Blog
This is a page where I pretend I have exciting and important things
to say to the world.
9 Oct 2008
Although the online version of the Flora of North America is an excellent resource,
particularly because it is freely available to anyone with an internet connection, it
unfortunately contains a number of errors. I will beging tracking those errors as I
encounter them here.
The main page for the FNA online (http://fna.huh.harvard.edu/, also reachable from
http://fna.org) contains a search box that does not function. The search box within the
pages for individual treatments, however, functions properly.
Amaranthaceae: The entry for Amaranthus arenicola is missing its distribution map.
7 Oct 2008
After an excellent monsoon season it's starting to dry up here in southern New Mexico. On a
couple of recent trips I decided to keep complete lists of plants seen in flower. I
used to do this regularly in Indiana but have not done so much in New Mexico, in part because
the plant diversity seen on an average hike in New Mexico is often great enough that
listing it all can become time-consuming. So without further ado, some plant lists. Plants
are flowering (or either flowering or fruiting in the case of grasses & similar plants)
unless otherwise noted. Plants photographed for the first time are in bold.
Percha Box, Sierra County, 5 Oct 2008:
Amaranthaceae:
Amaranthus palmeri, Amaranthus powellii, Chenopodium cf. fremontii, Froelichia gracilis,
Kraschenninikovia lanata, Salsola tragus.
Asteraceae:
Ambrosia acanthicarpa, Ambrosia monogyra, Artemisia dracunculus, Artemisia ludoviciana,
Baccharis salicifolia, Bahia absinthifolia, Brickellia
cf. rusbyi, Conyza canadensis, Ericameria laricifolia, Gutierrezia microcephala,
Gutierrezia sarothrae, Heliomeris longifolia,
Heterosperma pinnatum, Machaeranthera tanacetifolia, Melampodium leucanthum, Parthenium incanum,
Parthenium integrifolium, Psilostrophe tagetina,
Sanvitalia abertii, Senecio flaccidus, Stephanomeria sp., Thelesperma longipes, Thymophylla
acerosa, Trixis californica, Verbesina encelioides, Xanthisma spinulosa, Zinnia
grandiflora.
Boraginaceae:
Tiquilia canescens (no fls).
Brassicaceae:
Boechera perennans or porphyrea (plants with neither fls nor frt, not properly
identifiable), Sisymbrium irio.
Capparaceae:
Polanisia dodecandra.
Convolvulaceae:
Ipomoea costellata.
Cyperaceae:
Cyperus cf. esculentus, Cyperus squarrosus.
Euphorbiaceae:
Acalypha neomexicana, Chamaesyce albomarginata, Chamaesyce fendleri, Chamaesyce
revoluta, Chamaesyce serpyllifolia, Euphorbia bilobata, Tragia ramosa.
Fabaceae:
Dalea brachyphylla, Dalea formosa, Dalea pogonathera, Dalea wrightii, Hoffmannseggia
drepanocarpa (no fls but some frt), Melilotus alba.
Lamiaceae:
Hedeoma oblongifolium (no fls).
Loasaceae:
Cevallia sinuata.
Malvaceae:
Anoda cristata (frt only), Sida cf. abutifolia, Sphaeralcea cf. incana.
Nyctaginaceae:
Allionia incarnata, Cyphomeris gypsophiloides.
Oleaceae:
Menodora scabra (frt only).
Onagraceae:
Gaura coccinea, Oenothera caespitosa (no fls).
Poaceae:
Achnatherum eminens, Aristida adscensionis, Aristida purpurea, Bothriochloa sp., Bouteloua
curtipendula, Bouteloua
eriopoda, Bouteloua hirsuta, Cenchrus sp., Chloris virgata, Dasyochloa pulchella, Enneapogon
desvauxii, Eragrostis cf. barrelieri (keys to that sp. and has yellow glandular rings
below the nodes, but the inflorescence is more diffuse, larger, etc., than usual for
the species), Eragrostis cilianensis, Eragrostis
cf. intermedia, Eragrostis pectinacea, Eriochloa acuminata, Leptochloa dubia,
Muhlenbergia cf. pauciflora, Muhlenbergia porteri, Panicum cf. bulbosum, Pleuraphis
mutica, Scleropogon
brevifolius, Setaria leucopila, Sporobolus contractus, Sporobolus cryptandrus, Tridens
mutica.
Polygonaceae:
Eriogonum abertianum, Polygonum aviculare.
Pteridaceae:
Argyrochosma limitanea, Astrolepis integerrima, Cheilanthes feei, Cheilanthes eatonii,
Notholaena standleyi.
Rosaceae:
Fallugia paradoxa.
Solanaceae:
Chamaesaracha sordida (no fls), Datura wrightii (old withered fls), Nicotiana trigonophylla,
Solanum rostratum.
Verbenaceae:
Aloysia wrightii.
Zygophyllaceae:
Tribulus terrestris.
Bar Canyon, Organ Mountains, Doña Ana County, 6 Oct 2008:
Amaranthaceae:
Amaranthus palmeri, Froelichia gracilis, Gomphrena nitida, Guilleminea densa (frt only),
Salsola tragus.
Asteraceae:
Acourtia wrightii (frt only), Artemisia ludoviciana, Bahia absinthifolia, Berlandiera lyrata,
Brickellia californica, Brickellia
laciniata, Ericameria laricifolia, Gutierrezia microcephala, Heliomeris longifolia,
Melampodium leucanthum, Parthenium incanum, Parthenium integrifolium, Pectis prostrata (frt
only),
Sanvitalia abertii, Schkuhria pinnata, Senecio flaccidus, Viguiera dentata, Zinnia grandiflora
(few fls left, mostly frt).
Capparaceae:
Polanisia dodecandra.
Convolvulaceae:
Convolvulus equitans, Dichondra brachypoda, Ipomoea costellata, Ipomoea cristulata, Ipomoea
pubescens, Ipomoea purpurea.
Euphorbiaceae:
Acalypha neomexicana, Chamaesyce albomarginata (no fls), Chamaesyce dioica, Chamaesyce fendleri,
Chamaesyce cf. nutans, Phyllanthus polygonoides, Tragia ramosa.
Fabaceae:
Dalea brachyphylla, Dalea wrightii, Macroptilium gibbosifolium, Phaseolus acutifolius
(frt only).
Lamiaceae:
Hedeoma oblogifolium, Salvia subincisa.
Malvaceae:
Sphaeralcea incana.
Nyctaginiaceae:
Allionia incarnata, Boerhavia coccinea, Boerhavia gracillima (one plant), Mirabilis
linearis.
Plantaginaceae:
Castilleja integra, Plantago patagonica.
Poaceae:
Aristida adscensionis, Aristida purpurea, Aristida ternipes, Bothriochloa cf. barbinodis,
Bouteloua curtipendula, Bouteloua eriopoda, Bouteloua
gracilis, Bouteloua hirsuta, Dasyochloa pulchella, Digitaria californica, Enneapogon desvauxii,
Eragrostis cf. intermedia, Eragrostis lehmanniana, Leptochloa dubia, Muhlenbergia emersleyi,
Muhlenbergia porteri, Muhlenbergia sp. (a small, awnless annual), Setaria leucopila.
Polygalaceae:
Polygala barbeyana (frt only).
Polygonaceae:
Eriogonum wrightii.
Pteridaceae:
Astrolepis cochisensis, Cheilanthes eatonii.
Rosaceae:
Fallugia paradoxa.
Verbenaceae:
Aloysia wrightii, Glandularia bipinnatifida.
18 July 2008
Topozone is dead. Long live Topozone! Er, I mean
TopoQuest!
13 July 2008
Continuing with Joko Beck... one of her later chapters in Nothing Special: Living Zen
is entitled "The Natural Man":
"Let's take a look at what we might call 'a natural man'. [...] In the Bible a natural man
would be Adam before he was expelled from the Garden of Eden--that is, before he became
conscious of himself as a separate self. What was that natural man like? What would it be
like to be a natural man?
"STUDENT: A natural man would be full of wonder.
"JOKO: That's true, though he wouldn't be aware that he was full of wonder.
"STUDENT: There would be no sense of separation between himself and the world around him.
"JOKO: That's also true. Again, he would have no awareness of his lack of separation."
What does the word "natural" mean here? And how seriously should we take Joko's
linking of a natural state of affairs with a purely fictional, imagined state? The
situation is complicated by Joko's view that the result of Zen practice is movement towards
a natural state. I can think of
no particular reason to view self-awareness (or awareness generally) as a product of
artifice. Considering our consciousness to be artifical is reasonable if we consider everything
about humans (even those aspects of ourselves that we
presumably had no hand in creating) to be artificial, but under such a view there can be no
such thing as a "natural man". What definitions of the words could cause us to describe
our normal states of mind as "artificial" while describing the results of a conscious attempt to
change our minds in one direction or another as "natural" without resulting in
self-contradiction?
11 July 2008
More thoughts on Joko Beck... within the portion of her message with which I strongly agree,
summarized below as "Pay attention to what you're doing," (perhaps "to what's going on"
would be better), there is nonetheless the rather large problem of how this is best to be
accomplished. The Buddhist approach is of course sitting meditation. The mechanism proposed
for this approach is, so far as I can tell (Buddhist writing does not appear, from my
very limited
experience, to be overly concerned with discussions of mechanism), is that meditation allows
us to become conscious of and eventually control or remove those mental activities which tend to
separate us from direct experience. This certainly makes a good deal of sense, however it
is unclear to me how what the relation of this process to understanding and comprehension
is. Awareness without understanding seems as though it would be rather empty. This may of
course be the point, but nonetheless we must still live in a world in which there are decisions
to be made and actions taken, and we must have an understanding of the situations we find
ourselves in so as to make those decisions and take those actions. Further, awareness without
understanding strikes me as oxymoronic; what, then would someone be aware *of*? In any
case, in Joko's writings there is very
little attention given to furthering understanding (or, for that matter, aiding the "functional
thinking" that she speaks well of on occasion) and her views thus seem rather lopsided.
For instance, Joko correctly points out the damaging effect of false generalizations; but
removing generalizations entirely is even more harmful and Joko gives no suggestions for
increasing the accuracy or utility of generalizations. So what are we to do? Often, the same
mental activities that can separate us from awareness (e.g., making of *false*
generalizations) are essential to awareness (e.g., making of *accurate* generalizations).
The content makes the difference. We ignore or trivialize the content of our thoughts at
our own peril.
27 June 2008
I've now been reading Nothing Special: Living Zen by Joko Beck. This is an
interesting book. It has enough of the trappings of ditzy New Age self-help to make me
cringe every few pages, but luckily some of the more obnoxious clichés of the genre are
ditched in
favor of what often appears to be real wisdom. The many portions of Joko's views I agree
with in this book generally boil down to an elaboration on the following: "Pay attention to
what you're doing." The equally many portions of Joko's views I disagree with are along the
lines of: "Once you sit and meditate long enough, you will see X is the case." X may be
that judgments are fundamentally invalid and false, that our identity as individuals is an
illusion, that the problems we concern ourselves with in daily life are similarly illusory,
etc. Maybe she's right. My meditation is sporadic and thoroughly
undisciplined at best (to put it another way, sometimes I like to stare off into space for a
while), and presumably long, intense meditation would change my views in some form or
another, quite possibly towards Joko's views. However, I find all claims that there is a
right way (to do just about anything, really) implausible and... irritating. And I find such
claims particularly irritating when they are presented in the aggressively
nonjudgmental style that is a trademark of so much New Age spirituality and is, alas, quite well
developed in Joko's writing. She clearly believes that she knows the right path, and I see
no indication she will admit another right path; yet she won't admit that people not on her
path are, by her standards, failing. Instead, every few pages like clockwork some phrasing
of, "They aren't ready yet, and that's okay," will rear its condescending, passive-aggressive
head. I don't mind nonjudgmental thinking (although I feel no need to embrace it myself),
but if we're going to have judgment I'd rather have it open and unapologetic. Judgment is
OK. What's important is knowing that you're being judgmental, knowing why, and understanding
what your judgment means (as an incidental aside, judgment is the prerequisite of
forgiveness, of acceptance). Cloaked judgment goes against everything Joko otherwise stands
for. But then, self-contradiction doesn't seem to hold much terror in Zen Buddhism.
Unrelated rant: Cymbals. Cymbals are the bane of modern popular & rock music. They should
simply be taken away from most drummers, to be released on a probationary basis after
attendance of a mandatory "safe cymbal" course. No matter how bad everything else going on
in a song is, the solution is not to just bang away on those things hoping it
drowns it all out. And when there is good stuff going on, for christ's sake lay off for a
while. I want to hear that stuff, not a bunch of eight-note bashing. Today's offender:
whoever the drummer on Built to Spill's Keep it Like a Secret is. So far, all I can
say is that if all the Modest Mouse comparisons are accurate we must hope this is Built to
Spill's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank; it has that album's mix of excellent
melodies mixed in with a layered approach apparently undertaken on the belief that lots of
stuff happening is good, even if half of it is entirely uninteresting and in the way. To put it
another way, there's lots of good stuff on
Keep it Like a Secret, but most of it can't breathe under the weight of thoroughly
uninspired rhythm guitar and those awful cymbals.
