The "technological repertoire" of a culture
Brooks Moses
You'd probably get a lot more, and better, responses if you posted it
there.
hal...@hypermetrics.com wrote:
> Here's a pair of questions for you all, if I can can
> express them. Maybe even three.
[...]
> So I am wondering: Does anyone know of a taxonomy or pedigree
> of technology that shows "dependencies" or "prerequisites"?
> I'd like to have a reasonable set of guidelines.
I don't know that such has been laid out; it's certainly an interesting
question, though. You could also ask how strictly you want to consider
dependencies -- for example, we can trace overnight delivery services as
depending on cross-country diesel trucks which require effective
automotive engines which started with carburetors that were inspired by
a perfume atomizer which of course implies perfumes. So, in one sense,
overnight delivery services depend on having perfumes. But one could,
quite easily, concieve of a separate path which doesn't even come close
to that track.
So it takes a _lot_ of consideration of alternate ways of doing things.
And an answering of the question of how important inspiration is -- the
carburetor was inspired by a perfume atomizer; is it necessary that it
be inspired by something at all?
Dang. I shall now add Big Large Project #324 to my list of things to do
when I get bored for a year.
> An idea that interests me also is that many parts of technology
> are independent of each other. It's conceivable that a culture
> might travel farther down one branch than we have, but not as
> far down another.
[...]
> Can we imagine a culture with widespread use of electricity, but
> which hasn't discovered radio? Sure we can! Talk coast to coast
> if you want, but it's all land lines, buddy. What? Of course we
> can't talk to someone in an airplane, except in Morse code. What,
> you want us to string a wire from the plane or something?
Um, not exactly. If land-line audio communication exists, and Morse
code communications with planes exist, radio audio communication is a
quite obvious extension. Now, if you eliminate any way of
communicating, even by Morse, with the airplane, then you might have a
point.
Also, electronic logic circuits will probably imply radio being
discovered, if only from tracking down interference issues.
> Can we imagine a culture with radio, but no TV? I think so;
> we lived that way for ahile. Cars, but no airplanes? We lived
> that way for at least twenty years. What if it had been eighty
> years? Can we imagine a world in which hot-air balloon flight
> was as widespread as airplanes are now?
Again, I'd wonder -- hot-air balloons simply aren't that useful,
airplanes or no.
> What if the jet had never been invented -- propl planes
> everywhere? What if the _Hindenburg_ hadn't met with disaster?
> Might we have eventually replaced hydrogen with helium and kept
> developing dirigible technology?
Actually, the US was simulataneously working on dirigibles with helium
at the time; that wasn't the issue (well, it was for Germany; we
controlled the world's supply). I think the problem ended up being
essentially that airplane technology simply outpaced them, and when the
Akron and Macon crashed, it was sort of the death knell for the idea --
I don't think any large dirigibles (and the Hindenburg wasn't the only
one, by far) were intentionally taken out of service!
(http://tristate.pgh.net/~bsilver/Airship.htm is a good bit of reference
relating to this.)
> On the other hand, some things really are prerequisites: Can't
> have radio and TV without electricity. Can't have airplanes
> without cars (meaning, if we have engines strong enough for
> flight, someone will adapt them for ground travel).
Right.
[...]
> BUT: Is it possible that in our branching out, we have neglected some
> paths that might have led to a greater (or at least unknown) technology
> sooner? We know there are gaps in our knowledge "ahead" of us -- are
> there also gaps "behind" us?
>
> Imagine a bright mind in the 19th century, with the ordinary knowledge
> and materials and techniques of the time. With the right idea/theory/
> insight, could that person create something that we still have not
> thought of today? I am dubious, but the thought tantalized and haunts
> me.
An interesting point, here. A decade or so back, a few graduate
students took a large pile of Tinkertoys and built a mechanical computer
that could play Tic-Tac-Toe unbeatably. Aside from some general vague
ideas of how to arrange the parts, which would be trivial to explain,
that's technology which has been around for millenia. The Greeks could
easily have built such a machine. And yet....
So, in 1800, someone could easily have said that someone a thousand
years earlier, with ordinary materials and techniques, could build
something that (in 1800) had still not been thought of then. If they
could say that then, I imagine little has changed.
Now, you'll note I left something out there -- "ordinary knowledge".
Just because that it's pitifully easy to explain how to do something
after the fact, doesn't mean that it would have been at all easy to see
from where they stood then. (Ever tried to stand a hard-boiled egg on
its tip? See if you can figure out how to do it!) I doubt that we can
do much more today than we're already doing with the knowledge that we
have. However, I'm sure that there are things that will be really
obvious in hindsight that would have let us make very very big
breakthroughs.
Of course, perhaps in 1800 nobody would have cared that a machine make
of tinkertoys could beat them at Tic-Tac-Toe. Maybe they wouldn't have
had the reference point to see that the same principles that allow a
machine to play Naughts and Crosses could simply be scaled up to let
them search an entire library of stored books for a given word (for
example) ... and so even if someone had realized the tinkertoy computer
was possible, it would have been irrelevant.
I expect that AI will likely be similar -- I'd be surprised if this PC
couldn't, with suitable programming, do some AI sorts of things that
would be considered incredible today. Someday, I predict, it will be
possible to write a program, using no more computer power than this
desktop PC has, that will be able to design a bridge. And by "design a
bridge" I mean something like the Golden Gate Bridge, which is not only
structurally sound and works as a bridge, but is also a recognized
symbol of San Francisco and is _beautiful_. And, like the Golden Gate
was, contains _original_ ideas that aren't simply (or at least not
obviously) derived from other bridges or whatnot. This is something
that current computer science cannot begin to do.
Moreover, I bet that the seeds for being able to do that are something
that I probably already know, if I only knew that they were the seeds
for that awesome a technology. Just that, not having hindsight, I can't
see the path from them to whatever cool future thing happens (likely by
not knowing what this cool future thing really is!) and so they do me no
good....
(Sigh. Big Large Project #325: look at designing bridges as a venue for
AI.)
There are lots of things which people will look back on and say, "Why
didn't they see this simple obvious little thing? They could have
accomplished so much!" But it's not a little thing when you don't know
it ... have you balanced that egg yet?
- Brooks
Cathy Purchis-Jefferies
Brooks Moses, hal...@hypermetrics.com wrote:
> > Here's a pair of questions for you all, if I can can
> > express them. Maybe even three.
> [...]
> > So I am wondering: Does anyone know of a taxonomy or pedigree
> > of technology that shows "dependencies" or "prerequisites"?
> > I'd like to have a reasonable set of guidelines.
IIRC the James Burke PBS television series Connections (I think there were
actually a couple of series, but I only have seen one) does a lot of tracing
how technology got from A to B by way of Q. We have the companion book, but I
admit that although I enjoyed the TV series, I haven't looked at the book too
thoroughly, so I can't recommend it one way or the other.
--
"George" Cathy Purchis cat...@value.net
The Peregrine Hacker Interpretive Web sites
http://pwp.value.net/catpur/hacker.htm
hal...@hypermetrics.com
express them. Maybe even three.
I'm creating a fantasy backdrop of what will probably be
a medium-sized continent. There are several cultures
scattered over at differing levels of technological
advancement. Some of these do not know of the existence
of some of the others.
Creating a technological repertoire is a little difficult
for me. I keep saying, "Wait, they can't have THIS unless
they have THAT," and conversely, "If they have THIS, wouldn't
they have THAT?" (I'm assuming no magic for now.)
So I am wondering: Does anyone know of a taxonomy or pedigree
of technology that shows "dependencies" or "prerequisites"?
I'd like to have a reasonable set of guidelines.
An idea that interests me also is that many parts of technology
are independent of each other. It's conceivable that a culture
might travel farther down one branch than we have, but not as
far down another.
FWIW, Heinlein used this idea in one of his early works (_Time
for the Stars_, I think?). The characters needed liquid oxygen
but were stuck on Venus with the reptile-like natives, who were
thought of as being rather aboriginal -- a little backwards, with
not a lot of obvious technology. One character explains in his
halting Venerian that water is made of two parts, a light and a
heavy part; and they want the heavy part to be "like water."
The native eventually returns with what looks like an ordinary
skin of water. "No, no," says our hero. "I don't want water."
So the native takes our hero's arm, squeezes a droplet onto his
skin... and it burns him. It is liquid oxygen.
So here we see a fictitious race with no astronomy or space travel,
but a lot of skill in chemistry. Let's pursue this.
Can we imagine a culture with widespread use of electricity, but
which hasn't discovered radio? Sure we can! Talk coast to coast
if you want, but it's all land lines, buddy. What? Of course we
can't talk to someone in an airplane, except in Morse code. What,
you want us to string a wire from the plane or something?
Can we imagine a culture with radio, but no TV? I think so;
we lived that way for ahile. Cars, but no airplanes? We lived
that way for at least twenty years. What if it had been eighty
years? Can we imagine a world in which hot-air balloon flight
was as widespread as airplanes are now?
What if the jet had never been invented -- propl planes
everywhere? What if the _Hindenburg_ hadn't met with disaster?
Might we have eventually replaced hydrogen with helium and kept
developing dirigible technology?
I can envision an alternate universe wherein people would be astounded
that we have known about relativity and quantum mechanics for more
than 75 years... and still have not invented warp drive! Or: They have
computers that can beat a world grand master chess player... but they're
still using binary logic!
On the other hand, some things really are prerequisites: Can't
have radio and TV without electricity. Can't have airplanes
without cars (meaning, if we have engines strong enough for
flight, someone will adapt them for ground travel).
Now, the really interesting question. Imagine the tree of invention
and discovery as it grows and forks and reaches dead ends and
backtracks on itself and takes a different path.
It goes without saying that there are multitudes of branches that are
as yet unexplored because they are unreached. (At least, we assume
and hope there are! What if actually "ran out" of inventions and
discoveries?)
BUT: Is it possible that in our branching out, we have neglected some
paths that might have led to a greater (or at least unknown) technology
sooner? We know there are gaps in our knowledge "ahead" of us -- are
there also gaps "behind" us?
Imagine a bright mind in the 19th century, with the ordinary knowledge
and materials and techniques of the time. With the right idea/theory/
insight, could that person create something that we still have not
thought of today? I am dubious, but the thought tantalized and haunts
me.
What about the 16th century? The 10th?
There are stories of Tesla and Wilhelm Reich and others, tales of
strange machines and bizarre energies, that still circulate today. We
assume these are myth or hoax or fringe science or honest mistakes.
But I still wonder about it all.
Comments?????
Hal
--
Hal Fulton
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Chad Ryan Thomas
hal...@hypermetrics.com wrote:
> So I am wondering: Does anyone know of a taxonomy or pedigree
> of technology that shows "dependencies" or "prerequisites"?
> I'd like to have a reasonable set of guidelines.
Technology is a system by which an actor modifies his environment
through means other than his own muscle power. I've never seen any
specific attempts at a real typology of technology, but it is a
*system* which means that systems theory can describe it. Look
up "systems theory" or "cybernetics" (they're synonyms) and find a
basic reference.
Warning: you'll very soon get bogged down in all sorts of jargon
like "tranducer" and "capacitor" and "transformer," but there are
fairly specific rules about how each unit in the system relates to
others.
> Can we imagine a culture with widespread use of electricity, but
> which hasn't discovered radio? Sure we can! Talk coast to coast
> if you want, but it's all land lines, buddy. What? Of course we
> can't talk to someone in an airplane, except in Morse code. What,
> you want us to string a wire from the plane or something?
How, exactly, would the Morse code get to the plane without the same
wire?
> Now, the really interesting question. Imagine the tree of invention
> and discovery as it grows and forks and reaches dead ends and
> backtracks on itself and takes a different path.
Excellent point in there: technology does not always "advance." There
are numerous examples of technologies being abandoned because they're
simply unnecessary, or too ungainly in new conditions, or just don't
fit with the preferences of the people using them.
--
****** Chad Ryan Thomas *********** crth...@asu.edu ******
/ "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be\
\ content." -- St. Paul (Phil. 4:11, KJV) /
*********** http://www.public.asu.edu/~crthomas ***********
hal...@hypermetrics.com
Chad Ryan Thomas <crth...@asu.edu> wrote:
> In article <8do95d$r39$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> hal...@hypermetrics.com wrote:
> > So I am wondering: Does anyone know of a taxonomy or pedigree
> > of technology that shows "dependencies" or "prerequisites"?
> > I'd like to have a reasonable set of guidelines.
>
> Technology is a system by which an actor modifies his environment
> through means other than his own muscle power. I've never seen any
> specific attempts at a real typology of technology, but it is a
> *system* which means that systems theory can describe it. Look
> up "systems theory" or "cybernetics" (they're synonyms) and find a
> basic reference.
>
> Warning: you'll very soon get bogged down in all sorts of jargon
> like "tranducer" and "capacitor" and "transformer," but there are
> fairly specific rules about how each unit in the system relates to
> others.
Thanks, I'll pursue that...
>
> > Can we imagine a culture with widespread use of electricity, but
> > which hasn't discovered radio? Sure we can! Talk coast to coast
> > if you want, but it's all land lines, buddy. What? Of course we
> > can't talk to someone in an airplane, except in Morse code. What,
> > you want us to string a wire from the plane or something?
>
> How, exactly, would the Morse code get to the plane without the same
> wire?
Sorry, wasn't specific there. I was thinking of flashing lights.
>
> > Now, the really interesting question. Imagine the tree of invention
> > and discovery as it grows and forks and reaches dead ends and
> > backtracks on itself and takes a different path.
>
> Excellent point in there: technology does not always "advance." There
> are numerous examples of technologies being abandoned because they're
> simply unnecessary, or too ungainly in new conditions, or just don't
> fit with the preferences of the people using them.
And sometimes the things abandoned are revisited later. I read an
article a year or two ago that indicated there might be a resurgence
of interest in prop-driven planes (with lighter, stronger materials and
more efficient engines).
HF
> --
> ****** Chad Ryan Thomas *********** crth...@asu.edu ******
> / "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be\
> \ content." -- St. Paul (Phil. 4:11, KJV) /
> *********** http://www.public.asu.edu/~crthomas ***********
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>
--
Hal Fulton
Ayende Rahien
> BUT: Is it possible that in our branching out, we have neglected some
> paths that might have led to a greater (or at least unknown) technology
> sooner? We know there are gaps in our knowledge "ahead" of us -- are
> there also gaps "behind" us?
>
> Imagine a bright mind in the 19th century, with the ordinary knowledge
> and materials and techniques of the time. With the right idea/theory/
> insight, could that person create something that we still have not
> thought of today? I am dubious, but the thought tantalized and haunts
> me.
>
> What about the 16th century? The 10th?
>
> There are stories of Tesla and Wilhelm Reich and others, tales of
> strange machines and bizarre energies, that still circulate today. We
> assume these are myth or hoax or fringe science or honest mistakes.
> But I still wonder about it all.
>
Sure there are LOTS of dead technological branches. If I time travel to the
10th century, I can, in a matter of weeks, built a telegraph. Steam cars
would be much harder, but also possible, in the technologies of the 10th
century alone. Complex things, such as even simple TV radios are way beyond
the technolical level of the 10th century, but the principals of telegraph or
steam driven cars were known for almost 3,000 years. They just never been
applied. (I'm taking cars and telegraphs because they are basically the core
to our civilization today, and also very simple to construct.) -- Ayende
Rahien Aye...@softhom.net "Ave, Caesar Imperator! Morituri te salutant!"
"Lottery: A tax for those who are bad in math."
Jo Walton
> Here's a pair of questions for you all, if I can can
> express them. Maybe even three.
>
> I'm creating a fantasy backdrop of what will probably be
> a medium-sized continent. There are several cultures
> scattered over at differing levels of technological
> advancement. Some of these do not know of the existence
> of some of the others.
>
> Creating a technological repertoire is a little difficult
> for me. I keep saying, "Wait, they can't have THIS unless
> they have THAT," and conversely, "If they have THIS, wouldn't
> they have THAT?" (I'm assuming no magic for now.)
>
> So I am wondering: Does anyone know of a taxonomy or pedigree
> of technology that shows "dependencies" or "prerequisites"?
> I'd like to have a reasonable set of guidelines.
GURPS - Steve Jackson's Generic Universal Role-Playing System -
have one, it does everything you want and it's in the main rule
book. There's a supplement called "High Tech" which covers from
the invention of guns to the present, but no "Low Tech" yet. I'd
get the rule book and read up on "Tech Levels" and then don't use
them slavishly. I think they're a brilliant idea and a boon to
historians. (They were originally invented for Traveller, but they
are better implemented in GURPS, in part because of input from John
M. Ford, as I understand it. Oh, and Ford's :GURPS Time Travel: is
an essential book for people wanting to do anything with time travel.)
Another pretty good resource for this is the puter game Civilization,
which has a reasonable history of technology tree set out at the back
of the manual in tree form, and in the game.
You might also enjoy the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Technology, if it
happens to reside in a university library near you. It doesn't have
things in such a useful form for x leads to y, but it's very useful for
details of anything specific you need to know more about.
> An idea that interests me also is that many parts of technology
> are independent of each other. It's conceivable that a culture
> might travel farther down one branch than we have, but not as
> far down another.
That's covered in the GURPS stuff, which divides human endeavour
into branches.
> FWIW, Heinlein used this idea in one of his early works (_Time
> for the Stars_, I think?). The characters needed liquid oxygen
> but were stuck on Venus with the reptile-like natives, who were
> thought of as being rather aboriginal -- a little backwards, with
> not a lot of obvious technology.
:Space Cadet:.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
my fantasy novel :The King's Peace: coming from Tor in October
sample chapters on http://www.tor.com/sampleKingsPeace.html
LK
>Here's a pair of questions for you all, if I can can
>express them. Maybe even three.
>
>I'm creating a fantasy backdrop of what will probably be
>a medium-sized continent. There are several cultures
>scattered over at differing levels of technological
>advancement. Some of these do not know of the existence
>of some of the others.
>
>Creating a technological repertoire is a little difficult
>for me. I keep saying, "Wait, they can't have THIS unless
>they have THAT," and conversely, "If they have THIS, wouldn't
>they have THAT?" (I'm assuming no magic for now.)
>
>So I am wondering: Does anyone know of a taxonomy or pedigree
>of technology that shows "dependencies" or "prerequisites"?
>I'd like to have a reasonable set of guidelines.
>
>An idea that interests me also is that many parts of technology
>are independent of each other. It's conceivable that a culture
>might travel farther down one branch than we have, but not as
>far down another.
Check out the first two "Connections" series (videocassette and
book-form). Some of your examples aren't quite "right." Little is
linnear in discovery and techniques are lost such as glass-making and
hot-air "balloons." (The latter according video on "Ancient
Technologies.") Forgotten and rediscovered tech, despite ERik Von
Denekan(sp), does not mean gifts from extra-terrestials.
Even more profound is _The Day When the Univserse Changed_ book and
video series about basic science discoveries that challenged and
perspectives and commonly held beliefs.
All the above is by James Burke and has enjoyed broadcast on PBS and
Discovery Channel. I don't know if there are any current showings in
the USA or anywhere else, but you can buy the videos (last time I
looked).
eLK
Dan Goodman
>Here's a pair of questions for you all, if I can can
>express them. Maybe even three.
>
>I'm creating a fantasy backdrop of what will probably be
>a medium-sized continent. There are several cultures
>scattered over at differing levels of technological
>advancement. Some of these do not know of the existence
>of some of the others.
>
>Creating a technological repertoire is a little difficult
>for me. I keep saying, "Wait, they can't have THIS unless
>they have THAT," and conversely, "If they have THIS, wouldn't
>they have THAT?" (I'm assuming no magic for now.)
>
>So I am wondering: Does anyone know of a taxonomy or pedigree
>of technology that shows "dependencies" or "prerequisites"?
>I'd like to have a reasonable set of guidelines.
This gets discussed now and then in soc.history.what-if.
>An idea that interests me also is that many parts of technology
>are independent of each other. It's conceivable that a culture
>might travel farther down one branch than we have, but not as
>far down another.
>
>FWIW, Heinlein used this idea in one of his early works (_Time
>for the Stars_, I think?). The characters needed liquid oxygen
>but were stuck on Venus with the reptile-like natives, who were
>thought of as being rather aboriginal -- a little backwards, with
>not a lot of obvious technology. One character explains in his
>halting Venerian that water is made of two parts, a light and a
>heavy part; and they want the heavy part to be "like water."
>The native eventually returns with what looks like an ordinary
>skin of water. "No, no," says our hero. "I don't want water."
>So the native takes our hero's arm, squeezes a droplet onto his
>skin... and it burns him. It is liquid oxygen.
>
>So here we see a fictitious race with no astronomy or space travel,
>but a lot of skill in chemistry. Let's pursue this.
>
>Can we imagine a culture with widespread use of electricity, but
>which hasn't discovered radio? Sure we can! Talk coast to coast
>if you want, but it's all land lines, buddy. What? Of course we
>can't talk to someone in an airplane, except in Morse code. What,
>you want us to string a wire from the plane or something?
>
>Can we imagine a culture with radio, but no TV? I think so;
>we lived that way for ahile. Cars, but no airplanes? We lived
>that way for at least twenty years. What if it had been eighty
>years? Can we imagine a world in which hot-air balloon flight
>was as widespread as airplanes are now?
>
>What if the jet had never been invented -- propl planes
>everywhere? What if the _Hindenburg_ hadn't met with disaster?
>Might we have eventually replaced hydrogen with helium and kept
>developing dirigible technology?
>
>I can envision an alternate universe wherein people would be astounded
>that we have known about relativity and quantum mechanics for more
>than 75 years... and still have not invented warp drive! Or: They have
>computers that can beat a world grand master chess player... but they're
>still using binary logic!
Ask this again on soc.history.what-if!
>On the other hand, some things really are prerequisites: Can't
>have radio and TV without electricity. Can't have airplanes
>without cars (meaning, if we have engines strong enough for
>flight, someone will adapt them for ground travel).
>
>Now, the really interesting question. Imagine the tree of invention
>and discovery as it grows and forks and reaches dead ends and
>backtracks on itself and takes a different path.
>
>It goes without saying that there are multitudes of branches that are
>as yet unexplored because they are unreached. (At least, we assume
>and hope there are! What if actually "ran out" of inventions and
>discoveries?)
>
>BUT: Is it possible that in our branching out, we have neglected some
>paths that might have led to a greater (or at least unknown) technology
>sooner? We know there are gaps in our knowledge "ahead" of us -- are
>there also gaps "behind" us?
>
>Imagine a bright mind in the 19th century, with the ordinary knowledge
>and materials and techniques of the time. With the right idea/theory/
>insight, could that person create something that we still have not
>thought of today? I am dubious, but the thought tantalized and haunts
>me.
>
>What about the 16th century? The 10th?
