail to the group's address (Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu).
I thank you all for your continuing interest in Darwin-L.
Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner
Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
Center for Critical Inquiry and Department of Biology
100 Foust Building, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:2>From CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu Thu Mar 3 22:35:41 1994
Date: Thu, 03 Mar 94 22:34 CDT
From: Tom Cravens <CRAVENS@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Introductions are welcome
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
In a belated reply to John Sutton, let me say that, from the description
given, superposition is a topic of interest in historical linguistics,
although I've never seen it given that name. In the phonological realm,
it's usually referred to as rule competition or rule clash or something
similar. See if this fits under superposition:
The working hypothesis is that sound change is regular. It isn't, it
turns out, but the hypothesis holds just well enough that (apparent)
exceptions to regular change call for investigation. Among the more
interesting of the ifs and buts is the case of competing sound changes.
Sound change B (changing X to Y) comes into competition with sound change
A (X to Z) before A has run its course, so that the ultimate result is both
X > Y and X > Z, an irregularity in the overall view, but due to the
clash of two regularities.
In an ideal clean case such as the illustration, the emergent mixture
would have the original ingredients (results of the earlier rule) distinct
and distinguishable. In the real world of scanty documentation and changes
long digested by the system, the situation of overlay is usually much less
clear, in my experience, but the discrepancy is still noticeable.
Is this superposition in the sense intended?
Tom Cravens
cravens@macc.wisc.edu
cravens@wiscmacc.bitnet
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:3>From BENEDICT@VAX.CS.HSCSYR.EDU Fri Mar 4 16:05:26 1994
Date: 04 Mar 1994 17:06:23 -0500 (EST)
From: BENEDICT@VAX.CS.HSCSYR.EDU
Subject: cladistics & distance data
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Here's a topic to flame on. I'll pose some questions, give my thinking and
see what bounces back. I don't expect to respond much my self after this
posting.
MAIN QUESTION: Can one estimate cladistic relationships from distance data?
Background: Distance data. For those who aren't familiar, distance data are
measures of (dis)similarity that yeild an overall estimate of that property
without measuring any component that contributes to the measure. Examples from
biology include immunological comparisons and DNA-DNA hybridization. The
opposite is character data, data we get by comparing two things, homologizing
the differences and noting how the expression (state) of each homologous
quality (character) varies from beast to beast. Some comparisons are
intermediate -- we can specify differences but the differences are unordered
and it is hard to compare three or more things which are mutually different.
Cladistic relationships. I presume this means only that we hypothesize a
branching relationship between entities compared, due to common ancestry.
Context. E. Mayr and W. Bock (Ibis 1994 issue 1) published a long note
pleading for conservation of the current (e.g., Peters Checklist, AOU 6th
Edition) classification of birds of the world, generally in regard to
alternate proposals by anyone and specifically to the classification proposed
by Chas. Sibley, Jon Ahlquist & Burt Monroe (Auk 1988) and based on DNA-DNA
hybridization measurements done by the first two. I am not interested in
the merits of any specific alternate classification. I am interested in your
reaction to an argument the used: the Sibley-Ahlquist-Monroe classification
can not be cladistic because it's based on distance data and must therefore be
phenetic (and thus is unsuitable for general use).
My opinion: Yes. Many techniques that purport to be cladistic ultimately
use distance values, and character state information, if needed is used only
to estimate distances between taxa and their "intermediates" A specific
example is the Character Wagner method of James Farris, who derived the
corresponding algorithm (Distance Wagner) for distance wagner. There are some
techniques that can't use distance data (e.g., character compatibility), but
the opposite isn't true since distances can be obtained from any character
data. Whether the answer a particular method gives is what actually happened
is irrelevant, unless you can show that all distance only methods never
recover the actual history (branching pattern) but character do. So don't
bother us with specific cases where charcters and distances give different
results. I know those can be produced, but I have no idea as to how common
they are in real situations.
SUBQUESTION: What makes a technique cladistic?
My opinion: Any alogrithm which produces intermediates that are used in
subsequent steps of that algorithm is cladistic. Thus, even UPGMA is
cladistic. An example of a purely phenetic method is the method of Prim
Networks (Minimum spanning trees) - it produces no intermediates. I have no
doubt that some techniques are more efficient at recovering the real branching
pattern than others, and in a biological context it is clear that some
techniques (e.g., Distance Wagner) were derived with an evolutionary process
in mind while others (e.g., UPGMA) were derived with a mathematical operation
in mind. I'd expect the former to work better, but if the situation agrees
with the assumptions of the technique, that shouldn't matter.
So that's it for now. It's getting late and I've lots of snow to shovel.
Paul DeBenedictis
Educational Communications
S.U.N.Y Health Science Center at Syracuse
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:4>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Fri Mar 4 21:42:22 1994
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 1994 22:45:19 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Paul Feyerabend dies in Geneva
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
The _Chronicle of Higher Education_ reports this week that Paul Feyerabend,
noted philosopher of science and controversialist, died on February 11th in
Geneva. Although Feyerabend's work did not often touch on the historical
sciences, he was one of several philosophers of science (along with Thomas
Kuhn and Stephen Toulmin) who in the 1960s and 1970s placed a new emphasis on
the historical character of science itself, and chided other philosophers for
ignoring the actual facts of scientific history. I myself found Feyerabend's
book _Against Method_ an exceedingly encouraging and intellectually liberating
book when I read it as a graduate student, so I here pay homage to the late
professor with a quotation I am very fond of, and which ought to resonate in
the mind of anyone who studies the products of history:
Science "is a complex and heterogeneous _historical process_ which contains
vague and incoherent anticipations of future ideologies side by side with
highly sophisticated theoretical systems and ancient and petrified forms of
thought. Some of its elements are available in the form of neatly written
statements while others are sumberged and become known only by contrast, by
comparison with new and unusual views." (_Against Method_, second edition,
1988, p. 111.)
