Darwin-L Message Log 35: 31–65 — July 1996

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 July 1996. 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 35: 31-65 -- JULY 1996
-------------------------------------------

DARWIN-L
A Network Discussion Group on the
History and Theory of the Historical Sciences

Darwin-L@raven.cc.ukans.edu is an international network discussion group on
the history and theory of the historical sciences.  Darwin-L was established
in September 1993 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 academic professionals in these fields.
Darwin-L is not restricted to evolutionary biology nor to the work of Charles
Darwin but instead addresses the entire range of historical sciences from an
interdisciplinary perspective, including evolutionary biology, historical
linguistics, textual transmission and stemmatics, historical geology,
systematics and phylogeny, archeology, paleontology, cosmology, historical
anthropology, historical geography, and related "palaetiological" fields.

This log contains public messages posted to Darwin-L during July 1996.
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 some administrative messages and personal messages 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 on the Darwin-L Web Server at
http://rjohara.uncg.edu.  For instructions on how to retrieve copies of this
and other log files, and for additional information about Darwin-L and the
historical sciences, connect to the Darwin-L Web Server or send the e-mail
message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@raven.cc.ukans.edu.

Darwin-L is administered by Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu), Center for
Critical Inquiry in the Liberal Arts and Department of Biology, University of
North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A., and it
is supported by the Center for Critical Inquiry, University of North Carolina
at Greensboro, and the Department of History and the Academic Computing Center,
University of Kansas.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:31>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu Tue Jul  9 10:40:07 1996

Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 10:40:03 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Re: Linguistic and Biological Evolution
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu

Many of the issues that have been raised in this thread have been the
subject of discussion on Darwin-l before, in particular in an extensive
series of postings in September and October of 1993.  Subject headings
include "Heritatbility and cultural evolution", "Language, evolution,
linguistics", and "Manuscript polymorphism".  The thread began with a
post by Bob O'Hara 11 Sept., expanded to include cultural transmission in
general, became redirected specifically back to language evolution, and
then moved on to manuscript transmission.  The theme throughout was what
are the analogies with biological evolution, and how useful are they.
Among the posts are those by Kent Holsinger on 15 Sept and 1 Oct, O'Hara
on 8 Oct, Jeff Wills on 9 & 18 Oct, Sally Thomason on 29 Sept, and myself
on 5 & 12 Oct.  There were many others, by other people, and others by the
few I've mentioned here; I only spent a few minutes glancing at my
message logs, and I did not read all the posts in this period.

I mention this so that, taking advantage of the logs Bob has made
available at the Darwin-l web site, people can read further and consider
other views on this most interesting subject.

Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:32>From hineline@helix.ucsd.edu Tue Jul  9 18:58:42 1996

From: Mark Hineline <hineline@helix.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Call for Papers - WCHSS
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 16:58:39 -0700 (PDT)

WEST COAST HISTORY OF SCIENCE SOCIETY

The 1997 annual meeting of the West Coast History of
Science Society will be held April 12-13 on the
campuses of the Claremont Colleges.  The theme of the
meeting will be "Mastering Nature, Mastering the World:
Science and Power." Professor Joan Cadden, soon to be
at UC Davis, will be this year's featured speaker.
This meeting traditionally provides a friendly forum
where graduate students can present their work and more
established scholars can let their colleagues know what
they have been up to.

Presentations should be planned to run about 20
minutes.  The deadline for submission of paper
and/or session titles (please include a short abstract)
is January 31.  Interested participants will be
sent a list of local hotels and should make their own
arrangements.  Please send paper titles and requests
for lodging information to

Pamela H. Smith, President-Elect
History Department
551 No. College Ave.
Pomona College
Claremont, CA 91711-6337

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:33>From MNHVZ082%SIVM.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU Tue Jul  9 08:46:45

Date: Tue, 09 Jul 1996 09:41:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kevin de Queiroz <MNHVZ082%SIVM.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: reference
To: Darwin-L <DARWIN-L@RAVEN.CC.UKANS.EDU>

I'm wondering if someone out there can help me with a reference.  I'm
writing a paper about the influence of evolutionary thinking on the
Linnean hierarchy, and I'm discussing various modifications to the
hierarchy that have occurred in recent years.  I seem to recall having
seen a paper that proposed a number of additional ranks/categories
based on terminology used in the military (companies, squadrons, etc.),
but I can't remember where I saw it.  Has anyone out there seen this
paper?  If so, I would be very grateful for the reference.  Thanks.

Kevin de Queiroz

There's probably no need to clutter up the list with responses.  My e-mail
address is mnhvz082@sivm.si.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:34>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu Tue Jul  9 08:27:51 1996

Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 09:33:18 -0400
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu (Darwin List)
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy C. Ahouse)
Subject: Hugh Miller - the Movie

        Bob's recent mention of the new book on Hugh Miller (Shortland,
1996) had me wondering about when Hollywood would pick up this property.
Bob mentioned Hugh Miller in June of 1995 on this very list and taking
those comments as inspiration, I closed my eyes and imagined...

        Fossils, God & Madness: the Hugh Miller story, directed by Steven
Spielberg with guest direction by Terry Gilliam and Peter Weir, starring
Michael Cain as Hugh Miller Diana Rigg as Lydia with James Earl Jones as
the voice of God, special effects by Pixar and Industrial Light & Magic.

        We open to the sound of rocks being chipped from a red sandstone,
the sun glints off the axe handle as the camera pans up to the silhoutte of
a man holding one of the oldest vertebrate fossils to date. Close up on the
man's face as we fade to the ancient world that he is reconstructing from
the bones he is holding. <This is where the great Jurassic Park-like
special effects come in.>

        We return to scenes of struggle with writing, his response
("Footprints of the Creator") to Chamber's "Vestiges of Creation" and
scenes of a devout family in the Scottish Free Church. <Room here for some
internal dialogs with James Earl Jones.>

        Then midlife - the madness takes hold... (implications that it is
the irreconcilable pressure of God and geology for an easy positivist
moral?) as we enter the hallucinations and dream sequences. (Hollywood
could have a field day with these mixing something like the LSD scenes from
Easy Rider with the technology from Forest Gump. Terry Gilliam (Brazil,
Time Bandits, 12 Monkeys) to film these. Maybe Jack Nicholson can do a
cameo.)

        Bob O'Hara described the situation, "He began to experience
hallucinations, and to think that people were coming in the night to his
house to break into his museum an steal his collections.  He would awake in
the morning convinced that he had gone out in the night to chase the
intruders away, but no one else in the house had seen any intruders nor
seen him go out.  He would check his clothes to see if they we wet or dirty
from having been walking outside, but they never were; and yet he had
repeated hallucinations about chasing off intruders in the night."

        And now the climax. Musical score has extensive use of didgeridoo
this part filmed by Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, the Last Wave, Dead
Poets Society). On Christmas Eve morning, 1856, less than a week after
finishing his last book, "The Testimony of the Rocks", he removes the gun
from safe keeping. This is the gun he had bought to defend his home. From
severe angles (fast MTV cutaways) we see him, in shadow, shoot himself
through the chest. Camera moves to a note written in unsteady hand lying on
the table to his wife:

  Dearest Lydia, -- My brain burns.  I _must_ have _walked_; and a
  fearful dream rises upon me.  I cannot bear the horrible thought.  God
  the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me.  Dearest Lydia,
  dear children, farewell.  My brain burns as the recollection grows.
  My dear, dear wife, farewell.

End with pastiche of images from throughout his life as James Earl Jones
reads the epigraph from "The Testimony of the Rocks".

  Unknown he came.  He went a Mystery --
    A mighty vessel foundered in the calm,
  Her freight half-given to the world.  To die
    He longed, nor feared to meet the great "I AM."
  Fret not.  God's mystery is solved in him.
    He quarried Truth all rough-hewn from the earth,
  And chiselled it into a perfect gem --
    A rounded Absolute.  Twain at a birth --
  Science with a celestial halo crowned,
    And Heavenly Truth -- God's Works by His Word illumed --
  These twain he viewed in holiest concord bound.
    Reason outsoared itself.  His mind consumed
  By its volcanic fire, and frantic driven,
  He dreamed himself in hell and woke in heaven.

        End with camera panning back from red clay rock face to puffy
clouds in a blue sky.

note: last year when Bob mentioned Hugh Miller, Michael Shortland alerted us
to "Miller's hitherto unpublished early autobiography, written in 1829-30,
and full of his characteristic zest and pugnacity, has now been published:
Michael Shortland (ed.), HUGH MILLER'S MEMOIR (Edinburgh University Press,
1995, pbk), with an 80 page introduction which presents a radical
reinterpretation of his life and work, and speculative scholarship on his
illness, imagination and suicide-- and his science and religion, of
course."

  Shortland, Michael (ed.). 1996 "Hugh Miller and the Controversies of
  Victorian Science" Oxford: Clarendon Press.

p.s. I came across Bob's original description only because I was fetching
the Darwin logs for June 1995 to find comments on Gosse and Omphalos. And
there it was. Then there was today's announcement to the list of the
Shortland book. Contingency or the prepared mind? You be the judge. Maybe a
mind that spent a full trying to get a !@#$ ethernet connection to work!