>
>There are stories of Tesla and Wilhelm Reich and others, tales of
>strange machines and bizarre energies, that still circulate today. We
>assume these are myth or hoax or fringe science or honest mistakes.
>But I still wonder about it all.
>
>
>Comments?????
>
>Hal
>
>--
>Hal Fulton
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Chad Ryan Thomas
Brooks Moses <bmo...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>(Ever tried to stand a hard-boiled egg on
> its tip? See if you can figure out how to do it!)
I can think of how to do it without even trying. Problem-Solving
Strategy: make no assumptions about the rules of the game that are not
warranted by the information given.
Reasoning: Presumably, you mean "Stand a hard-boiled egg on its tip, so
that it continues to stand when you let go," otherwise the task would
be trivial. On the other hand, there's no reason to believe that the
rules exclude using some other means of support.
Solution: Pour out a small pile of granular salt in a conical heap.
Push the tip of the egg into the pile until it's stable, then let go.
(Of course, this same solution could be extended to "use an egg-stand,"
but that would make the game into more of a practical joke.)
Not sure if this had anything to do with what you were thinking about,
but I was state-ranked at competitive academics in high school, and the
new-and-novel-ways-to-solve-problems-in-15-seconds-or-less are hard to
give up.
--
****** Chad Ryan Thomas *********** crth...@asu.edu ******
/ "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be\
\ content." -- St. Paul (Phil. 4:11, KJV) /
*********** http://www.public.asu.edu/~crthomas ***********
Irina Rempt
> In article <38FFBAA9...@stanford.edu>,
> Brooks Moses <bmo...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>> its tip? See if you can figure out how to do it!)
> Solution: Pour out a small pile of granular salt in a conical heap.
> Push the tip of the egg into the pile until it's stable, then let go.
Or tap it on the table so the shell cracks and it has a flat surface
to stand on.
Irina
--
ir...@valdyas.org http://www.valdyas.org/irina/index.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity. |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joy Haftel
>Here's a pair of questions for you all, if I can can
>express them. Maybe even three.
>
>I'm creating a fantasy backdrop of what will probably be
>a medium-sized continent. There are several cultures
>scattered over at differing levels of technological
>advancement. Some of these do not know of the existence
>of some of the others.
>
>Creating a technological repertoire is a little difficult
>for me. I keep saying, "Wait, they can't have THIS unless
>they have THAT," and conversely, "If they have THIS, wouldn't
>they have THAT?" (I'm assuming no magic for now.)
>
>So I am wondering: Does anyone know of a taxonomy or pedigree
>of technology that shows "dependencies" or "prerequisites"?
>I'd like to have a reasonable set of guidelines.
[snip]
>What if the jet had never been invented -- propl planes
>everywhere? What if the _Hindenburg_ hadn't met with disaster?
>Might we have eventually replaced hydrogen with helium and kept
>developing dirigible technology?
An important and often-overlooked factor in technological development
is natural resources and access thereto. While researching the WIP, I
discovered the reason the Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen. It
wasn't that the helium technology didn't exist, but that the U.S. had
all the known helium reserves--and we weren't selling to the Nazis.
Floundering upon my hero's lack of access to helium, I reluctantly
cancelled the airship flight and made him take the train instead. I
needed him to arrive alive; and his mother worries about him.
Joy
"Joy is the serious business of heaven." --C.S. Lewis
Russell Wallace
> An interesting point, here. A decade or so back, a few graduate
> students took a large pile of Tinkertoys and built a mechanical computer
> that could play Tic-Tac-Toe unbeatably. Aside from some general vague
> ideas of how to arrange the parts, which would be trivial to explain,
> that's technology which has been around for millenia. The Greeks could
> easily have built such a machine. And yet....
>
> of tinkertoys could beat them at Tic-Tac-Toe. Maybe they wouldn't have
> had the reference point to see that the same principles that allow a
> machine to play Naughts and Crosses could simply be scaled up to let
> them search an entire library of stored books for a given word (for
> example)
But they *couldn't* simply be scaled up. You can't feasiably build a
machine to search a library of books for a given word until you've
invented the integrated circuit, which requires a lot of other things.
There's a huge difference between what can be done before its time as a
curiosity, and what can be done as a viable commercial proposition.
What's the earliest known example of printing? Apparently something
called the Phaestos Disk from the time of ancient Greece. (I read about
it in "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond - strongly recommended
for anyone interested in these issues.) Movable block type in a clay
medium, an isolated fragment, the type, inventor and key to the message
seem to be lost forever. An isolated enigma; but the technology of the
time wasn't enough to make it viable as more than a curiosity.
What's the earliest example of a general purpose digital computer?
Babbage's Analytical Engine, from Victorian times. Unfortunately the
technology of the time wasn't enough to make it viable as more than a
curiosity.
What's the earliest example of manned interplanetary travel? The Apollo
project, from 1969. (Modulo quibbles about the semantics of "planet".)
Unfortunately the technology of the time...
All that having been said, while I've a pretty deterministic view about
what needs to come before what in real life, I'm quite happy to suspend
disbelief for alternative paths in science fiction, so if you've a good
idea for a story based on it, then go for it.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mailto:mano...@iol.ie
Russell Wallace
> And sometimes the things abandoned are revisited later. I read an
> article a year or two ago that indicated there might be a resurgence
> of interest in prop-driven planes (with lighter, stronger materials and
> more efficient engines).
The Gatling gun, replaced by the Maxim for higher rate of fire, then
reinstated in electrically rotated form for shooting from or at
aircraft, for still higher rate of fire.
More recently, people are apparently working right now on nanoscale
memory chips based on principles more similar to the old magnetic core
memories than to modern semiconductor memories.
Chad Ryan Thomas
mano...@iol.ie wrote:
> What's the earliest known example of printing? Apparently something
> called the Phaestos Disk from the time of ancient Greece
Bronze Age Crete, actually. Crete wouldn't be "Greek" for another
thousand years or so.
(Part of the problem in deciphering Minoan hieroglyphics and Linear A
lie in the fact that the Minoans weren't Greeks, and we have no idea
what language group they belonged to. After about 1450 B.C., Greeks
apparently took over the island, and started writing in Linear B, which
was conveniently deciphered decades ago.)
Russell Wallace
>
> In article <390890...@iol.ie>,
> mano...@iol.ie wrote:
> > What's the earliest known example of printing? Apparently something
> > called the Phaestos Disk from the time of ancient Greece
>
> Bronze Age Crete, actually. Crete wouldn't be "Greek" for another
> thousand years or so.
Oops, I stand corrected.
Lucy Kemnitzer
<crth...@asu.edu> wrote:
>In article <390890...@iol.ie>,
> mano...@iol.ie wrote:
>> What's the earliest known example of printing? Apparently something
>> called the Phaestos Disk from the time of ancient Greece
>
>Bronze Age Crete, actually. Crete wouldn't be "Greek" for another
>thousand years or so.
>
>(Part of the problem in deciphering Minoan hieroglyphics and Linear A
>lie in the fact that the Minoans weren't Greeks, and we have no idea
>what language group they belonged to. After about 1450 B.C., Greeks
>apparently took over the island, and started writing in Linear B, which
>was conveniently deciphered decades ago.)
>
And did you also grow up with the mythology of Michael Ventris
hanging over you? "He knew he was going to decipher Linear A from
when he was eleven years old --- and if he hadn't been run over by
a truck soon after doing Linear B, by gum, he would have . . ."
What moral to draw from it? Was it a triumph of young and
dedicated genius or a frightening vision of mortality?
_Did_ one want to be precocious?
Lucy Kemnitzer
Chad Ryan Thomas
rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
> And did you also grow up with the mythology of Michael Ventris
> hanging over you?
Not exactly. Ventris's story isn't nearly as mythological as the one
put forward by Schliemann or Evans. (Now there are some legend-makers
for you!) Ventris just found a topic he really liked, stuck with it,
and hit on the proper strategy. I doubt he could've deciphered Linear
A had he lived to be a hundred. There simply aren't enough texts to
figure it out until we know the language it's written in.
Lucy Kemnitzer
<crth...@asu.edu> wrote:
>In article <3909180...@enews.newsguy.com>,
> rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
>> And did you also grow up with the mythology of Michael Ventris
>> hanging over you?
>
>Not exactly. Ventris's story isn't nearly as mythological as the one
>put forward by Schliemann or Evans. (Now there are some legend-makers
>for you!) Ventris just found a topic he really liked, stuck with it,
>and hit on the proper strategy. I doubt he could've deciphered Linear
>A had he lived to be a hundred. There simply aren't enough texts to
>figure it out until we know the language it's written in.
See, in my upbringing, Schliemann was clever, but he was also a
pothunter and a ravisher of other people's heritage. -- my
father's entry into anthropology was through rescue archaeology
here in California, where you start out with assumptions about the
putative nearest descendants of the people you're looking at
having some rights to the disposition of the finds and some rights
also as to taking part in the discussion as to what it all means.
Here locally, the largest armed confrontation I can think of in
recent memory took place twenty-five years ago over plans to build
something commercial on an Ohlone site.
The bit about finding Troy by taking Homer literally is pretty
powerful, though. How many people have come after and tried to
take various texts literally or metaphorically, to try to find
some ancient wonder, and instead of Troy have found Crackpotland?
Lucy Kemnitzer
Chad Ryan Thomas
rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
> See, in my upbringing, Schliemann was clever, but he was also a
> pothunter and a ravisher of other people's heritage.
Oh, that he most certainly was, but HE didn't say so. Most of the
legendry surrounding Schliemann is of his own making.
> father's entry into anthropology was through rescue archaeology
> here in California, where you start out with assumptions about the
> putative nearest descendants of the people you're looking at
> having some rights to the disposition of the finds and some rights
> also as to taking part in the discussion as to what it all means.
When did your father enter archaeology? That view is only about 30
years old in American archaeology. It still hasn't fully made it into
the legal codes (current land owners have more say in artifact
disposition than descendants). It's the right and proper view, of
course, but there are some real problems with implementing it in a
world where you can sell Hopewellian pottery on Ebay.
> How many people have come after and tried to
> take various texts literally or metaphorically, to try to find
> some ancient wonder, and instead of Troy have found Crackpotland?
Quite a few. Just go look in alt.archaeology to find most of 'em.
P.S. This has nothing to do with writing speculative fiction. Shall we
take it private?
Lucy Kemnitzer
<crth...@asu.edu> wrote:
>In article <39099d38...@enews.newsguy.com>,
> rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
>> See, in my upbringing, Schliemann was clever, but he was also a
>> pothunter and a ravisher of other people's heritage.
>
>Oh, that he most certainly was, but HE didn't say so. Most of the
>legendry surrounding Schliemann is of his own making.
>
>> father's entry into anthropology was through rescue archaeology
>> here in California, where you start out with assumptions about the
>> putative nearest descendants of the people you're looking at
>> having some rights to the disposition of the finds and some rights
>> also as to taking part in the discussion as to what it all means.
>
>When did your father enter archaeology?
In about 1962.
>That view is only about 30
>years old in American archaeology.
emphasis on that "about," I guess, unless the people at SF State
and UC Berkeley were ahead of the rest by about ten years. That
could happen. But I don't know that it did, I was just a kid
tagging along to the digs and stuff at the time.
> It still hasn't fully made it into
>the legal codes (current land owners have more say in artifact
>disposition than descendants). It's the right and proper view, of
>course, but there are some real problems with implementing it in a
>world where you can sell Hopewellian pottery on Ebay.
Yeah. And where's the Ishtar Gate? and stuff like that.
>
>> How many people have come after and tried to
>> take various texts literally or metaphorically, to try to find
>> some ancient wonder, and instead of Troy have found Crackpotland?
>
>Quite a few. Just go look in alt.archaeology to find most of 'em.
>
>P.S. This has nothing to do with writing speculative fiction. Shall we
>take it private?
I suppose, if there's any more to say. OBsf: remember that
strange sequence with Picard and the archaeologist and Q?
And there's a book I read last year, can't remember which, the
second in a trilogy about meeting up with some aliens, where an
artist is doing a conceptual art piece in the form of an
archeological dig with alien arifacts in it, and nobody, including
the aliens involved, can quite encompass that it's fictional.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lori Selke
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>On Fri, 28 Apr 2000 17:12:17 GMT, Chad Ryan Thomas
><crth...@asu.edu> wrote:
>Yeah. And where's the Ishtar Gate? and stuff like that.
Off topic:
Gods, that has to be one of the most surreal experiences of my life,
walking through the Ishtar Gate in the middle of a museum in Berlin.
And then realizing that, really, that was just the front-end of
a much bigger complex of buildings. Sheesh.
ObArchaeology: but it would be better, yes, if it were a model
instead of the real thing. How mind-boggling to think that they
just up and hauled the whole thing to Berlin instead of restoring
it on site.
(OTOH, my traitorous little heart whispers, at least this way
it didn't get bombed :( )
ObWriting: I took notes. Sketches, even.
Lori
--
se...@io.com
se...@sirius.com
"But this isn't a dance! It's upright delirium!" -- The Desert Peach
Chad Ryan Thomas
rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
> >That view is only about 30
> >years old in American archaeology.
>
> emphasis on that "about," I guess, unless the people at SF State
> and UC Berkeley were ahead of the rest by about ten years. That
> could happen. But I don't know that it did, I was just a kid
> tagging along to the digs and stuff at the time.
Yeah, early 60's is about right for the forward-looking archaeologists
to start considering that Natice Americans might be interested in
Native American archaeology. The idea took a few years to become
prevalent, though.
> I suppose, if there's any more to say. OBsf: remember that
> strange sequence with Picard and the archaeologist and Q?
I remember some of the ridiculous episodes where Picard showe doff his
so-called archaoelogical expertise. All I can say is that professional
ethics certainly didn't make it into the 26th century, if he was a
great archaeologist.
Lucy Kemnitzer
>In article <3909efeb...@enews.newsguy.com>,
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>>On Fri, 28 Apr 2000 17:12:17 GMT, Chad Ryan Thomas
>><crth...@asu.edu> wrote:
>
>>Yeah. And where's the Ishtar Gate? and stuff like that.
>
>Off topic:
>
>Gods, that has to be one of the most surreal experiences of my life,
>walking through the Ishtar Gate in the middle of a museum in Berlin.
>
>And then realizing that, really, that was just the front-end of
>a much bigger complex of buildings. Sheesh.
>
>ObArchaeology: but it would be better, yes, if it were a model
>instead of the real thing. How mind-boggling to think that they
>just up and hauled the whole thing to Berlin instead of restoring
>it on site.
>
>(OTOH, my traitorous little heart whispers, at least this way
>it didn't get bombed :( )
No, your little heart just bumped up against the Thing about
history.
So many horrible horrible things, right? But they are what
brought us here. I wouldn't say that therefore the horrible
things are good: just that, sometimes, something good happens, and
you do get to treasure it when it does.
Lucy Kemnitzer
>ObWriting: I took notes. Sketches, even.
Oh, I would have too.
>
Helen Kenyon
<ir...@valdyas.org> writes
>Chad Ryan Thomas wrote:
>> In article <38FFBAA9...@stanford.edu>,
>> Brooks Moses <bmo...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>>> its tip? See if you can figure out how to do it!)
>
>> Push the tip of the egg into the pile until it's stable, then let go.
>
>Or tap it on the table so the shell cracks and it has a flat surface
>to stand on.
>
> Irina
>
I thought of doing that, but then decided it would be cheating. The
easiest way is to spin it fast. It will then stand upright. This is
how to tell hard-boiled eggs from raw ones, should you ever be in the
position of having to distinguish between them.
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
Now with added serious stuff (basic maths and how to be an NVQ assessor).
**Please delete the extra bit from e-mail address if replying by mail**
Jo Walton
ken...@baradel.demon.co.uk.please.delete.this "Helen Kenyon" writes:
> I thought of doing that, but then decided it would be cheating. The
> easiest way is to spin it fast. It will then stand upright. This is
> how to tell hard-boiled eggs from raw ones, should you ever be in the
> position of having to distinguish between them.
Where were you when I was seventeen and made a terrible mistake? :]
Mary K. Kuhner
[eggs]
>I thought of doing that, but then decided it would be cheating. The
>easiest way is to spin it fast. It will then stand upright. This is
>how to tell hard-boiled eggs from raw ones, should you ever be in the
>position of having to distinguish between them.
I was in that position last year at the egg hunt, where one
organizer came in and shamefacedly admitted that there were a
dozen hardboiled eggs still in her refrigerator, so we must
have dyed the raw ones. We had nine dozen eggs, one dozen of
which were presumably raw. They'd all been mixed together
during dying, of course.
We spun them, and identified 9 raw eggs. It's possible that
the organizer's raw-egg carton only had 9 because she'd eaten
the others. It's also possible that someone went home from
the hunt with a raw egg in their pocket, but if so, we never
heard about it.
It was pleasing to put that bit of egg trivia to use: almost as
much fun as finding classical recreational-math problems on the
Graduate Exam.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Karen Lofstrom
: father's entry into anthropology was through rescue archaeology
: here in California, where you start out with assumptions about the
: putative nearest descendants of the people you're looking at
: having some rights to the disposition of the finds and some rights
: also as to taking part in the discussion as to what it all means.
I have very mixed feelings about this, Lucy. Rights of possible
descendents should only go back a few generations -- to the depth of
the genealogies people keep. Going further back than that means that
there is NO way of proving any kinship between the alive and the
dead. You end up with preposterous situations like the set of bones
people are calling Kennewick man: the human who once walked around on
those bones was possibly non-American Indian. Some American Indians
are claiming those bones. Can they determine any relationship? Will
they let any scientists study the bones? (No)
We have such situations all the time here in Hawai'i, with people who
can in no way claim kinship asserting their claims to things. A very
nasty affair lately with the Forbes Cave artifacts, with several
Hawaiian groups feuding for custody, and numerous Native Hawaiians
saying "To heck with those folks, let's have the artifacts in the
museum where our children can see them".
We also have Native Hawaiians who believe that Native Hawaiians should
be the final arbiter of what is true about Hawaiian history,
haoles keep out. Dialogue is good; racial claims to truth are not.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to hell. Here is your accordion.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
>We also have Native Hawaiians who believe that Native Hawaiians should
>be the final arbiter of what is true about Hawaiian history,
Yeah, and they have everything either written down or memorized. Not.
>haoles keep out. Dialogue is good; racial claims to truth are not.
Amen.
Native Hawaiians really use the word "haole"? It looks a bit contrived
to me. Maybe because I encountered it in a book the first time. Of
course, real mileage quite probably varies.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Chad Ryan Thomas
Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
> I have very mixed feelings about this, Lucy. Rights of possible
> descendents should only go back a few generations -- to the depth of
> the genealogies people keep. Going further back than that means that
> there is NO way of proving any kinship between the alive and the
> dead.
The problem is which standard of proof you accept as sufficient to
establish relationship. It is entirely true that physical anthropology
makes it virtually impossible to establish relationship more than a
handful of generations back, but Native American ways of knowing can
extend relationship back much much further. If you simply declare that
the scientific (a.k.a. Non-Native American) pradigm is the "correct"
one, you're not doing much to advance scholar/Native relations.
Karen Lofstrom
: The problem is which standard of proof you accept as sufficient to
: establish relationship. It is entirely true that physical anthropology
: makes it virtually impossible to establish relationship more than a
: handful of generations back, but Native American ways of knowing can
: extend relationship back much much further. If you simply declare that
: the scientific (a.k.a. Non-Native American) pradigm is the "correct"
: one, you're not doing much to advance scholar/Native relations.
Explicate "Native American ways of knowing", please.
"Ways of knowing" that I'd accept:
Person now alive saw the person buried or had grave pointed out by
relative. "That's your great-grandfather's grave."
Written records, authenticated memoirs. "They buried the dead from the
massacre in the bluff over the river."
Oral tradition establishing continuous use of a certain site as a
burial ground. "That's where we used to bury all our dead, when in
winter camp, until we moved into town."
I think I'd also accept tribal jurisdiction over remains if the
remains were provable recent, and could be shown by associated
artifacts or DNA tests to be related to the group. That would be like
finding remains of missing servicemen, say.
All of those rules would have protected Native American graves from
the casual desecrations that used to be the rule. Pot-hunters DID go
into recent graveyards and dig up greatgrandmother to get the
gen-yoo-ine Indian skull and the pots that were buried with her.
But it's just wrong for a tribe to declare their jurisdiction over a
find of bones hundreds of years old recovered from a site of which
they had no tradition. There's no way to prove that those remains come
from the same tribe or that those currently alive are in any way
related to the deceased.
It would be as if I announced that no one could dig up any remains of
any age anywhere in Sweden, because I'm part-Swedish, those people
MIGHT have been my ancestors, and I object.
IMHO, the current furor over bones and artifacts is payback. I get the
impression that from activists here in Hawai'i that brooding over
terrible wrongs in the past produces the prickly mindset, "But I won't
let them do that to ME!", and a raw-skinned alertness for possible
insults or disputes in the present. If you can't go back in the past and
stop the Great Mahele that dispossessed the Hawaiians, you're going to
be as obstreperous as you can about bones, or archeological sites, or
gathering rights.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ta hifo ki liku 'o tou siale
Kakala namamu ke tui tavale
Helen Kenyon
<J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article <MJJ$HBA+Rt...@baradel.demon.co.uk>
> ken...@baradel.demon.co.uk.please.delete.this "Helen Kenyon" writes:
>
>> easiest way is to spin it fast. It will then stand upright. This is
>> how to tell hard-boiled eggs from raw ones, should you ever be in the
>> position of having to distinguish between them.
>
>
I picked up this tip -- which I don't think I've ever needed, to be
honest, though it makes a good trick to amuse kids.
Chad Ryan Thomas
The primary one is "Our traditions say that..." and "Our grandfathers
say that...", and no self-respecting anthropologist is just going to
say "Well, your traditions/grandfathers are dead wrong." Well,
unfortunately some anythropologists do say that, but in my opinion they
respect themsleves a little more than is maybe warranted.
> "Ways of knowing" that I'd accept:
All of these are Euro-American arguments, and they work well enough for
probably 95% of all cases in the US. The overwhelming majority of all
NAGPRA claims are made by indisputable descendant groups, and are taken
care of quickly and quietly, with mutual respect on both sides. My
conservation office is working on two NAGPRA claims right now, neither
of which is the least bit controversial, despite the fact that the
remains in question are around 1000 years old.
Problems only arise in two situations: bizarre and ridiculous cases
like Kennewick, where strong wills run into one another and a legal
grey area at the same time, and in situations where the bones are still
in the ground. There you get problems with deciding what's a clear-and-
present-danger for the remains. If there's a danger, the laws says
they can come out. If not, then they stay where they are. It's only
the vocal minority of the descendant groups who'll argue that virtually
nothing is a clear-and-present-danger.