5 June 2008
A rather soul-destroying quote from Matthiessen:
"All worldly pursuits have but the one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow:
acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings, in destruction; meetings, in separation; births,
in death. Knowing this, one should from the very first renounce acquisition and heaping-up,
and building and meeting, and ... set about realizing the Truth. . . . Life is short, and the
time of death is uncertain; so apply yourselves to meditation. . . ."
Matthiessen takes this from Lama Milarepa, and we see a basic problem with Buddhism (at
least with the form of Buddhism popularized in the United States). Like all religions I know
of, it has a carrot and a stick. Christianity has heaven and hell, which are honestly both
rather difficult to take seriously; so we can ignore the whole thing and move on.
However, Buddhism has a very convincing stick, as seen here. On the other hand, the
carrot seems awfully small and awfully far away. Nirvana sounds neither plausible nor
appealling. Problems seem unlikely to conveniently disappear if we ignore them; and a life
with nothing to strive for sounds... boring, tasteless, soulless. I don't want nirvana for
the same reason I don't want a lobotomy. If the only way to avoid failure is to
give up trying, I'll stick with failure.
31 May 2008
From Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, p. 55:
"Somewhere, Einstein remarks that his theory could be readily explained to Indians of the
Uto-Aztecan languages, which include the Pueblo and the Hopi. ('The Hopi does not say "the
light flashed" but merely "flash", without subject or time element; time cannot move because
it is also space. The two are never separated; there are no words or expressions referring
to time or space as separate from each other. This is close to the "field" concept of modern
physics. Furthermore, there is no temporal future; it is already with us, eventuation or
"manifesting". What are in English differences of time are in Hopi differences of
validity.')"
Good for the Hopi; but how do they say things like "I'll meet you at my house at
7:00."? Or do they sit around discussing quantum physics all day?
Claims like this (the parenthesied quote is from Benjamin Whorf, so I guess it isn't all
Matthiessen's fault) suggesting that certain indigenous languages are ideally suited for
expressing fundamental truths by avoiding the "linear" or "analytical" restrictions of European
thought & language are always hard for me to take seriously. Surely these are just normal
people with daily lives like the rest of us. And yet we are supposed to believe that their
language expresses esoteric philosophy while bypassing all the niggling requirements of being
able to communicate in the mundane world of houses, times, food, meetings, and the rest?
Such a people would have starved to death centuries ago, no matter how enlightened.
So far, association of unfamiliarity with spirituality seems fundamental to
Matthiessen's writing. I suspect this underlies most interest in foreign religion and
culture throughout the U.S. It thus becomes difficult to disassociate, for instance, Buddhism
and escapism--though one might think they should be opposed.
14 May 2008
I've been re-reading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. One thing that becomes
apparent that I had not realized the last time I read Nietzsche (however long ago that was)
is that his philosophy has distinctly Wittgensteinian undercurrents. Of course, Nietzsche is
known best for his various value judgments and not for the philosophical worldview that
underpins them. Those underpinnings are perhaps more interesting but harder to
trace since they are not explained as explicitly. The most distinctly Wittgensteinian aspect
of the early parts of Beyond Good and Evil is Nietzsche's suggestion that philosophy
is limited by language, and that philosophical error often results from mistaking grammar for
metaphysics; "we really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words!"
But Nietzsche had perhaps not realized that we cannot free ourselves without leaving language
behind and becoming mute. Wittgenstein clearly did realize this.
An analogy is perhaps useful here. Imagine language as a bottle into which we pour meaning.
Most liquids go in fine, but some will corrode or dissolve the bottle and there are a great
many things that simply aren't suitable at all; bricks, for instance, go poorly in bottles.
Consequently, what kinds of meanings we convey--and thus the structure of our knowledge and
conception of reality--is determined at least in part by language.
Now, there is a problem with that analogy. The analogy suggests that meaning and language
are independent, with the former translatable (at least imperfectly) into the latter, whereas
properly meaning is subsumed within language. This is the point Wittgenstein often made and
that Nietzsche perhaps missed (or at least, I have not yet seen him express it). Perhaps a
better analogy is that language is like an Erector Set of knowledge & meaning. Only certain
patterns can be constructed. The unconstructable patterns are things that cannot be
expressed. Even here we skirt disaster by referring to these unconstructable patterns at
all.
12 May 2008
A western kingbird (Tyrannus verticalis) lives in a tree next to my apartment. It
sounds like this and
calls at night.
18 April 2008
Propagation of two quotes from Annie Dillard's For the Time Being:
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
"Purity does not lie in a separation from the universe but in a deeper penetration of
it."
Frithjof Shuon:
"It is always man who is absent, not grace."
14 April 2008
Goodbye TopoZone... the formerly free topozone.com has disappeared from the web, with its
functionality sunk somewhere into the $50/year functionality of trails.com. This was one of
the websites I used most frequently, as it provided free access to USGS topographic maps with
easy searching by place name, lat/long, UTM coordinates, etc. Alas, no more. It's a pity
USGS can't provide user-friendly online access to its own topographic maps.
8 April 2008
It is wise to remember that any argument, any reasoning, is designed to convince people of a
certain background. The premises are never stated in full and they include a wide array of
background knowledge without which the argument will fall flat.
An example of this I encountered today, certainly not for the first time, is the role of
proof in scientific reasoning. The short version, of course, is that proof has no role in
scientific reasoning. As scientists, we do not prove things but can occasionally hope to
disprove them. This view, called falsificationism, is for most scientists simply some
portion of the foundations that has been there so long it no longer arouses any interest.
However, in discussions with non-scientists--particularly with non-scientists who seek to
oppose science, like creationists--it causes no end of grief and misinterpretation. Lack of
proof is taken to mean uncertainty. "Theory" sounds like speculation. What scientists
forget when they try to explain falsificationism and the lack of proof is that they are using
arguments designed to convince mathematicians and logicians when talking to people who, for
the most part, have background in neither. The proof that science lacks is logical or
mathematical proof; science is inductive, not deductive. Were our creationists convinced
that we were mathematicians, this would be an appropriate approach to dissuade them. But
when non-scientists hear "proof" they are thinking of something more along the judicial lines
of "proven beyond a reasonable doubt" than of symbolic logic. In their usage proof is simply
strong evidence. So when we say that we do not prove things in science this is a mistake; we
do not mean to say that we have no strong evidence, but merely that we are not using the
specific form of reasoning entailed in logical or mathematical proof. Most non-scientists
have no particular interest in the second point, so why argue it? It merely engenders
semantic argument by ignoring the simple fact that meaning is context-dependent.
Related to this is the contingency of all language. It is common for logicians and
mathematicians in particular, and to a lesser extent scientists, to want to see structures of
language (especially formal languages like those of mathematics) as logically necessary.
This view tends to obscure the context-dependence of language and leads to a worldview in
which abuses to language are seen as abuses of logic rather than abuses of social norm (as a
random example here consider the use of double-negatives; it is merely a normative and
contingent fact of mathematics that --1 = +1; it could just as easily be that --1 = -2).
This leads also to a great many philosophical errors, wherein some fact about how our
language works--some contingent fact about what it is various Europeans mostly concerned with
their social lives, farming, hunting, warfare, etc., have wanted to say to each other and how
they have chosen to say it--is taken to have metaphysical significance. Descartes provided
no critique of our ability to know the external world, but instead some interesting problems in
our grammar related to knowledge. Post-modernism is not so new; metaphysicians have long
taken reality to be determined by grammar.
5 April 2008
From Ed Abbey:
"Life is already too short to waste on speed."
25 January 2008
More Cormac McCarthy... I read The Orchard Keeper, which includes a new way for Cormac
to irritate his readers--weird flashback passages in italics interspersed seemingly at random
in the text, usually without any readily intelligible connection to the rest of the
narrative. Parts of this book are utterly baffling. I found myself all too frequently
reading along and suddenly realizing I hadn't the faintest idea what'd been happening in the
last couple of pages. In these passages all the sentences seem innocuous enough but I can't
figure out what
they add up to. So I have to go back and begin again a little back and hope it makes sense
this time. Or just keep going and hope it wasn't anything important.
These disjointed passages stand out in this book particularly because other sections are,
unusually for McCarthy, gentle, relaxed, and quite frankly beautiful. In these sections I
can start to see him as a truly great writer; but then the spell is broken, jarringly.
I've also begun Cities of the Plain. The protagonists of both The Crossing and
All the Pretty Horses are featured prominently. Either I'm getting used to it or his
writing has settled down here into something relatively straightforward and intelligible.
However, more than halfway in I'm still waiting for a plot.
I also finished Horizontal Yellow. Highly recommended, even if he is wrong about
horses. I'll probably re-read it before too long.
16 January 2008
A band I recommend: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.
Since not many of their lyrics are online (I looked), here are those from a song I particularly
like, Cockroach:
O loathsome, crawling thing
be done with your miniscule affairs.
O hungry, creeping speck
I release you from your cares.
Be gone, specks.
Roach!
You live on carrion. That's outrageous.
You're probably contagious.
Blind, crippled, and half-squashed
and yet you carry on.
Your persistence is disgusting.
I could never find myself trusting
a creature that would rather live
in the trash than in the lawn.
Cockroach, your problems are not mine.
I love life, but with you I draw the line.
Not to flaunt my superior design
but next to you I'm practically divine.
Your problems are not mine.
Cockroach, your problems are not mine.
15 January 2008
Geographical errors in Horizontal Yellow: 1) Dan Flores has a picture taken from the
east side of the Organ Mountains just south of US 70, and labels it as being on the Jornada
del Muerto. However, the Jornada del Muerto lies on the west side of the Organ Mountains,
between the San Andres & Oscura Mts. on the east and the Caballo Mts. & Fra Cristobal Range
on the west. 2) The cover photo is a view looking south at the Capitan Mountains from the
plains southeast of Corona. The back of the book says that this is a view of the Sacramento
Mountains. In Flores' defense, however, there is a history of using
"Sacramento Mountains" in two alternate and rather different senses, either for the
Sacramento Mountains proper, or for the Sacramento Mountains plus all the nearby ranges on
its north side (despite the fact that they are very distinct geologically and several of
them are not contiguous with the Sacramento Mts. proper). Similarly, one will occasionally
see the San Andres Mountains, Organ Mountains, and Oscura Mountains collectively referred to as
the "San Andres Mountains". Clearly a better geographical taxonomy is needed in such
cases.
Another point on Dan Flores' book, continued from a brief mention yesterday: I don't buy the
idea that the arrival of domestic horses in the U.S. was some sort of grand Pleistocene
reunion as Flores (and a disheartening number of other authors) suggests. Flores is partially
aware of this; he admits that neither the country nor the domestic horse are the same things
they were
15,000 years ago, but he suggests that the differences are minor or unimportant--that both
are "close enough". I disagree. The southwestern plains of 15,000 years ago had a diverse
assemblage of megafaunal herbivores and, more importantly, robust populations of large
predators. This is a very different ecology from the depauperate herbivorous mammal fauna
and near absence of predators that the domestic horses faced when released into North
America. Similarly, the horse has also changed. Just how much in terms of its ecology, I do
not know. In terms of temperament and its relation to humans, however, there can be no doubt
that the change was profound. The native Equus scotti was not a domesticated animal.
It lacked precisely the relationship to humans that causes the great fondness and
romanticism with which Dan Flores and many others regard domesticated Equus caballus.
In cultural terms the difference between the two could hardly be more profound; we may as
well dismiss the differences between coyotes and golden retrievers as irrelevant detail.
In short, the horse Flores has fallen in love with is not American. It is Eurasian. As
an advocate of bioregionalism he may as well be singing the praises of Lehmann's
lovegrass (Eragrostis lehmanniana; another introduced species that spreads rampantly
in parts of the southwest and, like Equus caballus, belongs to a genus with native
members).
Now, the whole situation becomes more interesting when we take into account Flores' rejection
of the traditional ideology of wilderness preservation as the pursuit of pre-European pristine
America (the
reasoning being, briefly, that the America the Europeans arrived in was an anthropogenic and
thoroughly inhabited landscape, not a pristine wilderness).