Who shall take his place?
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:5>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sat Mar 5 04:21:42 1994
Date: Sat, 05 Mar 1994 00:25:37 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: NEH Translation Program (fwd from HUMANIST)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
This announcement from the Translation Program of the (U.S.) National
Endowment for the Humanities recently appeared on HUMANIST. I can certainly
think of a whole host of valuable translations that could be made in the
historical sciences. Perhaps someone here would like to send NEH a proposal?
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
--begin forwarded message--------------
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 7, No. 0525. Monday, 28 Feb 1994.
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 94 07:27:43 EDT
From: Helen Aguera <NEHRES@GWUVM>
Subject: Humanist posting
The TRANSLATIONS PROGRAM of the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE
HUMANITIES supports individuals or collaborations among scholars
to translate into English works that are germane to the history,
literature, philosophy, and artistic achievements of other
cultures, thereby making the thought and learning of those
civilizations available to scholars teachers, students, and the
public. The program has supported a broad range of projects,
including the translation of single works, the complete works of
a particular writer, and anthologies. Translations of texts from
virtually all of the European languages have garnered support
from the Endowment, as well as texts from a vast array of
languages--ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, oral and
written. American citizens and institutions and foreign
nationals who have been living in the United States for at least
three years are eligible to apply.
The next application deadline is June 1, 1994 for projects
beginning after April 1, 1995. For more information call Helen
Aguera or Meghan Laslocky at (202) 606-8207 or write to:
Translations, Room 318, National Endowment for the Humanities,
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20506; FAX (202)
606-8204; E-mail nehres@gwuvm.gwu.edu
--end forwarded message----------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:6>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sat Mar 5 04:21:44 1994
Date: Sat, 05 Mar 1994 00:57:57 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Re: Superposition
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Just catching up on some messages that I have let accumulate in my mailbox
for the last few days.
John Sutton asked an interesting question about the concept of "superposition"
which he says is a hot topic now in connectionism and related fields. The
most common sense of the term in the historical sciences is of course the
geological one: the "principle of superposition" says that in a series of
geological strata, the oldest layers are on the bottom and the youngest layers
are on the top, because sediments are deposited horizontally, one on top of
another. This is a very important principle of historical reconstruction
which goes back to Steno in the 1600s at least; perhaps some of our historians
of geology could provide more information about its history.
The sense I have from what John was saying, though, is that although the same
word may happen to be used by people in some other fields, they are not really
talking about the same concept. (Just as an historian might refer to
"character" as something in the the personality of an individual, whereas
"character" to a systematist means a difference among taxa from which we infer
and evolutionary event. Same word, different meaning.) The concept John was
describing sounds like what I would call "superimposition" rather than
"superposition" (which I have never really heard outside of geology, but that
means nothing). "Superimposition" to me describes the placement of an image
or abstract object of some kind on top of another image or abstract object,
such that the two form a single image. George Gale mentioned the case of two
waves being superimposed on one another. This strikes me as a different thing
from "superposition", which I take to be the placement of one space-filling
object _above_ another, just as one layer of rock is deposited above another.
The notion of stratigraphic superposition certainly exists in some fields
outside geology in the strict sense. Dendrochronology is based on the
superposition of tree rings. Someone reconstructing the sequence of brush
strokes used by a painter to produce a particular painting would similarly
assume that if a particular paint later covers another then the uppermost is
the younger and the lowermost is the older. All of these applications of the
principle of superpostion (as a tool of historical reconstruction) presume
that there process of "deposition" going on, and that that process is
understood. I can imagine situations where such an assumption might not hold.
I seem to recall reading a long time ago (maybe in some popular work like
Sagan's _Dragons of Eden_?) a reference to the human brain being structured in
layers: an ancient reptilian later, a middle mammalian layer, and a later
human layer. This strikes me as a rather naive "superpostion" argument, since
I rather doubt that our brains have been deposited like sediments over the
course of evolution. ;-)
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:7>From J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU Sat Mar 5 13:08:45 1994
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 14:07:27 -0500 (EST)
From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU (JOHN LIMBER)
Subject: Re: Superposition
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Hi-regarding Sagan and naive brain structure, it is more than likely he is
using Paul McLean's lifelong work on the "Triune Brain" (PL has lengthy book
by that title but I don't have the full reference handy). Anyway, PL has a
surprising amount of evidence at anatomical, biochemical, and behavior levels
of analysis for his conjecture. While PL almost certainly has cartooned the
evolution of brains, the evidence he has collected--much of it his own work at
NIH?--is very interesting. regards, John Limber, Psychology UNH
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:8>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu Sun Mar 6 12:31:50 1994
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 1994 13:33:56 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy Creighton Ahouse)
Subject: Re: Paul Feyerabend dies in Geneva
Thank you for this info and quote Bob. Feyerabend was/is an
inspiration to me. His is the first work that gave me the feeling of being
convinced of something that I was initially averse to. Just this weekend I
have been reading Gutting's _Michel Foucault's Archeology of Scientific
Reason_ and lingering over the chapter on Bachelard and Canguilhem. (A
friend gave me the newly translated Canguilhem for my Birthday last month.)