> But it's just wrong for a tribe to declare their jurisdiction over a
> find of bones hundreds of years old recovered from a site of which
> they had no tradition. There's no way to prove that those remains come
> from the same tribe or that those currently alive are in any way
> related to the deceased.
Genealogical relationship is not required by the law of any state that
I'm aware of. NAGPRA only mentions direct descent in passing. The
important criterion for determining jurisdiction is cultural
affiliation, which means that a Pueblo III fieldhouse can easily be
given to the modern Hopis and Zunis. This despite any mention in any
traditons of the site, and no chance of ever establishing genetic
relationship.
> It would be as if I announced that no one could dig up any remains of
> any age anywhere in Sweden, because I'm part-Swedish, those people
> MIGHT have been my ancestors, and I object.
But no one outside of Orthodox Jews in Israel says this (and they do
some pretty masty things, besides). Even the most vocal Native
American groups don't assert that NO remains be removed from the
ground. They just want to make sure that the ones that do have to come
out (to save the remains from destruction) get treated properly. The
one's that don't have to come out ought to stay there.
Opinions differ on what constitutes proper treatment, of course, and
that's the meat of the legal troubles these days.
> IMHO, the current furor over bones and artifacts is payback.
Anyone who denies there's any political component to the debate is
blind or stupid, but it's more than politics. It's a metter of
recognizing that those bones are honest-to-goodness people, and there
are still living people who feel strongly about how they're handled.
I have about a bazillion references on this debate, from both sides of
the street, if you'd care to look at the technical literature on it.
Karen Lofstrom
: Native Hawaiians really use the word "haole"? It looks a bit contrived
: to me. Maybe because I encountered it in a book the first time. Of
: course, real mileage quite probably varies.
Yes, they use haole. I use the word too. It means "foreigner" and has
come to mean "white"*. I'm OK with being called a haole as long as
someone is using the word in a purely neutral way. Someone who says it
with a glower or a sneer hurts my feelings.
If you live in Hawai'i any length of time, you end up absorbing some
of the local pidgin, which has lots of Hawaiian words. A good source
for pidgin would be the _Pidgin to Da Max_ books.
*It's not common any longer, but African-Americans used to be called
"haole eleele" or "black foreigners". Hawai'i may be the only place in
the US where whites and blacks used to belong to the same foreign and
not-quite-trusted group :)
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nevermore
Keith Morrison
> *It's not common any longer, but African-Americans used to be called
> "haole eleele" or "black foreigners". Hawai'i may be the only place in
> the US where whites and blacks used to belong to the same foreign and
> not-quite-trusted group :)
Try Alaska. If the Inuit use the same conventions as they do in the
central and eastern Arctic, there's Inuit and everybody else.
--
Keith
Brian Pickrell
>In article <8egoig$bnl$1...@mochi.lava.net>,
> Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>> I have very mixed feelings about this, Lucy. Rights of possible
>> descendents should only go back a few generations -- to the depth of
>> the genealogies people keep. Going further back than that means that
>> there is NO way of proving any kinship between the alive and the
>> dead.
>
>The problem is which standard of proof you accept as sufficient to
>establish relationship. It is entirely true that physical anthropology
>makes it virtually impossible to establish relationship more than a
>handful of generations back, but Native American ways of knowing can
>extend relationship back much much further. If you simply declare that
>the scientific (a.k.a. Non-Native American) pradigm is the "correct"
>one, you're not doing much to advance scholar/Native relations.
Who cares? Screw that.
Karen Lofstrom
:> Explicate "Native American ways of knowing", please.
: The primary one is "Our traditions say that..." and "Our grandfathers
: say that...", and no self-respecting anthropologist is just going to
: say "Well, your traditions/grandfathers are dead wrong." Well,
: unfortunately some anythropologists do say that, but in my opinion they
: respect themsleves a little more than is maybe warranted.
Why can't one say that? Oral tradition is notoriously malleable. And
various. If it contradicts trustworthy archival or archaeological or
biological sources, it can be wrong.
I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Often enough it's quite
valuable. But I'd weigh it.
: All of these are Euro-American arguments, and they work well enough for
: probably 95% of all cases in the US.
If you can tell me where my reasoning is vitiated by my culture, I'll
try to rectify my reasoning. I won't give up reasoning.
: Genealogical relationship is not required by the law of any state that
: I'm aware of. NAGPRA only mentions direct descent in passing. The
: important criterion for determining jurisdiction is cultural
: affiliation, which means that a Pueblo III fieldhouse can easily be
: given to the modern Hopis and Zunis. This despite any mention in any
: traditons of the site, and no chance of ever establishing genetic
: relationship.
NAGPRA is badly-written law, IMHO. It extends jurisdiction WAY too far
into the past. It's not right just because it's the law.
:> It would be as if I announced that no one could dig up any remains of
:> any age anywhere in Sweden, because I'm part-Swedish, those people
:> MIGHT have been my ancestors, and I object.
: But no one outside of Orthodox Jews in Israel says this (and they do
: some pretty masty things, besides). Even the most vocal Native
: American groups don't assert that NO remains be removed from the
: ground. They just want to make sure that the ones that do have to come
: out (to save the remains from destruction) get treated properly. The
: one's that don't have to come out ought to stay there.
Aargh. Not in Hawai'i. I have had vociferous arguments online with
people who say that bones must not be moved (ever) and must never be
studied, because it's disrespectful.
The "must-not-be-moved" argument bugs me because I can cite texts
showing that the contact-era Hawaiians felt that the bones were
powerful and sacred, but did not extend that feeling to the
surroundings of the bones. The Hawaiians would bundle up the bones
with twine and put them under the bed, as a way of being close to the
departed. Or they'd bury the bones under the house, or in the
path. Then they might dig them up and move them elsewhere. So a
contact-era Hawaiian, brought to life today, would have no qualms
about moving bones -- just about their safety. Wouldn't want enemies
to get them!
At least in Hawai'i, must-not-be-moved is a modern emotion, an
artifact of Christianity and its notions of sacred ground. It's
particularily inconvenient when the bones are found anywhere and
everywhere, due to pre-contact notions of proper hiding places for
bones. An acquaintance of mine works for the Maui electric company and
says they hate finding burials; they have to do mounds of paperwork
and route the buried cable around the bones, all of which delays
things and costs lots of money.
I suppose what upsets me the most is the opposition to study. If all
the groups wanted was respectful reburial of the bones, after casts
had been made and DNA samples taken, that would be fine. But refusing
to allow studies is just plain know-nothing-ism. It reminds me of the
laws against dissection in earlier Western eras. If I'd been a doctor
then, I probably would have defied those laws, in the interests of
science and better care for the living. And if I were a physical
anthropologist today ... I'd probably do whatever I could to study
*old* bones.
I just re-read what I'd written and decided it sounds a little
chip-on-the-shoulder -- but I don't know quite how to soften
things. Please accept my apologies if I've been too strident.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------
contents may shift during handling
Chad Ryan Thomas
If anyone out there is tired of my propagating off-topic discussion,
just send me nasty emails. I've found, though, that at least a couple
people are always lurking anxiously, hoping discussions of this sort
don't go private.
In article <8em396$bga$1...@mochi.lava.net>,
Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
> Chad Ryan Thomas <crth...@asu.edu> wrote:
> : no self-respecting anthropologist is just going to
> : say "Well, your traditions/grandfathers are dead wrong." [SNIP]
> Why can't one say that? Oral tradition is notoriously malleable. And
> various. If it contradicts trustworthy archival or archaeological or
> biological sources, it can be wrong.
Because in the Native American way of thinking, oral tradition ISN'T
malleable. It is the equivalent of Western religions' Holy
Scriptures. An anthropologist who claims that his epistemology (i.e.,
science) is right, but someone elses (i.e., oral history) is wrong, is
making a value judgment that is forbidden based on the principle of
cultural relativism. What has to be done is to understand how both
epistemologies work, and how they can work together to produce a result
acceptable to both parties. Just declaring that science is the "right"
paradigm won't do that, no matter how much some scientists, myself
included, would like.
(Cultural relativism is itself a whole new barrel of worms, but it most
certainly does NOT mean that "everybody's right--anything goes--let's
hug.")
> If you can tell me where my reasoning is vitiated by my culture, I'll
> try to rectify my reasoning. I won't give up reasoning.
The very idea that oral tradition is malleable is a Western, scientific
concept. The idea that we *need* to learn what the bones have to teach
us is a Western concept. (Many Native American religious teachings
would argue that knowledge of the past is entirely unnecessary for
proper living today.) The idea that human remains have no continued
use for the spirits of the departed (which is implicit in many
arguments for study).
Besides, there's some much deeper cultural assumptions in the
identification methdos you suggest. The idea that some weird invisible
thing called "DNA" can tell you whose ancestor a particular bone came
from is culturally based in the paradigm that scientific investigation
reveals the true nature of the universe.
> NAGPRA is badly-written law, IMHO. It extends jurisdiction WAY too far
> into the past. It's not right just because it's the law.
NAGPRA is a very badly written law. It's also a law with far too
little applicability (it only applies to collections made before the
law was enacted from federal land and curated by publicly-funded
institutions). But despite its shortcomings, its the closest thing we
have to guidelines for how to act properly in these situations, and it
was essentially written by some of the best minds in archaeological
ethics this country has now. You can be sure that they considered all
dimensions of the issue, and came up with the least-problematic
solution.
> Aargh. Not in Hawai'i. I have had vociferous arguments online with
> people who say that bones must not be moved (ever) and must never be
> studied, because it's disrespectful.
I stand corrected. I wasn't aware of the situation in Hawaii. Only a
negligible minority of Native American groups advocate absolutely no
disturbance of bones, and this is a non-issue in most other parts of
the globe.
> I suppose what upsets me the most is the opposition to study. If all
> the groups wanted was respectful reburial of the bones, after casts
> had been made and DNA samples taken, that would be fine.
DNA testing is a destructive process. This is allowing potential
enemies to acquire and control part of your power. (Isn't the Hawaiian
word Mana?) I doubt even contact-period Hawaiians would have allowed
that.
The differences between modern attitudes toward remains and ancient
attitudes is a problem, but its not advisable to tell a descendant
group that we know their ancestors' traditions better than they do.
That would cause even worse political fall-out than just declaring that
they have no claim.
There is a very significant strand in the archaeological arguments for
cooperation that boils down to simple fear. We're afraid that if we
don't cooperate with native groups, *we'll* be denied access to the
materials, and we'll be out of a job. Especially in the southwest,
where most of the excavations take place on tribal land (and therefore
need excavation permits from tribal authorities), this is a very
serious problem. Nation-wide, most of the legislation in the last 30
years concerning cultural preservation and repatriation has been
directly or indirectly the result of Native Americans flexing their
muscles. We have to respect their opinions, or we're out of a job.
But beyond that, it's a matter of simple respect. These people (well,
some of them) do feel very strongly about the issue. Whether we
Western-types undertsand it or not, the Columbia Indians really do
believe that Kennewick man is one of their direct ancestors, no
different from Grandma who died last year.
> I just re-read what I'd written and decided it sounds a little
> chip-on-the-shoulder -- but I don't know quite how to soften
> things. Please accept my apologies if I've been too strident.
Not at all. It's an emotional issue, and the fact that there's emotion
here means that someone is at least paying attention.
Julian Flood
> An anthropologist who claims that his epistemology (i.e.,
> science) is right, but someone elses (i.e., oral history) is wrong, is
> making a value judgment that is forbidden based on the principle of
> cultural relativism.
<mildly> A forbidden questioning? My word, we are in deep waters here.
Forbidden by whom? Me, I'd back science, not because of cultural relativism,
you understand, but because it has a rather good track record. You, of
course, may know better about the achievements of a science that respects
oral ancestral beliefs above all other criteria.
I wonder who owns the bones in the Cheddar caves, science or the relatives?
After all, the descendants are still living in the local area after ten
thousand years. They may be Christian vegetarian surfboarders, but what's a
little life-style change compared with blood links? Shared DNA might have
more importance than universally shared knowledge.
Or it may not.
--
Julian Flood
Life, the Universe and Climbing Plants at www.argonet.co.uk/users/julesf.
Mind the diddley skiffle folk.
Vicki Rosenzweig
21:49:41 -0700:
>Chad Ryan Thomas <crth...@asu.edu> wrote:
>
>>In article <8egoig$bnl$1...@mochi.lava.net>,
>> Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>>> I have very mixed feelings about this, Lucy. Rights of possible
>>> descendents should only go back a few generations -- to the depth of
>>> the genealogies people keep. Going further back than that means that
>>> there is NO way of proving any kinship between the alive and the
>>> dead.
>>
>>The problem is which standard of proof you accept as sufficient to
>>establish relationship. It is entirely true that physical anthropology
>>makes it virtually impossible to establish relationship more than a
>>handful of generations back, but Native American ways of knowing can
>>extend relationship back much much further. If you simply declare that
>>the scientific (a.k.a. Non-Native American) pradigm is the "correct"
>>one, you're not doing much to advance scholar/Native relations.
>
>Who cares? Screw that.
>
For starters, anyone who wants to learn about a culture would do well
to remain on good terms with the people of that culture. Think of
it as research advice: you don't get information from people by
offending them or by convincing them that you don't respect their
knowledge and opinions.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
v...@redbird.org | http://www.redbird.org
Welcome to the century of the iguana:
http://www.redbird.org/iguana.html
Lucy Kemnitzer
<jul...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
> Chad Ryan Thomas wrote:
>> An anthropologist who claims that his epistemology (i.e.,
>> science) is right, but someone elses (i.e., oral history) is wrong, is
>> making a value judgment that is forbidden based on the principle of
>> cultural relativism.
>
><mildly> A forbidden questioning? My word, we are in deep waters here.
>Forbidden by whom? Me, I'd back science,
The _science_ of anthropology, however, _is_ cultural relativism.
Since, you see, the subject is culture (and cultures).
not because of cultural relativism,
>you understand, but because it has a rather good track record. You, of
>course, may know better about the achievements of a science that respects
>oral ancestral beliefs above all other criteria.
not above all other criteria: in concert with all other criteria.
The result of the approach has been clearly and remarkably better
science as the scientists now have access to a whole lot more
information, and a lot greater continuity, than before, when they
didn't collaborate with the people they studied so much.
>
>I wonder who owns the bones in the Cheddar caves, science or the relatives?
>After all, the descendants are still living in the local area after ten
>thousand years. They may be Christian vegetarian surfboarders, but what's a
>little life-style change compared with blood links? Shared DNA might have
>more importance than universally shared knowledge.
You're making a great case for an entirely different argument than
the one Chad's talking about.
In fact, nobody really cares about DNA when we're talking about
the fate of these sites -- what's being discussed is an
orientation to the past and the present, the role of science in
creating a history, and who the history belongs to. Does it only
belong to pothunting white guys? Or does it _also_ belong to the
people whose putative ancestors we're talking about?
>
>Or it may not.
And then we could talk about what is "universally shared
knowledge--" for example, is it that Don Cortes and fifty hardy
Spaniards awed the superstitious natives and conquered all of
Mexico who thought they were gods? Or was it that Cortes had
reifnorcements arriving on a biweekly basis in groups of hundreds,
that the Aztec federation was a precarious one before they got
there, and their neighbors took advantage of the disruption to
overthrow a hated tyrrany (and then, finding another plopped down
in its place, promptly commenced to resisting that)? The first
version was "universally shared" in textbooks and histories until
recent better work turned up the second version: now both versions
can be found.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Chad Ryan Thomas
> > but someone elses ... is wrong, is making a value judgment that is
> > forbidden based on the principle of cultural relativism.
>
Questioning of anything isn't forbidden. In fact, questioning culture
is the heart and soul of anthropology. But making value judgments
about one cultural system from within another is forbidden for one
simple reason: it doesn't help us understand human cultures. All it
does is give the anthropologist an ego boost by making him feel
superior.
> Forbidden by whom?
By anybody who's read the nineteenth century "science" that treated
Native Americans like animals, and caused a decent part of the
political clusterf##k we're still trying to repair. Just saying that
science is right and Native American beliefs are wrong doesn't do
anyone any good.
> Me, I'd back science, not because of cultural relativism,
> you understand, but because it has a rather good track record.
As do the Native American worldviews. They've survived to the present
day despite a lot worse treatment than Western science has ever
endured, and they're emerging as the bases for fairly powerful
political blocks.
If you meant a good record for revealing the true history of the world,
well, the Native American worldviews aren't especially concerned with
that.
> You, of course, may know better about the achievements of a science
> that respects oral ancestral beliefs above all other criteria.
Did I ever say anything about respecting Native American beliefs "above
all other criteria"? I said we have to respect their beliefs, and find
a way that ours and theirs can cooperate to produce mutually-acceptable
solutions.
> I wonder who owns the bones in the Cheddar caves, science or the
> relatives?
I suspect the way UK law is set up, the government owns them. Not that
I have any data on the matter--I'm just guessing.
Karen Lofstrom
: Questioning of anything isn't forbidden. In fact, questioning culture
: is the heart and soul of anthropology. But making value judgments
: about one cultural system from within another is forbidden for one
: simple reason: it doesn't help us understand human cultures. All it
: does is give the anthropologist an ego boost by making him feel
: superior.
This argument is incoherent. It took me years to see it, but it's
incoherent. What standpoint do you have for saying that "judging is
forbidden"? Doing so is itself a judgment. The only standpoint you can
have for making such a meta-observation is one that assumes that there
is such a thing as reason, that one can make philosophical points and
argue whether they are right or wrong, etc. You are claiming for
yourself a privileged position you are denying to everyone else.
(It's also kinda funny that this idea is itself a meme propagating in
a particular time and context. Part of the anthropological
catechism. Believe or you are damned.)
A further problem with this is that you are assuming that cultures are
discrete objects and that the boundaries between them are obvious and
uncontroversial.
I remember exactly when I saw through this. I arrived in Tonga
thinking that there was such a thing as "Tongan culture". With great
rapidity, I managed to place myself in a small Tongan village on a
tiny island in a remote archipelago, about as far from the culturally
contaminated metropolis of Nuku'alofa as I could.
Then one morning I woke up too damn early to the sound of Vili
splitting coconuts with an ax, to make copra. The copra would then be
carried to Pangai, sold for cash, and the cash used to buy imported
goods, pay school fees at the British-model school, and for donations
to the Wesleyan Methodist Church, another British import.
What separate culture? Tonga was a backwater of the world economic
order and the British Commonwealth. Sure, it was different in a lot of
ways. Sure, the old pre-contact Tongan way of life and way of thinking
was still alive. But any line between Western and Tongan "culture" was
utterly fluid, situational, and negotiable. No ethnographic present,
no way.
Culture, like language, is a lot more fluid and various than a
structural analysis would suppose. What's the difference between Dutch
and German? A little. It would be entirely feasible to argue that
Dutch is a dialect of German. But no ... a language is a dialect with
an army. What's the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese? They're
dialects, because the Beijing government says so. Never mind that
they're to a great degree (AFAIK) incomprehensible; they're dialects
because it's politically expedient.
OK, what's the difference between American and British culture? Well,
yes, there's differences. But we speak the same language, we read the
same books, we share the same heritage of common law. Different
cultures? What about the differences between New England and US
Southern societies? Different cultures? Or the same, with variations?
What about the differences between Boston and West Podunk, Maine? Same
culture? Different culture?
So, is it OK for the French to take a casual attitude towards
second-hand smoke, because they're a different culture? As an
asthmatic, smoke from Marlboros or Gauloises is all the same to me: it
makes my throat swell shut. OK to choke me in France and NOT OK in
Palo Alto?
Finally -- pant, pant, rant, rant -- sorry, I've been thinking about
these issues for years -- cultural relativism assumes (in a sly
underhanded way) that you're an agnostic or an atheist. Because if
you're religious at all, you're likely to consider morality incumbent
upon all humans, even if you realize that it's going to be expressed
in different ways in different places and times. The challenge is
finding out what is alive and true in each situation. Serious moral
thinking is difficult and challenging.
: By anybody who's read the nineteenth century "science" that treated
: Native Americans like animals, and caused a decent part of the
: political clusterf##k we're still trying to repair. Just saying that
: science is right and Native American beliefs are wrong doesn't do
: anyone any good.
Cultural relativism is a reaction to the depredations of colonial
adminstrators and missionaries -- who often worked hand in glove.
The problem with colonial administrators is not that they had
different moral standards, it's that they had power to enforce them,
without dialogue, without knowledge of the consequences. IMHO, the
problem was their ability to exercise power capriciously, not their
moral standards.
The problem with the missionaries was that they were frequently
blinkered bigots, who believed that their way of life and their
interpretation of the Bible should triumph, and that native ways
should die completely. But NOT ALWAYS. Consider the Jesuit
missionaries to China back in the ... 16th century, was it? They
learned Chinese. They observed Chinese culture. They adopted Chinese
dress and many Chinese customs. They engaged in a dialogue with
Chinese culture and made many converts. And ... sigh ... rivals
complained to Rome, saying that the Jesuits were going native, and
that was the end of that.
Still, Roman Catholic missions have often been much more open to
foreign cultures than Protestant missions. In Tonga, some old songs
and dances survived in Catholic villages, just because they weren't
banned.
You can refrain from imposing your views on others, you can open your
ears and your mind to others rather than closing them out ... and you
can still NOT be a cultural relativist.
--
Karen Lofstrom SCIENTOLOGIST BAIT lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
OT7-48 1. Find some plants, trees, etc., and communicate to them
individually until you know they received your communication.
Chad Ryan Thomas
Apologies to interested lurkers, but I'm taking this one private
now. It's just too long and too little related to how to write
speculative fiction for me to rationalize. Plus it's getting ino
obscura about anthropology theory and epistemology that even I can't
find interesting.
In article <8eog86$nd1$1...@mochi.lava.net>,
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>> Why can't one say that? Oral tradition is notoriously malleable. And
>> various. If it contradicts trustworthy archival or archaeological or
>> biological sources, it can be wrong.
>
>Because in the Native American way of thinking, oral tradition ISN'T
>malleable. It is the equivalent of Western religions' Holy
>Scriptures. An anthropologist who claims that his epistemology (i.e.,
So what? I certainly don't think an archeologist has to take Western
religions' holy texts as the gospel truth (little pun there) if it
turns out that the scientific evidence disproves some claim made
therein. Nor can we overlook the possibility of changes creeping in
during the process of copying. In this case, anybody who's ever
played "telephone" can reasonably conclude that an oral tradition may
be inaccurate. Now, perhaps the Native Americans in question have
some particularly good mnemonic technique, and are therefore capable
of passing on tales with little or no corruption. But until such time
as we have corroborating evidence, it's reasonable to believe that the
oral tradition may have been distorted.
>science) is right, but someone elses (i.e., oral history) is wrong, is
>making a value judgment that is forbidden based on the principle of
>cultural relativism. What has to be done is to understand how both
Oh bullshit.