Given that rejection, his advocacy of the domestic horse doesn't necessarily require the
horse to be native. Nonetheless he consistently describes the return of the horse as the
return of a lost native. Another thing
that is not clear (yet?) in this book is what sort of new justificatory framework Flores
intends to put in place. If we abandon the old wilderness ideology (something with which I
agree), what do we put in its place? Or do we view Flores' desire for feral
horses as mere personal whim--and let his arguments for conservation and bioregionalism
suffer the same fate?
14 January 2008
Other recent books:
1) Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. May as well keep reading him so long as I've
started, right? This is one of his earlier books. He didn't use quotation marks then,
either. He did, however, use short sentences and short chapters, in marked contrast
to his later works. I think if you just stuck all his short sentences together with "and" and
took out the chapter breaks, though, you'd get something a lot like the later books. In any
case, this charming tale of a necrophiliac hillbilly is not as obviously pretentious as his
later works. A good read, if you like that sort of thing.
2) Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. Pretty much what you would expect from
Krakauer-does-Mormonism. And, as you would expect, online reviews of it include a contingent
of irate Mormons who point out that the homicidal polygamists at the center of this book are
not representative of the LDS church. The problem with that criticism, however, is that
Krakauer knows these guys aren't anything like typical Mormons and openly says so. What he does
suggest here, however, is that although these fundamentalist extremists are so
unlike the modern LDS church they aren't quite so different from the early LDS
church. Thus there is not too much discussion of modern mainstream Mormonism here.
Krakauer's focus on the modern church is limited to how and why it has left most of the
extremist views and actions of the early church. What we get in this book is both some sense of
how an extremist sect becomes a sober mainstream religion, and how this in turn inspires a
fringe of more or less unhinged fundamentalism.
3) Horizontal Yellow by Dan Flores. Only partway through this one. So far I like it
quite a bit, although I remain baffled by the horse fetish that takes hold of so many writers
about the West.
7 January 2008
A book I read recently that I found not in the least objectionable: Throwim Way Leg
by Tim Flannery. I'm a sucker for biological exploration memoirs and this is a good one,
even if Flannery does study mammals.
In addition to explorations of New Guinea itself there is quite a bit here about its people,
who seem an interesting lot. I think I'd like to meet them if it didn't mean dealing with the
climate, parasites, &c. of New Guinea. Without being irritated by the book, however, I find
myself with little to say.
4 January 2008
So long as this page has turned into a venue for random Cormac McCarthy criticism, here's
another noteworthy feature of his writing... his protagonists seem to often encounter people
who tell him their life stories at length, with little provocation and little or no response
from the protagonist. Sometimes it seems like these must be the moments of meaning that the
rest of the books so clearly lack. And yet, while they're generally quite interesting and
enjoyable passages, they never quite seem to come together. After reading them I have the
feeling of having been moved closer to some deep meaning McCarthy wants to convey, yet still
without any clear idea what that deep meaning might be.
A lot of modern television shows (Alias, Lost, Heroes, etc.) seem to use the same sort of
technique. Their writers feel that every episode must provide exciting revelations; yet they
also realize that nothing can ever be resolved, or there won't be exciting revelations to
promise next week. The result, unfortunately, is a continual building of tension that builds
towards... nothing. McCarthy's books have something of the same feeling, although not as
pronounced and not as obviously manipulative.
3 January 2008
I am now reading another of Cormac McCarthy's books, The Crossing. Since the book begins
in Hidalgo County of southwestern New Mexico, an area I have visited several times, I will
mention another thing I have found unsettling about all of McCarthy's books I have read so
far. When the locations he describes are among those I am familiar with, his descriptions of
them are often at odds with my experiences. In this case, McCarthy describes the Animas
Valley and Peloncillo Mountains of Hidalgo Co. as being a land of frequent and sometimes
heavy snowfall in winter. This simply isn't the case. It is an area of infrequent
precipitation in the winter, and this usually not of the frozen variety. In the area where
he puts the protagonist's ranch, there are probably a few light snows most winters, with
minor accumulation and a quick melt as the sun warms it. Instead, he describes snow several
feet deep in the Peloncillo Mountains, a low range that doesn't make it much above 6,500 feet
in elevation. This is a pretty severe misjudgement of the climate; his descriptions make the
Animas Valley sound like Taos.
Other errors include misidentification of common plants or animals. For instance, on page five
McCarthy gives a description of a tree--pale, with bone-like branches and flaking bark--that
fits sycamore perfectly. But he says he's describing cottonwood, which looks nothing of the
sort and, as the most important and distinctive tree of lower elevations in New Mexico, is
a plant any competent observer of the southwest should be well familiar with. He also
describes the protagonist stopping at a stand of "blackjack oak" in the vicinity of the
Peloncillos, but this species occurs nowhere in the state, coming no closer than central
Texas. Oak identification can be a tricky subject, however, and so this error is more
understandable.
Similar errors that he has not made (yet?) in the The Crossing but which abound in
Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses include calling agave "aloe" (a
superficially
similar genus, yes, but an African one--and again agave is one of the most distinctive and
culturally important plants of the area) and some apparent confusion between coyotes and
wolves. It often seems that he's talking about coyotes when he mentions wolves, but it's
hard to be certain.
Probably it sounds like I'm nit-picking, but location is central to these books. It isn't an
afterthought that can be safely ignored here.
Another point before I leave McCarthy alone for the moment--I'm starting to wonder just how
many of McCarthy's books begin with a teenage boy leaving home to head into
Mexico. So far, I'm at three for three. It's not a bad plot-line, but it's starting to seem
redundant.
31 December 2007
I've never thought too highly of "important" literature. "Self-important" or "pretentious"
generally strike me as better adjectives. Recently I read "Blood Meridian" by Cormac
McCarthy; as important literature goes, this is a very good book. Yet it is pretentious,
collapsing under its own weight, written by an author who has clearly spent many hours
perfecting his style and worrying at his image. Speech never
comes with quotation marks and is rarely attributed. Dialogue is thus hopelessly muddled.
Plot and action can barely be discerned under their burden of long, tortured sentences,
obscure references, and irrelevant imagery. The characters likewise are indistinct, most of
them nearly interchangable. The protagonist is never given a name and barely has an
identity at all. Ultimately, there is little left in the book but McCarthy's stylistic
oddities and a long series of deaths, most of them violent and senseless.
Yet this book has received so much praise that I may read it again. Perhaps I missed
something. I must have missed something, since there barely seemed to be anything there.
On the other hand, I am most of the way through another of Cormac McCarthy's books, "All the
Pretty Horses", and find this one much more enjoyable. If we could just get him to drop the
endless run-on sentences and start using quotation marks and intelligible attribution of
dialogue, we could make a proper piece of good fiction out of it.
12 December 2007
Now I've also read The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein. Overlap with
Incompleteness is significant, although the two were written 20 years apart and The
Mind-Body Problem is fiction (loosely autobiographical fiction, but fiction) while
Incompleteness is (mostly) non-fiction. The impression given by the two books in
combination is that Goldstein lives in a very narrow world that she assumes to be the center
of the universe; I can't quite decide if this is charming or arrogant. I guess I'll stick
with charming for the moment and feel myself slightly superior for knowing that my own
worldview is hopelessly provincial, while Goldstein perhaps does not.
In any case, The Mind-Body Problem works very well as an entertaining mix of
autobiography and self-exploration, focusing primarily on the role of women in academia (at
least, in
one particular version of academia--Princeton of the 1960's/1970's) and, conversely, the role
of male genius in this world. The book's philosophical pretensions, however, are sometimes
irritating. Despite being a professor of philosophy, Goldstein comes across here as a good
novelist who dabbles in philosophy, rather than a philosopher who dabbles in fiction.
Although I can certainly understand the desire to simplify complicated philosophical issues
to some extent, so as to create an engaging novel rather than a dry technical work,
Goldstein's attempts at this often seem clumsy. Perhaps non-philosophers won't
mind, though.
As an example (the one that I found most irritating, of course) we have a proof of
dualism on pages 157-158. My own crude simplification of this proof is: "Since our
bodies continue to exist after death but our minds do not, our minds and bodies are
fundamentally different things." The argument, as presented, might sound reasonable in
context (at least to people without my antipathy towards dualism), however, the same argument
would allow us to split off into separate realms any properties of any object that can be
lost without the destruction of the object. So instead of dualism, we would end up with a
hopeless pluralism... not just mind and body, but color, size, shape, texture, &c., would all
live in their own separate realms, connected by God only knows what tenuous strands of
metaphysics. After all, the color of an object can change without
the object being destroyed, so the color of an object and the object must be very different
things inhabiting separate metaphysical realms; and so on for any malleable characteristic
you care to think of.
So, the short version is: if you like semi-autobiographical fiction about academia you
should like this book. Just don't expect too much from the philosophical bits.
9 December 2007
I recently read Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel by Rebecca
Goldstein. An interesting and well-written book (with minor exceptions; for instance, the
prefix "meta" becomes cloying after a few dozen uses), but, Wittgensteinian I
am, I'm left wondering what the general importance of Gödel's famous incompleteness
theorems
is. The narrow importance in mathematics--that Gödel showed Hilbert's program to be
unworkable--is fairly clear. (Even this importance, though, is somewhat fishy, since
Gödel's theorems rely on Gödel numbering. Roughly speaking, Gödel numbering
allows meaning to be ascribed to numbers. Since that meaning is
beyond the sort of simple arithmetical system Gödel was targeting, I'm not sure how valid
its use is in evaluation of such simple systems.)
However, very few who aren't working in academic mathematics
have ever heard of Hilbert's program--except, perhaps, in reference to Gödel's
theorems--and the alleged import of the incompleteness theorems extends far beyond
that narrow, highly specialized sphere.
To provide at least some minimal context, Gödel's incompleteness theorems state
that we cannot create a formal mathematical system that is both consistent and complete
(i.e., capable of being used to prove all true mathematical statements that can be formulated
within it). Hilbert's program entailed the production of a formal mathematical system that is
both consistent and complete, so clearly Hilbert & his mathematical followers have a problem.
The version of Gödel's incompleteness theorems that has seeped out into the world,
however, is the suggestion that exacting mathematics proves any systematization of knowledge
to be doomed. Hence
post-modernists love Gödel, just as they love Heisenberg (whose Uncertainty Principle is
similarly abused), because they think he dooms science, logic, math, etc., to the sort of
free-floating, harebrained subjectivity they adore. Much of Rebecca Goldstein's point in
Incompleteness is that this interpretation is at odds with that of Gödel himself.
Gödel, fide Goldstein, thought his theorems supported a Platonist (rather than,
for instance, logical positivist) view of the world, wherein mathematics could rely on
objective
mathematical truth when formalism alone fails. The result would then be to strengthen
mathematics by showing that it is a reflection of objective reality.
Wittgenstein, for
his part, described it as a "logische kunststuck", literally a "logical art-piece". From a
Wittgensteinian point of view, the Hilbert program was rather silly to start with, founded as
it was on the fear of contradiction to which mathematicians are prone. (This fear does have a
basis: logically, anything can be proven from a contradiction. Thus, any reasoning that is
based on contradiction is fruitless. The fear goes too far, however, when the possibility of
contradiction within a formal system is used to discredit the entire system. Like mud,
contradiction poses no problems until you step in it--so just walk around.) Gödel simply
uses this same fear to undermine the Hilbert program. The whole thing is rather irrelevant
and does nothing more, ultimately, than to translate the classic self-referential paradoxes
(which, in their various forms, boil down to something like "This sentence is false.") into
exceedingly complicated mathematics. The basic fact--that self-reference allows paradox--had
by Gödel's time been fairly obvious for several millenia. The translation of this
familiar philosophical pothole into formal math is ultimately a demonstration of great skill and
ingenuity, but not a surprising or ground-breaking result.
7 October 2007
How to distinguish Eryngium heterophyllum
and Eryngium lemmoni
or
Why I don't like to use the Kearney & Peebles
Flora of Arizona
Here is how Kearney & Peebles distinguish these two species:
"3. Plants from a cylindric taproot; lower cauline leaves pinnatifid to bipinnatisect;
inflorescence paniculately branched, the heads comate; bracts linear-lanceolate to lanceolate,
entire or with 1 or 2 pairs of lateral spines near the middle, commonly yellowish above . . .
. . . . 3. E. heterophyllum
3. Plants from a fascicle of fibrous or fleshy roots;
lower cauline leaves spinose-serrate; inflorescence successively trifurcate, the heads not
comate; bracts broadly lanceolate to oblanceolate, spinose-serrate with 2 or 3 pairs of teeth,
silvery-white above . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. E.
Lemmoni"
And here are my observations on the various characters:
"Plants from
a cylindric taproot" vs. "plants from a fascicle of fibrous or fleshy roots". This appears to
be accurate and, although not necessarily a useful field character, this can be a
useful distinction with good herbarium specimens.