Bachelard (especially in Gutting's presentation) seems to anticipate many
of the ideas that I associate with Feyerabend and that help me understand
my own interest and motivation in science. This is very sad news...
- Jeremy
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:9>From rho@linda.CS.UNLV.EDU Mon Mar 7 18:50:15 1994
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Superposition
Date: Mon, 07 Mar 1994 16:43:39 -0800
From: "Roy H. Ogawa" <rho@linda.CS.UNLV.EDU>
Quantum Mechanics and Optics both use the concept of superposition. It
amounts to the sum of two functions.
For example, say that f(x,y,z,t) and g(x,y,z,t) describe solutions to the
relevant equations (Schrodinger's for QM and Maxwell's for Classical Optics).
If the relevant equations do not have any non-linear constraints, then the
linear sum of the two functions are also solutions:
h(x,y,z,t) = af(x,y,z,t) + bg(x,y,z,t)
is also a solution. This is the Principle of Superposition. In the case
of QM, the functions are matter-waves (the major current interpretation
is that these are probablility distribution functions for the matter),
while in optics, these are the light waves. Of course, in modern Optics,
based on QM with light as particle/wave, these are the same.
The descriptions you give above are consistent with a = b = 1 because
one can always imagine graphs of f, g, and h with g = h - f, giving
the appearance of an f-layer with a g-layer superposed (added) to give
the graph for the h-layer.
From whence I come, the term superposition used in geology or biology seems
odd. But not anymore.
Hope this helps.
Roy O
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
! Roy H. Ogawa Office: TBE B381 !
! University of Nevada at Las Vegas email: rho@unlv.edu !
! Department of Computer Science Phone: (702) 895 3259 !
! P.O. Box 454019 Phone: (702) 798 3074 (home) !
! Las Vegas, NV 89154-4019 FAX: (702) 895 4075 !
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:10>From jacobsk@ERE.UMontreal.CA Mon Mar 7 19:39:43 1994
From: jacobsk@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Jacobs Kenneth)
Subject: Re: Superposition (geological)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 1994 20:36:46 -0500 (EST)
> John Sutton asked an interesting question about the concept of
> "superposition" which he says is a hot topic now in connectionism and related
> fields. The most common sense of the term in the historical sciences is of
> course the geological one: the "principle of superposition" says that in a
> series of geological strata, the oldest layers are on the bottom and the
> youngest layers are on the top, because sediments are deposited horizontally,
> one on top of another. This is a very important principle of historical
> reconstruction which goes back to Steno in the 1600s at least; perhaps some
> of our historians of geology could provide more information about its
> history.
As Bob O'Hara implied here on 5 March, Steno was not the first. As with so
many of the things Steno "discovered" (or so I am told by one of my students,
who provided the following info), Avicenna said it first (in the early 11th
century) and often in the very same manner in which it was later said. Here
is part of Avicenna's discussion of mountain formation:
"It is possible that each time the land was exposed by the ebbing of
the sea a layer was left, since we see that some mountains appear to
have been piled up layer by layer, and it is therefore likely that the
clay from which they were formed was itself at one time arranged in
layers. One layer was formed first, then, at a different period, a
further layer was formed and piled [upon the first, and so on]."
p.31, in "Section on stones and minerals" in _Avicennae,
De congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum_. ("Being sections of the
'Kitab Al-Shifa.' The Latin and Arabic texts edited with an English
translation of the latter and with critical notes) E.J. Holmyard & D.C.
Mandeville (eds.) Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geunther, 1927.
There are other passages with similar conclusions. Interestingly,
no mention is ever made of the implication that the lower strata are _older_,
the antiquity of the layers (and the things found in them) being wholly un-
interesting. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but I'll have to wait
until the student's thesis is done to recount them.
Ken Jacobs
Anthropologie
Universite de Montreal
jacobsk@ere.umontreal.ca
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:11>From Kim.Sterelny@vuw.ac.nz Mon Mar 7 20:33:21 1994
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 15:33:11 +1300
To: Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: Kim.Sterelny@vuw.ac.nz
Subject: Re: Paul Feyerabend dies in Geneva
Let me add a note of discord before Feyerabend sentimentality gets out of
hand. His early work in my view was powerful and interesting, contributing
to the dismantling of logical empiricism, and leaving the door open to a
more naturalistic and historically realistic conception of science. But
from Against Method on, his work instanciated little more than
self-indulgent relativism. It is healthy to fart in church, when the object
of that derision has undeserved prestige, or, even if deserved, is the
object of an uncritical veneration. It would be absurd to claim that that
is the status of the natural sciences in recent times. Many contributors to
the list have complained about the incurability of crank views, their
astounding prestige, and the utter ignorance of many of even elementary
natural sciences. Some of this crankery is harmless; much of it is not:
Creation Science, and New Age superstions of various stripes. Yet
sentimental and respectful noises are being made about someone who
advocated, as seriously as he advocated anything, chairs in astrology and
no doubt, in creation science or crystal medicine too.
Count me out.