        - Jeremy

        Jeremy C. Ahouse
        Biology Department
        Brandeis University
        Waltham, MA 02254-9110
ph:     (617) 736-4954
fax:    (617) 736-2405
email:  ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu
web:    http://www.rose.brandeis.edu/users/simister/pages/Ahouse

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:35>From hanss@zondisk.sepa.tudelft.nl Tue Jul  9 04:55:08 1996

From: "Hans-Cees Speel" <hanss@zondisk.sepa.tudelft.nl>
Organization:  TUDelft
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 11:54:14 +0000
Subject: Re: Linguistic & Biological analogies?/strong analogy?
Cc: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy C. Ahouse), hanss@sepa.tudelft.nl

Dear Darwinners,

Jeremy Ahouse wrote:
. They retain integrity thanks to the canals. But
> that doesn't give languages any kind of self-sustaining integrity.

this I don't understand. What would be an example of a
self-sustaining integrety of a language. Why should that be there?

But my main concern is to what makes a strong analogy:

>         To make the strong analogy stick,: it seems that we would want to
> argue that
 there are internal language dynamics that resist being mixed
> (e.g. syntactic rules that resist certain modifications and support a
> particular constellation of linguistic regularities). These internal
> dynamics might then serve a role analogous to the developmental regulatory
> hierarchy in biology.

This I do not understand at all. Why do we need a developmental
analogy to the story of embriology in biology to be analogous? My
view is that gene-lineages build their own vehicles [organisms], and
memetic languages do not. They thrive on organisms to survive, like genes
thrive on the environmental ecological things like energy and elements to be
able to survive. This is the most important disanalogy between genes
and memes. So why an embriological analogy: memes do not build
organisms? Such an analogy will brake down on the particular way in
which genes build organisms, in which we can make a difference
between feno and genotype. This will not work for memes I think.
But maybe I am confused, and I missed something:-)

>         Let's see what kind of work the strong analogy must do. To claim
> analogy with evolutionary biology can mean a number of things;
>
>         i. languages have a history.
>         ii. languages have common ancestors.
>         iii. languages are dichtomously branching.
>         iv. language change is explained by natural selection. Longterm
> language dynamics is nothing more than the cumulative result of local
> selection. This is the adaptationist program as applied to languages,
> requiring; a) richness of variation (spontaneous, persistent (i.e.
> heritable), abundant, small and continuous (or nearly so) in its effects),
> b) nondirectedness of variation, c) a nonpurposive "sorting" mechanism
> (Amundson 1989).

This point four is not consistent. That selection is natural is
nothing more than that there is no directedness, or intentionality
involved [in my view]. There need not follow that variation is
continiouss or small. B is valid, and c too.

>         v. language change is explained by developmental constraints,
> contingency, varying rates of change (exhibiting periods of stasis). The
> reaction (from the 70s - present) to the adaptionist program as applied to
> language. This includes what Kelly Smith calls structuralism (Smith 1992)
> and it is crude to call this a reaction to the adaptationism as its roots
> are much deeper and its articulation predates the neo-Darwinian synthesis
> that cemented selectionism centered adaptationism.

I do not know what you think that developmental constrains are. I can
think of three different meanings at lest of this statement. Is a
single language constrained in its development? Is it constrained by
the guys who invent it, or by internal syntactical rules, by the fact
that there is already another language? etc etc, what do you mean?
I also do not see how language change can be explained by stasis, it
can be described by that [I take that was a slip of the tongue]. But
why is stasis-change strongly analogous? are all species evolving in
such a way?

>         vi. language change is explained by founder effects, disruptive
> selection, shifting balance equilibria, neutralism, random fixation and a
> whole cornucopia of ideas borrowed from biology

 Alternately, if we recast the analogy
> in ecological terms we may do better. We often claim that foodwebs can get
> reestablished after strong climatic change. Now the analogy with language
> is not one of "species" but of trophic actors - herbivores, predators,
> etc... These ecological kinds are of crucial relevance to theoretical
> understanding in ecology, being the basis of an ecological hierarchy(3).

Good idea, but how do lineages fit into that? And most important,
what are the analogues to food-web actors as herbivores, etc?
I think you are walking to the always present fact in these
analogies, that most meme-complexes are replicated as one, like
gene-comples in cells, but that they have not the very strong
internal structure of a gene-complex. The gene-complex has such a
structure because in every copying instnce of reproduction, it is
checked again for faults, and when there are, the organisms dies
somewhere in development.
Ecosystems do not evolve as one, nor are replicted as one, and have a
loose structure, with interchangeble parts. Gene-complexes, evolve
with the selection constraint that a complex that arizes must yield a
living organism, thus it must function as a whole, and are replicated
in one instance in one process.
So where do languages fit in?

>         iii. The topology of branching seems to be (at least so far in the
> discussion) solely due to the isolation of human populations. No claim has
> been made that after isolation and diffusion that subsequent reticulation
> is ruled out or even strongly inhibited. This strikes me as strongly at
> variance with many examples in evolutionary biology. Though some
> angiosperms may offer a model here (Grant 1981). There are many examples of
> hybrids in flowering plants (see the diagram of _Clarkia_ in Futuyma 1986,
> pg. 229). But is this really what people mean when they analogize language
> and biological evolution?

this little peace is crucial to analogy I think. I think the
theoretical theories should be analogous, to be usefull for
comparison, or to be part of the same description language
[theoretical frame].
Not that some instances that fit into the theory are
analogical. This would mean that Darwinism is not analogous to
Darwinism becuase plants do not evolve like animals. This is
obviously a rediculous claim. So you can't use that for the analogy
between language and biology either.
Further I would say that what most people think what evolution by
natural selection is only important if those know what they are
talking about. In other words, for a theory only claims count that
are well-informed.

>         All of these questions must paint me as quite the strong analogy
> skeptic. But I want to reiterate that I think that there is room for cross
> fertilization and in a way I hope the analogy doesn't fit too well. We
> already have biology as a good example of biological evolution it would be
> interesting to have language evolution offer marked differences.

My question after the previous is what is analogical? The
evolutionary process in all its facets? The language in which we
describe it[selection, variation, retention]? The most
important forces that explain evolution [flow, selection at a
specific level, directed variation] ? The way in which these
forces act [intentional, natural selection, blind versus insightfull
selection].

I would say we make a big step forward if the laguage of desription
is the same, i.e. if we all agree on the possibility to describe
language change in words like variation, selection, blind and
insightfull variation, replication, interaction, adaptation etc etc.
Second would be that the processes of biology and lagnuage have some
things in common, and some not. We can invent words, but can we in
effect influence our grammar, and syntax, etc. Atre those not
processes that happen in big groups of people over a long time [i.e.
not a week].

greetings

Hans-Cees

by the way, I really apreciate these mails, and do not mean to have
too much critigue. I only think that we should try to be as critical
as possible, as good scientists should:-), to improve our
understanding. I think it is great that Jeremy for instance invests
so much time for the last mail.

Theories come and go, the frog stays [F. Jacob]
-------------------------------------------------------
|Hans-Cees Speel School of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and management
|Technical Univ. Delft, Jaffalaan 5 2600 GA Delft PO Box 5015 The Netherlands
|telephone +3115785776 telefax +3115783422 E-mail hanss@sepa.tudelft.nl
www.sepa.tudelft.nl/~afd_ba/hanss.html featuring evolution and memetics!

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:36>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Wed Jul 10 00:08:07 1996

Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 01:08:03 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: July 10 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

JULY 10 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1802: ROBERT CHAMBERS is born at Peebles, Scotland.  He will become a popular
and prolific writer and publisher, especially of works on Scottish character
and history.  Chambers will be best remembered, however, for his widely read
and controversial _Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation_, which will be
published anonymously in 1844.  The _Vestiges_, "the first attempt to connect
the natural sciences into a history of creation", will comprehensively trace
the development of the human race, of animals and plants, the earth, and the
cosmos as a whole: "if we could suppose a number of persons of various ages
presented to the inspection of an intelligent being newly introducted into the
world, we cannot doubt that he would soon become convinced that men had once
been boys, that boys had once been infants, and, finally, that all had been
brought into the world in exactly the same circumstances.  Precisely thus,
seeing in our astral system many thousands of worlds in all stages of
formation, from the most rudimental to that immediately preceding the present
condition of those we deem perfect, it is unavoidable to conclude that all the
perfect have gone through the various stages which we see in the rudimental.
This leads us at once to the conclusion that the whole of our firmament was at
one time a diffused mass of nebulous matter, extending through the space which
it still occupies.  So also, of course, must have been the other astral
systems.  Indeed, we must presume the whole to have been originally in one
connected mass, the astral systems being only the first division into parts,
and solar systems the second."