"Lower cauline leaves pinnatifid to
bipinnatisect" vs. "lower cauline leaves spinose-serrate". This is also essentially accurate,
although it could be better worded, for instance by including a more quantifiable distinction
rather than descriptive terms that can be somewhat subjective (how deep must the divisions be
before the leaf is pinnatifid?).
"Inflorescence paniculately branched" vs. "inflorescence
successively trifurcate". This is simply inaccurate. Inflorescences of the two species are
quite similar. In both, as we move up the plant we have first several alternately arranged
primary inflorescence branches, then a whorl of ca. 3-7 primary branches. Each primary branch
of the inflorescence is determinate, and may either terminate in 2-3 heads arising from a
single node, or the lateral head(s) may be replaced by secondary branches terminating in
groups of 2-3 heads. It seems to be more common for E. heterophyllum to have the
terminal groups with only 2 heads, and E. lemmoni to have groups of 3 heads. However,
this is by no means a uniformly applicable identifying characteristic, and neither
species has an inflorescence that is accurately characterized as "paniculately branched"
or as "successively trifurcate", although the primary branches of the inflorescences of
either species may (or may not) be "successively trifurcate".
"The heads comate"
vs. "the heads not comate". "Comate" is, first, a needlessly obscure term. I do not recall
having heard it before, in any context, and although it sounds much like the more commonly
used "comose" the meaning is quite different. In any case, a comate head is one in which the
bracts of the head are greatly enlarged at the apex of the head and form a leafy projection
beyond the flowers. Pineapples are comate. The heads of E. lemmoni are indeed not
comate and most heads on most specimens of E. heterophyllum are indeed
comate. But some heads on many specimens, and all heads on rare specimens of E.
heterophyllum are not comate, or at best indistinctly so. So this is a
one-directional character; plants with
comate heads must be E. heterophyllum, but plants with non-comate heads could be either
species.
"Bracts linear-lanceolate to lanceolate, entire or with 1 or 2 pairs of lateral
spines near the middle" vs. "bracts broadly lanceolate to oblanceolate, spinose-serrate with 2
or 3 pairs of teeth". This is accurate, although unfortunately there is overlap in the
descriptions.
Bracts
"commonly yellowish above" vs. "silvery-white above". I cannot tell if this character is
inaccurate, or simply variable and of limited utility. I have only seen E.
heterophyllum in the field at two locations (Rucker Canyon in the Chiricahua Mts. and
Clanton Draw in the Peloncillo Mts.), but both times the bracts were silvery-white above. No
difference in bract coloration is apparent from the herbarium specimens I looked at earlier
today, but colors are often unreliable in dried material. Presumably any specimens that did
clearly have yellowish bracts could be readily identified but, as with non-comate heads,
specimens with silvery-white bracts (which appear to be the overwhelming majority) could be
either species.
Although this is the most annoying example I have encountered recently
(since this key has resulted in my misidentifying E. heterophyllum as E. lemmoni
not once but twice), it is unfortunately not an isolated example. Most keys in the Kearney &
Peebles flora are well written and eminently usable. However, a significant minority are not,
and while these keys will still usually yield correct identifications if used carefully while
comparing specimens of all of the relevant taxa, they often make me feel rather confused and
can lead to misidentifications if used incautiously.
3 September 2007
I return this night from the Peloncillo & Chiricahua Mountains. I bring a piece of
Agave back, lodged in my arm.
28 August 2007
Got my first rejection letter for a manuscript; specifically, a brief note objecting to
poorly supported nomenclatural change in the snake genera Pantherophis &
Pituophis by Burbrink & Lawson.
Reviews are anonymous, but of course it's hard to resist guessing who the reviewers are based
on their comments. One review appears to be from
Burbrink; he very nearly says so and it is clear enough from the views expressed. It is,
predictably, uniformly negative and
includes, in addition to a couple of minor but correct points, many that appear to result
from nothing more than a negative reaction to criticism. For instance, I am told that I do
not have a clear grasp of why phylogenetic hypotheses generated by Bayesian inference should
be preferred over those generated by maximum likelihood. This is true--I don't have
any idea. The reason I don't have a clear grasp of this,
however, is related to one of my criticisms of Burbrink & Lawson--they prefer a BI tree but
do not give any clear explanation of their reasons for doing so, nor cite any author that
provides such an explanation. So I am criticized for not understanding a point that the
authors did not make. So it goes.
The author of the other review is less obvious. In initially suspected it might be David
Hillis, but have now learned that this is not the case. Most of the comments
from this reviewer are relatively minor criticisms, although he did notice a significant
omission on my part. Many comments relate to PhyloCode, and some of these are interesting.
Some background explanation is necessary:
Several phylogenies have recently been published for the tribe Lampropeltini, which includes
the genera Pantherophis and Pituophis among others. The status of the genus
Pantherophis varies between these phylogenies. Depending on the phylogeny, the genus may
be either: 1) monophyletic; 2) unresolved; 3) paraphyletic with respect to Pituophis; or
4) paraphyletic with respect to the genera Arizona, Bogertophis, Cemophora,
Lampropeltis, Pituophis, and Stilosoma. Burbrink & Lawson suggested
that, based on topology "3", Pantherophis and Pituophis should be synonymized,
with no discussion of the alternate topologies (despite the fact that "4" was produced by one
of their own analyses).
I objected to this, on fairly obvious grounds. My second reviewer suggests
that under PhyloCode the situation would be unproblematic. PhyloCode is a system in which
taxa are explicitly clade names, rather than being defined based on content; a taxon
in PhyloCode is something like "all members of the smallest clade including species X, Y, &
Z". So definitions of taxa never change on different trees; but content often does change.
With appropriate definitions of the relevant taxa in the present situation, content of
Pituophis could remain unchanged, but content of Pantherophis would change
radically on different trees. I don't see, however, how this removes the problem. Instead
of having different content-based definitions of generic names, we would have constant
clade-based definitions with varying content. The result is the same: differing
content of taxa. And in fact the amount of variation increases. Under traditional Linnean
nomenclature, we have two alternatives: a) we either stick with previous usage & have two
separate genera, Pantherophis and Pituophis, or b) we accept Burbrink's proposal &
Pituophis now includes species formerly included in Pantherophis. Under
PhyloCode, we have four possibilities corresponding with the four published topologies,
either: 1) Pantherophis includes only those species previously assigned to the genus;
2) content of Pantherophis is undefined; 3) Pantherophis includes previous
members of the genus as well as members of Pituophis; 4) Pantherophis includes
previous members of the genus as well as members of Arizona, Bogertophis,
Cemophora, Lampropeltis, Pituophis, and Stilosoma. Furthermore,
conventions for stating which alternative is being used by an author are simple and
well-known under the traditional Linnean system. "Pituophis sensu Utiger et
al. (2002)" would indicate alternative "a", and "Pantherophis sensu Burbrink & Lawson
(2007)"
would indicated alternative "b". But what do we do when using PhyloCode? There is no
established convention. I suppose something like "Pantherophis, according to the
cladogram of Burbrink & Lawson (2007), figure 2" would work, but this presupposes more
knowledge on the part of the author. To know what
"Pantherophis sensu Burbrink & Lawson (2007)" refers to, I need to know which taxa
Burbrink & Lawson included in the genus. To know what "Pantherophis, according to
the cladogram of Burbrink & Lawson (2007), figure 2" I have to know both what the
PhyloCode definition of "Pantherophis" is and what topology is shown by the figure
referred to. Keeping track of PhyloCode definitions should be easier than the
corresponding Linnean requirement; under PhyloCode, there would be one published
definition per taxon name, whereas in traditional Linnean taxonomy there may be several.
Having to know published topologies, however, will often be much more difficult than keeping
track of taxonomic proposals in Linnean nomenclature. There are often many
more published cladograms than there are published taxonomic proposals; in this case, there
are at least 8 published cladograms relevant to delineation of supraspecific taxa within tribe
Lampropeltini.
PhyloCode certainly produces different problems than does traditional Linnean
nomenclature. However, I can see no indication that it produces fewer problems, and
can certainly see cases in which it produces more of them.
27 August 2007
Back from a couple days in the field. Hiking up steep mountains at night is very odd, I've
discovered. I went most of the way up Mt. Riley Friday night. On steep slopes on the east
side, I found myself on a 45-degree slope unable to see top or bottom of the mountain. Kind
of an odd mix of claustrophobia and vertigo. Worth doing once; maybe again.
24 August 2007
Following up from yesterday, here's another paper from the Crews lab that contradicts their
preferred hypothesis of progesterone induction of pseudocopulatory behavior:
B.G. Dias & D. Crews, 2006. "Serotonergic modulation of male-like pseudocopulatory behavior
in the parthenogenetic whiptail lizard, Cnemidophorus uniparens." Hormones and
Behavior 50: 401-409.
This one does at least have a minimal discussion of the anomaly:
"The absence of male-like
pseudocopulatory behavior by OVX+P animals [lizards with implanted progesterone] might be due
to the need for a decrease in levels of estrogen to accompany an increase in progesterone
levels (as observed in naturally cycling animals), a hormonal profile not achieved by
implanting animals in the OVX+P group with only progesterone."
Since the lizards in question had their ovaries removed and thus are producing no endogenous
estrogen, it seems that they would indeed have a "decrease in levels of estrogen", but I'll
readily admit my ignorance of most of the physiology involved. The main point remains: we
now have two papers showing no induction of pseudocopulation by progesterone, and one showing
it. So the effect is, if nothing else, not repeatable. Another point of interest is that in
this, and the other Crews lab papers on experimental manipulation of pseudocopulatory
behavior I have read, the authors find it necessary to induce pseudocopulatory behavior by
implanting testosterone in order to study it. This is presumably because intact
lizards do not exhibit the behavior often enough to study, and naturally-occurring hormones
do not induce this behavior reliably. So Crews lab experimental design & data do not seem to
support the Crews lab contention that this is a common, natural behavior. This also has the
further effect that most of the advantages of using a parthenogenetic lizard to study the
evolution of sexual behavior are nullified. It's not exactly clear what the behavior of
androgenized females has do with evolution of behaviors in natural populations.
23 August 2007
Further thoughts on pseudocopulation in Aspidoscelis.
The story David Crews likes to tell about the role of hormones is something like this (e.g., in
his 1987 Scientific American article):
Crews coincidentally observed pseudocopulation in captive A. uniparens, and wondered
what was going on. He first thought that perhaps A. uniparens had elevated
testosterone levels that produced male-like copulatory behavior in this all-female species.
Research down this line was only partially fruitful. It turns out that exogenous testosterone
can produce male-like sexual behavior, but there is no detectable testosterone being produced by
these lizards. So he figures it must be some sort of unusual activity of a typical female
hormone. Male-like behavior turns out to be limited to post-ovulatory females with high
levels of progesterone, and further experiments show that in both female A.
uniparens and the majority of male A. inornata, one of the parental species of the
hybrid A. uniparens, progesterone can elicit male-like sexual behavior. So now we
know the hormonal basis of pseudocopulation: male-like sexual behavior is produced in
these lizards by progesterone, a hormone typical of the female reproductive cycle.
As I mentioned, he was telling basically this story back in 1987, and though the Crews
lab has continued to do research on pseudocopulation in Aspidoscelis for the last 20
years, this part of the story hasn't really changed. Now here's the interesting part. In
2003, Sakata, Woolley, Gupta, & Crews published a paper entitled "Differential
effects of testosterone and progesterone on the activation and retention of courtship
behavior in sexual and parthenogenetic whiptail lizards." This isn't a particularly good
paper (for instance, readers are challenged to understand what, exactly, is going on in
Figure 2, to comprehend why the length of behavioral trials for expression of male-like
sexual behavior varies, apparently at random, among experiments, or to explain the absence of
any experimental control in Experiments 3 & 4), but it does have one rather intriguing
result. Sakata et al. find no elicitation of male-like sexual behavior in A.
uniparens by progesterone. Their Experiment 2, which looks at the difference in percent
of ovariectomized individuals of A. uniparens exhibiting male-like sexual behavior after
implantation of testosterone, progesterone, or cholesterol (this experiment does have
a control), shows that progesterone produces results statistically indistinguishable from
those of cholesterol. Now, you would think this would change the story, right? Nope.
In their conclusion, Sakata et al. simply cite previous work as having shown that
"both testosterone (T) and progesterone (P) can activate courtship behavior" (p. 528), and do
not even discuss the fact that their present study found no such activation.
18 August 2007
Some thoughts on pseudocopulation in Aspidoscelis...