Kim Sterelny
Philosophy
Victoria University of Wellington
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:12>From jkp@world.std.com Tue Mar 8 07:26:03 1994
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 08:25:57 -0500 (EST)
From: John K Pearce <jkp@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: Superposition
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
On Mon, 7 Mar 1994, JOHN LIMBER wrote:
> Hi-regarding Sagan and naive brain structure, it is more than likely he is
> using Paul McLean's lifelong work on the "Triune Brain" (PL has lengthy book
> by that title but I don't have the full reference handy). Anyway, PL has a
> surprising amount of evidence at anatomical, biochemical, and behavior levels
> of analysis for his conjecture. While PL almost certainly has cartooned the
> evolution of brains, the evidence he has collected--much of it his own work
> at NIH?--is very interesting. regards, John Limber, Psychology UNH
"The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Palecerebral Functions" Paul
D. MacLean, Plenum Press, NY 1990
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:13>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu Tue Mar 8 09:10:55 1994
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 10:13:00 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy Creighton Ahouse)
Subject: Triune refs
Author: MacLean, Paul D.
Title: A triune concept of the brain and behaviour, by Paul D.
MacLean. Including Psychology of memory and Sleep and
dreaming; papers presented at Queen's University,
Kingston, Ontario, February 1969, by V. A. Kral [and
others.
Publication Info: Toronto, Buffalo] published for the Ontario Mental Health
Foundation by University of Toronto Press [c1973]
Phys. Description: xii, 165 p. illus. 24 cm.
LC Call Number: QP376 .M155
Author: MacLean, Paul D.
Title: The triune brain in evolution : role in paleocerebral
functions / Paul D. MacLean.
Publication Info: New York : Plenum Press, [1990]
Phys. Description: xxiv, 672 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 26 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 580-635).
Subjects: Brain--Evolution.
LC Call Number: QP376 .M185 1990
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:14>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Mar 8 11:07:28 1994
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 1994 12:07:16 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Gould citation on turtles?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
A colleage of mine asks whether anyone can point him to an S.J. Gould
essay called something like "Dr. Gott and the Turtles", "Turtles all the
way down", or some similar title. Has it been collected in one of Gould's
books?
Please reply privately to me at the address below. Many thanks.
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:15>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Mar 8 13:56:08 1994
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 1994 14:55:50 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Structuralism
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Still catching up on my backlog of mail here.
Gary Aronsen asked a few days ago whether "structuralism" was an approach that
has been used in evolutionary biology, and Kelly Smith rightly pointed out, I
think, that structuralism is a term that probably means many things to many
different people. (I hadn't realized that "superposition" did also until we
just discussed that term.) I have very little sense of the technical meaning
of the term as it is used in its source fields, which I take to be linguistics
and anthropology. My impression has always been, however, that structuralist
approaches to those fields are almost the antithesis of historical and
evolutionary approaches, concentrating as they do on universal principles and
present-day functioning rather than on historical reconstruction. Am I
mistaken in this impression? Quite a few fields around 1900 began to turn
away from historical questions (systematics, linguistics, and textual
criticism are three) and toward "structural" questions, and I associate this
early twentieth-century "eclipse of history" (a term used by Brooks & McLennan
that I like) with a corresponding rise of "structural" approaches that treat
historical inquiries as "speculative" and fuzzy-headed.
(Of course I am talking about approaches to studying the evolutionary past
itself, and not the community of people who study the evolutionary past. It
might well be possible to ask is anyone has done structuralist anthropology
on evolutionary biologists themselves; that just not the point I'm addressing.)
Somewhere I think I have a few references on the "eclipse of history" around
1900; I'll see if I can find them. It certainly strikes me as a Ph.D. thesis
in the history of ideas that is waiting to be written.
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:16>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Mar 8 15:35:44 1994
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 1994 16:35:16 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: March 8 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
MARCH 8 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1841: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR., born at Boston, Massachusetts. In his
college years at Harvard he will join the circle of Chauncey Wright, Charles
Sanders Peirce, and William James, and under the influence of Darwinian
thought this group will give birth to the school of philosophy that will come
to be known as Pragmatism. Later, Holmes will become an associate justice of
the United States Supreme Court, and will author many influential texts on
jurisprudence that reflect his historical perspective, including _The Common
Law_ (1881): "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.
The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories,
intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which
judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the
syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. The law
embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it
cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a
book of mathematics. In order to know what it is, we must know what it has
been, and what it tends to become. We must alternately consult history and
existing theories of legislation....In Massachusetts to-day, while, on the one
hand, there are a great many rules which are quite sufficiently accounted for
by their manifest good sense, on the other, there are some which can only be
understood by reference to the infancy of procedure among German tribes, or
to the social condition of Rome under the Decemvirs."
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).
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:17>From TREMONT%UCSFVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU Tue Mar 8 17:05:56 1994
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 1994 14:48:00 -0800 (PST)
From: "Elihu M. Gerson" <TREMONT%UCSFVM.BITNET@KU9000.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Paul Feyerabend dies in Geneva
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
On Tue, 08 Mar 1994 16:31:38 -0600 <Kim.Sterelny@vuw.ac.nz> said:
>... sentimental and respectful noises are being made about {Feyerabend,] who
>advocated, as seriously as he advocated anything, chairs in astrology and
>no doubt, in creation science or crystal medicine too.
>
>Count me out.
>
>Kim Sterelny
>Philosophy
>Victoria University of Wellington
It's amazing that critics of the One True Way cannot even be allowed
to die in peace. Feyerabend made a major contribution by criticising
the defects in philosophy of science. Most importantly, he held (in a
hostile time) that novelty and discovery are important and interesting
phenomena, worth doing and worthy of study. For that, he deserves respect and
gratitude.