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.
Send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@raven.cc.ukans.edu or connect to
the Darwin-L Web Server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu) for more information.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:37>From harveyi@liverpool.ac.uk Wed Jul 10 09:47:42 1996

Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 15:47:16 +0100
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: harveyi@liverpool.ac.uk (Ian Harvey)
Subject: The Collected Papers of W.D. Hamilton Volume 1

Dear Darwin-Lers

I've just bought a copy of "The collected works of W.D. Hamilton Volume 1:
Evolution of social behaviour".  This is much more than a reprint of Bill
Hamilton's first 15 papers (1963-1980), useful though it is to have them in
one volume.  The real fascination, and the thing that may well appeal to
many readers of this list, is that each paper is preceded by an
introduction, written by Hamilton, which describes the context of the paper
in both scientific terms and in relation to his personal circumstances.  He
also discusses the difficulties of getting some of the (now seminal) papers
published!  One gets a real sense of reading about how some of the most
important papers in evolutionary biology were conceived and written - a
real history of science.

Cheers

Ian

******************************************************************************
Ian Harvey                                             Tel: +151 794 5028
Population Biology Research Group                      Fax: +151 794 5094
Department of Biological Sciences
Nicholson Building
The University of Liverpool                            email:harveyi@liv.ac.uk
PO Box 147, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK
******************************************************************************

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:38>From HANSS@sepa.tudelft.nl Fri Apr 19 10:58:16 1996

From: "Hans-Cees Speel" <HANSS@sepa.tudelft.nl>
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 18:00:08 MET
Subject: Re: path dependency and Darwinian theory

[my apologies if this message has been send before, I have
mail-troubles]
Dear list-members,
A biological question with regard to path-dependency.

In biological evolutionary theory path dependency plays a role. In my
view path dependency means that a species or population cannot change
into a new form, or statistical genotype-configuration in big steps,
but such changes take many small steps [where the question what big
steps and small steps are is important]. The word path-dependency
thus expresses the fact that the possibilities of new forms are
limited by the organisms, or species as they are at any one moment.

 Different views are common,
and wel-known is the punctuated opinion versus the small-steps
opinion. I do not want to go into what is right but would like to
know the different mechanisms that are used as arguments for
explanation.

The first argument is of course that we see in the geological record
that there are big steps, or that we don't see them. I do not want to
discuss that, it has been done extensively.
What I do want to know is what explanations are given by whom.

I can think of three different classes of explanations:

First of all, an organismal internal explanation. Because all
organisms have to grow [more or less], and function, and internal
[grow-] processes
are quite complex in their functional characteristics, many changes will cause
organisms that will die before becoming adult. This internal
selection mechanism weeds out big variations that might occur within
one generation.

Second, the external explanation, by which I mean that such big
variations might occur, but such animals are very likely to loose in
competition with other organisms without the new variation. Because
species often exist of many different individuals, and these are in
competition, big variation steps will be weeded out. Big variation
steps that result in better fitting genotypes are thus unlikely.

Third, it is possible that the mutation-mechanims simply do not allow
big steps. I do not know if anyone holds that position.

[Maybe there are more?]

My question is thus, what explanations are used for either the
punctuated position, or the opposite, small steps position.

Hoping that someone can shed some light,
greetings
Hans-Cees Speel

Theories come and go, the frog stays [F. Jacob]
-------------------------------------------------------
|Hans-Cees Speel School of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and management
|Technical Univ. Delft, Jaffalaan 5 2600 GA Delft PO Box 5015 The Netherlands
|telephone +3115785776 telefax +3115783422 E-mail hanss@sepa.tudelft.nl
www.sepa.tudelft.nl/~afd_ba/hanss.html featuring evolution and memetics!

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:39>From ROSEN@macc.wisc.edu Wed Jul 10 14:23:06 1996

Date: Wed, 10 Jul 96 14:22 CDT
From: Jill Rosenshield <ROSEN@macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: grant-in-aid UW-Madison
To: CHPSSTU@UMDD.UMD.EDU, DARWIN-L@UKANAIX.CC.UKANS.EDU,
        EARLYSCIENCE-L@LISTSERV.VT.EDU, ARCLING@ANU.EDU.AU,
        ASHR-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU, FCR-HUMART@U.WASHINGTON.EDU, H-ALBION@MSU.EDU

    FRIENDS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN--MADISON LIBRARIES
                    HUMANITIES GRANTS-IN-AID

     Deadlines are April 1 and October 1 each year. The
application form is at the end. Applications must, however, be
submitted on paper.

     To foster high-level use of the University of Wisconsin--
Madison Libraries' rich holdings, and to make them better known
and more accessible to a wider circle of scholars, the Friends of
the University of Wisconsin--Madison Libraries are pleased to
offer two grants-in-aid annually, each one month in duration, for
research in the humanities in any field appropriate to the
collections. Awards are $800.00 each. The Memorial Library is
distinguished in many areas of scholarship: it boasts
world-renowned collections in the history of science from the
Middle Ages through the Enlightenment, one of the largest
American collections of avant-garde "Little Magazines,"a rapidly
growing collection of American women writers to 1920, of
Scandinavian and Germanic literatures, of Dutch post-Reformation
theology and church history, of French political pamphlets of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, among many other fields.
      Applicants must have the Ph.D. or be able to demonstrate a
record of solid intellectual accomplishment. Foreign scholars,
and graduate students who have completed all requirements except
the dissertation, are eligible. The grants-in-aid are designed to
help provide access to UW-Madison Library resources for people
who live beyond commuting distance, that is, for scholars who
reside outside a seventy-five mile radius of Madison. The grantee
is expected to be in residence during the term of the award,
which may be taken up at any time during the year.Completed
applications are due October 1 and April 1. For more specific
information please write to Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries
Award Committee, 976 Memorial Library, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706-1494, or phone John
Tortorice at (608) 262-3243.
Compressed application form for grant-in-aid:
FRIENDS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON LIBRARIES, 728
STATE STREET, MADISON, WI 53706
1. Name
2. Social Security Number
3. Present Address
          Telephone (   )                Birth Date
4. Present rank or title
5. Department
     Institution
     Field of Specialization
6. Please attach a curriculum vitae and an abstract (not to
exceed one page) of your proposed research project.
7. Proposed period of grant:
8. Give the names, titles, and addresses of 2 persons familiar
with your work. Please have letters from your references in
support of your proposed research sent directly to the FRIENDS OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON LIBRARIES at the address
below.
A.
B.
Please return to: Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries
                  976 Memorial Library
                  728 State Street
                  Madison, WI 53706-1494

Deadlines are April 1 and October 1 each year.
Applications must be on paper, neither FAX nor email applications
are acceptable.

* * * *

Jill Rosenshield, Associate Curator, Dept. of (Rare and) Special
Collections, 976 Memorial Library  608/265-2750 (with answering
machine) or Dept. Phone: 608/262-3243 Internet: rosen@doit.wisc.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:40>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sat Jul 13 15:30:43 1996

Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 16:30:38 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: U. Texas paleontology web site (fwd from nhcoll-l)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

--begin forwarded message--------------

Date: Tue, 09 Jul 1996 11:07:50 -0500
From: "Melissa C. Winans" <mcwinans@mail.utexas.edu>
To: "Nat. Hist. Coll. LISTSERV" <nhcoll-l@ucmp1.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: Univ. Texas Vertebrate Paleontology WWW

At long last, and with very generous financial assistance from the dean of
the College of Natural Sciences, the University of Texas Vertebrate
Paleontology & Radiocarbon Laboratory has made it onto the Web.  Our URL is:

        http://www.utexas.edu/research/vprl

Initial offerings include information about both labs, links to their staff
and students (both current and former), a searchable account of sample
requirements and pretreatment techniques for various types of radiocarbon
samples, and a modest-sized test of a searchable version of the lab's
vertebrate fossil databases.
****************************************************************
Melissa C. Winans, Collection Manager (mcwinans@mail.utexas.edu)
Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory      Phone: 512-471-6087
J.J. Pickle Research Campus               Fax: 512-471-5973
University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712

--end forwarded message----------------

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:41>From dasher@netcom.com Fri Jul 12 23:25:26 1996

Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 21:25:20 -0700
From: dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood)
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Linguistic & Biological analogies?

Jeremy C. Ahouse wrote
: . . . . This is the adaptationist program as applied to languages,
: requiring . . . c) a nonpurposive "sorting" mechanism (Amundson 1989).

Can you elaborate a bit on "sorting"?

Anton Sherwood   *\\*   +1 415 267 0685   *\\*   DASher@netcom.com

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:42>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sat Jul 13 15:47:34 1996

Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 16:33:32 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Mailing list on Roman web sites (fwd)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

--begin forwarded message--------------

Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 05:38:31 -0500
From: Bill Thayer <petworth@SUBA.COM>
Subject: Roman Web Sites: a mailinglist

---------Begging your indulgence for the inevitable cross-posting---------

  +  Barring serious objections, this announcement will be repeated
          on BRITARCH, CLASSICS, Latin-L, LT-ANTIQ and NUMISM-L
           about every other month, to let newcomers to these
     lists know of the existence of this Roman antiquity resource.

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

"RomanSites-L" is a mailing list for sharing Web sites of interest to
students of ancient Rome, i.e., from the Etruscans to roughly 476 AD.
Topics follow the Roman content of the Web at large, and thus tend to the
archaeological, but the list does cover anything Roman, including texts,
philology and history.