Cultural relativism, taken to that extreme, is nonsense because there
is a real universe out there, in which actual facts exist, and some
techniques really are better at getting to them than others. Your
version of cultural relativism was rather neatly punctured by Alan
Sokal, in his wonderful prank in which he got _Social Text_ to print
an article asserting that gravity was social construct. Tell that to
a guy who's just dropped a fifty pound dumbbell on his foot.
Let's take an example of conflicting epistimologies, shall we? Now,
like many people, I've heard about the Cargo Cults, (which I'm sure is
an un-PC term), which sprang up on various islands after WWII. (My
example will be valid, even if you tell me that the Cargo Cults are an
urban myth. Are they, by the way?) Here we've got these folks, who
see the world in terms of various divine interventions. As I
understand their worldview, _people_ don't actually do anything; it's
the gods, who do stuff for folks who perform the right rituals. Now,
supposedly, these folks saw all these US troops at these little
airfields in WWII, and saw that they had all sorts of neat stuff --
"cargo." So, after the servicefolks left, they built bamboo airplanes
and runways and the like, in the hopes of luring the gods to deliver
more cargo. The couldn't imagine that we'd actually produced the
wealth that flowed into the bases.
Question: if the Cargo Cultists believed that the bamboo airplanes
really and truly would fly, if they performed the right rituals, would
you believe them? If the answer is yes, you're an idiot, and if the
answer is no, then, at some level, you believe in the primacy of
scientific understanding over various other epistimologies. The folks
at Boeing Aerospace, unlike the Cargo Cultists, are able to make
flying machines, because they have an understanding of the physical
world which approximates the real thing closely enough to allow them
to build working airplanes. An understanding which is, in large
measure, a result of the scientific method.
>epistemologies work, and how they can work together to produce a result
>acceptable to both parties. Just declaring that science is the "right"
>paradigm won't do that, no matter how much some scientists, myself
>included, would like.
Oh, I can see how it might be _undiplomatic_ to tell the Native
Americans in question that their oral tradition may or may not be
true. I'm just not sure why you would deny the fact that that's the
case, even if it's not polite to bring it up with the Native
Americans.
>
>(Cultural relativism is itself a whole new barrel of worms, but it most
>certainly does NOT mean that "everybody's right--anything goes--let's
>hug.")
You will now attempt to do intellectual backflips to distinguish
between the Native American oral tradition case and the Cargo Cult
case. I'll get the popcorn.
>
>> If you can tell me where my reasoning is vitiated by my culture, I'll
>> try to rectify my reasoning. I won't give up reasoning.
>
>The very idea that oral tradition is malleable is a Western, scientific
>concept. The idea that we *need* to learn what the bones have to teach
>us is a Western concept. (Many Native American religious teachings
>would argue that knowledge of the past is entirely unnecessary for
>proper living today.) The idea that human remains have no continued
>use for the spirits of the departed (which is implicit in many
>arguments for study).
>
>Besides, there's some much deeper cultural assumptions in the
>identification methdos you suggest. The idea that some weird invisible
>thing called "DNA" can tell you whose ancestor a particular bone came
>from is culturally based in the paradigm that scientific investigation
>reveals the true nature of the universe.
And the idea that you shouldn't jump out the windows of skyscrapers is
culturally based on the idea that you can't fly like Superman.
There's abundant evidence for the existence of DNA, and for the fact
that it can show degrees of relationship. It's not just something we
made up one day.
>
>> NAGPRA is badly-written law, IMHO. It extends jurisdiction WAY too far
>> into the past. It's not right just because it's the law.
>
>NAGPRA is a very badly written law. It's also a law with far too
>little applicability (it only applies to collections made before the
>law was enacted from federal land and curated by publicly-funded
>institutions). But despite its shortcomings, its the closest thing we
Oh, great. So you want to restrict everybody, not just those who get
money from the feds.
>have to guidelines for how to act properly in these situations, and it
>was essentially written by some of the best minds in archaeological
>ethics this country has now. You can be sure that they considered all
Don't lead with your chin, Chad.
>dimensions of the issue, and came up with the least-problematic
>solution.
>
>> Aargh. Not in Hawai'i. I have had vociferous arguments online with
>> people who say that bones must not be moved (ever) and must never be
>> studied, because it's disrespectful.
>
>I stand corrected. I wasn't aware of the situation in Hawaii. Only a
>negligible minority of Native American groups advocate absolutely no
>disturbance of bones, and this is a non-issue in most other parts of
>the globe.
>
>> I suppose what upsets me the most is the opposition to study. If all
>> the groups wanted was respectful reburial of the bones, after casts
>> had been made and DNA samples taken, that would be fine.
>
>DNA testing is a destructive process. This is allowing potential
>enemies to acquire and control part of your power. (Isn't the Hawaiian
>word Mana?) I doubt even contact-period Hawaiians would have allowed
>that.
So what? The notion that we acquire any actual "power" because bones
are tested is rather obviously superstitious nonsense. I see no
practical reason why it should interfere with our study of the world.
>
>The differences between modern attitudes toward remains and ancient
>attitudes is a problem, but its not advisable to tell a descendant
>group that we know their ancestors' traditions better than they do.
>That would cause even worse political fall-out than just declaring that
>they have no claim.
>
>There is a very significant strand in the archaeological arguments for
>cooperation that boils down to simple fear. We're afraid that if we
>don't cooperate with native groups, *we'll* be denied access to the
>materials, and we'll be out of a job. Especially in the southwest,
>where most of the excavations take place on tribal land (and therefore
>need excavation permits from tribal authorities), this is a very
>serious problem. Nation-wide, most of the legislation in the last 30
>years concerning cultural preservation and repatriation has been
>directly or indirectly the result of Native Americans flexing their
>muscles. We have to respect their opinions, or we're out of a job.
_That's_ a good argument, unlike your invocation of the principle of
cultural relativism. Yes, if the current Native Americans control the
sites, you have to suck up to them. That doesn't mean that you have
to be wholly credulous with respect to their various claims, though.
>
>But beyond that, it's a matter of simple respect. These people (well,
>some of them) do feel very strongly about the issue. Whether we
>Western-types undertsand it or not, the Columbia Indians really do
>believe that Kennewick man is one of their direct ancestors, no
>different from Grandma who died last year.
Well, gee, what if I decide that some pile of bones in Scotland, or
even Africa, is my ancestor? Can I stop the bones from being dug up?
What if I decide that I'm the reincarnated soul of some resident of
Pompeii who died in the eruption? Can I stop all archeological work
there?
--
Pete McCutchen
Karen Lofstrom
: Because in the Native American way of thinking, oral tradition ISN'T
: malleable. It is the equivalent of Western religions' Holy
: Scriptures. An anthropologist who claims that his epistemology (i.e.,
: science) is right, but someone elses (i.e., oral history) is wrong, is
: making a value judgment that is forbidden based on the principle of
: cultural relativism.
Let's come at this from a different angle. Do you think that math is
culturally relative? Is it wrong for me to impose my understanding of
quadratic equations upon some poor native? I don't think so. If the
native is bright, he/she is going to reason in just the same way I
do. The math that people do, world-wide, is a math that was created by
many cultures and is intuitively graspable by people from any
culture. I'd suggest that science, at its best, approaches this level
of universality and when it doesn't, it has to be corrected, not
dismissed as a mere cultural epiphenomenon.
Consider math and science as being more like sophisticated
tools. They aren't "culture" in the sense that certain beliefs about
kinship, or proper etiquette, are culture. For one thing, they aren't
shared by all or even most members of the culture. If 95% of the
people in the United States don't know what an imaginary number is,
then in what sense is the concept of "imaginary number" a product of
American culture? Or characteristic of American culture? The concept
is immediately understood world-wide by the minority of people who can
do math beyond balancing a checkbook. But not by anyone else ...
As for a critical stance towards oral tradition -- weighing,
comparing, and valuing differing oral or textual traditions has been
independently invented in several times and places. I believe that
this is a significant component of Torah study and of the Muslim study
of the Hadith, or traditions about Mohammed. Chinese scholars of the
Ming and Ching did much the same kind of work on early Chinese
texts and traditions about those texts.
: There is a very significant strand in the archaeological arguments for
: cooperation that boils down to simple fear. We're afraid that if we
: don't cooperate with native groups, *we'll* be denied access to the
: materials, and we'll be out of a job.
Well, fine, let's be diplomatic. Never my strong point, but someone
has to do it. Don't send me to NAGPRA negotiations :) But let's not
confuse being diplomatic with saying that we can't venture to judge
because right and wrong are culturally relative. Perhaps we *could*
say that a certain tentativeness in our conclusions would be both
modest and prudent, since it's unlikely that we've come up with
conclusions that will NEVER be bettered.
ObSF: Mathematicians themselves don't really understand why math
"works" for describing the real world. Or, by extension, science. Is
it because our brains blot out anything contradictory? Is it because
natural selection has favored brains that "reason" in ways that mirror
the operation of the world? Greg Egan is one writer who investigates
questions like this.
If alien brains work differently than ours, would they be inhabiting a
parallel dimension? Would we be able to interact with them at all?
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"While I write this letter, I have a pistol in one hand and a sword
in the other." -- Sir Roche Boyle
Chad Ryan Thomas
wide-spread misconceptions about what it is that Anthropologists do,
and it's exactly this viewpoint that hurts both scientists and Native
Americans. After this, I'll try my best to stay quiet.
In article <gnv1hs0hsu52h39lc...@4ax.com>,
Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> But until such time
> as we have corroborating evidence, it's reasonable to believe that the
> oral tradition may have been distorted.
You missed the entire point of my previous statement, and I suspect it
may be because I phrased the post badly. I'll restate as clearly as
possible.
From a Western, scientific viewpoint, oral traditions are malleable and
questionable as historical resources. I do not dispute this. I have
never disputed this, and no scientist will dispute it. This statement
is a non-issue.
The issue is this: Native Americans are not evaluating their oral
traditions from a Western, scientific point of view. They are
evaluating these traditions from their distinctive worldview that says
such traditions are sacred and must be respected.
As a society which (one should hope) is making a real, good-faith
attempt to include Native American interests in national politics, we
must take into account that there are different views on the
reliability of oral traditions, and must find a compromise between
these two conflicting viewpoints. To simply declare that science will
be the ultimate authority on historical fact reveals just one thing:
the attempt to include Native Americans as full citizens is not
sincere. Groups like AIM are fully justified in being annoyed at such
situations. It is an hypocrisy more flamboyant than usual for US
politics. That much for NAGPRA and similar issues.
In terms of anthropology as a science, declaring a scientific appraisal
of history as "true" and Native American concepts as "wrong" does
nothing to reveal the workings of human culture. In fact it obscures
cultural processes. Anthropology is not an historical science,
really. Its concern is not whether X happened in the past, but how
human culture works now, then, and in the future. (It is rather
similar to physics in the sense that we're looking for rules and
processes the obtain regardless of time and place.) Whether X really
happened or not, the people in question *believe* that it did, and they
will act accordingly.
Consider this research program. "Based on such-and-such evidence, this
particular oral tradition seems not to be an accurate representation of
historical fact. Under what circumstances, and by what processes,
would a culture of intelligent, rational people develop such inaccurate
traditions? What functions might such inaccurate traditions serve?"
This is a perfectly valid anthropological research program.
On the other hand, this one isn't: "Native Americans believe
superstitious nonsense. How could they be so stupid?" It is based on
the same observations, and ultimately wants to examine the same thing.
But the second one includes value judgments of the one cultural system
which are made according to criteria from the other system. The first
program mediates such value judgments as far as is possible through
neutral language. The second program has already implicitly arrived at
an answer to the research question. (They believe because they're
stupid.) The first, however, has no implicit answers. The first
program will answer interesting questions about how human culture
works. The second will make the researcher feel big by making the
Native Americans look small. Which is science?
> Cultural relativism, taken to that extreme, ...
To what extreme? My formulation of the principle of cultural
relativism is this: "One cannot make value judgments about aspects of
one cultural system based on criteria derived from another cultural
system if one wishes to learn about how human culture operates." How is
this extreme at all?
I suppose you may have been thrown by my use of the words "right"
and "wrong." I used them in quotes in my original post to try ot
indicate the implict value judgment, and I suppose the terrible medium
through which we're communicating obscured that intent. A scinetist
can say that something is inaccurate based on certain evidence, without
being ethnocentric and biased. What a scientist shouldn't say is that
it's "wrong," with the implication that it's therefore valueless,
foolish, and backward.
> Your
> version of cultural relativism was rather neatly punctured by Alan
> Sokal, in his wonderful prank in which he got _Social Text_ to print
> an article asserting that gravity was social construct.
How does "My version of cultural relativism" get "punctured" by such a
statement? I strongly suspect that you're reading more into my
position than is there. That someone can publish a paper whose
conclusions are obviously false punctures nothing but the reputation of
the journal editor.
> Let's take an example of conflicting epistimologies, shall we? Now,
> like many people, I've heard about the Cargo Cults, (which I'm sure is
> an un-PC term), which sprang up on various islands after WWII.
"Cargo cult" is an appropriate term, and one which is gaining a wider
application than to cargo cults proper. It is currently being applied
to any new religious movement. The implict suggestion is that such
religious movements operate under the same sort of rules as the very
well-understood cargo cults.
> (My
> example will be valid, even if you tell me that the Cargo Cults are an
> urban myth. Are they, by the way?)
Not at all. Thye're very well-documented, and very well-understood
social phenomena with a wide distribution in both time and space.
(FYI: the earliest examples predate WWII be several decades. Several
similar cults were even reported in the 19th century, if I recall
correctly.)
> Question: if the Cargo Cultists believed that the bamboo airplanes
> really and truly would fly, if they performed the right rituals, would
> you believe them?
Of course not. I'm more than aware of principles of aerodynamics, and
the functioning of the internal combustion engine, and such. Saying
that the bamboo planes won't fly isn't an anthropological issue,
though. It has to do with physics and engineering.
Now, suppose I were an anthropologist studying cargo cults. I can say
the planes won't fly. Great. What does that have to do with human
culture? I can say that cargo cults are followed by people who believe
stupid and obviously false things. That doesn't tell me anything about
*WHY* they believe those things, or *HOW* they came to belive those
things, or *WHAT* those beliefs do for them. All it does is, rather
arbitrarily, declare the cultists to be stupid.
A scientific anthropologist isn't interested in why the planes will or
will not fly. Not at all. Not in the least little bit. What a
scientific anthropologist is concerned about is why would rational,
intelligent people *THINK* that bamboo planes would fly. That's an
entirely different issue.
> If the answer is yes, you're an idiot, and if the
> answer is no, then, at some level, you believe in the primacy of
> scientific understanding over various other epistimologies.
Of course I believe "in the primacy of scientific understanding." I
was born and raised in a cultural milieu in which that was the
prevalent, hegemonic paradigm. I can't escape that paradigm easily, if
at all, and I certainly can't escape it just because a cultist tells me
differently.
But if I intend to learn interesting things about how human culture
works, I must try to mediate the bias that such a worldview introduces,
in order to understand the principles by which other rational,
intelligent people (who do not have such Western biases) would accept
such statements as true.
> Oh, I can see how it might be _undiplomatic_ to tell the Native
> Americans in question that their oral tradition may or may not be
> true.
I'm not talking about truth or untruth (which, by the way, are
philosophical terms that I can't even begin to define). What I'm
talking about is value judgments about a cultural system, which
explicitly or implicitly devalue a particular way of viewing the world
because the speaker possesses a different worldview.
I can see now that "right" and "wrong" were clearly some of the most
unfortunate choices of words I've made in a long time.
When you declare that Western science is the ultimate authority on what
happened in the past, and that Native American views will have no input
into the discussion, what you're doing is implicitly saying that Native
American views are worthless. That they don't matter, and have nothing
interesting to add. In a great many cases, this is just verifiably
false in the Western scientific sense. In all cases, this reveals a
fundamental hypocrisy in the society that claims to be trying to
include Native Americans as full members. And in all cases, it
obscures the cultural processes behind Native American beliefs.
> >(Cultural relativism is itself a whole new barrel of worms, but it
most
> >certainly does NOT mean that "everybody's right--anything goes--let's
> >hug.")
>
> You will now attempt to do intellectual backflips to distinguish
> between the Native American oral tradition case and the Cargo Cult
> case. I'll get the popcorn.
I have no idea how to reply to this, because I have no idea what you're
trying to say. If cultural relativism does NOT mean that everybody's
right, as I clearly assert above, why should I have to "do intellectual
backflips" to reconcile my statement that we must respect Native
American worldviews and my statement that bamboo planes can't fly?
> And the idea that you shouldn't jump out the windows of skyscrapers is
> culturally based on the idea that you can't fly like Superman.
The idea that you *SHOULDN'T* jump is obviously culturally based. It's
a value judgment about the utility and "rightness" of an action. The
idea that you can't fly like superman is also culturally based, but in
a much more muted way, and has a much, much stronger possibility of
accurately reflecting the real state of the external universe.
> There's abundant evidence for the existence of DNA, and for the fact
> that it can show degrees of relationship. It's not just something we
> made up one day.
No, there's evidence of certain instruments acting in a certain way, by
which we infer the existence of an invisible object called "DNA."
Furthermroe, there is abundant evidence for said instruments acting in
similar or identical ways when used on samples of known biological
relationship, by which we infer that DNA is a signal of biological
relatedness.
At no point do we have evidence for DNA directly. (For the record, a
strict definition of evidence must be restricted to the direct
sensations provided by human senses. Such sensations are, after all,
the only direct input into the human brain.)
No, DNA is not just something that we made up. It is a theory with a
very high probability of accurately reflecting the real state of an
external universe. But since there is no perfect epistemology, the
real existence of DNA can never be proven beyond all doubt.
The epistemology by which the instruments were constructed and their
results interpreted is a Western, scientific epistemology. Therefore,
the belief that DNA exists and represents biological relatedness is
ultimately biased by the Western, scientific paradigm. No matter how
likely it is to exist in the real world.
[Concerning the legislative scope of NAGPRA]
> Oh, great. So you want to restrict everybody, not just those who get
> money from the feds.
Damn straight. There are exactly two groups of people who have a
justifiable reason to have anything to do with human remains:
scientists and descendants. "I own the land," is not a good excuse,
and neither is "Grampa gave it to me."
> >have to guidelines for how to act properly in these situations, and
it
> >was essentially written by some of the best minds in archaeological
> >ethics this country has now. You can be sure that they considered
all
>
> Don't lead with your chin, Chad.
Again, huh? Kintigh and Goldstein *are* some of the best minds in
archaeological ethics in the US today. Their work on repatriation
issues has done more in the last fifteen years to repair scientist-
Native relations than the entire history of anthropologists up to that
point.
And, having spoken to Kintigh myself on many occassions, I can say that
he is a frighteningly intelligent man, with an almost encyclopedic
knowledge of the relevant literature. You may disagree with his
conclusions, but you can hardly claim that he's not qualified to speak
on the issue.
> So what? The notion that we acquire any actual "power" because bones
> are tested is rather obviously superstitious nonsense.
<SIGH> It's "rather obviously superstitious nonsense" to you, because
you're evaluating the issue from a Western, scientific worldview. To a
Native Hawaiian, in whose opinion mana is a real, powerful force in the
universe, such a conclusion is anything by "obvious." In fact, it is
obviously false.
And, may I take a moment here to step out of my anthropoplogist's shoes
and make a personal statement? It has been a long time since I've
heard anyone make so blatantly bigoted a statement in a public forum.
I've never been to Hawaii, and I have never met any Native Hawaiians,
but I am personally disgusted.
Okay, anthropologist hat back on.
> >We're afraid that if we
> >don't cooperate with native groups, *we'll* be denied access to the
> >materials, and we'll be out of a job. [SNIP]
>
> _That's_ a good argument, unlike your invocation of the principle of
> cultural relativism. Yes, if the current Native Americans control the
> sites, you have to suck up to them.
"Suck up to them" is a rather crass way to put it. I would much prefer
to say that we respect their viewpoint, and strive to work in ways that
do not offend them, but still increase our knowledge of how human
culture works.
Nevertheless, "sucking up" is often a particularly accurate way to put
it.
> Well, gee, what if I decide that some pile of bones in Scotland, or
> even Africa, is my ancestor? Can I stop the bones from being dug up?
Probably not. Laws outside the U.S. are not nearly so friendly to
native and/or descendant interests. Do you have a right to stop them
from being dug up? I really don't know. Deep time frames are a
horrible grey area in archaeological ethics, and as far as I know, no
one has ever really tried to address the problem. I'm certainly not
going to go on record one way or the other.
The difference between this hypothetical situation and, say, Kennewick
Man lies in two areas: 1) in Kennewick, the remains fall in a LEGAL
grey area, not only an ETHICAL grey area. I suspect that Scottish and
African laws would not be grey about such old remains. 2) in the
Kennewick case, the claimant is a politically powerful, federally
recognized corporate entity, which wields much more power than a single
person could. Even if the ethics were more clear, the politics likely
wouldn't be.
There are situations in which we must sacrifice scientific
investigation due to political situations. For example, no American
can do archaeology in Iraq right now, despite the fact that Americans
count among some of the most knoweldgeable Mesopotamian archaeologists
in the world. If Kennewick had been reburied immediately without
study, that situation would have been no different.
Okay, I've spent a couple hours composing this email. This is as clear
as I can possibly word my position. I will remain silent in the public
forum from here, unless someone wants a specific clarification. (Even
then, I'd prefer to do it via private email.)
Also, I'll repeat my earlier offer to provide a series of citations
from the scholarly literature on both sides of the issue. I invite
anyone interested in the issue to read the primary literature for
themselves and make an informed decision.
I disagree strongly with Pete's position, but I also suspect that he
misunderstood what I intended. The scholarly debate is no less prone
to misunderstandings, but at least it has been through a review process
that might eliminate some of the first-level misunderstandings.
Matt Bishop
Apologies for continuing this off-topic thread, but I've always
been interested in ideas about truth and evidence and the scientific
method, and SF is a good way of exploring those ideas -- which is why
Philip K. Dick is still my favourite author. Tenuous, I know...
Chad Ryan Thomas wrote:
> No, there's evidence of certain instruments acting in a certain way, by
> which we infer the existence of an invisible object called "DNA." [...]
> At no point do we have evidence for DNA directly. (For the record, a
> strict definition of evidence must be restricted to the direct
> sensations provided by human senses. Such sensations are, after all,
> the only direct input into the human brain.)
"Evidence" is extraordinarily hard to define, granted, but that definition
seems so strong as to be useless. As I read it, it would mean that there's
more evidence for alien abduction than there is for the existence of DNA.
Or, allowing that human senses can be just as fallible as inferences made
from insufficient data (because they *are* inferences made from insufficient
data!), that there's no evidence for anything at all.
> No, DNA is not just something that we made up. It is a theory with a
> very high probability of accurately reflecting the real state of an
> external universe.