Elihu M. Gerson
Tremont Research Institute
458 29 Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
415-285-7837 tremont@ucsfvm.ucsf.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:18>From BDHUME@ucs.indiana.edu Tue Mar 8 21:20:09 1994
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 94 22:20:08 EST
From: BDHUME@ucs.indiana.edu
Subject: History of Science Society Conference
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
This is my first introduction on this list. I'm a Phd student at Indiana
University's History and Philosophy of Science Department. My main
interest is in the history of anthropology, but I have done related work
on the history of biology (including evolutionary theor(ies)) and the
history of medicine. I have been concentrating on the development of
anthropology in North America in case studies restricted to native
Americans.
I have just completed a paper on 18th century natural history and the
depiction of "places" and native peoples that I am interested in presenting
at the upcoming History of Science Society Conference to be held
in New Orleans, October, 1994. I have a better chance presenting (and more
interest in presenting) if I can join or help form a session relating
to either natural history or the history of anthropology. This message
then is an invitation to interested scholars to form such a session.
If you are interested please contact me directly:
Brad D. Hume
History and Philosophy of Science
Goodbody Hall, Room 130
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
BDHUME@UCS.INDIANA.EDU
My thanks to the list for the post.
B Hume
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:19>From aceska@cue.bc.ca Wed Mar 9 11:53:48 1994
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 09:45:33 +0800 (PST)
From: Adolf Ceska <aceska@cue.bc.ca>
Subject: Re: Structuralism
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Excuse my ignorance, but what is "structuralism."
I know this as a trend in literature, mentioned many times
in David Lodge's novels ("Changing Places," "Small World").
But I have never made an effort to find out.
Adolf Ceska
aceska@cue.bc.ca
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:20>From TOMASO@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu Wed Mar 9 19:13:50 1994
Date: Wed, 09 Mar 1994 19:13:39 -0600 (CST)
From: TOMASO@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 163
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
More on Structuralism and social evolution.
Bob O'Hara correctly points out that Levi-Strauss and other explicitly
structuralist theorists in anthropology designed structuralist methodology and
theory as a counter to social evolutionary arguments. According to Levi
Strauss, structuralism should focus on the synchronic and dialectic/dualistic
relations between mental structures (it is worth noting that these relations,
in both the anthropologist's mind and that of the subject, are little more than
structures themselves) in the minds of anthropological subjects. This was
based on a completely mentalist conceptualization of culture, which was
perceived to counter the categorical and materialist bent of the evolutionists.
However, as Johaannes Fabion (1983 - _Time and the Other: How Anthropology
Makes its Object_) ably confides, structuralism subsumed all of the
time-distancing devices of its alledged antithesis by defining its subject as
'the other', and not-very-cautiously (or reflexively) applying oppositions like
"modern" and "primitive" as if they had meanings outside of political and
oppressive discourse. The logic and argumentation of social evolutionism _was_
constructed in a way that would be amenable to structuralist methods of
analysis (involving the dialectics and explanation of sets of binary
oppositions - such as: simple - complex, primitive - civilized, etc), and so,
the epistemology underlying evolutionism could be considered structural.
However, the intent of the structuralists was to go beyond evolutionism and
relativism, and to create a 'science of cultural ideas' that essentially
ignored the diachronics of culture. (This, for some, is the essential failure
of structuralism. I believe that it fails on many more fronts as well.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Tomaso
Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
INTERNET:
TOMASO@UTXVMS.CC.UTEXAS.EDU
TOMASO@GENIE.GEIS.COM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:21>From sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu Thu Mar 10 07:54:39 1994
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 163
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 94 08:54:34 -0500
From: Sally Thomason <sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu>
Matt Tomaso's interesting commments about the history of
structuralism in anthropology can't be extended easily to linguistics,
where it came from originally. It's true that Ferdinand de Saussure,
the "father of structural linguistics", set synchronic linguistics
on something like an even level with historical linguistics, and
made it possible/respectable/fashionable to study a language in its
current state, not just in its development from an earlier state.
But Saussure's structural thinking enabled him, at the age of 19,
to make one of the most dramatic contributions to HISTORICAL
linguistics that anyone has ever made: his Laryngeal Theory (not
his title, but his proposal). This was in 1879 (I think -- one sees
different dates in the literature), decades before he launched
synchronic structural linguistics. What he did was propose that
an immensely complex & messy set of phonetic alternations in Indo-
European languages, especially in verbs and to a lesser extent in
nouns, could be accounted for much more economically and in a way
that made much more phonetic sense, if one took the notion of a
simple basic structure seriously and posited the existence of a
set of sounds in Proto-Indo-European (the parent language of the
entire I-E family). The trouble was that these sounds didn't
exist in any of the IE languages known in 1879, so the theory
required that they vanished from all the IE languages, making the
alternations phonetically & phonologically opaque (and accounting
for the messy state of things in the attested languages).
The hypothesis was highly controversial for many years; the
structural argumentation, sans hard evidence in the attested
sources, was viewed with great suspicion by many I-E-ists. In
the early years of the 20th century, however, the decipherment
of Hittite provided some dramatic confirmation of the Laryngeal
Theory: Hittite had a letter, transliterated with a kind of h,
in exactly those places (well, some of them) where Saussure
had hypothesized a "laryngeal" consonant.
But in addition to the discovery of the "h" in Hittite,
evidence poured in...trickled in, anyway...in the form of excellent
principled explanations for other kinds of alternations that had
previously seemed totally bizarre, in light of pre-Laryngeal Theory
thinking.