Roughly 600 sites, few found elsewhere at the time of posting, were
reported in the list's 6 months. Traffic is about two 20K postings a week.
The list currently has over 550 subscribers.

The main aim of RomanSites-L is to connect new, obscure or unpublicised
sites to the main Roman subject tree as embodied in ROMARCH, Rassegna, the
Australian National University, Classics & Mediterranean Archaeology and
other key sites.

Some of the sites are small or near-trivial, but others, surprisingly, are
of some importance. I actually access and scan for content every site
posted, and revisit and update previously posted sites.

Finally, the highly condensed postings are designed to provide a variety of
useful and searchable information about site quality, access & problems;
photograph vs. text content; unusual items; the best search words to use
for sites not in English, etc; and a fair attempt is made to index the
contents of each site: see sample below.

To subscribe, send:

       SUBSCRIBE RomanSites-L

to

       petworth@suba.com

i.e., to me.

***Please*** put "Roman_Sites-L" in your message; for a while I was running
2 other mailinglists, and I may do so again!

If your subscription has gone thru properly, it will be confirmed by your
receiving within 24 hours:

    1. the usual "Welcome" message with list subscription syntax etc.
    2. a Guide to making the best use of the postings.
    3. complete "back-issues" collated into a geographically ordered list.
       This is about 600 sites taking 400K in 31 pieces of e-mail.

A sample posting can be viewed under ROMARCH at

        http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfoss/thayer.html

through the kind courtesy of Dr. Pedar W. Foss, to whom thanks.

One more resource out there!

Bill Thayer (Chicago, USA)
****************************************
Magnae rei quantulumcunque possideris,
fuisse participem, non minima gloria est.
       Columella, de re rustica, 11.1.12

--end forwarded message----------------

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:43>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sat Jul 13 16:40:52 1996

Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 17:40:47 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: gaps in evolutionary design? (fwd)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

I think the listserv software is still not working correctly and some
messages aren't getting through to the list.  I don't think the following
from Stan Kulikowski made it through; if it has already gotten to some
people I apologize for the duplication.

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

--begin forwarded message--------------

Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 13:05:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: stan kulikowski ii <STANKULI%UWF.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: gaps in evolutionary design?
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu

  i am not sure how to phrase this question.  it comes from a dream i
had about the stupidly centralized technology but otherwise humanoid
aliens in _independence day_ movie.  are there gaps in the designs of
evolution which happened here but may not have happened elsewhere?  i
do not think i am only referring to missing ancestral lines due to
extinction events, but whole logical concepts of design which never
seemed to happen.

  here are some examples.

  buckminster fuller once taught a seminar in my graduate school.  in
it he identified that the basic element of architecture is a tripod.
the simplest free standing structure.  now if you include the ground
as a necessity in providing a foundation of the structure, the basic
element is actually a pyramid shape, composed of subunits of
force-resistant triangles. from here is it is a matter of playing
with these elements before you discover geodesic domes which he was
so famous for.  he made it sound simple.  the discovery of fullerenes
a few years back show these structures existent in chemistry.

  why is it that a basic element of architecture is not so obvious in
evolutionary forms?  are there (were there) tripod structured
lifeforms?  i assume they would show some trilateral symmetry rather
than the usual bilateral forms which we see in our advanced
lifeforms.  maybe some diatoms... i can not recall the variety of
their shell patterns.

  another example i recall hearing about: a free rotating axle.  this
is a very useful and simple design in technology for structural
movement.  yet i had a professor once tell me that the flagella of
protozoans were the closest to a rotating structure in biology.  i
have always assumed free rotation would cause difficulties in
nutrient supply if the axle were a living mass, but secretion around
inclusion masses (like the pearl in a clam) show that bearing like
shapes can be produced and regulated like inert shell growth.  is
there some reason axles have not developed a utility in evolutionary
forms?

  so beside the scarcity of basic structural elements like tripods
and axles, are there other fundamental design elements that have not
been exploited by terrestrial evolution?  i hope this question is not
embarassingly naive to you all.
                               stan

                                           stankuli@UWF.cc.UWF.edu
       lacrima nihil citius arescit
       nothing dries quicker than tears
            -- Cicero _de Inventione Rhetorica_ i 69

--end forwarded message----------------

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:44>From jsl@rockvax.rockefeller.edu Sat Jul 13 17:03:16 1996

To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: gaps in evolutionary design?
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 18:09:11 EDT
From: Joshua Lederberg <jsl@rockvax.rockefeller.edu>

Responding to:
<<<<
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 13:05:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: stan kulikowski ii <STANKULI%UWF.BITNET@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: gaps in evolutionary design?
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu

aliens in _independence day_ movie.  are there gaps in the designs of
evolution which happened here but may not have happened elsewhere?
>>>>

<<<<
  so beside the scarcity of basic structural elements like tripods
and axles, are there other fundamental design elements that have not
been exploited by terrestrial evolution?
>>>>>

In fact the flagella of *bacteria*, not protozoa, are rooted in rotating
axles!  You'll see something like tripods in the root support of
Pandanus trees.   Tetrahedral Carbon atoms, and "cubane, prismane"
preceded buckyballs.

It is easy to dream up biochemical pathways that "might have happened"
-- then sometimes we find they have; or discover reasons why they
would not be competitive.  Outstanding example:  why just the 20
(+/-) standard amino acids in the repertoire that matches the
genetic code.  If that is not fundamental enough; then would
sulfonic or phosphonic analogues of amino acids match your
definition of "fundamental design"; if not, what would?

The inverted universe, D- systematically substituted for L-
amino acids probably should!   Big arguments, but I suggest that
was an accidental fluctuation, hard to get out of once started
on its way.   Bruce Merrifield has synthesized a D-analog enzyme
and showed it works just as expected (It better had!!)

For possible biological worlds, see:

121   Lederberg J.
Signs of Life: criterion system of exobiology
Nature 207: 9-13. (1965)

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:45>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Jul 14 12:04:52 1996

Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 13:04:48 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: July 14 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

JULY 14 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1454: ANGELO POLIZIANO or POLITIAN is born at Montepulciano, Tuscany.
Politian's intellect and skill with languages will be recognized early in his
youth, and he will be sent to Florence to study Greek and Latin.  His clever
poems and epigrams will win him admittance to the household of Lorenzo de'
Medici, who will support his scholarship for many years.  Politian will travel
widely in Italy collecting and studying Classical manuscripts, and he will
come to be one of the most influential scholars and teachers of the Italian
Renaissance.  Through critical study of the many copies of Cicero's _Epistulae
ad familiares_, Politian will establish a clear sequence of transmission of
the text, in which most of the extant manuscripts derive from an ancestral
copy made for Coluccio Salutati in 1392, a manuscript which was itself the
descendant of another manuscript that had been found in the cathedral library
of Vercelli.  Politian's methods of reconstructing textual histories will not
be improved upon until the nineteenth century.

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.
Send the message INFO DARWIN-L to listserv@raven.cc.ukans.edu or connect to
the Darwin-L Web Server (http://rjohara.uncg.edu) for more information.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:46>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Sun Jul 14 12:20:29 1996

Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 13:09:22 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: New volume on scientific illustration
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

A new volume on scientific illustration that may be of interest to Darwin-L
members has recently appeared:

  Baigrie, Brian S., ed.  1996.  _Picturing Knowledge: Historical and
    Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science_.  Toronto:
    University of Toronto Press.

Several papers in the volume relate to the historical sciences.  One of
my papers is reprinted ("Representations of the natural system in the
nineteenth century"), and there is a paper by Stephanie Moser on
illustrations of human evolution ("Visual representations in archaeology:
depicting the missing-linnk in human origins").  Michael Ruse has a paper
in the volume on Sewall Wright's diagrams of "adaptive landscapes", as well.

Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner

Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)      |
Cornelia Strong College, 100 Foust Building  |  http://rjohara.uncg.edu
University of North Carolina at Greensboro   |  http://strong.uncg.edu
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.      |

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:47>From elanier@crl.nmsu.edu Sat Jul 13 17:38:19 1996

Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 16:38:02 -0700
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: elanier@crl.nmsu.edu (Ellery Lanier)
Subject: bucky fuller

>  so beside the scarcity of basic structural elements like tripods
>and axles, are there other fundamental design elements that have not
>been exploited by terrestrial evolution?  i hope this question is not
>embarassingly naive to you all.
>                               stan

Stan,
Not only was your post not naive, it was really to the point. Only I don't
have time to respond right now. Give me a few weeks.

But for the present, let me tell you that there is a vast literature on
your questions. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson "On Growth and Form". is a good
example.
A beautiful exposition of these concepts is contained in a small book
Plants as Inventors by Raoul France, published in 1923. It may be available
through Interlibrary Loan. The fundamental unit of life, the cell, is also
made up of triangulated geodesic structures.The basic concept was stated by
Pierre Maupertuis in 1744 in his paper on Least Effort, that is a now a
foundation structure for quantum mechanics. An equivalent concept in
psychology was published in 1973 by William T. Powers, called Behavior-the
Control of Perception.