David Crews & associates have studied pseudocopulation between females of
parthenogenetic Aspidoscelis in captivity for several decades now,
and have argued throughout that it is an important factor in the
reproduction of wild populations. This view was criticized extensively
early in the studies of Crew et al., but little criticism has been
published in the last two decades. I've been skeptical for a few years,
though, and it doesn't seem to me that the criticisms have ever been
satisfactorily answered. My present discussion is spurred by a 2003
article by Miriam Solomon, "The Whiptail Lizard Reconsidered", since it
includes many of the salient misconceptions and omissions.
The central question in attempts to understand pseudocopulation in
parthenogenetic Aspidoscelis has been whether this behavior is
primarily an artifact of captivity, or occurs frequently in the wild. M.
Solomon discusses this on p. 321:
"Reproductively inactive lizards do not pseudocopulate (so, it isn't just
artifactual behavior created by the stress of captivity, nor is it behavior
unrelated to reproductive physiology) (Moore, Whittier, Billy and Crews
1985 and Moore, Whittier and Crews 1985)."
The first conclusion here is erroneous, the second accurate. Condition-sensitivity
does not imply that a behavior is not an artifact of unusual
conditions. It may only mean that it is a relatively complicated artifact,
sensitive to variation within unusual conditions rather than only to the
unusual conditions themselves. Another mistaken assumption here (repeated
later on the page as well) is that increased stress is the only unusual
aspect of captivity. However, unusual captive behaviors need only be
caused by an aspect of the captive conditions that differs from those
experienced by animals in the wild; increased stress is hardly the only
such factor available and in fact greatly increased density of captive
populations, not increased stress, has been the most commonly mentioned
unusual aspect of captivity suggested by critics (e.g., Cuellar in the 1993
book "Biology of Whiptail lizards (genus Cnemidophorus)". M.
Solomon's discussion of this question continues on p. 322:
"There is one paper, however, that addresses a lingering worry, referred to
by Collins and Pinch as "the most salient piece of negative evidence" (p.
116): why has pseudocopulation not been observed in the field? As late as
1989 (Paulissen and Walker) there is puzzlement about this. Well, now the
important observations have been done. Crews's 1991 paper with Young
reports the first documented observation of pseudocopulation (by an
observer not involved in the debate), and also reports a new study giving
indirect evidence of pseudocopulation in the field from measurement of bite
marks (this was a much better study than the first such study). McCoid and
Hensley (1991), Eioer (1993), Paulissen (1995) (the same Paulissen who in
1989 doubted that pseudocopulation occurs in the field) and Bezy and
Enderson (2002) have reported pseudocopulation in nature in a number of
parthenogenetic lizards including C. uniparens."
Yes, pseudocopulation has been observed in the wild; however, the published
reports are either indirect or of the "man bites dog" variety. For
instance, the report of Bezy & Enderson (2002) is noteworthy and
publishable only because it is such a rarely observed phenomenon; while
such reports do help establish that pseudocopulation occurs in the wild, by
their very nature they also suggest that it cannot be common. Indirect
evidence is somewhat uncertain; published reports from indirect evidence
have not uniformly suggested that pseudocopulation is a common occurrence,
and since parthenogenetic species typically co-occur with sexual species,
it is necessary to distinguish whether bite marks come from pseudocopulation
with other females, or from copulation with males of co-occurring
sexuals; both are known to occur at unknown frequency in the
wild. Observational studies in semi-natural conditions (large outdoor
exclosures, rather than the small indoor aquaria of Crews et al.)
are another important source of information not mentioned by Solomon. Beth
Leuck conducted several such studies, and never observed pseudocopulation
among parthenogens. She did, however, observe a number of copulations
between sexuals in the same studies. Unobserved pseudocopulations may, of
course, have occurred; but they must have either been far less common than
copulation between individuals of sexual species, or
for some reason much more difficult to observe. On the whole, it seems to
me that we know pseudocopulation does occur in wild populations, but that
it appears to be much less common than sexual copulation and that claims
that it is frequent enough to physiologically replace sexual copulation in
parthenogens remain unfounded.
One of the implications of this is interesting, but has rarely been
explored. Parthenogens like those in Aspidoscelis are of great
interest in studies of the evolution of sex. The central question in that
field is, roughly: Since asexual taxa can, all else equal, out-reproduce
sexuals by a factor of two, why don't asexual taxa replace sexuals? If
parthenogenetic Aspidoscelis are physiologically entrenched by their
sexual history, and cannot realize the potential two-fold reproductive
advantage because of hormonal reliance on copulatory behavior that occurs
too infrequently in the wild to effectively replace sexual behavior in
gonochoristic species, this provides an answer. However, it may be over-looked
in part because it is not the kind of answer researchers are
generally looking for; it is a suggestion that all else cannot be equal,
and thus undermines search for a general explanation.
Another facet of the question that is generally overlooked is that
pseudocopulation may not be a characteristic of parthenogens, but one of
whiptails generally. Crews & Moore (1993, in "Biology of Whiptail Lizards
(genus Cnemidophorus")) mention, briefly and without further
discussion, that pseudocopulation is also observed when females of sexual
species are housed together in captivity. This important observation has
not been followed up, that I am aware of; this is odd, since it
fundamentally changes any picture of the importance of pseudocopulation in
whiptails. It renders the suggestion that pseudocopulation is something
new that happens in parthenogens to allow them to accommodate the absence
of males, which seems implicit in most of the work of Crews et al.
and in interpretations of their work, untenable. Instead, perhaps
parthenogens in Aspidoscelis can arise only because pseudocopulation
already occurs in the genus; but they cannot displace sexuals because
pseudocopulation doesn't happen often enough.
19 July 2007
Yes, it's been a long time since I wrote anything here.
Now, there's nothing some scientists like better than pointing out the gaping
flaws in the
work of others. I happen to be one of those scientists, and, with that in mind,
here are my
thoughts on a recent paper by E.B. Rosenblum: Convergent Evolution and Divergent
Selection:
Lizards at the White Sands Ecotone. First, a brief summary, taken from portions
of the
abstract:
"Three lizard species [Aspidoscelis inornata, Holbrookia maculata,
and
Sceloporus undulatus], distributed along a dramatic environmental
gradient in substrate
color, display convergent adaptation of blanched coloration on the gypsum dunes
of White
Sands National Monument." ... "I find species differences in degree of
background matching
and in genetic connectivity of populations across the ecotone. Differences among
species in
phenotypic response to selection scale precisely to levels of genetic isolation.
Species with
higher levels of gene flow across the ecotone exhibit less dramatic responses to
selection.
Results also reveal a strong signal of ecologically mediated divergence for
White Sands
lizards. For all species, phenotypic variation is better explained by habitat
similarity than
genetic similarity. Convergent evolution of blanched coloration at White Sands
clearly
reflects the action of strong divergent selection; however, adaptive response
appears to be
modulated by gene flow and demographic history and can be predicted by
divergence-with-gene-flow models."
The problems in this study show the importance of basic biology & knowledge of
ecology.
First off, this is based on mitochondrial DNA and the results show higher gene
flow
between sample sites for the teiid Aspidoscelis inornata than the two
phrynosomatid
species, Holbrookia inornata and Sceloporus undulatus.
Mitochondrial DNA is,
however, a biased marker; since it shows only matrilineal relationships, it will
consistently
underestimate gene-flow in species with male-biased dispersal. Not a terribly
good choice,
then, but perhaps defensible because it is far easier to work with than any of
the
alternatives; however, the deficiencies need to be addressed and they aren't.
Most lizards,
including phrynosomatids,
do have male-biased dispersal; but teiid lizards don't. So we
would expect
that, even under similar patterns of overall gene flow, phrynosomatids should
show more
geographic structure than teiids because of differences in sex-biased
dispersal.
Second, differences in microhabitat use & behavior, although mentioned, are
given short
shrift. From the paper:
"A previous study comparing activity patterns between H. maculata and S.
undulatus at White
Sands found that H. maculata spent more time in open areas and was less closely
associated
with vegetation than S. undulatus (Hager 2001a)." ... "Therefore, it is
plausible that H.
maculata is more visible to predators and that selection pressure for substrate
matching is
higher in this species."
This is an important point. If we want to look at background matching, we need
to measure
the backgrounds relevant for the lizards. A lizard that spends a lot of its
time under
bushes needs to be cryptic under bushes, not merely on open sand; even if
it matches
its background just as well as a lizard spending most of its time on open sand,
it will be
darker and more strongly patterned. And, guess what, the species that spends
most of its
time on sand, Holbrookia maculata, is indeed lighter and less-patterned
than the
other two, and so the observed results fit perfectly with expectations based on
what we know
of the ecology of these lizards. Moreover, ordering of taxa in order of
brightness is the
same on White Sands and off: Holbrookia maculata is always brightest,
Aspidoscelis
inornata is always darkest, and Sceloporus undulatus is always
intermediate--a good indication that something more than different facility in
matching
White Sands substrates is going on. But an important role for microhabitat use
and behavior is
rejected for, so far as I can tell, no particularly good reason.
A third, and related, problem is poor knowledge of White Sands:
"Second, intermediately colored S. undulatus [and A. inornata!]
could be locally
adapted to the intermediate substrate color at the margin of the dune field.
However, in
contrast to the large expanse of pure gypsum habitat, the band of intermediately
colored
ecotonal substrate is extremely narrow, often only meters wide. Given the
likelihood of gene
flow across the ecotone in this species and the restricted area of the ecotone,
natural
selection would need to be implausibly strong to provide an adaptive explanation
for
maintenance of intermediate color morphs."
I've spent some time wandering White Sands. The basic situation is this:
there's a large
active dune field with very white sand and small, slightly darker interdunal
areas; to the
west of this area there are flat, crusty, white, alkali flats; to the north,
east, and south,
the dunes get progressively smaller, narrower, more vegetated, and slightly
darker in color
while the interdunes get much larger and significantly darker. These large
interdunes toward
the edge of the dune area are a major portion of the White Sands area, and are
intermediate
in color between the active dune field and the soil of the surrounding flats of
Tularosa
Basin. The "extremely narrow" ecotone is exactly what you see along the road at
White Sands
National Monument in the area of the Big Dunes Trail, one of E.B. Rosenblum's
collection
sites, but it is not at all an accurate representation of the situation
otherwise.
Importantly, Aspidoscelis inornata is very abundant in these large
interdunal areas,
whereas Holbrookia maculata is not (I haven't seen enough Sceloporus
undulatus,
OTOH, to have any idea of their distribution). This comes back to the point
above: what
background is relevant to the lizards? This is determined by behavior and
abundance across
habitat types and cannot be estimated by simply choosing a half-dozen sites,
treating them as
monoliths, and seeing how well the lizards at each site match open soil or
sand.
And then we have another problem: phenotypic plasticity. We don't know whether
or not color
differences between White Sands and other populations of these lizards are
heritable, and we
do know that most lizards, including phrynosomatids, have some level of
plasticity in
coloration. For instance, a 1958 study by R.E. Bundy & J. Neess suggests that
the major
factor in background matching by the phrynosomatid Phrynosoma modesta is
plasticity.
And now we're down to nit-picking. There are more than three lizards with
light-colored
populations on White Sands, but the "other two" are never mentioned:
Phrynosoma
cornuta and Uta stansburiana. I wouldn't bother mentioning this,
except that E.B.
Rosenblum says: "In this study, I ask how the complete lizard fauna at White
Sands has
responded to natural selection across a common ecotone." No, this study
examines how 3/5 of
the lizard fauna at White Sands responds to selection.
In conclusion:
1. The genetic markers used do not provide a neutral estimate of gene flow, and
this bias,
although fundamental in interpretation of the results, is ignored.
2. Alternative explanations that fit the data at least as well as the preferred
hypothesis,
that gene flow limits crypsis, are rejected either without good cause or due to
poor
knowledge of the area.
4 January 2007
Thoughts on sex-ratio in ants:
The usual explanation of sex-ratios in ants goes something like this: In a
monogyne colony
with a singly-mated queen, queens are equally related to both male and female
alates and thus
should favor a balanced sex ratio, while workers have a relatedness of .75 to
female alates
and .25 to males and should therefore favor a female-biased sex-ratio of about
3:1. If queens
mate multiply this relatedness asymmetry is reduced (because relatedness to male
alates,
which carry only the queen's genes through parthenogenesis, stays constant while
relatedness
to female alates, which now may be half-sibs rather than full-sibs, decreases)
and the
tendency for workers to favor female-biased reproduction should likewise
diminish. If there
are multiple singly-mated queens, the relatedness asymmetry remains constant but
average
relatedness to either male or female alates drops, presumably reducing indirect
fitness
effects for workers of a female-biased sex ratio. Based on this, in monogyne
singly-mated colonies a sex ratio approaching 3:1 is taken to indicate worker
control of
reproduction, a sex ratio approaching 1:1 is taken to indicate queen control,
intermediate values are interpreted as the result of conflict and partial
control by each
group, selective killing of male larvae by workers is interpreted as a
manifestation of
parent-offspring conflict between the queen and workers, and so on and so
forth.