This is where I begin to think that your "evidence" and my "evidence" mean
something different. If we have no evidence for DNA, how do you know
that it has a high probability of being a correct idea? If it has a high
probability of being correct, doesn't that mean that there's evidence for it?
> But since there is no perfect epistemology, the
> real existence of DNA can never be proven beyond all doubt.
No argument about that; I can't even prove my own existence
beyond all doubt.
> My formulation of the principle of cultural
> relativism is this: "One cannot make value judgments about aspects of
> one cultural system based on criteria derived from another cultural
> system if one wishes to learn about how human culture operates."
> [...]
> A scinetist can say that something is inaccurate based on certain evidence,
> without being ethnocentric and biased. What a scientist shouldn't say is
> that it's "wrong," with the implication that it's therefore valueless,
> foolish, and backward.
Thank you; that clarifies things immensely. I've never seen those implications
in the word "wrong" before (mental note: say "inaccurate" in future), and the
idea of cultural relativism makes a sight more sense with the addition of that
qualification "if one wishes to learn about how human culture operates".
Most articles I've read previously have omitted any such phrase, implying that
there's no way to decide between different theories of how the real physical
world operates, and that 2+2 might just as easily be 5.
Matt
Kristopher/EOS
>
> I'm replying to this one publicly because it represents
> the worst, most wide-spread misconceptions about what
> it is that Anthropologists do, and it's exactly this
> viewpoint that hurts both scientists and Native
> Americans. After this, I'll try my best to stay quiet.
Maybe I should mention that I perfer archaeology...
> In article <gnv1hs0hsu52h39lc...@4ax.com>,
> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>> But until such time as we have corroborating evidence,
>> it's reasonable to believe that the oral tradition may
>> have been distorted.
Because we know for a fact that they often ARE distorted.
> You missed the entire point of my previous statement,
> and I suspect it may be because I phrased the post badly.
> I'll restate as clearly as possible.
>
> From a Western, scientific viewpoint, oral traditions are
> malleable and questionable as historical resources. I do
> not dispute this. I have never disputed this, and no
> scientist will dispute it. This statement is a non-issue.
Personally, I don't think it's a matter of viewpoint when it
has been shown to be true.
> The issue is this: Native Americans are not evaluating
> their oral traditions from a Western, scientific point
> of view. They are evaluating these traditions from
> their distinctive worldview that says such traditions
> are sacred and must be respected.
>
> As a society which (one should hope) is making a real,
> good-faith attempt to include Native American interests
> in national politics, we must take into account that
> there are different views on the reliability of oral
> traditions, and must find a compromise between these
> two conflicting viewpoints. To simply declare that
> science will be the ultimate authority on historical
> fact reveals just one thing: the attempt to include
> Native Americans as full citizens is not sincere.
The problem is, one view on the reliability of oral
tradition is right, and one isn't, and compromising
with inaccuracy is just silly.
> Groups like AIM are fully justified in being annoyed at
> such situations. It is an hypocrisy more flamboyant
> than usual for US politics. That much for NAGPRA and
> similar issues.
And I care what AIM thinks?
> In terms of anthropology as a science, declaring a
> scientific appraisal of history as "true" and Native
> American concepts as "wrong" does nothing to reveal
> the workings of human culture. In fact it obscures
> cultural processes. Anthropology is not an historical
> science, really. Its concern is not whether X happened
> in the past, but how human culture works now, then, and
> in the future.
But in order to know that, you have to have an accurate
picture...you have have to know what actually happened,
as well as what someone claims happened based on stories
grandmama told him.
> (It is rather similar to physics in the sense that
> we're looking for rules and processes the obtain
> regardless of time and place.) Whether X really
> happened or not, the people in question *believe*
> that it did, and they will act accordingly.
And if a culture's traditions claimed that they are
descended from the survivors of a crashed Venusian
starship from 1692, would you take that at face value?
> Consider this research program. "Based on
> such-and-such evidence, this particular oral tradition
> seems not to be an accurate representation of historical
> fact. Under what circumstances, and by what processes,
> would a culture of intelligent, rational people develop
> such inaccurate traditions? What functions might such
> inaccurate traditions serve?" This is a perfectly valid
> anthropological research program.
But first you'd have to know that it's not accurate.
> On the other hand, this one isn't: "Native Americans
> believe superstitious nonsense. How could they be so
> stupid?" It is based on the same observations, and
> ultimately wants to examine the same thing.
>
> But the second one includes value judgments of the
> one cultural system which are made according to
> criteria from the other system. The first program
> mediates such value judgments as far as is possible
> through neutral language. <snip>
And no one is suggesting the second one. *sheesh*
>> Cultural relativism, taken to that extreme, ...
>
> To what extreme? My formulation of the principle of
> cultural relativism is this: "One cannot make value
> judgments about aspects of one cultural system based
> on criteria derived from another cultural system if
> one wishes to learn about how human culture operates."
> How is this extreme at all?
I don't find scientific inquiry to be cultural. Sorry.
> I suppose you may have been thrown by my use of the
> words "right" and "wrong." I used them in quotes in
> my original post to try ot indicate the implict value
> judgment, and I suppose the terrible medium through
> which we're communicating obscured that intent. A
> scinetist can say that something is inaccurate based
> on certain evidence, without being ethnocentric and
> biased. What a scientist shouldn't say is that it's
> "wrong," with the implication that it's therefore
> valueless, foolish, and backward.
If it walks like a duck...
IMO, the cargo cults are a perfect illustration of how
wrong (ie, inaccurate, incorrect) a worldview can be.
>> Question: if the Cargo Cultists believed that the
>> bamboo airplanes really and truly would fly, if they
>> performed the right rituals, would you believe them?
>
> Of course not. I'm more than aware of principles of
> aerodynamics, and the functioning of the internal
> combustion engine, and such. Saying that the bamboo
> planes won't fly isn't an anthropological issue,
> though. It has to do with physics and engineering.
Personally, I can't put science in boxes. It's all one
thing for me.
> Now, suppose I were an anthropologist studying cargo
> cults. I can say the planes won't fly. Great. What
> does that have to do with human culture?
It tells us that sometimes, people are silly. Sorry,
but it really is silly.
> I can say that cargo cults are followed by people who
> believe stupid and obviously false things. That doesn't
> tell me anything about *WHY* they believe those things,
> or *HOW* they came to belive those things, or *WHAT*
> those beliefs do for them. All it does is, rather
> arbitrarily, declare the cultists to be stupid.
>
> A scientific anthropologist isn't interested in why the
> planes will or will not fly. Not at all. Not in the
> least little bit. What a scientific anthropologist is
> concerned about is why would rational, intelligent people
> *THINK* that bamboo planes would fly. That's an entirely
> different issue.
Because they WEREN'T rational people.
>> If the answer is yes, you're an idiot, and if the answer
>> is no, then, at some level, you believe in the primacy of
>> scientific understanding over various other epistimologies.
>
> Of course I believe "in the primacy of scientific
> understanding." I was born and raised in a cultural
> milieu in which that was the prevalent, hegemonic
> paradigm. I can't escape that paradigm easily, if at
> all, and I certainly can't escape it just because a
> cultist tells me differently.
IMO, science isn't a matter of culture. It supercedes
culture. It's maybe the one thing humans have done that
allows them to overcome/sidestep their myopia.
> But if I intend to learn interesting things about how
> human culture works, I must try to mediate the bias
> that such a worldview introduces, in order to understand
> the principles by which other rational, intelligent
> people (who do not have such Western biases) would accept
> such statements as true.
>
>> Oh, I can see how it might be _undiplomatic_ to tell the
>> Native Americans in question that their oral tradition
>> may or may not be true.
>
> I'm not talking about truth or untruth (which, by the way,
> are philosophical terms that I can't even begin to define).
> What I'm talking about is value judgments about a cultural
> system, which explicitly or implicitly devalue a particular
> way of viewing the world because the speaker possesses a
> different worldview.
**sigh** Some worldviews ARE more accurate than others.
> I can see now that "right" and "wrong" were clearly some of
> the most unfortunate choices of words I've made in a long
> time.
>
> When you declare that Western science is the ultimate
> authority on what happened in the past, and that Native
> American views will have no input into the discussion,
> what you're doing is implicitly saying that Native American
> views are worthless. That they don't matter, and have
> nothing interesting to add. In a great many cases, this is
> just verifiably false in the Western scientific sense. In
> all cases, this reveals a fundamental hypocrisy in the
> society that claims to be trying to include Native Americans
> as full members. And in all cases, it obscures the cultural
> processes behind Native American beliefs.
Imput with discretion then. Use the stories as starting points
in the investigation. Just don't toss out accuracy in favor of
comprimise.
>>> (Cultural relativism is itself a whole new barrel of worms,
>>> but it most certainly does NOT mean that "everybody's right
>>> --anything goes--let's hug.")
>>
>> You will now attempt to do intellectual backflips to
>> distinguish between the Native American oral tradition
>> case and the Cargo Cult case. I'll get the popcorn.
>
> I have no idea how to reply to this, because I have no
> idea what you're trying to say. If cultural relativism
> does NOT mean that everybody's right, as I clearly assert
> above, why should I have to "do intellectual backflips"
> to reconcile my statement that we must respect Native
> American worldviews and my statement that bamboo planes
> can't fly?
Should one respect provably inaccurate beliefs?
>> And the idea that you shouldn't jump out the windows of
>> skyscrapers is culturally based on the idea that you
>> can't fly like Superman.
>
> The idea that you *SHOULDN'T* jump is obviously culturally
> based. It's a value judgment about the utility and
> "rightness" of an action. The idea that you can't fly like
> superman is also culturally based, but in a much more muted
> way, and has a much, much stronger possibility of
> accurately reflecting the real state of the external
> universe.
I think he was getting back the the gravity article...
>> There's abundant evidence for the existence of DNA, and for
>> the fact that it can show degrees of relationship. It's not
>> just something we made up one day.
>
> No, there's evidence of certain instruments acting in a
> certain way, by which we infer the existence of an invisible
> object called "DNA."
Um, we've actually seen DNA now.
> Furthermroe, there is abundant evidence for said instruments
> acting in similar or identical ways when used on samples of
> known biological relationship, by which we infer that DNA is
> a signal of biological relatedness.
>
> At no point do we have evidence for DNA directly. (For the
> record, a strict definition of evidence must be restricted
> to the direct sensations provided by human senses. Such
> sensations are, after all, the only direct input into the
> human brain.)
>
> No, DNA is not just something that we made up. It is a
> theory with a very high probability of accurately reflecting
> the real state of an external universe. But since there is
> no perfect epistemology, the real existence of DNA can never
> be proven beyond all doubt.
But it's far closer than "great-great-grandma landed on a ship
from Venus."
> The epistemology by which the instruments were constructed
> and their results interpreted is a Western, scientific
> epistemology. Therefore, the belief that DNA exists and
> represents biological relatedness is ultimately biased by
> the Western, scientific paradigm. No matter how likely it
> is to exist in the real world.
Paradigm is a pernicious notion, when used in this manner.
Some things are true, to the best of our knowledge. Some
things are not. Paradigm has nothing to do with it.
> [Concerning the legislative scope of NAGPRA]
>> Oh, great. So you want to restrict everybody, not just
>> those who get money from the feds.
>
> Damn straight. There are exactly two groups of people who
> have a justifiable reason to have anything to do with human
> remains: scientists and descendants. "I own the land," is
> not a good excuse, and neither is "Grampa gave it to me."
Sorry, but if I find a human skeleton on my "back 40," the
last thing I'd do at this point is tell anyone, BECAUSE
someone else would probably end up with the "right" to tromp
all over my property.
My land, my bones. Get off.
>>> have to guidelines for how to act properly in these
>>> situations, and it was essentially written by some of the
>>> best minds in archaeological ethics this country has now.
>>> You can be sure that they considered all
>> Don't lead with your chin, Chad.
>
> Again, huh? Kintigh and Goldstein *are* some of the best
> minds in archaeological ethics in the US today. Their work
> on repatriation issues has done more in the last fifteen
> years to repair scientist-Native relations than the entire
> history of anthropologists up to that point.
>
> And, having spoken to Kintigh myself on many occassions, I
> can say that he is a frighteningly intelligent man, with an
> almost encyclopedic knowledge of the relevant literature.
> You may disagree with his conclusions, but you can hardly
> claim that he's not qualified to speak on the issue.
>
>> So what? The notion that we acquire any actual "power"
>> because bones are tested is rather obviously superstitious
>> nonsense.
>
> <SIGH> It's "rather obviously superstitious nonsense" to
> you, because you're evaluating the issue from a Western,
> scientific worldview. To a Native Hawaiian, in whose
> opinion mana is a real, powerful force in the universe,
> such a conclusion is anything by "obvious." In fact, it
> is obviously false.
One position has evidence backing it up, the other does not.
Which are we to accept? If we accept the former, why should
we even try to operate under the strictures of the latter?
> And, may I take a moment here to step out of my
> anthropoplogist's shoes and make a personal statement?
> It has been a long time since I've heard anyone make so
> blatantly bigoted a statement in a public forum. I've
> never been to Hawaii, and I have never met any Native
> Hawaiians, but I am personally disgusted.
>
> Okay, anthropologist hat back on.
Do you always climb onto a high-horse when you climb out
of your anthro shoes?
Which means that politics is interfering with our ability
to find out whether Kennewick man is even related to the
people claiming him as an ancestor. I don't think this is
in any way a coincidence. In fact, it's my position that
they want him reburied as fast as possible in order to
protect their status.
Kristopher/EOS
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>Chad Ryan Thomas <crth...@asu.edu> wrote:
>
>: Because in the Native American way of thinking, oral tradition ISN'T
>: malleable. It is the equivalent of Western religions' Holy
>: Scriptures. An anthropologist who claims that his epistemology (i.e.,
>: science) is right, but someone elses (i.e., oral history) is wrong, is
>: making a value judgment that is forbidden based on the principle of
>: cultural relativism.
>
>Let's come at this from a different angle. Do you think that math is
>culturally relative?
Actually, yes, though not necessarily in the way that immediately
comes to mind. Three crows is always three crows. However, math
is not all about integers: a lot of math is about relationships in
space. How do you divide up a circle? We usually divide it into
360 degrees measured as angles formed by rays emanating from the
center. The Icelanders of saga times and later divided the circle
into eights -- and the rest of the world too, space, time (the
day, the year, the span of life), kinship, all divided into
eighths. And though we would draw those eighths as defined by rays
emanating from the center, what the Icelanders were thinking of
was not the rays at the boundaries but the field "between." And
then there are radians: now, that's so culturally different a way
to look at circles that I can't even encompass it. And yet there
is a subculture that does it.
Or take, for example, the way we add and subtract large numbers.
Oh, that's integers, isn't it? So there's nothing _cultural_
about that: a thousand sacks of rice is a thousand sacks of rice.
But no: watch a Vietnames person add 5643, 6547, 890, 934, 3875,
and 562 sacks of rice without a calculator: watch a Chinese person
do it: watch a Nigerian do it: go back in time and watch a
Medieval Italian, a Medieval Arab, and a Classical Mayan person do
it: all different, -- they get the same number but the process is
different, and the way they think about the numbers is different.
If you really want to be in stitches, go back in time and watch a
Russian peasant do it.
>Is it wrong for me to impose my understanding of
>quadratic equations upon some poor native? I don't think so. If the
>native is bright, he/she is going to reason in just the same way I
>do.
If this person is learning math in high school or college, then
the person is going to be learning only one of a few ways to think
about quadratic equations (yes, there's more than one way to think
about them, and they are taught differently in different schools).
If this person is operating in a school-less context --- less and
less likely these days -- he or she is going to be using an
entirely different mathematical strategy to talk about the same
kinds of problems (quadratics are frequently used to approach
problems which can be approached other ways: they are actually
quite easy, comfy math).
My son is in his third semester of calculus, the one everybody
hates to take or teach because the graphing calculator has made it
obsolete but mathematics departments still think that students
need to go through the grind of it so they'll know what their
calculators are doing. Quite a few of the problems they do in
calculus are problems that can be done by modelling or by
cascading algebra problems, which themselves can be solved by
modelling or by series of arithmetic or geometry problems -- in
other words, they are "higher" math situations which are
transparent to other approaches. Not that there aren't problems
which are insoluble without calculus, just that there are many
problems which are not, and which have been solved repeatedly over
the ages by people with different mathematical systems.
But, teaching our highest and best knowledge of modern mathematics
across cultures doesn't have to entail disrespect or destruction
of other ways of thinking, any more than teaching the most
elegant, effective and respectable English has to entail making
people forget their first language (notice that the higher status
the ESL student is, the less likely he or she will be asked to do
this!)
>The math that people do, world-wide, is a math that was created by
>many cultures and is intuitively graspable by people from any
>culture. I'd suggest that science, at its best, approaches this level
>of universality and when it doesn't, it has to be corrected, not
>dismissed as a mere cultural epiphenomenon.
I think the phrase "mere cultural phenomenon" is the problem.
Damned straight science is a cultural phenomenon. WIthout a
culture of science, it's not even possible.
It's simply _better science_ to encompass native knowledge and
ways of knowing. Of course we come up with areas where one body
of knowledge "knows" things the other "knows" to be untrue, and
sometimes you ahve to choose -- medical knowledge comes quickest
to mind, as I have had students whose parents have had traditional
knowledge of how to handle childhood ailments -- which knowledge
was wrong and even sometimes harmful: but to say "turpentine is a
bad louse treatment, it's poisonous to the child and doesn't kill
the lice" is not to say "your entire understanding of childrearing
is crap." -- of course there are people for whom the latter is
true, and there are cultures (Aztec!) for whom it has been true --
but it's not a good a priori assumption to make that because I am
"educated" and another person isn't, I automatically know better.
Another childrearing example. Modern Western parents know that
babies need socializing, "floor time" with clean toys and a nice
blanket, and a quiet clean bed. Amazonian parents know that
babies need to stay inside the house with mommy for a period of
time and to be kept off the ground for a year. Guess who's right?
I could go on and on. I guess I already did. But Emma wants floor
time with the computer before she goes off to be tested according
to the traditions of her culture.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
knowing. On Wednesday I was subbing for the high school librarian
and the rewas a long period where I had nothing to do so I
followed up on some ideas of Cathy Purchiss-Jeffries and I was
surfing for plant ecology and physiology, and I found all this
ifnormation about plant autecology.
Right smack in the middle of a course about plant ecology was a
long dicsussion of the European "traditon" and the American
"tradition." It was two basically different ways of studying
plant communities, with deep consequences, that have arisen out of
different _cultures_ of science.
But if science isn't cultural: if science is only right things and
wrong things: this shouldn't happen. After all, plant ecologists
in Europe and plant ecologists in America are all educated, right?
They can test their hypotheses, right?
Lucy Kemnitzer
Chad Ryan Thomas
In article <39116683...@dcs.kcl.ac.uk>,
Matt Bishop <bis...@dcs.kcl.ac.uk> wrote:
> This is where I begin to think that your "evidence" and my "evidence"
mean
> something different. If we have no evidence for DNA, how do you know
> that it has a high probability of being a correct idea? If it has a
high
> probability of being correct, doesn't that mean that there's evidence
for it?
There's plenty of evidence for it, just no DIRECT evidence. We have
plenty of evidence from our instruments, from which we induce a (more-
or-less) necessary cause that we call DNA. Those instrument readings
are still evidence for DNA, but they're a different level of evidence
from, say, an eyewitness account of a robbery.
One more reading suggestion for this discussion: Anyone even remotely
interested in philosophy of science and epistemology (and that would
include anyone who's posted in this discussion) ought to read a nifty,
slim little book by Carl Hempel.
Hempel, Carl.
1966 Philosophy of Natural Science. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-
Hall, Inc. (ISBN 0-13-663823-6)
It very neatly distinguishes between all sorts of epistemological
issues similar to this one. (It *is* a bit awkwardly worded at points,
but considering how awkward the issues are, it's approachable.)
Also, anyone who denies that science is a cultural endeavor, I suggest
you hunt down this one:
Kuhn, Thomas S.
1962 The Structure of Sicentific Revolutions. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. (ISBN 0-226-45808-3)
It's got some problems, but the gist is still true.
And keep in mind that both of these books are specifically about the
supposedly a-cultural physical sciences that always reveal the true
nature of the universe.
--
Keith Morrison
> >Because in the Native American way of thinking, oral tradition ISN'T
> >malleable. It is the equivalent of Western religions' Holy
> >Scriptures. An anthropologist who claims that his epistemology (i.e.,
>
> So what? I certainly don't think an archeologist has to take Western
> religions' holy texts as the gospel truth (little pun there) if it
> turns out that the scientific evidence disproves some claim made
> therein. Nor can we overlook the possibility of changes creeping in
> during the process of copying. In this case, anybody who's ever
> played "telephone" can reasonably conclude that an oral tradition may
> be inaccurate. Now, perhaps the Native Americans in question have
> some particularly good mnemonic technique, and are therefore capable
> of passing on tales with little or no corruption. But until such time
> as we have corroborating evidence, it's reasonable to believe that the
> oral tradition may have been distorted.
I can jump in with some data here. The Canadian ruling on the issue
(as decided by the Supreme Court) was that oral tradition had to be
accepted as evidence in, for example, a land claim, but that it had
no special status as evidence. Thus, if someone said "I should have
rights to access this land because grand-dad did," if someone else
showed that there's no way grand-dad could have been there because
he was living several thousand miles away, the oral tradition would
obviously be discounted when it came to the decision.
I've found that oral traditions tend to be good for things that
deal with everyday life. That forest was always used for hunting
and fishing. That area over yonder is where people are buried.
The buffalo used to come down this valley. Whatever. It's also
good for especially significant events, like the stories about one
really, really bad winter when great-great-great-great grandmother
was the only survivor of her village.
When it comes to larger issues, then it gets messy because the oral
tradition tends to mix with myth and legend. 'We were always here'
as uttered by some particular group, for instance, is something I
wouldn't necessarily take at face value.
--
Keith
Ted
:
: Of course I believe "in the primacy of scientific understanding." I
: was born and raised in a cultural milieu in which that was the
: prevalent, hegemonic paradigm. I can't escape that paradigm easily, if
: at all, and I certainly can't escape it just because a cultist tells me
: differently.
Is this the only reason you believe in the primacy of scientific
understanding (or anything else, for that matter)?
Ted
Chad Ryan Thomas
> : Of course I believe "in the primacy of scientific understanding." I
> : was born and raised in a cultural milieu in which that was the
>
> Is this the only reason you believe in the primacy of scientific
> understanding (or anything else, for that matter)?
Well, no. There are many reasons why science is an important part of
my worldview, not least of which is that it seems to get results. But
the chain of reasoning by which I evaluate results, and by which I
determine which questions are important, and what's the best way to go
about answering questions--that's all cultural.