Ellery                        elanier@crl.nmsu.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:48>From rmccalli@sunmuw1.muw.edu Sat Jul 13 22:16:52 1996

Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 22:21:33 -0500
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: rmccalli@sunmuw1.muw.edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Subject: Re: linguistic & biological evolution

I've found the genes and language thread fascinating and, being neither a
biologist nor a linguist, I'll risk putting my foot in my mouth with a few
observations.
        Re the transition from Sicily to Portugal: this is generally true
as long as you stay in the countryside and keep away from the Basque
country. But given that, with patience, Portuguese and Sicilians should be
able to understand one another, albeit with a degree of difficulty, this
may not be the best example. But the point is well taken.
        But if you go the other direction, the same thing can not be said.
As a fluent speaker of Spanish, I had no problems with Portuguese or
Italian. French was problematic and Rumanian is very difficult--both for
reasons that seem to mirror genetics.
        Italian, Provencal and the Ibero-Romance languages, as has been
pointed out, form a "genetic continuum."
        French--and other standardized languages, on the other hand, might
be compared to a "domesticated breed," in that an effort has been made to
fix its characteristics so that, obstensibly, its genetic evolution has
been frozen in time. In the case of French, the intermediate "breeds"--the
patois-- are in the process of being wiped out. Thus, a Spanish speaker
from Barcelona and a French speaker from Montpellier probably won't be able
to understand one another without great difficulty even though they live a
couple of hours or so apart.
        Before someone accuses me of inventing the concept of "linguistic
neoteny," :> I also have to mention that French has received extensive
influence from non-Romance language groups.
        This leads us to Rumananian, and to a serious difference betweens
biological and linguistic evolution. Like Romance and Slavic, cats and dogs
are distantly related. Unlike cats and dogs, who cannot share genetic
material, Romance and Slavic were able to mix to form Rumanian, whose
vocabulary is about a third Slavic and whose phonology and morphology show
a strong influence from neighboring non-Romance languages.
        Any language can form a pidgin or creole with any other language.
Ibero-Romance and West African languages (inter alia) formed Papiamentu,
whose vocabulary is largely Ibero-Romance and whose grammar is largely West
African. English and New Guinea languages formed Tok Pisin, and so on. But
we don't see any offspring of dogs and chickens walking around.
        Languages, of course, are the product of a single species.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:49>From mayerg@cs.uwp.edu Sun Jul 14 14:04:44 1996

Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 14:04:41 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gregory Mayer <mayerg@cs.uwp.edu>
Subject: Gaps in design: tripods, axles
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu

	I can't recall any earthly examples, but since your question was
inspired by _Independence Day_, it might not be quite out of place to
point out that the Martians of Wells' _War of the Worlds_ (inspiration
for much of _Independence Day_) used walking tripod fighting machines as
their chief vehicles of war.  I don't know if such machines are
functionally reasonable.  I should think that R. McNeill Alexander has
considered the problem of limb number from a functional point of view,
but I have no references to hand; good functional morphologists have
always followed Eddington's maxim to consider what doesn't exist in
attempting to understand that which does.

	As far as axles go, the great difficulty is that an axle is
actually physically disconnected from the rest of the entity to which it
pertains, and so for more complex organisms there are difficulties in
maintianing material and information flow (e.g. blood, nerves) to a part
which spins round without twisting the pipes and wires.  Nonetheless,
bdelloid rotifers have a pair of ciliated discs at their anterior end
which whirl round and round, and give them the common name of wheel
animalcules.  I don't know enough details of rotifer anatomy to say how
closely this could be thought of as a wheel and axle.  There is a
retractor muscle attached to each disc; perhaps this muscle simply twists
as the disc spins, and then untwists as the disc spins the other way.

Gregory C. Mayer
mayerg@cs.uwp.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:50>From jaakko.hyvonen@utu.fi Sun Jul 14 12:49:09 1996

To: Darwin-L@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: jaakko.hyvonen@utu.fi (Jaakko =?iso-8859-1?Q?Hyv=F6nen?= )
Subject: teaching cladistics
Date: 	Sun, 14 Jul 1996 20:48:50 +0300

Dear Colleagues, a couple of years ago there was a thread in this group on
teaching cladistics. It's again time to start preparations for the fall
semester and I'd like to start this discussion again. Any new ideas how to
teach these things? I'm  especially interested to learn about experiences
you have had with first year students, pros and cons in the nuts and bolts
approach etc.
This will be fourth time I'll be teaching these things, each time for
different kind of audience. Most rewarding it has been for graduate
students who were really motivated to learn, most frustrating for students
specializing in other fields of biology with only marginal interest on the
topic. I would guess it would be a real challenge to teach first year
students (first time for me) because, at least here in Finland, high school
textbooks give no idea whatsoever about modern systematics. But naturally
that can be seen also as a benefit, you have "tabula rasa", no need for
re-orientation, cleaning away bad old habits.

Best regards to all
Jaakko Hyv=F6nen
jaakko.hyvonen@utu.fi

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:51>From JAINN@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu Sat Jul 13 17:44:52 1996

Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 17:46:54 -0500
From: Neeraj Jain <JAINN@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu>
Subject: Re: gaps in evolutionary design? (fwd)
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu

On 7/13/96 stan kulikowski ii wrote:

>   buckminster fuller once taught a seminar in my graduate school.  in
> it he identified that the basic element of architecture is a tripod.
> the simplest free standing structure.

>  why is it that a basic element of architecture is not so obvious in
>evolutionary forms?  are there (were there) tripod structured
>lifeforms?

An interesting question. Recently I was wondering why the normal posture of
a fish is not belly up. Definetly it is more stable in water given that a
dead fish floats that way.

Life *as we know it* is not really looking for rigidity, stablity, stasis
and immobility at the individual level. A pyramid shaped organism might be
the most stable stucture, it would also be one that is most difficult to
move or bend. If I were pyramid shaped, I would hate to be toppled over by
an enemy ('turned turtle' is the first example that comes to mind).
Trees do tend to use structural elements closer to tripod for stability.
Cross section of the trunk closer to ground for a number of big tree
species would be more like many pointed star.

-neeraj

(Neeraj Jain, Ph.D.)
Department of Psychology
301 Wilson Hall
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37240

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:52>From s-mufwene@uchicago.edu Mon Jul 15 07:09:13 1996

Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 07:08:51 -0500 (CDT)
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: Salikoko Mufwene <s-mufwene@uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: linguistic & biological evolution

At 10:21 PM 7/13/96 -0500, you wrote:

>        Any language can form a pidgin or creole with any other language.
>Ibero-Romance and West African languages (inter alia) formed Papiamentu,
>whose vocabulary is largely Ibero-Romance and whose grammar is largely West
>African. English and New Guinea languages formed Tok Pisin, and so on. But
>we don't see any offspring of dogs and chickens walking around.

     Part of what you say about the structure of Papiamentu and Tok Pisin is
a myth. West Africa is a heterogeneous linguistic world! Even if one could
assume that the structure of pidgins and creoles consisted of vocabulary
from one language and grammar from another, it would be so difficult to make
a convincing case by invoking generalized grammatical input from such a
heterogeneous lot of languages. The other part of the story is that
Papiamentu shares a number of principles with nonstandard Portuguese and
Spanish, as well as with some (West)African languages, but this is like a
child sharing features with their father and mother, some of them more or
less the same for that matter. There are a number of unanswered questions
about how pidgins and creoles developed their grammatical systems. Matters
of the vocabulary have been relatively clearer than those of the grammar so far.

>        Languages, of course, are the product of a single species.

    It really depends on how you want to talk about this. You might also
argue that birds belong to the same species. Different (kinds of) languages
differ from each other like different (kinds of) birds differ from each
other, or perhaps, more adequately, like different canine subspecies do. I
think the main difference between other species and humans is that humans
cross racial and ethnic boundaries in their interactions, up to mating
practices, more easily. This relative lack of constraints, compared to other
species, accounts for all sorts of genetic and cultural mixing/hybridization
(of the more obvious kind?) among humans, and this includes the
pidgin/creole phenomenon. But even at this level, there are some differences
between humans and other species. In the particular case of language, I
think there is a factor of choice in the selection of vocabulary (for
pidgins and creoles at least--but some creolists may disagree with me on
this), but there is little deliberate choice with regard to grammar. Some of
us are still trying to figure out how grammars may develop from mixed pools
of competing features, and under what specific kinds of constraints. So, if
dogs and wolfs, or perhaps just different canine subspecies, were raised
together and could interbreed without genetic constraints, it would be
interesting to see what genetic and cultural changes obtain in such a mixed
population. This would be an interesting  way of comparing language and species.