This explanatory framework is interesting because there is both a fair amount of
empirical
support for it and some errors in its formulation. One conspicuous absence is
the role
males may play. Because males are produced parthenogenetically from
unfertilized haploid
eggs, when a
male mates with a queen he will have a relatedness of 0 to any males the colony
later
produces, and males that could impart genes causing a female-biased sex ratio
would have
increased fitness as a result; the ideal sex-ratio for males, from the point of
view of
relatedness in the next generation alone, would be 1:0 (the ideal proportion of
males
increases from 0 if future generations are taken into account). Furthermore,
although queens
are
equally related to both male and female offspring, the haplodiploid reproductive
system of
ants means that, all else equal, male offspring, which give rise only to
females, will
produce only half as many "grandchildren" for a queen as will females, which
produce both
male and female offspring. So, although an account of the queen's direct,
single-generation
fitness alone would suggest she should favor a 1:1 sex ratio, when reproduction
of the next
generation is included the favored sex ratio becomes 2:1. If all this is
correct, both
males, queens, and workers should all favor a female-biased sex-ratio, although
to
differing degrees and with substantial variance associated with changes in
reproductive
structure of colonies.
Now, how to interpret variation in sex-ratio, killing of male larvae by workers,
dependence
of said killing on the number of mates a queen has had, and all those other
phenomena
...?
2 January 2007
Further thoughts on polygyne ants... in Solenopsis invicta the switch to
a polygyne
colony system has been linked to a single gene (Krieger & Ross, 2002; Science
295(5553):
328-332); this is interesting but not really very informative evolutionarily,
beyond
establishing that there is a genetic component to the social system. In
Linepithema humile, the switch to a polygyne colony system has been
attributed to a
genetic bottleneck (if all individuals in a population are very closely related,
all members
of the population may treat each other as kin; Tsutsui et al., 2000;
P.N.A.S. 97(11):
5948-5953), to increased costs of competition in the denser populations of the
introduced range,
and thus selection against uncommon recognition
alleles (Giraud et al., 2002; P.N.A.S. 99(9): 6075-6079), or to a
combination of a
bottleneck and selection against uncommon recognition alleles (Tsutsui et
al., 2003;
P.N.A.S. 100(3): 1078-1083). However, the last-cited paper undermines any
argument for
selection against uncommon recognition alleles since it shows that nestmate
recognition is learned in Linepithema humile, and that currently existing
"supercolonies" of L. humile are being maintained by learned broad
recognition in
spite of diversity at recognition alleles. The same paper also shows
competitive superiority
of monogyne colony workers against those of polygyne colonies, which further
confuses the
situation; competitive superiority of polygyne colonies, however, could still
occur if in
their introduced range these colonies can overwhelm monogynes through sheer
numbers, a
possibility supported by the higher nest density and abundance of polygynes
compared to
monogynes. These results from Tsutsui et al. (2003) furthermore argue
against a genetic
bottleneck alone causing current unicoloniality, unless the present genetic
diversity arose
after the recent formation of a unicolonial social structure, which seems
unlikely. Another
cause of unicoloniality that has been suggested in other ants is nest site
limitation: if ant
densities are high, good nest sites may all be occupied and queens may have no
choice but to
attempt to enter existing nests, giving rise to polygyne nests if they are
successful.
29 December 2006
I recently read E.O. Wilson's autobiography, "Naturalist". Excellent book.
It's also gotten
me on an ant kick again. Dangerous. Today's exciting phenomenon of note: a
polygynous form
(having multiple queens per colony) of the Argentine fire ant (Solenopsis
invicta;
a.k.a. "imported red fire ant", a name concocted for political correctness) in
the U.S. occur at
10-30 times the density of monygynous (one queen per colony) forms, and forms
interconnected
"supercolonies" without explicit colonial territories. This is odd. According
to kin
selection theory, one of the reasons you get cooperation in social hymenoptera
is that the
haplodiploid sex determination system of the hymenoptera produces the rather
unusual effect
that,
if the sex-ratio of reproductives is female-biased, workers are more related to
the queen's
offspring than they would be to their own. But in a polygynous colony, any
given worker may
have a relatedness of 0 to the offspring of a particular queen. All else equal,
polygyne
colonies should be on thin ice; relatedness no longer favors cooperation. But
instead,
polygyne colonies in this species show greater cooperation, with
cooperation extending
from the within-colony level to the between-colony level.
Even more interesting, this is not an isolated phenomenon, but a repeated
pattern in
highly-invasive ants.
28 December 2006
Possible answers to previous questions...
1: Yes; some obvious potential venues of cooperation include population
synchronicity (e.g.
masting in oaks), fertilization of ovules with non-self pollen rather than
selfing, nutrient
transfer to conspecifics through mycorrhizae (to the extent that this is under a
plant's
control, which may be very limited).
Cooperation is a somewhat limited word, though, and traditional preoccupation
with altruism
may obscure the evolutionary important phenomena. What are of interest to me
are any
processes that promote success above the individual level, whether they promote
success
at the individual level or not...
2: No; the limitation is that any genes acting at higher levels must pass
through the
gateways of lower-level selection first, and since success at these lower levels
is so much
more direct, obvious, and measurable, higher level selection of all kinds tends
to be
ignored.
26 December 2006
Question of the day:
Can plants cooperate?
Second question of the day:
Is there any inherent reason that kin selection shouldn't apply above the
population or
species level?
19 September 2006
More bits of Stebbins; p. 262:
"Hybridization between well-established and well-adapted species in a stable
environment will
have no significant outcome or will be detrimental to the species populations.
But if the
crossing occurs under rapidly changing conditions or in a region which offers
new habitats to
the segregating offspring, many of these segregates may survive and contribute
to a greater
or lesser degree to the evolutionary progress of the group concerned."
p. 270:
"There is little doubt, therefore, that the majority of the examples of
hybridization and
introgression which can be foud in plant populations at the present time are
asociate with
the disturbance of old habitats and the opening up of new ones through human
activity.
15 September 2006
Disturbing quote from this
article:
"If we're not willing to use it [non-lethal weaponry] here against our fellow
citizens, then we
should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. [Air Force
Secretary
Michael Wynne]
I find weapons that are non-lethal but incapacitating very disturbing. They
make abuse of
power easier to justify--after all, you're not killing anyone--but to
think that
using nonlethal force is inherently unobjectionable is absurd. And arguing that
American
civilians--or any unconsenting civilians--are appropriate guinea pigs for
weaponry of
any kind is downright evil. If we need test subjects--start with Michael Wynne.
If he's not
willing to use it on himself, he shouldn't be willing to use it on any of the
rest of us.
Now more Stebbins quotes; pp. 189-190:
"The common ground of agreement between these definitions may be expressed as
follows. In
sexually reproducing organisms, a species is a system consisting of one or more
genetically,
morphologically, and physiologicall different kinds of organisms which possess
an essential
continuity maintained y the similarity of genes or the more or less free
interchange of genes
between its members. Species are separated from each other by gaps of genetic
discontinuity
in morphological and physiological characteristics which are maintained by the
abscence or
rarity of gene interchange between members of different species. The above
sentences are not
to be construed as this authors definition of a species, since several different
species
definitions are possible within the framework of their meaning."
But--isn't it precisely the problem of existing species concepts that they try
to limit us
to a single axis for discerning species, rather than admitting of several
different axes, as
Stebbins' sentences above do? Why not embrace such a broad and inclusive
definition--merely
because it could be subdivided?
p. 202:
"The second alternative [the first was multiple species concepts] would be to
recognize that
at any given moment in the evolutionary time sale, reproductive isolation is
important in
keeping distinct only those populations which are sympatric or which overlap in
their
distributions."
In other words... Mayr's Biological Species Concept is applicable only to
sympatric or
overlapping populations. This criticism has been hemmed and hawwed over for
five decades
now, but has never been addressed in a coherent fashion. And it is precisely a
multidimensional species concept that will allow us to overcome this problem, as
well as
those that plague the other species concepts. Why, after all, would we expect
groups in
multi-dimensional space to always be identifiable along a single axis, like that
of
reproductive isolation?
11 September 2006
Unrelated thoughts... first, the legacy of September 11th, 2001:
Two wars won militarily in years past, still being lost in every other way
imaginable. One a
war of revenge, the other... god knows what.
How many thousands killed for this? Or millions--we don't know. How many Arabs
equal one American? How many eyes for one eye?
How many enemies made? We learned this lesson, between World War I and World
War II.
Enemies conquered and then rebuilt become allies. Enemies conquered and left to
fester
become new and greater threats. When did we forget?
The legacy is death and distraction. Force misapplied and evil still
afoot.
And the other topic, Pluto's planethood. There was a letter to the editor in
our student
newspaper announcing a march for Pluto, in opposition to its demotion, for the
honor and
memory of Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto's discoverer. But science is not merely a
popularity
contest; if it were, the accomplishments of scientists like Tombaugh would not
be
particularly important, but merely historical fads. And Tombaugh's
accomplishments were not
semantic; they cannot be erased merely by changing a word. Those supporting the
march
forget, or never knew, these facts.
6 September 2006
Another quote from Stebbins, p. 34:
"All [Dobzhansky, Mayr, & Huxley] agree that species must consist of systems of
populations
that are separated from each other by complete or at least sharp discontinuities
in the
variation pattern, and that these discontinuities must have a genetic
basis."
This remains essentially the case with modern disagreements on species concepts.
The
disagreements are not in what species are, but in what is the best axis on which
to look for
discontinuities.
And Stebbins, p. 35:
"In fact, it is likely that most families in which the genera are well-defined
have suffered
the extinction of many species, and further that most boundaries between
neighboring genera
represent gaps left by species which have perished."
The importance of extinction in observed patterns remains often overlooked and
misunderstood. In most cases monophyletic taxa, for instance, were previously
paraphyletic groups in which sufficient lineages have subsequently become
extinct.
Stebbins continues:
"If this fact is kept in mind, then
the search for natural boundaries to genera has some meaning to the evolutionist
and is not
entirely a matter of convenience."
5 September 2006
I keep forgetting to write anything here. Went many places over the summer, now
I'm
continuing to botanize in the semester, not taking any classes but running the
lab for Plant
Taxonomy. Recently read several books by Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker
Creek, The Living,
For the Time Being, and Teaching a Stone to Talk. All highly recommenended,
especially
P.a.T.C. and F.t.T.B. I also read a biography of Marcus E. Jones, an early
western botanist, by
Lee Lenz. Poorly written but worth reading. I just started Stebbins' Variation
and Evolution
in Plants. Very interesting so far; here's a quote from the first page:
"The hierarchy of categories is a multidimensional pattern of variation in
nature, and the
gaps or discontinuities give reality to the various categories."
I think (and hope) he means taxa by "categories". This seems to be his usage
elsewhere.
There are several other interesting quotes in the first few dozen pages that I
may put up
later.
12 May 2006
End of semester. I prepare to become less productive.
I read "The Foundations of Arithmetic" by Gottlob Frege. I guess I know what
numbers are
now. I thought I knew earlier. More interestingly, Frege thought he knew
earlier; he often
uses a rather odd form of argument that puzzles me. The basic form is, in
trying to discover
the essence of an entity you create some sort of conceptual construct and then
compare the
properties of the construct with the properties of the entity. You create a
conceptualization from which our uses of the entity can arise; but this ignores
the basic
problem. Either the entity is some pre-existing thing, and its uses arise from
it; or the
entity is a conceptualization to begin with and it is its uses. We are left
with either a
mirage or a duplicate.
Perhaps a new conceptualization creates new uses; but then it cannot be judged
by its
similarity to the old concept.
In specific reference to Frege's explanation of what numbers are, he has either
explained the
already-known, or created a new concept different from that of number. He
searches for
depth where there is no depth; 2+2=4 is an explanation, not something in need of
explanation.
18 April 2006
I recently read Wittgenstein's "Zettel". Quotes of interest (to me, perhaps
others):
p. 70: '"Heap of sand" is a concept without sharp boundaries--but why isn't one
with sharp
boundaries used instead of it?--is the reason to be found in the nature of the
heaps?'
p. 77: 'There are for example degrees of pleasure, but it is stupid to speak of
a
measurement of pleasure. It is true that in certain cases a measurable
phenomenon occupies
the place previously occupied by a non-measurable one. Then the word
designating this place
changes its meaning, and its old meaning becomes more or less obsolete. We are
soothed by
the fact that the one concept is the more exact, and do not notice that here in
each
particular case a different relation between the "exact" and the "inexact"
concept is in
question: it is the old mistake of not testing particular cases.'
p. 123: 'There might be a use of signs made, such that they become useless
(perhaps they are
abolished) as soon as the bearer has ceased to exist.