To put it another way, the reason why I'm convinced that science is a
valid way of viewing the world is because, proximately, science
produces new and interesting knowledge about the universe. But the
ultimate reason I'm convinced that science produces new and interesting
knowledge about the universe is that I was enculturated in a milieu
where the predominant worldview said so.
Those proximates and ultimates are killers when you're discussing
worldview and enculturation. You gotta be really careful with 'em.
Heather Anne Nicoll
> Chad Ryan Thoma wrote:
> > Pete McCutchen wrote:
> >> So what? The notion that we acquire any actual "power"
> >> because bones are tested is rather obviously superstitious
> >> nonsense.
> > <SIGH> It's "rather obviously superstitious nonsense" to
> > you, because you're evaluating the issue from a Western,
> > scientific worldview. To a Native Hawaiian, in whose
> > opinion mana is a real, powerful force in the universe,
> > such a conclusion is anything by "obvious." In fact, it
> > is obviously false.
> One position has evidence backing it up, the other does not.
> Which are we to accept? If we accept the former, why should
> we even try to operate under the strictures of the latter?
Henh. I, personally, as a product of the 'Western scientific paradigm',
believe that someone who has my DNA has power over me, in both a literal
and a metaphysical sense.
I rather prefer having my right to hold that belief and my ability to
make judgements based on that belief respected, thankyouverymuch.
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.dslonramp.net/~darkhawk/
I understand about indecision, I don't care if I get behind
People living in competition; all I want is to have my peace of mind.
- Boston, "Peace of Mind"
Karen Lofstrom
: Right smack in the middle of a course about plant ecology was a
: long dicsussion of the European "traditon" and the American
: "tradition." It was two basically different ways of studying
: plant communities, with deep consequences, that have arisen out of
: different _cultures_ of science.
You can do some things differently and still be doing the same
thing. You can even have differential acceptance of new theories in
different places. McPhee describes how Agassiz, the geologist who
first described the ice ages, was generally rejected in his native
Europe but won a big following in the US. He ended up taking a post at
Harvard. But the split was temporary. There's no American or European
schools of thought re ice ages these days.
: But if science isn't cultural: if science is only right things and
: wrong things: this shouldn't happen. After all, plant ecologists
: in Europe and plant ecologists in America are all educated, right?
: They can test their hypotheses, right?
Ways of organizing and presenting data may differ, since it's a matter
of taste. Frex, in classification you get "lumpers" and "splitters",
who can argue vociferously about what strategy makes most sense. But
they're not disagreeing about the deeper, underlying stuff. Similarly,
American and European plant ecologists are still communicating ....
Sure, science is embedded in culture. It's done by people with
characteristic styles of communicating or organzing. But scientists
are continually debating, reading the same journals, going to
international conferences. They're negotiating the differences and
breaking down walls. Science isn't reducible to local culture.
Kristopher/EOS
>
> Henh. I, personally, as a product of the 'Western
> scientific paradigm', believe that someone who has
> my DNA has power over me, in both a literal and a
> metaphysical sense.
And if you're dead, how much power does the DNA-holder
have over you? I was under the impression that these
were the bones of the deceased being DNA-typed for
determining things like where they came from...
> I rather prefer having my right to hold that belief and
> my ability to make judgements based on that belief
> respected, thankyouverymuch.
OK...
Kristopher/EOS
Mark A. Brown
>In article <3909efeb...@enews.newsguy.com>,
> rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
*SNIP*
>> I suppose, if there's any more to say. OBsf: remember that
>> strange sequence with Picard and the archaeologist and Q?
Her name was Vash. I'm amazed that Picard managed to avoid pointing out that
'vache' is french for 'cow.' :)
>I remember some of the ridiculous episodes where Picard showe doff his
>so-called archaoelogical expertise. All I can say is that professional
>ethics certainly didn't make it into the 26th century, if he was a
>great archaeologist.
It was the 24th century, and archaeology was only a hobby for Old Baldy, on
the same level as fencing or horse riding.
Mark
"We have engaged the Borg. It will be a June wedding."
Eli Brandt
Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>Let's come at this from a different angle. Do you think that math is
>culturally relative?
As far as I know, yes. Not just mathematical techniques and
mathematical fields, inventions like zero and algebra, but math itself.
Hold on -- what I mean isn't as extreme as it sounds.
A mathematics has statements provable by assumption, and rules for
generating new provable statements from old ones. Once you have these
axioms, I'm not claiming any relativism about whether a particular proof
chain is correct. The axioms, though, you can pick how you like, if the
resulting mathematics pleases you.
I'm not even sure what relativism means, but look at this: say we have
one culture that lives among planes and one that lives among spheres.
The first develops Euclidian geometry, the second a spherical
non-Euclidean geometry. Is that relativism? But if they met, they
would each after heartfelt "that's not _real_ geometry" arguments
assimilate the other's geometry, and know when to apply each. Is that
universalism? (Or more relativism? I can never keep them straight.)
Other controversies we can't take such a universal overview of.
Should mathematics be `constructive', with each proof of existence
providing an example? Or may we use laws like classical logic's
"A or not-A", never saying which? As unquestionable as classical
logic seems, people do math without it. (It matters more in theory
than in practice.)
Computer scientists are more likely to be constructivists than other
mathematicians are (because computer programs and constructive proofs
turn out to be the same). If the two schools were distinct cultures,
they might eventually find each other mutually absurd. And these are
the currently prominent schools; there were or are Russian
constructivists and Brouwerian intuitionists and hard-core holdout
finitists in the hills and heaven knows what else. I pray some
century we will look back on all this and understand it the way we do
the different geometries. But I doubt it.
I'm curious whether there are cultures which have formalized their
common-sense logic into something decidedly different from Aristotle's.
I read a book on the history of mathematics with some interesting
material at the beginning about primitive concepts of number (oh yes, it
was an old book). Dantzig's book _Number_, maybe it was. Does modern
anthropology have any examples that can be grabbed for SF?
>Is it because natural selection has favored brains that "reason" in
>ways that mirror the operation of the world?
Brains don't seem to be built to do probabilistic reasoning the way
probability theory says they ought to. Why not is an interesting
question.
--
Eli Brandt | el...@cs.cmu.edu | http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/
Chad Ryan Thomas
e...@cs.cmu.edu (Eli Brandt) wrote:
> I read a book on the history of mathematics with some interesting
> material at the beginning about primitive concepts of number
There have been a couple of those in the last few years. Haven't read
any of them, but I may be able to hunt down a couple references.
> Does modern
> anthropology have any examples that can be grabbed for SF?
Examples of numerical and mathematical systems other than the
predominant Western one? Yeah, there're plenty. Examples that are
interesting to SF authors? Probably quite a few.
The one's I've always found most interesting are the Mesoamerican
systems, which have a sort-of-but-not-quite zero concept, and the
Babylonian system that was based on 6 instead of 10. And the Semitic
mysticism where words are treated like numbers (a la Roman numerals)
and multiplied, etc. for metaphysical purposes.
(Which reminds me of the movie "Pi", where a computer program
accidentally derives the name of God.)
Karen Lofstrom
: In terms of anthropology as a science, declaring a scientific appraisal
: of history as "true" and Native American concepts as "wrong" does
: nothing to reveal the workings of human culture. In fact it obscures
: cultural processes.
Yes, this I can understand. As an anthropologist, you hear people making
statements that you know darn well are wrong. You don't argue, you
just listen and try to figure out why those people would say that.
In RL, I once had a clerical job in a lawyer's office, where I was
constantly tempted to correct the lawyers when they confidently stated
things that were wrong. "That's a common misunderstanding of
statistics. Actually ..." This was not making me popular at all :) It
is very hard for me to keep my mouth shut when people are proclaiming
untruths, but I finally managed it by pretending that I was an
anthropologist studying the strange habits and customs of
lawyers. Their misconceptions were data and I wasn't going to get any
data if I corrected them.
This is simply a different focus on belief -- what it does, or what
it shows, not whether it's factually correct or not. But it doesn't
invalidate the question of correctness; it just sets it aside for a
bit.
You may also want to set aside the question of correctness when you're
dealing with political matters. You may think that the Maya villagers
are nuts for worrying about satanic cultists, but you have to stop
them from attacking Japanese tourists. If you can't convince them that
there are no cultists, what do you do? You have to take their beliefs
as a given and come up with another strategy.
But this is not at all the same thing as agreeing that there really
are satanic cultists stalking their children.
I'm trying to think of an ObSF for this. Hmmmm.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------
Um, mee too, add me to the list, please send me the n3kk1d
jp3gs of the 5hr0ud 0v tur1n. -- wednsday
Matt Bishop
>
> In article <39116683...@dcs.kcl.ac.uk>,
> Matt Bishop <bis...@dcs.kcl.ac.uk> wrote:
> > If we have no evidence for DNA, how do you know
> > that it has a high probability of being a correct idea?
>
> plenty of evidence from our instruments, from which we induce a (more-
> or-less) necessary cause that we call DNA. Those instrument readings
> are still evidence for DNA, but they're a different level of evidence
> from, say, an eyewitness account of a robbery.
This is a great example of exactly the point I was driving at;
eyewitness accounts of crimes are notoriously fallible, vastly more
so than instrument readings. For me, it's odd to think that the
blurred, hazy shapes I can see when I take my glasses off have the
distinguished status of "direct evidence", but when I put my glasses
on and have 20-20 vision I'm getting mere "inferred evidence" to be
accepted only modulo the theory of optics. Why is "stuff-I-see-through-
-the-lenses-I-was-born-with" privileged over "stuff-I-see-through-
-the-lenses-I-bought"?
> [...] ought to read a nifty, slim little book by Carl Hempel.
Thanks for the recommendation; I'll look for it.
> [re Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions"] It's got some problems
I'll say. He wrote at least one later essay that clarified (or retracted,
depending on how generous you're feeling) some of the wackier parts of
that book, but my brain is stubbornly refusing to give me the details.
I suspect you knew this already, so it probably doesn't matter anyway.
Matt
Matt Bishop
>
> My son is in his third semester of calculus, the one everybody
> hates to take or teach because the graphing calculator has made it
> obsolete but mathematics departments still think that students
> need to go through the grind of it so they'll know what their
> calculators are doing.
In the math department where I used to work, we started that
course with a brief selection of examples where graphing
calculators and symbolic algebra packages can lead you horribly
astray unless you understand their limitations.
Everybody still hated the course, but at least the students
understood why they were taking it. Luckily for me (and for the
students), I never had to teach it, and I'm just a bit too old
to have used a graphing calculator when I was learning it.
Matt
Matt Bishop
>
> Other controversies we can't take such a universal overview of.
> Should mathematics be `constructive', with each proof of existence
> providing an example? Or may we use laws like classical logic's
> "A or not-A", never saying which? As unquestionable as classical
> logic seems, people do math without it.
I think that if you're not a closet platonist, these questions get a
lot easier to answer: mathematics should have multiple formal logics,
each applicable to different problems.
> Computer scientists are more likely to be constructivists than other
> mathematicians are (because computer programs and constructive proofs
> turn out to be the same).
Absolutely -- but you don't have to "be a constructivist" to believe
that constructive proofs are the right thing to do in some
circumstances.
> I pray some
> century we will look back on all this and understand it the way we do
> the different geometries. But I doubt it.
To some extent, this might already be happening. There are no
"linearists", for example -- linear logic may be very successful, but
nobody seems to be arguing that it's the One True Mathematical Logic.
The "my logic can beat up your logic" arguments pretty much died
out around the 1940's.
Set theorists do this sort of mental jumping-about all the time: there's
a universe of sets where the Axiom of Choice is true, and one where it's
false, and no point asking which is the "real" one unless you believe
that sets have some platonic existence independent of the axioms.
> I'm curious whether there are cultures which have formalized their
> common-sense logic into something decidedly different from Aristotle's.
I haven't heard of any other cultures which have *formalized* their
logic, but I'll defer to the anthropologists on this one... Anyway,
common-sense logic has to handle things like belief and knowledge,
which already behave very differently from classical logic (it can
make perfect sense to believe A, believe "A implies B", and still
not believe B, for instance).
> Brains don't seem to be built to do probabilistic reasoning the way
> probability theory says they ought to. Why not is an interesting
> question.
First wild guess at an answer: because brains are built to do
(scientific) induction, they tend to overgeneralise and draw unwarranted
conclusions. I'm not sure I can unpack that into a convincing
argument, though.
Matt
Alma Hromic
>Consider math and science as being more like sophisticated
>tools. They aren't "culture" in the sense that certain beliefs about
>kinship, or proper etiquette, are culture. For one thing, they aren't
>shared by all or even most members of the culture. If 95% of the
>people in the United States don't know what an imaginary number is,
>then in what sense is the concept of "imaginary number" a product of
>American culture? Or characteristic of American culture? The concept
>is immediately understood world-wide by the minority of people who can
>do math beyond balancing a checkbook.
hey, for many people balancing a checkbook DOES add up to an imaginary
number. <G>
A.
***************
"The difference between journalism and literature
is that journalism is unreadable
and literature is unread."
Oscar Wilde
Alma Hromic
>Let's come at this from a different angle. Do you think that math is
>culturally relative? Is it wrong for me to impose my understanding of
>quadratic equations upon some poor native? I don't think so. If the
>native is bright, he/she is going to reason in just the same way I
>do. The math that people do, world-wide, is a math that was created by
>many cultures and is intuitively graspable by people from any
>culture. I'd suggest that science, at its best, approaches this level
>of universality and when it doesn't, it has to be corrected, not
>dismissed as a mere cultural epiphenomenon.
not entirely, i don't think. things numerical are more easily grasped
simply because there is a given solution - things fit into a shape.
this is less so than with something like biology where the "true"
answer can be "softer", if you like, and coloured by culture or
background. if you grow up in a culture where blood is taboo you won't
be studying blood as a scientific discipline; you will never know
about blood groups, or inheritance laws in terms of blood groupings,
or diseases of the blood like leukemia or haemophilia. and trying to
teach you about those things would be hard because it would go against
your grain.
>: There is a very significant strand in the archaeological arguments for
>: cooperation that boils down to simple fear. We're afraid that if we
>: don't cooperate with native groups, *we'll* be denied access to the
>: materials, and we'll be out of a job.
>Well, fine, let's be diplomatic. Never my strong point, but someone
>has to do it. Don't send me to NAGPRA negotiations :) But let's not
>confuse being diplomatic with saying that we can't venture to judge
>because right and wrong are culturally relative. Perhaps we *could*
>say that a certain tentativeness in our conclusions would be both
>modest and prudent, since it's unlikely that we've come up with
>conclusions that will NEVER be bettered.
that's sense enough. <G>
>ObSF: Mathematicians themselves don't really understand why math
>"works" for describing the real world. Or, by extension, science. Is
>it because our brains blot out anything contradictory? Is it because
>natural selection has favored brains that "reason" in ways that mirror
>the operation of the world? Greg Egan is one writer who investigates
>questions like this.
>If alien brains work differently than ours, would they be inhabiting a
>parallel dimension? Would we be able to interact with them at all?
intriguing.
food for thought.
William Burns
wrote:
>In article <8et8pc$jvt$1...@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu>,
> e...@cs.cmu.edu (Eli Brandt) wrote:
>> I read a book on the history of mathematics with some interesting
>> material at the beginning about primitive concepts of number
>There have been a couple of those in the last few years. Haven't read
>any of them, but I may be able to hunt down a couple references.
Reading one right now. Have been for the past month. Mostly because,
for me, its heavy going and I have to think about each chapter after
reading. IE; just finished Chapter 24 where the author says our
Arabic numerals originated in India, and am now deciding whether to
read the _Dictionary of Numerical Symbols of Indian Civilisation_, or
just skim it.
It's _The Universal History of Numbers From Prehistory to the
Invention of the Computer_ by Georges Ifrah (Translated from the
French by David Bellos, E.F. Harding, Sophie Wood, and Ian Monk)
ISBN 0-471-3756-3
--
William
Another 241 days, then it's "Welcome to the Third."
Chad Ryan Thomas
Matt Bishop <bis...@dcs.kcl.ac.uk> wrote:
> Anyway,
> common-sense logic has to handle things like belief and knowledge,
> which already behave very differently from classical logic (it can
> make perfect sense to believe A, believe "A implies B", and still
> not believe B, for instance).
My first conference paper was trying to untangle some of the logical
entanglements around saying "I know that Person X believes statement
A," which is one that anthro types say quite often.
I finished, looked out at the conference crowd, and realized that
absolutely no one in the audience had understood a single word I said.
C'est la vie, it was still something for my C.V.
Del Cotter
Matt Bishop <bis...@dcs.kcl.ac.uk> (King's College London) wrote:
>Chad Ryan Thomas wrote:
>
>> [re Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions"] It's got some problems
>
>I'll say. He wrote at least one later essay that clarified (or retracted,
>depending on how generous you're feeling) some of the wackier parts of
>that book, but my brain is stubbornly refusing to give me the details.
>I suspect you knew this already, so it probably doesn't matter anyway.
One of the things Kuhn never did say is that anything goes, or that
science is no more "right" than voodoo or dowsing. It just suits some
people to pretend he did.
Unfortunately for them, I've actually read _The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions_.
--
Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk
Eli Brandt
>a universe of sets where the Axiom of Choice is true, and one where it's
>false, and no point asking which is the "real" one unless you believe
>that sets have some platonic existence independent of the axioms.
Which, to be anthropological, some people do. I don't myself, but I
think I have room to be a little uneasy with the formalist statement
that (ZF) set theory with and without AC are necessarily on an equal
footing. AC is independent of ZF. To say that _this_ means we can
take AC or leave it is to give ZF something of a special status, isn't
it? Conceivably somebody will propose a compelling new axiom that
turns out to privilege either ZF or ZFC.
This may seem less far-fetched if we look at the Continuum Hypothesis
instead. It's independent of ZF(C) too, but I get the feeling that
compared with AC, more set theorists feel inclined to talk about its
being true or false. Gödel and Cohen, who together proved its
independence, thought it was false. A formalist will of course ask what
this "false" means. (And a Platonist will reply that a behaviorist will
always ask what a "thought" is -- but let's stop there.)
The set-theoretic foundations of math that we use now are only a
century-plus old. I can't imagine, but I can imagine imagining, a
foundational revolution that would overturn our understandings of these
questions. (And I know people who say this has already happened and I
should get with the program, but the stuff is beyond me.)
(This has gotten technical. I'll let it tag along with the following
bit, but...)
>> Brains don't seem to be built to do probabilistic reasoning the way
>> probability theory says they ought to. Why not is an interesting
>> question.
>
>First wild guess at an answer: because brains are built to do
>(scientific) induction, they tend to overgeneralise and draw unwarranted
>conclusions. I'm not sure I can unpack that into a convincing
>argument, though.
Brains seem to be better at generating hypotheses than at testing them.
I vaguely recall experiments where people were asked to choose which
uncertainty to dispel -- which card to flip over -- in order to test a
theory. They tended to pick ones with a good chance of consistency with
it, rather than inconsistency.
Brains are notably lousy with Bayes' law. We tend to ignore priors, or
weight them hopelessly wrong. (What am I talking about? See
http://www.csr.city.ac.uk/people/norman.fenton/bbns/Details/subjective_prob.html#The problem of base-rate neglect
)
I should mention that the whole claim that our intuitions are lousy
probabilists is not uncontroversial. A take on the debate:
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ArchiveFolder/Research%20Group/Publications/Wars/wars.html
This all reminds me of another cultural divide in math: frequentists
and Bayesians.
Sylvia Li
>
> The one's I've always found most interesting are the Mesoamerican
> systems, which have a sort-of-but-not-quite zero concept, and the
> Babylonian system that was based on 6 instead of 10. And the Semitic
> mysticism where words are treated like numbers (a la Roman numerals)
> and multiplied, etc. for metaphysical purposes.
Okay, the Babylonian I get (after binary and hexadecimal, what's odd about
base 6?), likewise Gematria (though the modern Thelemic take on that is
slippery because it keeps *sounding* like rationalism...), but could you
expand on the sort of but not quite zero? How was it like, and how was it
not like, our idea of zero?
There's a faint story idea tickling at the back of my head, thanks to your
paragraph above, but it's refusing to say anything more about itself. Could
you point me toward a good web reference, maybe, for more detail? Please?
--
Sylvia Li
Chad Ryan Thomas
meta...@escape.ca wrote:
>but could you
> expand on the sort of but not quite zero? How was it like, and how
was it
> not like, our idea of zero?
Honestly, it's been too long since I studied it for me to remember
specifics. I think the quasi-Zero was actually the omission of a
symbol that would otherwise be there.
Any reference on Maya culture will probably include the numerical
system. It's actually a fairly simple system--bars for fives, dots for
ones, and so on.
Karen Lofstrom
:> [re Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions"] It's got some problems
: I'll say. He wrote at least one later essay that clarified (or retracted,
: depending on how generous you're feeling) some of the wackier parts of
: that book, but my brain is stubbornly refusing to give me the details.
I'd like to hear more about this, if anyone would oblige.
One article I read recently (by whom and about what the brain refuses
to divulge) said something about Kuhn not seeing that scientific
"revolutions" usually consisted of schemes that expanded and
reorganized what we already knew, not junked it. Newtonian physics is
not overthrown, it just becomes an instance of a limiting case in a
larger theory.
The usual reading of Kuhn -- if I remember back to when I read it and
heard professors discussin it -- is that we all believe X and then
someone comes up with Y and we eventually switch over to Y, and that X
and Y may be radically different and discontinuous. This can be taken
as undermining any "truth" values in science, because the data can
support any number of opposing theories.
The "theory is expanded and improved" version of scientific progress
reverts to what I've heard called the "Whig" version of history, in
which we march ever onwards and upwards, getting closer and closer to
something like "truth". Or at least more useful theories.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If Usenet had a coat of arms, the
motto on the banner would be "SO THERE". -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Karen Lofstrom
:>Let's come at this from a different angle. Do you think that math is
:>culturally relative?
: Actually, yes, though not necessarily in the way that immediately
: comes to mind.
: How do you divide up a circle? We usually divide it into
: 360 degrees measured as angles formed by rays emanating from the
: center. The Icelanders of saga times and later divided the circle
: into eights -- and the rest of the world too, space, time (the
: day, the year, the span of life), kinship, all divided into
: eighths. And though we would draw those eighths as defined by rays
: emanating from the center, what the Icelanders were thinking of
: was not the rays at the boundaries but the field "between."
The number system and symbolic notation that we use are purely
arbitrary. Historic accidents. 360 is a nice number for the degrees of
a circle, because it has 2, 3, and 5 for factors, which means you can
divide it evenly into useful segments. But we would do geometry just
the same way if we conceptualized the circle as having 400
degrees. Nothing in algebra or calculus would change if we worked with
Mayan base 20 numbers instead of our usual base 10. Just as math is
the same whether you use the American 7, or the European 7 with the
little bar across the stem.