Sali.
**************************************************************
Salikoko S. Mufwene                     s-mufwene@uchicago.edu
University of Chicago                            (312)702-8531
Department of Linguistics                   Fax: (312)702-9861
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
**************************************************************

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:53>From erast@park.tartu.ee Mon Jul 15 07:19:20 1996

Date: Mon, 15 Jul 96 15:23:07 +0200
From: "Erast Parmasto" <erast@park.tartu.ee>
To: Darwin-L@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: teaching cladistics

I taught "Theory and methods of biotaxonomy" in Tartu University several
years, under different titles. It included chapters (lectures) on
classification in general, on species and other taxa, on characters and
homology, on phenetics, cladistic and "evolutionary taxonomy" approaches.
Now I had to stop lecturing (too old for Tartu University), but in August
a short textbook will be printed in Estonian (117 pages including index &
a short index of terms in English). If anybody wants to have a copy [in
Estonian!], let me know.
	It may be a good idea to teach cladistics to the first-year students,
but unhappily many of them have not seen in nature _what a species is_,
and what is _character_. The minimal experience needed is some practice in
identifying species using any key-book.
	Another thing to make cladistics understandable and interesting is some
knowledge on _scientific methodology_ including the principle of
parsimony, something on _hypotheses and theories_, on possibility (let us
hope there is some) to evaluate hypotheses: are they scientific or not,
etc. When students have some ideas on these interesting problems,
cladistics is a field of biology, an example where and how the general
principles of science are employed. Accordingly, it may be interesting
also for students not specializing in taxonomy.
	Happily I had the possibility to read to the first-year students a short
(20-24 hours) course on methodology of science (under different headings -
sometimes as a course "What is science", sometimes as "Scientific way of
thinking"). I was telling about anything they lacked in our gymnasiums -
including some bits of logics, of statistical approach, on modelling as a
way to study all natural phenomena, on semiotics, even on differences
between and common features of science, religion and arts.
	After this, in the course of taxonomy, students of2nd, 3rd and 4th year
of study as well as Master Degree students participated. Practical works
were done using their own datamatrices, sometimes compiled using key-books
(e.g., on Estonian Trifolium, Geranium etc. species). There are
difficulties with software here (no money!), but after all every student
used PAUP 3 on my computer not less than half an hour - simply to see how
does it work.
	In both courses I had some interested students from other departments,
too - including psychologists, geologists and forestry ingeneers.
	Shortly: I think that cladistics may be acceptable for all students if
and when 1) they have had the possibility to see and study species and
characters (the simplest way is to practice identification using
key-books); 2) they have studied what is science, scientific methods,
scientific thinking. However, p.2 may be taught as the introductory part
(possibly one third, not less) of the course of cladistics.
	However, due attention must be paid to phenetics and "evolutionary
taxonomy": cladistic methodology will be better understandable when
compared with these approaches. It is easy to make understandable for any
student that phenetics is a good way to ordinate observed data, and
cladistics is a way to proof scientific hypotheses.
   Best wishes to all,
	 Erast Parmasto
	 erast@park.tartu.ee
	    From 1 Aug: e.parmasto@zbi.ee

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:54>From ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu Mon Jul 15 09:39:53 1996

Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 10:40:23 -0400
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu (Darwin List)
From: ahouse@hydra.rose.brandeis.edu (Jeremy C. Ahouse)
Subject: evolution and maintenance of virulence

We had a discussion a few weeks ago that touched on evolution of diseases.
At the time I mentioned

Bull, J. J. (1994). Virulence. Evolution 48, 1423-1437.

Nesse, R.M. and G.C. Williams (1994) "Why we get sick: the new science of
Darwinian medicine" New York:Times Books.

Ewald, P.W. (1994) "Evolution of infectious disease" Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

        I failed to include:
Bull, J. J. (1995). (R)Evolutionary Medicine. Evolution 49(6), 1296-1298.
(A review of Nesse and Williams)

        I also came across the following.

Levin, Bruce R. (1996) The Evolution and Maintenance of Virulence in
Microparasites. Emerging Infectious Diseases v2 n2.

        is found on the web at:
        <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol2no2/levin.htm>

        note: the starting point for CDC's emerging diseases page is
        <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/eid.htm>

        - Jeremy

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:55>From Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca Mon Jul 15 10:34:13 1996

Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 08:34:07 -0700 (PDT)
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: Michael_Kenny@sfu.ca (Michael Kenny)
Subject: Re: DARWIN-L digest 643

Since someone mentioned the Martian tripod fighting machines in the
discussion concerning biological form and structure, it might be of
interest to quote from Wells' discussion of Martian evolution (and the War
of the Worlds is a very evolutionary book. Given the 'nebular hypothesis'
of cosmogony, Mars is an older 'dying' world, dying from internal cooling
and presumably from depletion of resources; hence the invasion sunward. If
we are inclined to think ill of the Martians, says Wells, perhaps we should
think of what we did to the indigenous inhabitants of Tasmania).

As for evolution proper, Wells represents what the Martians did as an
extention of their own structural biology to the construction of their
machines, becoming -- with the Lamarckian withering of their physical
capacities - nothing much more than the brains therein (the same logic is
applied to the fate of the industrial proletariat in The Time Machine; they
become troglodyte beasts). At any rate, here is Wells:

"We men, with our bicycles and road-skates, our Lilienthal
soaring-machines, our guns and sticks and so forth, are just in the
beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked out. They have
become practically mere brains, wearing different bodies according to their
needs just as men wear suits of clothes and take a bicycle in a hurry or an
umbrella in the wet. And of their appliances, perhaps nothing is more
wonderful to a man than the curious fact that what is the dominant feature
of almost all human devices in mechanism is absent - the *wheel* is absent;
among all the things they brought to earth there is no trace or suggestion
of their use of wheels. And in this connection it is curious to remark that
even on this earth Nature has never hit upon the wheel, or has preferred
other expedients to its development. And not only did the Martians not know
of (which is incredible), or abstain from, the wheel, but in their
apparatus singularly little use is made of the fixed pivot, or relatively
fixed pivot, with circular motions thereabout confined to one plane. Almost
all the joints of the machinery present a complicated system of sliding
parts moving over small but beautifully curved friction bearings. And while
upon this matter of detail, it is remarkable that the long leverages of
their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of
the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn
closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of electricity.
In this way the curious parallelism to animal motions, which was so
striking and disturbing to the human beholder was attained" (1898).

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:56>From snoe@ivy.tec.in.us Mon Jul 15 11:04:04 1996

Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 11:08:20 +0500
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: snoe@ivy.tec.in.us (Stephen Noe)
Subject: Re: gaps in evolutionary design? (fwd)

FYI, insects are double tripod structures.  The locomotive sequence is
alternating tripods, i.e.  right-side front and rear plus left-side middle
legs supporting the body weight, while left-side front and rear plus
right-side middle legs rise and shift positions.
Steve Noe  snoe@ivy.tec.in.us
 Anatomy & Physiology,  Ivy Tech State College Indianapolis, IN

We are not passengers on Spaceship Earth, we are crew,
and it's about time we took our duties seriously.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:57>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Mon Jul 15 21:24:16 1996

Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 22:24:12 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Re: linguistic & biological evolution (fwd)
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

--begin forwarded message--------------

Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 14:21:37 -0500
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: "Margaret E. Winters" <mew1@siu.edu>
Subject: Re: linguistic & biological evolution

I think Rick McCallister makes a very important point about biological and
linguistic evolution when he talks about Rumanian which is a hybrid of
Slavic vocabulary (about 1/3, which is enough to make it difficult reading
for a Romanist who has little or no other Slavic) and Romance grammatical
structure.  In the 19th century, the tree (genealogical) model of language
relationships was challenged by the wave model, in great part because a tree
model did not allow for further influence after the split of a node into two
or more daughters.  I thought the analogy to cats and dogs was interesting -
is it a good one?  This is not to question Rick McC. from any position of
knowledge, but asked from the point of view of a totally ignorant reader.

Cheers,
Margaret
-----------------------
Dr. Margaret E. Winters
Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (Budget and Personnel)
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Carbondale, IL  62901

tel: (618) 536-5535
fax: (618) 453-3340
e-mail: mew1@siu.edu

--end forwarded message----------------

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:58>From rmccalli@sunmuw1.muw.edu Mon Jul 15 22:57:50 1996

Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 23:05:36 -0500
To: mew1@siu.edu
From: rmccalli@sunmuw1.muw.edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Subject: Re: linguistic & biological evolution (fwd)
Cc: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu

I appreciate your comments, please keep me in mind the next time you have a
high paying opening in Latin American Literature :P

Seriously, your point about the tree model is well taken in that, or so it
seems to me, that it emphasizes "purity" to the exclusion of other
considerations. As a lit. person who's read too much theory, I could add
comments about thicker branches versus dead wood (extinct languages),
higher vs. lower branches but I'm afraid a deconstructionist might whip out
a chainsaw

Rick Mc Callister

>In the 19th century, the tree (genealogical) model of language
>relationships was challenged by the wave model, in grat part because a tree
>model did not allow for further influence after the split of a node into two
>or more daughters.
>
>Cheers,
>Margaret

>--end forwarded message----------------

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:59>From dsamorim@usp.br Tue Jul 16 07:23:11 1996

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 09:24:01 -0300
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: Dalton de Souza Amorim <dsamorim@usp.br>
Subject: Re: teaching cladistics

        I read with interest Erast Parmasto's note on teaching cladistics at
the Tartu University. I have taught phylogenetic systematics since 1982 and
I wrote a book on the subject in Portuguese in 1994. I have taught to
students of different levels, including talks in high-school. My experience
says that everyone can understand at least part of the problem, so
first-year students would be able to get quite a lot. Obviously, the
decision concerning to what level to teach depends on what are the purposes
of the course.