'In this language-game the name has the object on a string, so to speak; and if
the object
ceases to exist, the name, which has done its work in conjunction with the
object, can be
thrown away.'
And a random thought: math in biology exists to assure uniform analysis and
representation of
data. Statistics &c. are notational conventions. New methods that are not
accompanied by
decision rules governing their application are not progress, but undermine the
purpose of all
mathematical methods. When multiple methods already exist without a means of
deciding among
them, we have a severe problem. Standardized decision among methods is more
important
than the question of whether one method or the other is in some sense more
accurate.
11 April 2006
Rain!
<insert appropriately joyful exclamatory verse here>
25 March 2006
I took a trip through southeastern New Mexico and then down to Big Bend from the
19th to the
23rd. Those areas have gotten a bit more rain than we have here in Las Cruces,
but I guess
their rains were too little, too late--not much of anything in flower, and it's
pretty crispy
out there. This made the supposed goal of the trip, collecting Boechera,
somewhat
superfluous (though I did still find a few) and so I was forced to entertain
myself with
merely hiking and photography instead. The things I do for botany...
I've got most of the landscape type images online now. First I went to Wind Mountain, then to Sitting Bull Falls in the Guadalupe
Mountains.
In between those, I got hailed on whilst trying to sleep in my Tercel.
Disrupted the peace
of my slumber somewhat. Anyways, I then headed down to Big Bend National Park,
visiting the
Lost Mine Trail, the Window Trail in
Chisos Basin, the South Rim of the Chisos, and finally The Chimneys with adjacent Red Ass Spring. Where I've visited
places before,
the new and old pictures are mixed together so as to confuse you.
14 March 2006
I gave a talk yesterday resulting from my various species-related cogitations.
You could
watch the powerpoint file and try
to imagine my
rather erudite and witty commentary, if so inclined.
8 March 2006
It's National Procrastination Week. I ought to celebrate!
Well, I'll do that next week...
7 March 2006
An addendum to my earlier inchoate mutterings about math in science:
Part of the question is whether math has an explanatory role in and of itself.
I think this
depends in large part on the audience and is part of the divide between
biologists who
advocate mathematical primacy and the rest of us. To be blunt, for most
biologists math is
not explanatory; when you add an equation into a discussion you increases the
number of
things that need to be explained.
Instead, math is primarily a tool allowing uniform and explicit comparison of
different sets of
data, hence the focus on p-values and so forth. However, those biologists who
are highly
mathematically competent appear to think that an equation is an explanation,
rather than
something to be explained. As a result they become rather unintelligible to
those not
sharing their particular proclivities. This of course does not incline us to
become more
comfortable with math, but heightens the sense of mathematics as an alien and
baffling world.
As a recent example... suppose you're trying to look at how variation in
selective pressures
influences the ability of genetic variation to persist in a population. This
variation can
come in two basic forms: spatial variation and temporal variation. In a simple
case, we
might have two genotypes in a population and two environments that members of a
population are
exposed to. One genotype gives its bearer greater fitness in one environment,
the other
genotype
gives greater fitness in the other. Those two separate environments might be
co-occurring
microhabitats (sites closer to or further from a body of water, for instance),
or the result
of variation between years (years with more or less rain).
If you're a mathematical biologist trying to explain whether temporal or spatial
variation is more likely to promote polymorphism, you demonstrate that the set
of equations
describing spatial variation in selection gives the overall fitness of each
genotype as a
geometric mean,
whereas the set of equations describing temporal variation in selection gives
the overall
fitness of each
genotype as a harmonic mean. Then you conclude that spatial variation is more
likely to
promote polymorphism.
The number of people to whom that will be an explanation (even with the various
equations
and so forth inserted, as I have neither the time nor the inclination to do) is
quite small and,
as it would
happen, a non-mathematical explanation is possible and actually rather simple.
When there is
spatial variation in fitness, if the two genotypes are randomly assorted each
one will end up
having some representatives in the environment it does well in. When there is
temporal
variation, the environment is going to be universally bad for one of the two
genotypes in any
given year. As a result, either of the genotypes is much more likely to get
wiped out by a
bad year than by a bad microhabitat, and spatial variation in selection is more
likely to let
both genotypes persist.
This sort of explanation is not only more immediately comprehensible, but makes
it more
obvious what kinds of preconditions are being assumed and how they might be
violated. (For
instance, I can figure out how organisms might avoid a temporarily bad
environment and
upset this reasoning; I can't think the situation through in terms of organisms
differing in
ways that yield geometric rather than harmonic mean fitnesses!) However, if
you read a population genetics textbook, you're likely to see only the
mathematical
explanation. The way I figure it, if you want to only explain the biology
itself,
there's no reason to offer anything more than the plain-language explanation.
If you
want to explain both the biology and how to treat that biology in a more precise
mathematical
framework, both explanations
should be provided along with brief exposition of the relationship between the
two.
5 March 2006
Spring hasn't exactly sprung, but I think it's done about as much springing as
it intends
to. I was on the west side of A Mountain yesterday & saw six species flowering:
Baileya multiradiata, Thymophylla
pentachaeta, Dimorphocarpa wislizenii, Nerisyrenia camporum, Physaria gordoni
(or maybe
fendleri; they look rather too similar), and Streptanthus carinatus. Wandering
around Las
Cruces today, I also saw some Sphaeralcea, Phacelia integrifolia, a couple
clumps of Eschscholzia, some kind of Erigeron, & a lone Rafinesquia. Not quite
last year's
display, but at least we're getting some stuff blooming out there.
20 February 2006
I just got tickets to fly to Indiana in May. Disturbing as the idea is, I miss
the place.
I've also been reading more Wittgenstein recently, and trying to figure out what
the purpose
of math is; I suppose I'm supposed to just take the importance of math on faith
and dutifully
study it, but even if I take it as given that math is important I still need to
figure out
why. What purpose, exactly, does it serve? In what situations do I need math,
and in what
situations is the math superfluous or even obfuscatory?
As it is, there seem in biology to be two groups: A) those who always assume
that a
mathematical explanations is not only helpful but necessary and B), those who
don't
understand the mathematical explanations given by those in group A and view math
as just a
set of equations that you have to plug things into every now and then.
Neither group has analyzed the situation in any coherent fashion. Those in
group A
generally can't explain what exactly the math is doing for them, simply
insisting that it
is necessary. Those in group B just wish they didn't have to bother with the
whole
thing. My tendency is to fall into group B.
So I'm reading Wittgenstein's "Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics" and
thinking
things over. My impression
so far is that a cogent criticism of the group A position is possible, and that
the current
group A position is in part an obfuscatory force that has created the group B
position.
There are people who don't understand the purpose of mathematical explanations
because
those who do understand those explanations both haven't been able to coherently
explain their
purpose and have inflated their scope far beyond reality... instead of a useful
tool,
math in biology has become a priesthood. I hope at some point to get a
criticism of the
group A position worked out at least in its general outlines, right now I have a
rather
disjunct set of ideas.
30 January 2006
I submitted a letter to the editor for the journal Taxon, which they'll be
publishing. Not a
hugely significant publication (letters to the editor aren't peer-reviewed, for
instance),
but my first publication in a scientific journal nonetheless. It briefly
discusses an
argument for the inclusion of paraphyletic (including an ancestral form and some
but not all of its descendants; as opposed to monophyletic groups, which include
an ancestor
and all of its descendants) taxa in classification. I won't go into it in
detail here, but
might put up a citation once it's out into the world.
I've also been spending some time thinking about the concept that species are
individuals.
Often this is phrased as "individuals in the philosophical sense" or
"individuals in the
logical sense"; a problem should be obvious: definitions of "individual" will
vary between
philosophers and between logicians, and none of the various possibilities is
generally known
within the biological community as a whole (or, for that matter, in any
community
other than the philosophical or logical community), and so we've got a phrase
whose referent
is both ambiguous and largely unknown to the audience of interest.
Furthermore, it's not at all clear that there is any sort of native
interpretation for
"individual" in this context. Application of the word, then, is solely by
analogy. Given
that the analogy is, as mentioned, to an unknown concept, this isn't very
helpful. Consider
trying to describe the town of Lordsburg, New Mexico, to a New Yorker by saying
it's like the
nearby town of Deming but smaller and without the Florida Mts. nearby. At this
point, unless
you have found the exceedingly rare New Yorker familiar with New Mexican towns,
you
now have to explain what Deming is like in order to have accomplished anything
by the
comparison of Lordsburg with it. So why not just explain Lordsburg in the first
place?
Why explain by analogy to an unknown, if direct explanation is possible?
More explicitly, one of the things people have hoped to accomplish by calling
species
individuals is to convey that they are historical entities, with distinct
beginnings and ends
and perhaps some modifications in between. This is opposed to earlier
conceptions of
species as classes; categories are (in some sense) timeless, unchanging, etc.
So then we
wonder: is it obvious to the average
biologist that, by calling a species an individual, we mean that it is a
historical entity of
some kind? The answer seems to be "no", since authors wishing to make this
point feel it
necessary to spell things out and say something like, "Species are individuals;
and by
"individual" I mean a historical entity." Then... is invoking the "individual"
concept
necessary to make this point? Again, no--we can either explain directly, by
describing
characteristics of species (an originating speciation event, eventual
extinction) which
establish historicity, or we can even come up with temporally-limited classes
(e.g., "a
species is a class of organisms having members after time x and before
some future time
y). Either of these is a viable alternative to the individual-based
argument, though the
latter is not a particularly elegant or intuitive way of doing things. Well,
then... surely
we at least have made some progress by establishing that species are historical
entities,
even if the individual-based argument is not the only one, or even necessarily
the best one,
right? Again, I don't really think so... the "species are individuals" concept
first came up
in the 1970's, by which time it would have been very hard to find a taxonomist
who wasn't
aware of basic evolutionary events like speciation and extinction; we already
knew species
had temporal limits, so calling species individuals in order to establish those
temporal
limits seems rather like a clarification desperately in search of a
confusion.
More generally, there are no intrinsic limits to the conditions that could be
set on the
membership of a class. Any claim about species that could be accomplished by
describing them
as individuals could be accomplished by describing them as classes. It might be
more
difficult, but this is just a pragmatic argument and the "species are
individuals" proponents
think they are making an ontological argument.
21 January 2006
Most interesting website I've come across this month:
NOA
A:
Precipitation and Temperature
Through this you can get maps of the US
showing things like: precipitation, including absolute and percent
deviation from normal, for everything from the last week to the last year;
similar maps for
temperature; and changes in temperature and precipitation over the last four
decades.
I also just re-read Ed Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" and read "Wittgenstein's
Poker" by Edmonds
& Eidinow (about heated disagreement between Wittgenstein & Popper; though
there's a reason
Wittgenstein is in the title). Both highly recommended. Here're a
few quotes of particular interest to me at the moment from "Desert
Solitaire":
page xi of the introduction:
"For my own part I am pleased enough with surfaces--in fact they alone seem to
me to
be of
much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child's hand in your
own, the
flavor of an apple, the embrace of friend or lover, the silk of a girl's thigh,
the sunlight
on rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of
granite and sand,
the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind--what else is there?
What else
do we need?"
page 30 & 31:
"I've had this tree under surveillance ever since my arrival at Arches, hoping
to learn
something from it, to discover the significance in its form, to make a
connection through its
life with whatever falls beyond. Have failed. The essence of the juniper
continues to elude
me unless, as I presently suspect, its surface is also the essence."
from page 273:
"Where is the heart of the desert? I used to think that somewhere in the
American
Southwest,
impossible to say exactly where, all of these wonders which intrigue the spirit
would
converge upon a climax--and resolution. Perhaps in the vicinity of Weaver's
Needle in the
Superstition Range; in the Funeral Mountains above Death Valley; in the Smoke
Creek Desert of
Nevada; among the astonishing monoliths of Monument Valley; in the depths of
Grand Canyon;
somewhere along the White Rim under Grandview Point; in the heart of the Land of
Standing
Rocks. Not so. I am convinced now that the desert has no heart, that it
presents a riddle
which has no answer, and that the riddle itself is an illusion created by some
limitation or
exaggeration of the displaced human consciousness.
"This at least is what I tell myself when I fix my attention on what is
rational, sensible and
realistic, believing that I have overcome at last that gallant infirmity of the
soul called
romance--that illness, that disease, the isidious malignancy which must be
chopped out of the
heart once and for all, ground up, cook, burnt to ashes... consumed. [...] In
answer to the
original question, then, I find myself in the end returning to the beginning,
and can only
say, as I said in the first place: There is something about the
desert..."