So it isn't true, for historical linguistics, that structuralism
was antithetical; structural linguistics has provided many useful
ways of attacking the problem of unraveling linguistic history,
though nothing as exciting as Saussure's Laryngeal Theory.
Sally Thomason
sally@pogo.isp.pitt.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:22>From lgorbet@triton.unm.edu Thu Mar 10 09:22:59 1994
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 94 08:22 MST
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: lgorbet@triton.unm.edu
Subject: Re: Historical and Structural Linguistics
I'd like to second Sally Thomason's remarks that
>...it isn't true, for historical linguistics, that structuralism
>was antithetical; structural linguistics has provided many useful
>ways of attacking the problem of unraveling linguistic history,
>though nothing as exciting as Saussure's Laryngeal Theory.
and add, of course, the converse: that throughout this century and
increasingly, I believe, in the past 20 years or so, historical linguistics
has contributed essential insights, clarifications, and tests to efforts to
understand synchronic structure. Hmm...that's ambiguous---I mean not so
much that the historical linguists have been contributing more but that
linguists more concerned with synchronic matters have paid more attention,
taken more advantage of historical linguistic resources.
Larry Gorbet lgorbet@mail.unm.edu
Anthropology & Linguistics Depts. (505) 883-7378
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:23>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu Thu Mar 10 09:26:43 1994
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 10:28:42 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy Creighton Ahouse)
Subject: Feyerabend's Obituary - New York Times
>From the philosophy listserv:
Feyerabend's Obituary
Paul K. Feyerabend's obituary from the Times is here quoted in
its entirety.
++++++++++
Saxon, Wolfgang. "Paul K. Feyerabend, 70, Anti-Science
Philosopher," New York Times, 8 March 1994, p. B8.
Prof. Paul Karl Feyerabend, a gadfly philosopher of
science who asserted that scientists have no particular
claims on truth, died on Feb. 11 in Geneva. He was 70.
He died of a brain tumor, said officials at the
University of California at Berkeley, where he taught
from 1959 until he reached emeritus status in 1990. He
held a concurrent appointment at the Polytechnic
Institute of Zurich.
Dr. Feyerabend died just days after finishing the
final chapter of his autobiography, on which he had
worked for more than a decade. University officials in
Berkeley said his friends reported that he was still able
to write with his right hand despite growing paralysis.
Dr. Feyerabend held that the rationality of science
did not really exist and that the special status and
prestige of scientists are based on their own claims to
objective truth. He once said that "conceited and
intimidating scholars, covered with honorary degrees and
university chairs," can be tripped up by a lawyer able to
look through the jargon and expose the ignorance behind
dazzling displays of omniscience.
"Scientists have more money, more authority, more
sex appeal than the deserve." Dr. Feyerabend said in a
1979 article in Science magazine, "and the most stupid
procedures and the laughable results are surrounded with
an aura of excellence. It is time to cut them down to
size."
To that end, he became a prolific author of articles
and books. His best known works are "Against Method"
(1975) and "Farewell to Reason" (1987), a collection of
essays.
Dr. Feyerabend was one of the most radical
challengers to the long-accepted notion that science is
rational and progressive. If there was progress in
science, he insisted, it was because scientist broke
every principle in the rationalists' rule book and
adopted the principle that "anything goes."
Individual theories are not consistent with one
another, Dr. Feyerabend held, and since there is no
single "scientific method," scientific success flows not
only from rational arguments, but also from a mixture of
subterfuge, rhetoric, conjecture, politics and
propaganda.
He was born in Vienna and served in World War II as
an officer in the German Army, winning the Iron Cross for
bravery. In 1945, while fighting the Red Army on the
Eastern front, he was shot in the back; the wound left
him with a severe limp.
He studied history, physics and astronomy at the
University of Vienna, where he received his Phd. in
1951 Dr. Feyerabend then became an admirer and protege
of the philosopher Karl Popper of the London School of
Economics, whose scientific rationalism he later tried to
refute.
Besides his teaching posts at Berkeley and Zurich,
he taught at the University of Bristol in England, the
Institute of Fine Arts and Science in Vienna, Yale
University and the Free University in Berlin.
He is survived by his wife, Grazia Borrini
Feyerabend.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:24>From margaret@ling.edinburgh.ac.uk Thu Mar 10 11:55:34 1994
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 94 14:36:47 GMT
From: Margaret Winters <margaret@ling.edinburgh.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 163
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
I'd like to add two comments to Sally Thomason's remarks on historical
linguistics and Saussure. One is that in a sense reconstruction (of the
kind Saussure practiced in arriving at the laryngeal theory - again, the
modern term for what he called coefficients) was a kind of structuralism
before the fact in the way units of language are regarded in
relationship to each other.
The other point is that if you look at what Saussure said (or, to be
precise, is reported to have said) in the Cours de linguistique generale
about the necessary separation between synchrony and diachrony, much of
it is more methodological than theoretical: one can be a linguist who
looks at things historically or the way they are grasped/used by native
speakers, and the linguist who knows the history of a given language
cannot use that expert knowledge in talking about what the non-expert
has in the head. this does not, as far as I'm concerned, rule out
certain diachronic facts as supporting synchronic analyses, as long as
one does not claim that those facts are known by the average native
speaker. It is more the case that subsequent re-/mis-interpretations of
the Cours have given rise to the strict division between the two
approaches carried to the point of claiming total irrelevance of
diachronic data to "the best kind" of synchronic analyses.