: Or take, for example, the way we add and subtract large numbers.
: Oh, that's integers, isn't it? So there's nothing _cultural_
: about that: a thousand sacks of rice is a thousand sacks of rice.
: But no: watch a Vietnames person add 5643, 6547, 890, 934, 3875,
: and 562 sacks of rice without a calculator: watch a Chinese person
: do it: watch a Nigerian do it: go back in time and watch a
: Medieval Italian, a Medieval Arab, and a Classical Mayan person do
: it: all different, -- they get the same number but the process is
: different, and the way they think about the numbers is different.
Algorithms for performing common tasks may be different, but that
doesn't mean that we don't all reason the same way. My history of math
textbook has collected a bunch of these algorithms, puts them in
current notation, and shows why they work. You couldn't DO that if
they didn't all, at base, depend on the same logical processes.
: If this person is learning math in high school or college, then
: the person is going to be learning only one of a few ways to think
: about quadratic equations (yes, there's more than one way to think
: about them, and they are taught differently in different schools).
That's like solving a problem by different routes. If I attack the
problem one way, and get the solution, I can still look at my
neighbor's homework, see that he's solved the problem a different way,
understand his reasoning, and still feel, "Well, that's the way he
likes to do it. I prefer my route."
Math would be culturally relative if people didn't end up with the
same answers. But they do.
: If this person is operating in a school-less context --- less and
: less likely these days -- he or she is going to be using an
: entirely different mathematical strategy to talk about the same
: kinds of problems (quadratics are frequently used to approach
: problems which can be approached other ways: they are actually
: quite easy, comfy math).
If the strategy this person uses is an improvement on current methods
of approaching problems, and if other people find out about it, then
it's likely that other people are going to adopt it. So math
grows. Hooray!
If I'm to trust a popular version of Wiles' achievement in solving
Fermat's Last Theorem (Singh's book _Fermat's Enigma) then Wiles
approached the problem by proving the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture,
which postulated an equivalence between elliptical equations and
modular forms. Something people had been approaching head on for
hundreds of years, with no success, was solved by an entirely new
route. Case in point.
: But, teaching our highest and best knowledge of modern mathematics
: across cultures doesn't have to entail disrespect or destruction
: of other ways of thinking, any more than teaching the most
: elegant, effective and respectable English has to entail making
: people forget their first language (notice that the higher status
: the ESL student is, the less likely he or she will be asked to do
: this!)
As I pointed out in another post in this thread, science and math tend
to grow by subsuming older material in a new schema that contains the
older material and also goes beyond it. I reuse the example I used
there: Newtonian physics wasn't rejected, it was subsumed. Ditto for
the math of the Greeks or the Babylonians or Hindus or Arabs ...
it's subsumed, not completely thrown out.
: Damned straight science is a cultural phenomenon. WIthout a
: culture of science, it's not even possible.
That's a slightly different argument. You're saying that math and
science are cultures in their own right, yes? Cultures which exist
internationally and into which one is inducted by studying or taking
classes? Which co-exist with other cultures, however defined -- such
as New York Reform Jewish culture, or American culture, or Western
culture? That's an interesting argument, but the math and science
"cultures" seem to be different in a lot of ways from the other things
we call cultures. I suppose whether or not this you considered this a
useful viewpoint would depend on how you saw "culture". My jury is out
on this one.
: but it's not a good a priori assumption to make that because I am
: "educated" and another person isn't, I automatically know better.
I should think that a proper understanding of math and science, and
appreciation of the difficulties of seeking the truth, would make one
kinda humble. I know that there are a lot of difficult, egoistic,
primadonna, condescending academics and intellectuals out there, but
IMHO they haven't gotten to the heart of the matter.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to realize you're joking
just because you're posting something that is patently deranged.
Karen Lofstrom
: A mathematics has statements provable by assumption, and rules for
: generating new provable statements from old ones. Once you have these
: axioms, I'm not claiming any relativism about whether a particular proof
: chain is correct. The axioms, though, you can pick how you like, if the
: resulting mathematics pleases you.
But the resulting schools of thought among mathematicians -- whether
you're a formalist or an intuitionist or whatever -- don't map in any
way onto other cultural groupings, so far as I know. Indian
mathematicians aren't any more likely to belong to one school or
another than Russians, say. It seems to be a matter of temperament
more than anything. Or perhaps who you studied with, though that's not
infallible. Lots of people rebel against their professors. So I
wouldn't call this a proof of cultural relativism. What it proves, I
don't know :)
:>Is it because natural selection has favored brains that "reason" in
:>ways that mirror the operation of the world?
: Brains don't seem to be built to do probabilistic reasoning the way
: probability theory says they ought to. Why not is an interesting
: question.
Wait! I did read an interesting book a few years ago, title and author
forgotten, about why we have to do violence to our instincts in order
to do probabilistic reasoning. Thesis was that we are hard-wired to be
extremely risk-averse, which skews our perception of risk-reward
ratios.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"There is a lot of U.S. history here." -- my mother
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
: Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
: :>Let's come at this from a different angle. Do you think that math is
: :>culturally relative?
: : Actually, yes, though not necessarily in the way that immediately
: : comes to mind.
: : How do you divide up a circle? We usually divide it into
: : 360 degrees measured as angles formed by rays emanating from the
: : center. The Icelanders of saga times and later divided the circle
: : into eights -- and the rest of the world too, space, time (the
: : day, the year, the span of life), kinship, all divided into
: : eighths. And though we would draw those eighths as defined by rays
: : emanating from the center, what the Icelanders were thinking of
: : was not the rays at the boundaries but the field "between."
: The number system and symbolic notation that we use are purely
: arbitrary. Historic accidents. 360 is a nice number for the degrees of
: a circle, because it has 2, 3, and 5 for factors, which means you can
: divide it evenly into useful segments. But we would do geometry just
: the same way if we conceptualized the circle as having 400
: degrees. Nothing in algebra or calculus would change if we worked with
: Mayan base 20 numbers instead of our usual base 10. Just as math is
: the same whether you use the American 7, or the European 7 with the
: little bar across the stem.
I believe I understand what you intend by "purely arbitrary" in the
opening sentence above -- I understand you to be referring to an abstract
concept of "pure math" where the particular symbols used to represent the
underlying mathematical "truths" are arbitrary and interchangeable (e.g.,
whether we measure angles in degrees or rads).
But whatever the validity of a notion of "pure math", we can never get
away from the facts that mathematical concepts have to involve human
beings every time they are imagined, represented, or applied to
understanding or modifying the world. And once you've involved human
beings (which we can't escape) then the symbolic systems of math clearly
_aren't_ purely arbitrary or uninvolved in our understanding. "Historic
accidents" are rarely, if ever, completely accidental.
It isn't purely arbitrary that our number systems behave differently
around numbers that are salient to our human existence (e.g., two --
because we're bilaterally symmetric; five and ten -- due to the structure
of our hands; and so on). And once we've chosen an arbitrary (but
motivated) system for representing mathematical concepts (such as the
division of a circle, or the measurement of time or space) then the nature
of that arbitrary system, and the ways in which it interacts with our
physical existence, strongly affect the ways in which we perceive and
interact with the world via numbers. For example, the way in which we
perceive time is affected by the size of the default units used to measure
it. How would we think differently about time if the smallest
ordinarily-used unit were too fast or too slow to be able to count through
them reliably aloud (as we can with seconds)? Before the average person
had access to clocks with minute and second measurements, one of the
methods used for measuring small amounts of time was the time involved in
reciting familiar passages (such as the Lords Prayer) aloud -- how does
that affect one's perception of the nature of time? Measuring time by
"the time it takes to say the Pater" may well be an arbitrary historic
accident, but it's far from irrelevant to how people interact with the
concepts involved.
--
*********************************************************
Heather Rose Jones hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
**********************************************************
WooF
has neither been subsumed nor incorporated; it's been thrown out
completely. So has Galen's theory of humors, which held back
medicine for so many centuries; so has the pholigiston theory
(spelling ?) of combustion.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
Richard Horton
On 6 May 2000 19:35:51 GMT, Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>If I'm to trust a popular version of Wiles' achievement in solving
>Fermat's Last Theorem (Singh's book _Fermat's Enigma) then Wiles
>approached the problem by proving the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture,
>which postulated an equivalence between elliptical equations and
>modular forms. Something people had been approaching head on for
>hundreds of years, with no success, was solved by an entirely new
>route. Case in point.
Though as I believe, Taniyama and Shimura had made their conjecture
fully aware of its relevance to Fermat's conjecture (Wiles' Theorem,
one would think). (OK, that's being overnice.) Which is to say only
that Wiles' approach, while pretty new in the overall history of
attempts to prove the conjecture, wasn't entirely original to him.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent)
Ian A. York
WooF <owls...@netaxs.com> wrote:
>But there are major overthrows in science: the luminiferous ether
>has neither been subsumed nor incorporated; it's been thrown out
>completely. So has Galen's theory of humors, which held back
>medicine for so many centuries; so has the pholigiston theory
>(spelling ?) of combustion.
I'd question the use of the word "science" in connection with the first
two, at least; neither of them used anything like "science" to demonstrate
or, as far as I know, refute them.
I don't think the issue is whether there have been revolutions in
science; obviously, there have. The question is whether that's how
science inevitably progresses.
The way Kuhn is usually interpreted by the great unwashed is in two ways:
(1) BECAUSE science always progresses in revolutions in which the
conventional wisdom is overturned, THEREFORE the conventional wisdom is
always wrong. (2) BECAUSE revolutions in science are made by questioning
experts, THEREFORE the less one knows about a subject, the more qualified
one is to question it.
I don't suppose it's Kuhn's fault, but he's done a lot to encourage kooks;
not, of course, that kooks *need* encouragement, that's what makes them
kooks.
Ian
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England
Lucy Kemnitzer
a right to their own interpretation of their ancestors' remains,
and whether anthroplogists are bound to have some sort of
respectful orientation to those interpretations, and whether the
disposition of those remains ought to take all that into account
among other concerns.
On 6 May 2000 19:35:51 GMT, Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net>
wrote:
>
>Math would be culturally relative if people didn't end up with the
>same answers. But they do.
Depending on the initial problem, they don't always. But I don't
even accept this statement for the rest of math. Math is
culturally relative because the process has different _meanings_
to people in different contexts.
>
>: If this person is operating in a school-less context --- less and
>: less likely these days -- he or she is going to be using an
>: entirely different mathematical strategy to talk about the same
>: kinds of problems (quadratics are frequently used to approach
>: problems which can be approached other ways: they are actually
>: quite easy, comfy math).
>
>If the strategy this person uses is an improvement on current methods
>of approaching problems, and if other people find out about it, then
>it's likely that other people are going to adopt it. So math
>grows. Hooray!
NO. It's not always the case that an easy, productive approach to
a problem in one context is an easy, productive approach in
another. You know "math tables?" They were originally literal
tables, that people moved objects around on to get an answer.
People who are comfortable with abacus are faster than their
counterparts on adding machines. But though these things are the
best solutions in their own contexts, they aren't the best
solutions in other contexts.
<snip unrelated example>
>
>: But, teaching our highest and best knowledge of modern mathematics
>: across cultures doesn't have to entail disrespect or destruction
>: of other ways of thinking, any more than teaching the most
>: elegant, effective and respectable English has to entail making
>: people forget their first language (notice that the higher status
>: the ESL student is, the less likely he or she will be asked to do
>: this!)
>
>As I pointed out in another post in this thread, science and math tend
>to grow by subsuming older material in a new schema that contains the
>older material and also goes beyond it. I reuse the example I used
>there: Newtonian physics wasn't rejected, it was subsumed. Ditto for
>the math of the Greeks or the Babylonians or Hindus or Arabs ...
>it's subsumed, not completely thrown out.
But the thing you keep implying and I keep denying is that science
and math are homogeneous items, which grow steadily in specific
directions and which can be cleanly contrasted to some "other"
items which are only worthwhile if they can be neatly subsumed
into these homogeneous items.
>
>: Damned straight science is a cultural phenomenon. WIthout a
>: culture of science, it's not even possible.
>
>That's a slightly different argument. You're saying that math and
>science are cultures in their own right, yes?
yes. And another thing: that they are _several_ cultures in their
own rights, and that they are subcultures of other culture
systems.
>Cultures which exist
>internationally and into which one is inducted by studying or taking
>classes? Which co-exist with other cultures, however defined -- such
>as New York Reform Jewish culture, or American culture, or Western
>culture? That's an interesting argument, but the math and science
>"cultures" seem to be different in a lot of ways from the other things
>we call cultures. I suppose whether or not this you considered this a
>useful viewpoint would depend on how you saw "culture". My jury is out
>on this one.
You've lost me in the rest of this paragraph. I can't tell
whether you're off on a side issue that doesn't matter to the
basic disagreement we're having, or if you're somehow getting to
the real center of it. Try again?
>
>: but it's not a good a priori assumption to make that because I am
>: "educated" and another person isn't, I automatically know better.
>
>I should think that a proper understanding of math and science, and
>appreciation of the difficulties of seeking the truth, would make one
>kinda humble. I know that there are a lot of difficult, egoistic,
>primadonna, condescending academics and intellectuals out there, but
>IMHO they haven't gotten to the heart of the matter.
But you snipped the stuff where I talked about what I meant by
this. I wasn't talking about the personal arrogance of
individuals, but the fact that other cultures can know things that
we don't. And the fact that there are things we can know for a
fact which are in fact true, except when we go into a different
context, where we find that something else is true.
My examples were pretty down-to-earth, if I recall correctly.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>But there are major overthrows in science: the luminiferous ether
>has neither been subsumed nor incorporated; it's been thrown out
>completely. So has Galen's theory of humors, which held back
>medicine for so many centuries;
but which, at its first proposal, offered as cogent an explanation
of observed phenomena as could be.
so has the pholigiston theory
>(spelling ?) of combustion.
>
phlogiston, which if you look at it from the right direction,
looks mightily like some unexpected corners of modern physics.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Hedgehog
<URL:mailto:crth...@asu.edu> wrote:
> There's plenty of evidence for it, just no DIRECT evidence. We have
> plenty of evidence from our instruments, from which we induce a (more-
> or-less) necessary cause that we call DNA. Those instrument readings
> are still evidence for DNA, but they're a different level of evidence
> from, say, an eyewitness account of a robbery.
As in, they're more reliable, yes?
> Also, anyone who denies that science is a cultural endeavor, I suggest
> you hunt down this one:
No-one (that I've seen) denies that science is a cultural endevour; it
is, after all, performed by humans.
Chess and Bridge and Go and Shogi are cultural endevours, but that doesn't
stop there being better and worse ways of playing them.
> Kuhn, Thomas S.
> 1962 The Structure of Sicentific Revolutions. Chicago: University of
> Chicago Press. (ISBN 0-226-45808-3)
Kuhn confuses epistemology with social process. (Well, that may be
unfair. Certainly some followers of Kuhn do so. It's a long time
since I read the book.)
> It's got some problems, but the gist is still true.
>
> And keep in mind that both of these books are specifically about the
> supposedly a-cultural physical sciences that always reveal the true
> nature of the universe.
Strawman.
--
Lakatosian Hedgehog
Chad Ryan Thomas
Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
> The usual reading of Kuhn -- if I remember back to when I read it and
> heard professors discussin it -- is that we all believe X and then
> someone comes up with Y and we eventually switch over to Y, and that X
> and Y may be radically different and discontinuous. This can be taken
> as undermining any "truth" values in science, because the data can
> support any number of opposing theories.
>
> The "theory is expanded and improved" version of scientific progress
> reverts to what I've heard called the "Whig" version of history, in
> which we march ever onwards and upwards, getting closer and closer to
> something like "truth". Or at least more useful theories.
My sense of the history of science (and of Kuhn himself, after the
revisions in the postscript to the second edition) is that both sorts
of transition can and do regularly occur.
Heather Anne Nicoll
> Algorithms for performing common tasks may be different, but that
> doesn't mean that we don't all reason the same way. My history of math
> textbook has collected a bunch of these algorithms, puts them in
> current notation, and shows why they work. You couldn't DO that if
> they didn't all, at base, depend on the same logical processes.
Feynman's genius was, in significant part, that he had his own
algorithms for going at problems of physics. He went at problems in a
completely different way than many people he knew -- in part because of
how much mathematics and physics he had in part self-taught (I believe
he insisted for some time that he was not a genius, but that he simply
had a different tool-kit) -- and which some of his colleagues had
difficulty comprehending.
Several branches of analysis were born of Fenyman and people who
understood Feynman trying to get their worldview across to other people,
I believe; the Feynman diagrams being the most commonly known/used such
tool. Because those bridges have been built, us lesser mortals can at
least get up on the cliff overlooking the world Fenyman saw. That
doesn't necessarily mean we can actually successfully live there.
As physics, mathematics, the sciences as a whole, philosophy, etc.,
expand, they build more such bridges, making avenues into realms of
thought hacked out by such pioneers and evolving to more complete
understandings. That doesn't mean that these two globules of thought
were originally the same thing; it means that it is -now- possible to
consider them the same thing, because we've figured out how to merge
them.
Just because commonly-taught-physics now includes Feynman's insights
doesn't mean that commonly-taught-physics before those bridges were
built was /capable/ of including Feynman. Science isn't a static thing;
it evolves as it learns more. Just because something works doesn't mean
that everyone thinks of it; some cultures or situations are more likely
to produce a certain set of algorithms than others (Rome and the concept
of zero: there's something that's not going to happen -- but the Romans
still added the same way we add); once we incorporate other cultures'
algorithms into our own, we have in some way -changed- our mathematics,
our science, and our understanding.
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.dslonramp.net/~darkhawk/
I understand about indecision, I don't care if I get behind
People living in competition; all I want is to have my peace of mind.
- Boston, "Peace of Mind"
William Burns
wrote:
>In article <391398D9...@escape.ca>,
> meta...@escape.ca wrote:
>>but could you expand on the sort of but not quite zero? How was it
>>like, and how was it not like, our idea of zero?
>Honestly, it's been too long since I studied it for me to remember
>specifics. I think the quasi-Zero was actually the omission of a
>symbol that would otherwise be there.
>Any reference on Maya culture will probably include the numerical
>system. It's actually a fairly simple system--bars for fives, dots for
>ones, and so on.
That 'quasi-Zero' was actually a 'true zero' and did have a symbol,
IAW at least one authority (_The Universal History of Numbers_) :
"What is quite remarkable is that Maya priests and astronomers used a
numeral sysem with base 20 which possessed a true zero and gave a
specific value to numerical signs according to their position in the
written expression. The nineteen first-order units of this vegesimal
system were represented by very simple signs made of dots and lines:
one, two, three and four dots for the numbers 1 to 4; a line for 5;
one, two, three and four dots next to the line for 6 to 9, two lines
for 10, and so on up to 19."
The symbol for zero, btw, is a sea-shell -- though to me it looks more
like an eye. The Mayans wrote their numbers in vertical columns with
the lowest order on the bottom. A large number like one million,
eight-seven thousand, two hundred --- which we would write as
1,087,200 would be written in Mayan as (picture symbols for):
7
11
0
0
0
which translates as (7 x 114,00) plus (11 x 7,200) plus zero units of
the lower orders (360, 20, 1).
Is that what you meant by 'quasi-Zero' I wonder? We use ours to
indicate order. The Mayans used theirs to indicate an absence of
order.
--
William
Another 239 days, then it's "Welcome to the Third."
Chad Ryan Thomas
wbu...@cancom.net (William Burns) wrote:
> Is that what you meant by 'quasi-Zero' I wonder? We use ours to
> indicate order. The Mayans used theirs to indicate an absence of
> order.
Possibly. I only studied Mayan stuff for a semester 3 years ago, and
even then I didn't really understand their numerical system. I do
remember my particular reference on the subject saying the "Zero"
wasn't really the same concept as the Arabic numeral "0".
Maybe your source and mine are just on opposite sides of a minor
semantic debate.
Karen Lofstrom
: I believe I understand what you intend by "purely arbitrary" in the
: opening sentence above -- I understand you to be referring to an abstract
: concept of "pure math" where the particular symbols used to represent the
: underlying mathematical "truths" are arbitrary and interchangeable (e.g.,
: whether we measure angles in degrees or rads).
This doesn't feel like an abstract concept to me. Using 400 or 360
degrees is like counting "one two three four" or "taha ua tolu
fa". Different languages. So?
: And once we've chosen an arbitrary (but
: motivated) system for representing mathematical concepts (such as the
: division of a circle, or the measurement of time or space) then the nature
: of that arbitrary system, and the ways in which it interacts with our
: physical existence, strongly affect the ways in which we perceive and
: interact with the world via numbers.
This sounds like a mathematical version of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis. I don't buy the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for linguistics,
and I'm not at all sure that I buy it for mathematics.
I do agree that the existence of agreed upon symbolism, whatever it
is, makes it easier to think about mathematics. Arithmetic and
algebra used to be done as word problems. Instead of writing an
equation, you'd say, "If you have five measures of grain and three
workmen, and each workman eats a measure of grain every four days, how
much extra grain must you buy if you want to feed the workmen for ten
days?" The fact that people could think rigorously about
Diophantine equations, using word problems, boggles me.
But I'd regard this more as an example of the kind of thing that
Berlin and Kay discuss in regard to color terms. Color terms used to
be regarded as one of the prime examples of the Sapir Whorf
hypothesis. Language would give you a selection of color terms and so
that's how you perceived color.
Berlin and Kay found that if a language had only three color terms,
those terms would invariable be equivalent to -- um, I think it's
light, dark, and red/yellow/orange. If it had four, it would be a
certain set of colors. And so on. There was a divergence in the
developmental pathway at one point -- some languages added blue, some
added green. The mappings of color terms onto a color chart seemed to
be intimately related to the physiology of human vision. It's as if
the color chart were a relief map and if people were going to name the
peaks on the map, they would pick the same peaks. (Sorry if I'm not
explaining this well; it's been years since I read the little book.)
The language seemed to make no difference in people's ability to
distinguish between different colors. All the color terms did was
provide an agreed upon short-hand for referring to colors. Lacking a
term, people would say, "the green of young leaves" or "red like the X
flower".
The number of color terms seemed to be related to color
technology. That is, languages from groups which had relatively little
control over the colors of their artifacts had fewer color terms. The
more the technology of dyes and paints was developed, the more color
terms were used. Culminating in the current paint technologies which
give us thousands of colors with names like "Fiesta Brown", names
which are so idiosyncratic that they're not going to be used outside
the paint shop.
I would suggest that mathematical symbolism would be like color terms;
the more developed the math, the more developed the symbolism. That
this symbolism is as arbitrary as color names, but it represents
reasoning processes that are just as universal as humn color
perceptions. Given by our brain wiring.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member #462 of the Lumber Cartel (TINLC)
Karen Lofstrom
: Depending on the initial problem, they don't always. But I don't
: even accept this statement for the rest of math. Math is
: culturally relative because the process has different _meanings_
: to people in different contexts.