There are parallels in Wittgenstein. The last sentence of the "Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus" is:
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
& the most interesting section of "Wittgenstein's Poker", to me, is the
following from page
158:
"The theory that meaningful statements have either to be analytic (where truth
or falsity can
be assessed by examining the meaning of the words or symbols employed--"all
triangles have
three sides") or open to observation became known as "logical positivism," and
many logical
positivists [i.e., the Vienna Circle] took the Tractatus as their Bible.
[ ... ] The
total accuracy of
the Vienna Circle's interpretation of the Tractatus is another matter.
Wittgenstein
had parceled up propositions into those which can be said and those about which
we must
remain silent. Scientific propositions fell into the former category, ethical
propositions
into the latter. But what many in the Circle misunderstood was that
Wittgenstein did not
believe that the unsayable should be condemned as nonsense. On the contrary, the
things we
could not talk about were those that really mattered. Wittgenstein had spelt out
the point of
the Tractatus in a letter to a prominent avant-garde editor: 'The book's
point is an
ethical one... My work consists of two parts: the one present here plus all that
I have not
written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important
one.'"
The logical positivist interpretation had been mine, as well, but this view
seems much
better... I think I need to read & re-read some more Wittgenstein.
20 January 2006
Further comments on Jared Diamond's "Collapse":
In reference to blaming businesses for pollution and so forth--it is a duty of
the public to
hold businesses accountable for unethical, immoral behavior in which the public
is harmed for
private profit. Removing companies from the potential for blame in their
pursuit for profit
above all else erodes the ability of the public to fulfill this duty. As much
as blame is an
imperfect and often ugly concept, it remains a necessary part of the
process.
This is part of a larger problem; while Diamond is correct that part of being
able to adapt
to new situations, culturally, is the ability to jettison cultural values that
are no longer
functional and now hinder progress, he neglects the other half of this, that we
must also
create new cultural values or, better yet, coopt old values to perform new
functions in our
society. He seems to see cultural values as primarily a hindrance, whereas they
are also a
tool of progress. Taking this into account means we need new kinds of ethics
and morality to
allow us to evaluate new possibilities and prohibit harmful practices that
weren't previously
important, not
the rejection of parts of current morality that aid us in establishing
accountability for
new harmful practices.
Ideally we would react in a purely rational fashion rather than relying on
emotionally-charged and often inaccurate moral constructs but, realistically,
this will not
happen at a societal level.
Regarding TV pundits:
A couple weeks ago, a Republican spokesperson rejected current Democratic
resistance to (or
at least lack of enthusiasm for) Bush's (via FBI) investigation of the spying
leaks as
represeting "selective outrage" compared to the previous strong advocacy of
investigaion of
leaks involving Wilson's wife's identity as a CIA operative. Rhetorically this
is a good
move. It has enough truth to be convincing and awkward to refute, but enough
falsity to be
useful for deception.
The ideal response in terms of brevity and comprehensibility (and thus ability
to convince)
would be to point out that it is not the Democrats but both parties that have
switched sides
in the two cases; the Republicans can't attack the Democrats without atacking
themselves. The
downside is that, likewise, the Democrats leave no room for attacking the
Republicans, and
the whole thing is made to look like just another partisan squabble.
The better response, in terms of accuracy and cogency but too long and
complicated for a
sound byte, is that the Wilson leak appeared to represent a violation of law and
erosion of
natoinal security by the administration in order to bully a political opponent.
And,
likewise, the administration spying we learned about through the recent leak
also represents an
abuse of power for political gain. In both cases, Democrats are objecting to
presidential
abuse of power; there is no inconsistency, it's just the role of intelligence
leaks in the
two cases that changed. In the Wilson case, an investigation of the leak would
serve to expose
and potentially react appropriately to an abuse of power. In the spying leak,
an
investigation of the leak would serve a diversionary purpose, obscuring the
abuse of power
and decreasing the possibility of a correct response. But in both cases the
goal of these
Democrats was the same, holding the
administration accountable for illegal or immoral behavior. This is one of the
duties of
congress, and congressmen cannot be faulted for attempting to fulfill
it.
23 December 2005
You know what's a threat to national security? A president we can't trust with
the power to
defend our country.
Impeach.
And keep on impeaching until we find a real American in this administration.
Someone, anyone, interested in leading the country rather than duping it,
trashing it,
and milking it for cash.
18 December 2005
Highly recommended reading:
What You Can't Say
The gist is: there are moral fashions as well as clothing fashions, and
they restrict not just what we can say but what we think. He then goes
on to discuss various ways in which those moral fashions and their
influence can be discovered. Of those, one is particularly ironic--that
arbitrary moral fashion is probably at work when we find something
unspeakable that most other human societies have found perfectly
acceptable. The irony is that this suggests we can avoid the effects of
society-level conformity by embracing species-level conformity. However, the
most interesting way of identifying the effects of moral fashion
that he suggests is that whenever a statement, act, etc., is denigrated
through labelling rather than by demonstrating it to be incorrect or
harmful, odds are moral fashion rather than reasoning is at work. When a
good argument can be presented, it is always more compelling than
labelling; hence labelling is a fall-back in the absence of compelling
argument.
My favorite example of this is the word "intolerant", because it is an
ironic example. When someone accuses you of being intolerant, what they
mean, of course, is that they are unwilling to tolerate your (intolerant)
viewpoint. Maybe they have good reasons for doing so, but those reasons are
not demonstrated by the label "intolerant", which is given simply as a proof
of hypocrisy. The problem, of course, is that a great many things people
say and do are intolerant and some of those should be rejected for that
very reason. When, for example, the intolerance is based on moral
fashion rather than reasoning. And round and round we go... the
invalidity of the labelling argument is hidden by the fact that it often
arrives at the correct result.
Another problem is that, when moral fashion happens to be yielding
correct answers, the labelling argument is typically much quicker and
effective than direct rebuttal. It's hard not to use it. Would you
rather spend weeks digging up and analyzing studies on the comparative
abilities of men and women in management situations in order to try to
justify an equal-opportunity policy, or just reject the alternative as
sexist? The situation is further complicated by the fact that, in
practice, shorter arguments are more convincing than long
arguments.
This is one of the many cases where using invalid argumentation is a
rational, productive approach. It requires the expenditure of less time
and energy, and the results are more convincing. But, then, how do you
reject the cases
where using invalid argumentation is deceptive, counter-productive,
irrational?
Another essay linked from www.paulgraham.com:
A Civic Duty to Annoy
I agree with the sentiments, but after reading a few similar essays
linked from the "What You Can't Say" article, I find myself trying to
come up with arguments in favor of conformism...
14 December 2005:
I went to the Pyramid Mountains,
south of
Lordsburg in Hidalgo Co., NM, with Jeanne Tenorio
on Sunday. Nice little mountains, mostly reddish/tan rhyolite but with various
bits of
other stuff in there, too. I was hoping there might be some good ferns, but
things were
pretty dry and all I saw were Pellaea truncata and Cheilanthes
lindheimeri. My
main reason for going was simply that I hadn't been and, despite having driven
by them
several times on I-10, hadn't even noticed them. Turns out there's not just a
whole lot to
notice. A good place for aimless wandering nonetheless, and with excellent
views of the
Peloncillo and Dos Cabezas Mts. to the west.
I'm now reading "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared
Diamond. So far
an excellent book. He espouses a viewpoint I've seen before and disagree with,
though. He suggests that, since the purpose of a business is to make money, we
can't really
blame them for doing so in the most efficient manner possible, even when that
happens to
involve poisoning land, water, and people. There are a few ways to respond to
this:
1. If we can't blame the businesses for doing their best to make money, since
that's their
job--well, they can't blame us for wanting to blame them for their actions,
either, since
that's part of
our job. Diamond does mention that holding them accountable is part of our job,
but still
seems to want to reject the idea that the businesses can be blamed for screwing
things up for
the rest of us. While blame probably isn't the most useful concept in this
context,
trying to separate blame from accountability and rejecting the applicability of
blame comes awfully
close to rejecting accountability, too. For those thinking moral culpability
isn't
applicable, it's probably best to just not talk about moral culpability rather
than
attempting a one-sided rejection of moral culpability for businesses. If
talking
about moral culpability isn't helpful in the situation, then neither is any
attempt to reject
moral culpability, either.
2. The purpose of a business is to make money, true. But this doesn't mean
that it is in
the best interests--even from a purely financial perspective--for a business to
try to avoid
being accountable for damages it causes. For instance, there's an ASARCO copper
smelter in El
Paso. It was closed earlier because low copper prices made it a losing venture.
Now copper
prices are higher, and ASARCO wants to reopen, but they are facing strong
opposition because
of earlier pollution problems and an unwillingness on ASARCO's part to either
redress past
pollution wrongs or to take measures to prevent further pollution. Trying to
avoid
accountability is now keeping ASARCO out of business in El Paso.
3. The "we're just doing our job" defense has been tried before. The Nuremberg
War Trials
come to mind. While the crimes involved are totally dissimilar in kind and
scope, the
arguments are not--a crime is a crime is a crime whether it's part of your job
or not. If
making money hand-over-fist by mining requires a business to destroy other
people's
livelihoods, lands, and health then it's not acceptable. That it might be part
of a
business accomplishing its goals just doesn't matter.
26 November 2005:
I'm a binge-reader, I think. Recent books:
Centennial, James Michener
Rising from the Plains, John McPhee
Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
Blood Brook, Ted Levin
The Flight of the Iguana: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, David
Quammen
And I'm about halfway through The Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the
Beholder,
also by David Quammen.
Brief thoughts on a couple of those:
Centennial was one I didn't have too high hopes for starting off, since
the front
cover announces the book as the basis of some sort of "spectacular" televised
series, and the
only other thing I know about Michener is that "South Pacific" was also based on
one of his
works. So I expected populist drivel, to be perfectly blunt. But I read it
anyways, and the
short version is: it'd be an excellent book if you tore out the first 200 pages
or so. Don't
worry--that still leaves you with about 800 pages of reading. That first
section consists
primarily of narratives of the hopes and desires of non-sentient animals and
confused
accounts of evolutionary
history; the first can't be done well, the second just isn't done well by
Michener. The
rest, though, is a brief history of the United States as it relates to Colorado,
and is very
well done, especially in its surprising honesty. Though I wouldn't've expected
it in any
TV-ready book, he doesn't shy away from discussing the many unpleasant and
unflattering
aspects of American history. The view you come out with is one of the West
having been
made by believable, understandable human beings who made their share of
mistakes, rather
than the sort of
sanitized, glorified cowboyism that usually infects accounts of the American
West.
Blood Brook was interesting for similar reasons. Large portions of it
are the sort of
intimate observations of wildlife that usually end up off in Bambi-land, but
instead Levin
maintains an unusual degree of equanimity and, when you least expect it, is
suddenly
discussing--with equal equanimity--things like eating pileated woodpeckers,
cleaning
rattlesnake skins for mounting, and so forth. He demonstrates by example a
pragmatic
approach to nature that sees us as part of nature without anthropomorphizing
nature or hiding
its unpleasant aspects and, moreover, without hiding or denying our
unpleasant aspects.
24 November 2005:
Random thoughts:
There's no good word for the people who were in North America before Europeans
arrived.
"Indian" is hopelessly inaccurate, though perhaps useful in demonstrating
European
ignorance. "American Indian" is self-contradictory, though it does at least
avoid some
confusion. "Native American" I object to simply because I was born here and am
just as
native as anyone else, yet I'm not a "Native American". Sure, some people's
ancestors were here a lot longer than mine, but I've never been able to take the
idea that
ancestry determines a person's identity seriously. Culture is far more relevant
in identity;
and while Indians have had cultures here for much longer, and cultures much more
intimately
associated with the area than any culture from Europe, there are still problems
with calling
Indians "Native Americans" in a cultural sense of nativity--the pre-European
cultures of
North America are, for the most part, nonexistent. And North America's changed
a lot, too,
so cultures that were American would no longer fit. The simplest solution would
be to use
whatever word they had for themselves--but Indians
never had a collective word for themselves. Which brings up another point: the
Indians were
never a cohesive group, something which referring to them by a single name
obscures.
We are dependent on cars because we create cities that are unlivable without
them. This is
the purpose of a zoning board.
The incomprehensible corollary: those furthest from the city depend most on
cars.
On a related note, from the point of view of botanizing, hiking, etc., cars are
a mixed
blessing. With them, we can go far to experience new places. Because of them,
we have to go
far to experience much worthwhile.
I come across a quote from William Blake, in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
today:
`One law for the Lion and the Ox is Oppression.'
By this standard, modern public schooling is often oppressive; and I agree.
Unfortunately,
further exploration of the concept leads into disquieting areas. The basic
problem is:
who can we trust to determine who the lions and oxen are? and who decides what
is appropriate
for each?
Is our choice between oppressive uniformity and oppressive prejudice?
20 November 200