Best wishes,
Margaret Winters
<margaret@ling.ed.ac.uk>
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:25>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Thu Mar 10 14:47:39 1994
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 15:47:18 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: March 10 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
MARCH 10 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
1748: JOHN PLAYFAIR, mathematician and geologist, is born at Benvie, Scotland.
Playfair will serve for several years in the ministry as a young man, and will
later become professor of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. For
many years he will edit the _Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_,
where his friend James Hutton will first publish his cyclical theory of the
earth in 1785. After Hutton's death in 1797, Playfair will devote himself to
the extension and clarification of Hutton's work, and his _Illustrations of
the Huttonian Theory of the Earth_ (Edinburgh, 1802) will deeply influence the
later work of Charles Lyell. Like Hutton, Playfair will give great weight to
the existence of stratigraphic unconformities as indicators of the great age
of the earth, and in his biographical sketch of Hutton he will describe an
expedition the two of them made with Sir James Hall to Siccar Point on the
coast of Scotland, where deformed and uplifted Silurian slates are overlain by
nearly horizontal beds of Devonian Old Red Sandstone. Playfair's account of
the trip will go down as one of the most famous field reports in the history
of geology: "On us who saw these phenomena for the first time, the impression
made will not easily be forgotten. The palpable evidence presented to us, of
one of the most extraordinary and important facts in the natural history of
the earth, gave a reality and substance to those theoretical speculations
which, however probable, had never till now been directly authenticated by the
testimony of the senses. We often said to ourselves, what clearer evidence
could we have had of the different formation of these rocks, and of the long
interval which separated their formation, had we actually seen them emerging
from the bosom of the deep? We felt ourselves necessarily carried back to the
time when the schistus on which we stood was yet at the bottom of the sea, and
when the sandstone before us was only beginning to be deposited (in the shape
of sand or mud) from the waters of a superincumbent ocean. An epocha still
more remote presented itself, when even the most ancient of these rocks,
instead of standing upright in vertical beds, lay in horizontal planes at the
bottom of the sea and was not yet disturbed by that immeasurable force which
has burst asunder the solid pavement of the globe. Revolutions still more
remote appeared in the distance of this extraordinary perspective. The mind
seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time; and while we
listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher who was now
unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became
sensible how much farther reason may sometimes go than imagination can
venture to follow."
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).
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:26>From fwg1@cornell.edu Thu Mar 10 15:10:23 1994
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 16:10:15 -0500
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
From: fwg1@cornell.edu (Frederic W. Gleach)
Subject: French structuralism in anthropology
In a similar vein to Sally Thomason's and Margaret Winters's comments on
synchrony and diachrony in linguistics, I think it must be noted that while
Levi-Strauss's work (and perhaps even more so that of many of his
followers) emphasized synchronic structures, the theory was explicitly
based in an effort to understand historical processes *through* the study
of structure. L-S's famous essay on "History and Anthropology," written in
1948 although often dated to the early 1960s, when it was included as the
introduction to _Structural Anthropology_ (following its inclusion in the
1958 French edition), makes plain this orientation, as do some of his later
pieces (cf. esp. his published interviews). It is now quite popular in
anthropology to condemn L-S and structural studies, and there are certainly
some valid grounds on which they can be criticized, but
"post-structuralism" in today's anthropology too often means a pose of
complete rejection rather than a building on those ideas. As Marshall
Sahlins has suggested, there are a lot of people standing on L-S's
shoulders and shitting on his head. The structuralism of L-S can be better
seen as a reaction to the ahistorical (even anti-historical) functionalism
of Malinowski than to evolutionary ideas.
*****************************************************************************
Frederic W. Gleach (fwg1@cornell.edu)
Anthropology Department, Cornell University
(607) 255-6779
I long ago decided that anything that could be finished in my lifetime was
necessarily too small an affair to engross my full interest. --Ernest
Dewitt Burton
*****************************************************************************
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:27>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Thu Mar 10 20:45:01 1994
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 21:44:58 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Natural history collections on the Internet (fwd from BIODIV-L)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
The catalogs of a number of natural history collections have recently
become available over the Internet, mostly via gopher. This listing of
accessible collection catalogs just appeared on Biodiv-L, and I thought
it might be of interest to some Darwin-L subscribers. The collections
gopher at Harvard, mentioned below, is accessible from the Darwin-L
gopher on rjohara.uncg.edu in the directory "Network Resources in the
Historical Sciences."
Bob O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
--begin forwarded message--------------
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 10:44:51 +22305714 (HST)
From: Scott Miller <scottm@bishop.bishop.hawaii.org>
Subject: Biological Collections via gophers
The following was prepared at request of the Pacific Science Association,
but it may be of more general interest...
Biological collections databases available on Internet
Internet provides unparalleled opportunities to make data from
museum collections available (e.g., Miller, 1993, Bull. Ent. Res.
83: 471-474). Gopher servers have become popular interfaces for
databases of many kinds. Museum collection data are only begin-
ning to become available. The following list includes those
collections databases known to me in March 1994. The list is
probably incomplete and will hopefully be out-of-date soon.
All these databases may be reached via the Biodiversity and
biological collections gopher at Harvard University, or via other
gophers, some of which are listed below (except the U.S. National
Fungus collection, available only via telnet). This list in-
cludes only databases dealing with specimen data, not those
dealing primarily with taxonomic or other data. This list does
not include data from living collections. Sizes of databases
refer to approximate number of records; in some cases a
record includes more than one specimen (e.g., a lot). A database
is considered complete if it includes all the records available
for the category suggested by the title. These databases include
over 2 million records already and are growing rapidly.