        I have a course for graduate students, after which I expect the
students should be able to make actual phylogenetic analyses. For
undergraduate students I have a course for fourth-year students of biology
including phylogenetic systematics and population genetics. However, I
expect that in the near future I leave population genetics alone for the
4th-year students and begin teaching phylogenetics to first-year students.
The main reason is that if they understand the phylogenetic approach right
on the beginning, they will be able to learn all biology from a historical
perspective. I was considerably upset many years ago when I first learned
phylogenetic systematics just after I was graduate: I realized that I would
have understood (and appreciated) much better my entire biology course if I
was able to see its content historically (i.e., characters and taxa).

        I also teach "higher invertebrates" (basically, Metameria) for
2nd-year students, and I always use a phylogenetic approach to "hold"
information. Teaching (and learning) zoology --as far as I know, always a
problem-- became an interesting subject for both students and teacher. Not
any more boring classes on names of taxa changing all the time and names of
structures changing or repeating "hazardly" along the course. The
information fits in a hierarchical, historical strutucture.

        You have a good point when you refer to the need of some experience
on "conceptual tools" to deal with the phylogenetic question. Certainly if
one has more information he or she will be able to get more of the answers.
However, my teaching experience seems to show that basic information
(acquired in high schools and Zoos) about biological diversity is sufficient
to allow that first-year students understand the problem. Again, we come to
the question of what are the main goals of each course. If it is a detailed
understanding of the phylogenetic problem and method, then the course should
be given latter. On the other hand, if it is the development of a way of
organizing the biological information to be achieved latter in the course,
then it should be given in the first-year. Certainly courses with different
goals should have different emphases, approaches and contents. Actually a
course right in the beginning would have as the principal goal to break the
platonic/aristotelian view of the biological diversity nearly everyone has
when get to the university.

        Cheers,

Dalton.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:60>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu Tue Jul 16 23:08:27 1996

Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 00:08:15 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Historical linguistics and evolution: where might we go from here?
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

The relations between historical linguistics and evolution are a welcome
and perennial topic of discussion on Darwin-L, and this pleases me very much
because it is just the sort of thing that Darwin-L was created to explore.
I have learned a great deal from these discussions and I hope other people
have as well.  I am wondering if what we have learned might at this point be
put into a more conventional form via publication, and my question aloud
to the group is, what form might such a publication take?  If one were to
write a paper outlining the parallels (and lack of parallels) that we have
discussed, where would it be best to publish it?  If it went into a journal
like _Evolution_ then it would reach a wide audience of evolutionary
biologists, but it is unlikely that many linguists would ever see it.
Likewise if it were to go in a linguistics journal such as _Language_: only
half the intended audience would see it.  There are a few interdisciplinary
journals, but they tend not to have very wide readership.  Perhaps some kind
of simultaneous publication could be sought in two different journals?  This
is rare in scholarly publication, but in this case it might be justified.
Or perhaps a true generalist journal like _Science_ or _Proceedings of the
Royal Society_ would be appropriate; anything in Science has to be very
short, however.

In any event, I do not have any such manuscript to submit at the moment.
I am just thinking aloud and soliciting suggestions for how such a manuscript
might best reach all of its desired audiences.

Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner

Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)      |
Cornelia Strong College, 100 Foust Building  |  http://rjohara.uncg.edu
University of North Carolina at Greensboro   |  http://strong.uncg.edu
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.      |

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:61>From kent@darwin.eeb.uconn.edu Wed Jul 17 06:44:13 1996

Date: Wed, 17 Jul 96 07:43:56 EDT
From: kent@darwin.eeb.uconn.edu (Kent E. Holsinger)
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Historical linguistics and evolution: where might we go from here?

>>>>> "Bob" == DARWIN  <DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu> writes:

    Bob> The relations between historical linguistics and evolution
    Bob> are a welcome and perennial topic of discussion on Darwin-L,
    Bob> and this pleases me very much because it is just the sort of
    Bob> thing that Darwin-L was created to explore.  I have learned a
    Bob> great deal from these discussions and I hope other people
    Bob> have as well.

I think it's time for our annual thank you to Bob for organizing
DARWIN-L and keeping it alive.

    Bob> I am wondering if what we have learned might
    Bob> at this point be put into a more conventional form via
    Bob> publication, and my question aloud to the group is, what form
    Bob> might such a publication take?  If one were to write a paper
    Bob> outlining the parallels (and lack of parallels) that we have
    Bob> discussed, where would it be best to publish it?  If it went
    Bob> into a journal like _Evolution_ then it would reach a wide
    Bob> audience of evolutionary biologists, but it is unlikely that
    Bob> many linguists would ever see it.  Likewise if it were to go
    Bob> in a linguistics journal such as _Language_: only half the
    Bob> intended audience would see it.  There are a few
    Bob> interdisciplinary journals, but they tend not to have very
    Bob> wide readership.  Perhaps some kind of simultaneous
    Bob> publication could be sought in two different journals?  This
    Bob> is rare in scholarly publication, but in this case it might
    Bob> be justified.  Or perhaps a true generalist journal like
    Bob> _Science_ or _Proceedings of the Royal Society_ would be
    Bob> appropriate; anything in Science has to be very short,
    Bob> however.

What an interesting idea! I too have learned a lot from our
discussions over the past few years, and I think those unfortunates
who don't subscribe to DARWIN-L might learn something from them,
too. Where to publish such a paper, that's the rub.

_Science_ or _Nature_ would be possibilities *only* if the paper
appeared as one of the longer 4-6 page articles. _Proceedings of the
Royal Society_ is an interesting idea, but I like the idea of pursuing
simultaneous publication in a mainline evolution journal, like
_Evolution_ (_Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society_ would be
another possibility), and a mainline linguistics journal, like
_Language_. Another possibility would be a single publication in a
philosophical journal (we'd have to focus more on parallels in the
logic of explanation and similar topics for this) like _Philosophy of
Science_ or _Synthese_. The problem with this last approach is that
few evolutionary biologists (I don't know about linguists) would ever
see the paper, unless we mailed reprints directly to them. All in all,
simultaneous publication in two mainline journals representing the two
fields seems like the best alternative to me.

-- Kent

--
Kent E. Holsinger                Kent@Darwin.EEB.UConn.Edu
-- Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
-- University of Connecticut, U-43
-- Storrs, CT   06269-3043

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:62>From mew1@siu.edu Wed Jul 17 13:59:49 1996

Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 13:57:11 -0500
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: "Margaret E. Winters" <mew1@siu.edu>
Subject: Re: Historical linguistics and evolution: where might we go
  from here?

As I read Bob O'Hara's suggestion of a paper on linguistic and biological
change, I too thought of simultaneous publication - then I flipped the
screen and saw it was suggested as part of the posting.  I suspect that some
journal editors might be interested in principle in a double publication
under the circumstances (Brian Joseph, if you are reading this, what would
the editors "Diachronica" say, do you think?).  I'd be very happy to join
any group reading and reacting to a draft if such a paper came about.

I'd also like to second Kent Holsinger's thank you to Bob for Darwin-L.  One
of my pleasures during what is often a fairly tedious work day is taking a
minute or two to read postings, even if I don't have time to respond often.
And "Today in the Historical Sciences" is a delight!

Best,
Margaret

-----------------------
Dr. Margaret E. Winters
Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (Budget and Personnel)
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Carbondale, IL  62901

tel: (618) 536-5535
fax: (618) 453-3340
e-mail:	mew1@siu.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:63>From ANNILSSON@vimse.umdc.umu.se Wed Jul 17 15:21:30 1996

Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 22:16:19 +0100 (MET)
From: ANNILSSON@vimse.umdc.umu.se
Subject: artifacts or not
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu

This very rainy summer I had the time to read to very good books: Darwinism
Evolving and Homology, the Hierarchical Basis of Comparative Biology. I
really liked both of them. In the latter Gareth Nelson has a very readable
chapter named Homology and Systematics. One of the points he make is that
we should learn to view ancestral characters as artifacts, as we already
have learned to view ancestral taxa as artefacts. This point gives me no
rest. I would be very glad if someone out there could try to explain it.
What are the consequences and how is this idea related to the ground-plan
concept?

Anders Nilsson, senior lecturer in Zoology
UNiversity of Umeaa, North Sweden.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:64>From ncse@crl.com Wed Jul 17 12:25:39 1996

Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 10:10:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Eugenie C. Scott" <ncse@crl.com>
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Historical linguistics and evolution: where might we go from here?

As the old song goes, "I second the emotion!"  Thanks, Bob, for giving us
all a chance to share in the ideas expressed here.  It's a lot of work,
and we appreciate it.

Eugenie C. Scott

On Wed, 17 Jul 1996, Kent E. Holsinger wrote:

> I think it's time for our annual thank you to Bob for organizing
> DARWIN-L and keeping it alive.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<35:65>From dsamorim@usp.br Wed Jul 17 09:23:32 1996

Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 11:23:17 -0300
To: darwin-l@raven.cc.ukans.edu
From: Dalton de Souza Amorim <dsamorim@usp.br>
Subject: Re: Historical linguistics and evolution: where might we go
  from here?

Dear Bob O'Hara,

	I have included below information concerning the first number of a new
scientific journal published by our Department. The name given to the
journal --Journal of Comparative Biology-- tries to indicate its precise
scope. It is entirely published in English and intends to be an
international journal, in the sense that =93international=94 could have=
 nowadays
in the scientific community. It differs from most of the present biological
scientific journals in the sense that it is not dedicated to a single major
taxon nor to a single source of biological information --ethology,
morphology, physiology, cytology, etc. It somehow overlaps with Cladistics,
Syst. Biol., Evolution and Zoologische Zeitschrift f=FCr Evolution und
Systematik, but each of these journals has historically had a bias
--population genetics, systematics, numerical taxonomy, etc. Also, these
journals have been read mainly by systematists and geneticists. The
J.Comp.Biol. intends to publish theoretical, methodological, and historical
papers; as well, it intends publish articles that employ the phylogenetic
approach for the understanding of the distribution of any kind of biological
information within clades. In this sense, it should put in contact not only
systematists, geneticists, and philosophers of biology, but also
physiologists, ethologists, molecular biologists, histologists,
psychologists, linguists, etc.

	The first numbers of the journal will be freely distributed for
institutions around the world. Those interested in having their institutions
included in our mailing-list should contact me on my personal e-mail
(dsamorim@usp.br) as soon as possible. If I cannot send it to all
institutions, I will try my best to have some institution close to you
reached. Personal signatures can be made from now --please contact me by
e-mail or snail-mail. The first two years will have two numbers each;=
 from
the third year on, four numbers per year should be published. Detailed
information on how to submit papers are given below. Specialists in each
area from different countries have been selected to referee submit papers.
The abstracts of the first number are included in another message.

	I am not sure if the J.Comp.Biol. would be the best place to harbor the
papers on **historical linguistics and evolution**, mainly because it is
still a not well known journal. It could be, however, the journal that more
closely corresponds to an interface between different areas of research,
including linguistics. If there is any interest in it, we could consider the
publication of a special number on the subject. The usual structure of the
journal could be used --to invite some special revisionary articles to deal
with methodological, historical, and conceptual problems, and to open the
other sections to discuss general contributions.

Dalton de Souza Amorim
Editor-in-Chief

Journal of Comparative Biology      -   ISSN 1413-5159
Volume 1 - Number 1/2
Content
Note from the editor   1

Invited Revisionary Papers

de Pinna, M. Comparative Biology and Systematics: Some Controversies
in Retrospective   3

Original Articles

Rocha, P.L.B. & C.N. El-Hani. The Description of the Evolutionary
Process as a Metaphor of Phylogenetic Systematic   17

Cruz-Landim, C.;  R.L. Silva-de-Moraes &  J.E. Serrao.
Ultrastructural Aspects of  Epithelial Renewal in the Midgut of Adult
Bee Workers (Hymenoptera, Apidae)   29

Gimenez, E.A.; H. Ferrarezzi & V.A. Taddei. Lingual Morphology and
Cladistic Analysis of the New World Nectar-Feeding Bats (Chiroptera:
Phyllostomidae) 41

Debates

Morrone, J. & E.C. Lopretto. Cladistics of the Family
Trichodactylidae (Crustacea: Decapoda): A Reappraisal    65

Book Review

Schram, F. [on] Ax, 1995. Das System der Metazoa I: ein Lehrbuch der
phylogenetischen Systematik    73

Issued June 25, 1996

Editor-in-Chief:

Dalton de Souza Amorim, Depto. de Biologia - FFCLRP/USP, Av. Bandeirantes
3900, 14040-901 Ribeirao Preto SP, BRAZIL. Fax (55).16.633.5015. e-mail:
dsamorim@usp.br.

Associated editors:

Nelson Bernardi (phylogenetic systematics)
Ricardo Macedo Correa e Castro (zoology)
Fabio de Melo Sene (population genetics)
Hector F. Terenzi (biochemistry)
Ronaldo Zucchi (etology)
Fernando S. Zucoloto (physiology)

Editorial advisory board:
Jose Eduardo Bicudo, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, SP.
M.L. Christoffersen, Universidade Federal da Paraiba, Joao Pessoa.
J. Crisci, Museo de La Plata, La Plata.
D.A. Grimaldi,  American Museum of Natural History, New York.
M. Guimaraes, Universidade Estadual Paulista, Botucatu, SP.
C.J. Humphries, The Natural History Museum, London.
J.C. McNamara, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP.
N. Papavero, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo.
J.R. Pirani, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo.
F.M. Sene, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP.
H.F. Terenzi, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP.
Walter Ribeiro Terra, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, SP.
S.A. Vanin, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo.
R. Vari, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
M. de Vivo, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto.
R. Zucchi, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP.

The Journal of Comparative Biology is a publication of the Departamento de
Biologia, of the Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciencias e Letras de Ribeirao
Preto, of the Universidade de Sao Paulo, financially administrated by the
Fund. de Pesquisas Cientifcas de Ribeirao Preto (FUNPEC). The journal
will be published quarterly (except for the first two years, with two
numbers each), in March, June, September and December (first two years, June
and December). Manuscripts and other correspondence should be sent to the
Editor-in-Chief.

Aims: Comparative Biology in its modern, phylogenetic approach, became the
most important language connecting researchers using different techniques,
working with different parts of biological systems, studying different
taxonomic groups. Many biological journals now encourage papers with
comparative approaches. However, they still have their emphasis on parts of
organisms --chromosomes, brain, etc.-- or on particular taxa --insects, man,
birds, fungus, etc. The Journal of Comparative Biology is entirely dedicated
to papers on any kind of biological structure, from genes to morphology or
behavior, and of any taxon, from bacteria to man, including conceptual
discussions, biogeographical interpretations, and phylogenetic analyses if
they have their focus on a comparative approach. The main purpose of the
Journal is to create a forum to integrate comparative research of all areas.

Scope: The scope of this journal is to cover all aspects of comparative
biology, from molecules to ecosystems, from conceptual issues to
philosophical and historical accounts, and from methodological analysis to
evolutionary synthesis. There is no taxonomic restriction, nor fixed
disciplinary boundaries. Papers integrating comparative biology with the
physico-geo-chemical and social sciences are also welcomed.

Structure: The Journal will have five sections. The first section includes
invited revisionary papers on themes of current interest. The second will
receive original articles that deal with the understanding of the evolution
of biological structures or the study of the phylogeny of groups of
organisms. The third section will receive short notes. The fourth will be a
section for debates on biological concepts, methods, theories, and
evolutionary interpretations. In this section, manuscripts will be
eventually sent to researchers defending alternative points of view, with
space for replies. The fifth will be a book review section.

Frequency: First two years with two numbers per year; four numbers per year
beginning with Volume 3.

Subscriptions (delivery included and no extra charge for supplements):
	- personal in Brazil: R$ 20.00 (students, R$ 10.00);
	- personal in foreign countries: US$ 25.00 (students, US$ 12.50);
	- Institutional in Brazil: R$ 30.00;
	- Institutional in foreign countries: US$ 35.00.

Manuscripts: Manuscripts should be sent in triplicate to the
Editor-in-Chief. It is understood that the papers are original and that they
are not being submitted simultaneously to other journals. The first author
will receive with no charge 100 reprints of the published article.

Instructions to Authors: Manuscripts should be typed on one side of the
page, double space, with ample margin. Front page should include title, name
and address of all authors, including fax or e-mail, a short running title,
an abstract of no more than 200 words and up to 5 keywords. Structure of
papers should contain traditional sections except for conceptual papers.
Heading should not be numbered. Papers should be written in English.
References in the text should include "Author (date)" or "(Author, date)".
The section References should include: names and initials of authors; year
of publication; full title; source; volume number; first and last pages.
Book citations should include publisher and place of publication. For
citation of chapters, add the names and initials of the editors, and first
and last pages of the chapter. References should include only accepted
papers; unpublished information should be otherwise referred to in the text
as "personal communication", "unpublished data or manuscript", etc. Printing
page will be 13.5 x 21.5 cm. The publication of manuscripts larger than 20
pages may be considered. Inclusion of figures should be restricted to a
minimum. Black and white photographs should be glossy prints of high
quality, with correct contrast. Please crop figure to the closest area of
interest. All figures will be scannerized. No proofs will be sent to
authors, since we assume edited copies on disk were already checked. After
having the paper accepted, the authors will be asked to send the manuscript
in a file in a 3'1/2" diskette using a common IBM-compatible word processor
editor.

_______________________________________________________________________________
Darwin-L Message Log 35: 31-65 -- July 1996                                 End