SUBJECT SIZE COMPLETE
=================================================================
PLANTS & FUNGI
Aust. Nat. Bot. Garden herbarium 160,000 no
Univ. Texas Herbarium types 4,000 yes
Harvard Univ. Herbarium types 30,000 no
Farlow Herbarium diatom exsiccatae 13,000 no
Calif. Acad. Sci. Herbarium types 9,000 yes
Smithsonian plant types 88,000 yes
Australian plant specimens (ERIN database) 800,000 no
U.S. National Fungus Collection (USDA) 550,000 no
INVERTEBRATES
Australian animal specimens (ERIN database) 50,000 no
Boulder County, Colorado insects 26,000 no
Museum of Comparative Zoology insect types 15,000 no
Museum Comp. Zoology Microlepidoptera types 600 yes
Museum of Comparative Zoology spider types ? yes
Univ. Calif. Mus. Paleo. invertebrate types 11,000 yes
Univ. Calif. Mus. Paleo. microfossil types ? no
VERTEBRATES
Cornell University fish collection 70,000 ?
Museum of Comparative Zoology fish types 2,500 no
Univ. Texas Austin fish 23,000 yes
Univ. Calif. Mus. Paleo. vertebrate types 7,800 yes
Slater Museum birds 20,000 yes
Neotropical fish collections (NEODAT Project) 280,000 no
GOPHER ADDRESSES
Australian Nat. Botanic Garden osprey.erin.gov.au 70
Biodiversity gopher at Harvard huh.harvard.edu 70
Environmental Resources Info. Network kaos.erin.gov.au 70
NEODAT Project (Neotropical fish) fowler.acnatsci.org 70
Smithsonian Institution nmnhgoph.si.edu 70
Univ. Calif. Museum Paleontology ucmp1.berkeley.edu 70
Univ. Colorado gopher.colorado.edu 70
TELNET
U.S. National Fungus Collection fungi.ars-grin.gov
access with "login user" and "user"
========
Scott Miller, Bishop Museum, Box 19000-A, Honolulu, Hawaii 96817,
USA; scottm@bishop.bishop.hawaii.org
--end forwarded message----------------
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:28>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Fri Mar 11 19:31:07 1994
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 20:31:03 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Structural and historical linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Many thanks to all our linguists and anthropologists for their help
in elucidating the notion of structuralism in their respective fields.
Since the term is not a native one to my own field I am still trying
to get a handle on all its connotations in other historical sciences.
With regard to the idea of structuralism in linguistics, which comes
from Saussure, Sally Thomason wrote:
> But Saussure's structural thinking enabled him, at the age of 19,
> to make one of the most dramatic contributions to HISTORICAL
> linguistics that anyone has ever made: his Laryngeal Theory (not
> his title, but his proposal). This was in 1879 (I think -- one sees
> different dates in the literature), decades before he launched
> synchronic structural linguistics. What he did was propose that
> an immensely complex & messy set of phonetic alternations in Indo-
> European languages, especially in verbs and to a lesser extent in
> nouns, could be accounted for much more economically and in a way
> that made much more phonetic sense, if one took the notion of a
> simple basic structure seriously and posited the existence of a
> set of sounds in Proto-Indo-European (the parent language of the
> entire I-E family). The trouble was that these sounds didn't
> exist in any of the IE languages known in 1879, so the theory
> required that they vanished from all the IE languages, making the
> alternations phonetically & phonologically opaque (and accounting
> for the messy state of things in the attested languages).
My question for the linguists is this: What is it about this particular
historical inference of Saussure's concerning a set of lost sounds that
makes it "structuralist"? If he had been doing purely historical linguistics,
without a structuralist component, couldn't he have made the same historical
inference?
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<7:29>From mahaffy@dordt.edu Fri Mar 11 21:19:23 1994
Subject: Humanoid fossils in Time.
To: Address Darwin list <Darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 21:20:47 -0600 (CST)
From: James Mahaffy <mahaffy@dordt.edu>
Perhaps some of the anthropologists can let me know if there are any
glaring errors in presentation in the recent Time magazine on Humanoid
fossils. I do know something about fossils, but vertebrate paleontology
is NOT my strength. Although a little cautious about popular
presentation, I am especially cautious after the heat Scientific America
got from the linguists. In other words is it a fairly accurate
popularily written article?
--
James F. Mahaffy e-mail: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Biology Department phone: 712 722-6279
Dordt College FAX 712 722-1198
Sioux Center, Iowa 51250
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<7:30>From ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Sat Mar 12 01:17:20 1994
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 21:17:17 HST
From: Ron Amundson <ronald@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Quote query
Ok, folks. Hate to be boring. I'm sure everyone on Darwin-L
knows the answer to this one, so it's a contest. First person to
email me the answer gets a can of macadamia nuts.
"Minerva's owl flies at dusk."
or ...
"The philosopher's bird flies at dusk."
What is the original source of these quotes? I've heard the first
attributed to, I think, Hegel, and the second is attributed to von
Herder in a secondary source.
Extra bonus points for:
What the hell do they mean? (in original context)
tick tick tick tick
Thanks, all,
Cheers,
Ron Amundson
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Darwin-L Message Log 7: 1-30 -- March 1994 End