But how do you KNOW that math has different meanings? You've given
examples from books written about cultures far distant in time and
space, and used those to imply that "natives think differently". My
own experience with "natives" was that I did NOT experience any
mathematical difficulties. Tongans were perfectly rational about
number, whether it was making change in the market or doing math
homework. (Yes, I helped some kids with their math homework :) )
The Tongan language has a few interesting twists in that it uses
number classifiers based on the species or shape of an object and that
there's a special set of number names used for counting traditional
presentations to a chief -- the twenty in twenty pigs is different
from the twenty in twenty mats. But I saw absolutely no evidence that
this made any difference to the way Tongans did math.
But the way that the Tongans thought about kinship, rank, government,
religion, treatment of animals, relationship to the environment,
etc. -- that was all very distinctive. Very differnt from mine.
Productive of many "what? huh?" moments in dealing with people.
The interesting thing is -- hmmn, this IS interesting, I've never
thought this through until now -- that the Tongan beliefs that
differed the most radically from mine differed in just the areas that
people in Western cultures still find problematic. Kinship -- well,
what constitutes a family? What about the rights of the adoptive
versus the natural parents? We can argue vociferously about these
things because our starting points are fundamentally
arbitrary. Government -- well, there's a charged subject, anywhere.
Just as we can't usefully approach an argument within our own culture
by assuming that we are right, by definition, because our own beliefs
are just ... naturally superior, we can't deal with other cultures by
assuming that our own beliefs are naturally superior. This is where
cultural relativism applies, I would think. To the realm of the
arbitrary.
Anyway -- back to my original train of thought. There's an
interesting anthropological controversy between Sahlins and
Obayesekere, in which Obayesekere chides Sahlins for assuming that
"natives think differently" and points out that he, himself, is a
"native" and that he's just as rational as anyone else, thank you. The
book that started it was Obayesekere's _The Apotheosis of Captain
Cook_, IIRC.
Now what's interesting is that Sahlins did fieldwork in Fiji. Unlike
many other anthropologists, this encounter with the other doesn't seem
to have marked him. He doesn't cite his work there in his later
stuff. He's made his name with library work. He can draw all sorts of
conclusions about the weird ways pre-contact Hawaiians thought and
there's no pre-contact Hawaiians alive to contradict him. So it's
interesting that Obayeskere is the one to pull him up short and say,
"Hey, this theorizing about "natives" is wrong, and here's one native
who'll say so."
So you'll excuse me if I say that my own experience of non-Western
peoples doesn't incline me towards mathematical relativism, and that
drawing conclusions re "ways of thought" based on library work might
be dangerous.
:>If the strategy this person uses is an improvement on current methods
:>of approaching problems, and if other people find out about it, then
:>it's likely that other people are going to adopt it. So math
:>grows. Hooray!
: NO. It's not always the case that an easy, productive approach to
: a problem in one context is an easy, productive approach in
: another. You know "math tables?" They were originally literal
: tables, that people moved objects around on to get an answer.
: People who are comfortable with abacus are faster than their
: counterparts on adding machines. But though these things are the
: best solutions in their own contexts, they aren't the best
: solutions in other contexts.
I don't think that's a refutation of my point. If you want me to
qualify my point, by saying that "if the strategy used is an
improvement for dealing with certain kinds of problems, then if it's
publicized, it will spread -- as a way of dealing with those certain
kinds of problems", I will. I certainly wasn't suggesting that one
size fits all.
There's more in your post I want to ... ah, annotate, but I have to
make lunch. Laters, as we say in Hawai'i.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Inspected and found apparently free of sweet potato weevils in
accordance with Part 3 of Chapter 12 of Title 3 of the Louisiana
Revised Statutes
Chad Ryan Thomas
Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
> Berlin and Kay found that if a language had only three color terms,
> those terms would invariable be equivalent to -- um, I think it's
> light, dark, and red/yellow/orange.
The pattern of language term development was:
1) white/black are universal
2) red
3) green or yellow (but not both)
4) whichever of green or yellow was not chosen in #3
5) blue
6) brown
7) purple, pink, orange, grey (in any order or any combination)
> The language seemed to make no difference in people's ability to
> distinguish between different colors. All the color terms did was
> provide an agreed upon short-hand for referring to colors. Lacking a
> term, people would say, "the green of young leaves" or "red like the X
> flower".
Not exactly. If a language has no term for "green," then it uses "leaf-
colored" instead of green. It doesn't necessarily make a comparison
with some primary color term. It's just like English--we use words
like "pumpkin" for a particular color that we have no primary color
term for, and "turquoise" for a different color. It's just that some
langauges don't have as many words that ONLY mean a particular color,
and so have to fall to comparisons with objects more often.
> I would suggest that mathematical symbolism would be like color terms;
> the more developed the math, the more developed the symbolism.
This much is obvious. Most human cultures don't have any more
complicated mathematics than simple arithmetic that can be done in
one's head or on one's fingers.
Karen Lofstrom
: In article <391576fc...@newsread.cancom.net>,
: wbu...@cancom.net (William Burns) wrote:
:> Is that what you meant by 'quasi-Zero' I wonder? We use ours to
:> indicate order. The Mayans used theirs to indicate an absence of
:> order.
: Possibly. I only studied Mayan stuff for a semester 3 years ago, and
: even then I didn't really understand their numerical system. I do
: remember my particular reference on the subject saying the "Zero"
: wasn't really the same concept as the Arabic numeral "0".
I've got Coe's _Breaking the Maya Code_ (lovely fun book!) and he
lists zero among the "head variants" version of the numbers (p. 113)
There's also a drawing of an inscription that has a date 9 baktuns, 0
katuns, 19 tuns, 2 uinals, and 4 kins from the beginning of the Long
Count (p. 131). But using 0 in their calendric system is not the same
thing as being able to use it in arithmetic calculations. But then,
since all we've got is dates .... hard to tell.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo.
Chad Ryan Thomas
For one thing, even Y=X^2 is so much more complicated than anything a
New Guinea tribesman could ever need to know that it would be pretty
much meaning*less* to him. But to those of us in a highly
technologized culture, it's a simple and necesary equation, and one
with many pratical applications.
Yes, if you taught the tribeman Western mathematics, and explained the
symbolism to him, he would easily grasp the concept and its
application. But that process of teaching him is an enculturation
process that changes the cultural viewpoint you're trying to examine.
> You've given
> examples from books written about cultures far distant in time and
> space, and used those to imply that "natives think differently".
I think you're misinterpreting. (My apologies to Lucy Kemnitzer if I'm
wrong here.) By saying that a particular concept has different
meanings to different cultures, that's not implying that there's some
fundamental divide in mental processes. It just means that, when
presented with two effective takes on the same material, two cultures
chose differently. Natives don't "think differently," they "think
different things" (but the latter is awkward to say).
> Tongans were perfectly rational about
> number, whether it was making change in the market or doing math
> homework. (Yes, I helped some kids with their math homework :) )
Did you ever witness Tongans using math in a setting that was not
directly influenced by Western enculturation? Making change in market
and doing math homework are two mathematical contexts that probably
wouldn't exist on Tonga without Westerners.
Tongans were fairly complex people at contact, so they may well have
developed some complicated mathematics (or would have, had Western
influence not disturbed their trajectory). But that doesn't mean that
they would have had any use for the sorts of complex mathematical
applications we use on a daily basis.
> The interesting thing is -- hmmn, this IS interesting, I've never
> thought this through until now -- that the Tongan beliefs that
> differed the most radically from mine differed in just the areas that
> people in Western cultures still find problematic.
Of course. These issues are the most problematical ones. Since every
society has to deal with them repeatedly, the solutions are myriad and
different. Like in any compicated systems: the more times they break
and you jerry-rig them into working again, the less any two resemble
one another.
> This is where
> cultural relativism applies, I would think. To the realm of the
> arbitrary.
The trick is recognizing exactly how much is arbitrary, at its base.
Darn near everything.
> There's an
> interesting anthropological controversy between Sahlins and
> Obayesekere, in which Obayesekere chides Sahlins for assuming that
> "natives think differently" and points out that he, himself, is a
> "native" and that he's just as rational as anyone else, thank you.
I've never read Obayesekere's take on the situation, but I've read
others summarize the debate, and I can say that I'm solidly on Sahlins'
side. The issue isn't whether he thought that the Native Hawaiians
were inherently irrational, though. Sahlins committed the
anthropological heresy of assuming that people genuinely and sincerely
believed their religious beliefs.
I've mentioned a couple times that, just because an anthropologist
espouses cultural relativism, that doesn't mean that he can really
eliminate all his cultural biases from his analyses. Unfortunately, a
great many anthropologists are atheists or agnostics, and so don't
understand in their gut how motivating religious belief can be.
What Sahlins did was conclude that the Hawaiians were sincere in
believing that Cook was their deity, and that they acted in accordance
with that belief. Other anthropologists (not necessarily Obayesekere--
as I said, I've never read him) didn't buy this. How could they
believe Cook was a god--they were rational people! The anthropologists
were rational people, and they knew that Cook was no god, so the
Hawaiians must have known it, too.
Nobody's brave enough to say this straight out, but it's a very strong
undercurrent in a lot of anthropology. I'm convinced it's at the heart
of this debate. But Cook never said that the Hawaiians were
irrational. He said that they were religious believers, who, in their
own frames of reference, are imminently rational people.
> So it's
> interesting that Obayeskere is the one to pull him up short and say,
> "Hey, this theorizing about "natives" is wrong, and here's one native
> who'll say so."
I don't think Obayesekere is a Native Hawaiian, though. His theorizing
about Hawaii is no different from Sahlins'.
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>Not exactly. If a language has no term for "green," then it uses "leaf-
>colored" instead of green. It doesn't necessarily make a comparison
>with some primary color term. It's just like English--we use words
Something about that sentence didn't scan for me. "If they don't have
a word for 'green,' they use 'leaf-colored' instead." Well, in that
particularly language, isn't "leaf-colored" the word for green, then?
Under your theory, our language doesn't have a word for the color
orange, because an orange is both a color and a fruit. That's silly.
>like "pumpkin" for a particular color that we have no primary color
>term for, and "turquoise" for a different color. It's just that some
And we have words for those colors: "pumpkin" and "turquoise."
Likewise, "rust."
>langauges don't have as many words that ONLY mean a particular color,
>and so have to fall to comparisons with objects more often.
The observations that some words _just_ mean "color x," while other
words share the color with a paradigmatic example of color x strikes
me as, well, uninteresting. Besides, the language-forms-thought types
were claiming that folks who didn't have the word "green" in their
language couldn't recognize green as a distinct color, a claim that
turns out to be, well, false. If some group uses "leaf" for green,
who cares?
--
Pete McCutchen
Rachael Lininger
Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On Mon, 08 May 2000 05:47:52 GMT, Chad Ryan Thomas <crth...@asu.edu>
>wrote:
>
>>Not exactly. If a language has no term for "green," then it uses "leaf-
>>colored" instead of green. It doesn't necessarily make a comparison
>>with some primary color term. It's just like English--we use words
>
>Something about that sentence didn't scan for me. "If they don't have
>a word for 'green,' they use 'leaf-colored' instead." Well, in that
>particularly language, isn't "leaf-colored" the word for green, then?
>
>Under your theory, our language doesn't have a word for the color
>orange, because an orange is both a color and a fruit. That's silly.
The distinction does make sense to me, and if there were a real pattern
in how languages developed color words, it would be very interesting. But
IIRC, Kay and Berlin have been pretty thoroughly debunked for problems in
their methodology, not to mention a gaping hole (not considering
saturation along with hue and shade) in the initial setup. Which isn't
to say that their original notion is wrong, but that they failed to
demonstrate it.
Rachael
--
Rachael Lininger | "Ah, why should anyone be anxious for walls and a roof
rachael@ | When you have such hospitable pigeon-holes?"
dd-b.net | --Thomas Mendip
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>: Depending on the initial problem, they don't always. But I don't
>: even accept this statement for the rest of math. Math is
>: culturally relative because the process has different _meanings_
>: to people in different contexts.
>
>But how do you KNOW that math has different meanings? You've given
>examples from books written about cultures far distant in time and
>space, and used those to imply that "natives think differently". My
>own experience with "natives" was that I did NOT experience any
>mathematical difficulties. Tongans were perfectly rational about
>number, whether it was making change in the market or doing math
>homework. (Yes, I helped some kids with their math homework :) )
You know, you're the person who uses the phrases "natives think
differently" and who proposes a rational/non-rational dichotomy.
I don't.
I have been talking about meaning, not thinking ability: the
processes people construct to think about things, not the
equipment they do it with.
And the examples you objected to because they came from literature
were all examples of clear, rational thinking, based on different
systems of understanding the world, and not only that, based on
different truths really experienced in real conditions that
different peoples live in.
For the record: I don't think "natives think differently." We
all have the same brain(give or take a broad range of _individual_
differences). I do know, however, that thinking is not a
homogeneous act. Thinking is a dynamic thing, and we use
different methods of thinking for different purposes. Not only
that: we don't just receive these methods full-blown as our
birthright: what a newborn has is a script for learning how to
think and a swiftly-maturing nervous system to do it with. Every
human being constructs a thinking tool kit from scratch, by
thinking, and every human being does this in a context -- the
context of the physical world and the cultural world.
What's a big number? What's a small number? What the hell _is_
subtraction? You think you know, huh? Is it take-away? Is it
moving backwards? Is it the difference between two numbers? All
these and more are available ways to think about subtraction. But
there's more: once you start paying attention to the context in
which people learn the subtracting relationships of numbers, you
can see there's a lot more.
There are whole cultures for whom numbers have personality and
agency and purpose. That's real different, sorry, really
different.
>
>The Tongan language has a few interesting twists in that it uses
>number classifiers based on the species or shape of an object and that
>there's a special set of number names used for counting traditional
>presentations to a chief -- the twenty in twenty pigs is different
>from the twenty in twenty mats. But I saw absolutely no evidence that
>this made any difference to the way Tongans did math.
And that's not the difference you will _usually_ see. But
remember math is not only numbers: math is relationships, math is
space, math is time. And those things are going to be different.
>The interesting thing is -- hmmn, this IS interesting, I've never
>thought this through until now -- that the Tongan beliefs that
>differed the most radically from mine differed in just the areas that
>people in Western cultures still find problematic.
<Snipping desperately and probably foolishly: I can't tell what to
snip and what not to snip>
This is, sorry, a tautology, and entirely expected. These are the
places where I have always had the starkest culture clash as well.
But what's interesting is not always what's starkest.
>Now what's interesting is that Sahlins did fieldwork in Fiji. Unlike
>many other anthropologists, this encounter with the other doesn't seem
>to have marked him. He doesn't cite his work there in his later
>stuff. He's made his name with library work. He can draw all sorts of
>conclusions about the weird ways pre-contact Hawaiians thought and
>there's no pre-contact Hawaiians alive to contradict him. So it's
>interesting that Obayeskere is the one to pull him up short and say,
>"Hey, this theorizing about "natives" is wrong, and here's one native
>who'll say so."
But this has nothing to do with any of what I'm talking about: I'm
not making some claim that "Their minds is just different from
ours."
You'll recall that this leaf of this branch came because Chad and
I said -- in different ways and to different purpose about the
same subject -- that native thoughts and native desires with
reference to the remains of their ancestors, putative ancestors,
and symbolic ancestors, were worth honoring and were also in and
of themselves of scientific interest to anthropologists, a
position which you find somehow objectionable.
>
>So you'll excuse me if I say that my own experience of non-Western
>peoples doesn't incline me towards mathematical relativism, and that
>drawing conclusions re "ways of thought" based on library work might
>be dangerous.
Excuse me, Karen, I'm just not going to be humbled because you did
your fieldwork in Tonga . An airplane ticket is not the exclusive
ticket to cross-cultural experience and understanding.
The relevance of this discussion is obvious for me and for Karen,
since I happen to know that both our works in progress depend a
lot on views of culture, but I think I'm kind of done now.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
[I apologize in advance for both the length of this post and the
tardiness of it. It took me a while to compose, and I kept getting
interrupted.]
>I'm replying to this one publicly because it represents the worst, most
>wide-spread misconceptions about what it is that Anthropologists do,
>and it's exactly this viewpoint that hurts both scientists and Native
>Americans. After this, I'll try my best to stay quiet.
If you wish to close off further dialog, that's fine, but don't expect
the rest of us to shut up, just because you've chosen to do so.
>
>In article <gnv1hs0hsu52h39lc...@4ax.com>,
> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> But until such time
>> as we have corroborating evidence, it's reasonable to believe that the
>> oral tradition may have been distorted.
>
>You missed the entire point of my previous statement, and I suspect it
>may be because I phrased the post badly. I'll restate as clearly as
>possible.
My sense is that our disagreement is about half misunderstanding and
half real disagreement. Though it's probably exacerbated by my
tendency toward bluntness. If you want to, imagine that I've said the
same thing, except more diplomatically.
>From a Western, scientific viewpoint, oral traditions are malleable and
>questionable as historical resources. I do not dispute this. I have
>never disputed this, and no scientist will dispute it. This statement
>is a non-issue.
OK, we agree on that. The question, for me, is whether the
proposition "oral traditions are malleable" is true or not. Not
whether it's true "from a Western, scientific perspective," but
whether it's demonstrably true, anywhere. I would say that the
proposition is, indeed, true in an absolute sense, not just from a
"western, scientific perspective."
>
>The issue is this: Native Americans are not evaluating their oral
>traditions from a Western, scientific point of view. They are
>evaluating these traditions from their distinctive worldview that says
>such traditions are sacred and must be respected.
My claim is that some world views are _better_ than others at getting
to the facts of the matter about the way the world is. The Western,
scientific world view is the best we have, at present.
>
>As a society which (one should hope) is making a real, good-faith
>attempt to include Native American interests in national politics, we
>must take into account that there are different views on the
>reliability of oral traditions, and must find a compromise between
>these two conflicting viewpoints. To simply declare that science will
>be the ultimate authority on historical fact reveals just one thing:
>the attempt to include Native Americans as full citizens is not
>sincere. Groups like AIM are fully justified in being annoyed at such
>situations. It is an hypocrisy more flamboyant than usual for US
>politics. That much for NAGPRA and similar issues.
But we do that with other groups -- fundamentalist Christians, for
example. Here you've got this group which reads a holy text from a
distinctive worldview, which says that their understanding of the Holy
Bible is sacred and must be respected, even where the science says
that it's wrong. So some of them believe, quite irrationally from my
viewpoint, that the Earth was created six thousand years ago in six
days, with Adam and Eve fully formed.
We as a society tell these folks to shove off, that they don't get to
teach creationism in the public schools, that the science rules. And
generally left-leaning cultural relativists like you don't give a shit
about the fundamentalist Christians, and the fact that we're violating
their cultural norms -- there's no talk of "compromise" with them. If
they want their kids in public schools, well, tough shit; they've got
to learn evolution.
That's one example of how we do, in fact, let science be the ultimate
arbitrer, and not just with Native Americans, either.
Now, that said, if the Native Americans have certain legal claims to
certain lands, they can certainly impose conditions on the scientists,
reasonably or unreasonable. The question of how much control they
have over their putative ancestors' remains is a legal and poetical
one, not a scientific one. So it might be the case that the answer to
the scientific question of whether Tribe A is descended from the group
whose bones we've found a site A is irrelevant to the legal question
of who controls the remains.
But, as a scientist evaluating the truth of their claims, you should
simply express the truth, not engage in any sort of "compromise." And
I can't see how you can contend that the truth is more reliably found
via some oral tradition than by DNA evidence.
>
>In terms of anthropology as a science, declaring a scientific appraisal
>of history as "true" and Native American concepts as "wrong" does
>nothing to reveal the workings of human culture. In fact it obscures
I can see how going up to people and saying that you think they're
full of shit might well be unproductive, and how it might be
_irrelevant_ to certain areas of inquiry -- for example, if you're
studying Hopi creation myths, you might be interested in what they
are, rather than whether they're true. It would, of course, be silly
for an anthropologist to start arguing with a bunch of Hopi,
attempting to dissuade them of the truth of their creation myths, or
to end the article on the topic by saying that they were wrong.
Even so, however, that doesn't mean that you accept the truth of those
myths, even provisionally. The question is simply irrelevant to the
intellectual task at hand. If the point is to describe what folks
believe, the truth of those beliefs just isn't relevant.
Nonetheless, if Hopi kids go to a public school and are learning
physics, they damn well ought to be given the best scientific
understanding of the world. And if a Hopi physics graduate students
turns in a doctoral dissertation which doesn't talk about physics, but
instead regurgitates Hopi creation myths, well, they can damn well
deny him a PhD in physics. He might be eligible in some other field,
of course.
>cultural processes. Anthropology is not an historical science,
>really. Its concern is not whether X happened in the past, but how
>human culture works now, then, and in the future. (It is rather
>similar to physics in the sense that we're looking for rules and
>processes the obtain regardless of time and place.) Whether X really
>happened or not, the people in question *believe* that it did, and they
>will act accordingly.
That's fine enough. The truth of certain beliefs is irrelevant to the
question of whether people hold them, or whether those beliefs have an
effect on their society. I agree with that. That doesn't seem to me
to require any strong commitment to "cultural relativism," except in
the narrowest possible sense of the term.
>
>Consider this research program. "Based on such-and-such evidence, this
>particular oral tradition seems not to be an accurate representation of
>historical fact. Under what circumstances, and by what processes,
>would a culture of intelligent, rational people develop such inaccurate
>traditions? What functions might such inaccurate traditions serve?"
>This is a perfectly valid anthropological research program.
Agreed. I have no problem with that.
>
>On the other hand, this one isn't: "Native Americans believe
>superstitious nonsense. How could they be so stupid?" It is based on
>the same observations, and ultimately wants to examine the same thing.
>
>But the second one includes value judgments of the one cultural system
>which are made according to criteria from the other system. The first
>program mediates such value judgments as far as is possible through
>neutral language. The second program has already implicitly arrived at
>an answer to the research question. (They believe because they're
>stupid.) The first, however, has no implicit answers. The first
No, the first is just a more diplomatic way of saying the second.
Ultimately, it's the same question: why do people believe what they
believe?
>program will answer interesting questions about how human culture
>works. The second will make the researcher feel big by making the
>Native Americans look small. Which is science?
So long as you don't take your cultural relativism to the point of
saying that "Native ways of knowing" or just as good at getting to the
truth as the scientific method, I don't really care. I concede that
the first formulation is more tactful.
>
>> Cultural relativism, taken to that extreme, ...
>
>To what extreme? My formulation of the principle of cultural
>relativism is this: "One cannot make value judgments about aspects of
>one cultural system based on criteria derived from another cultural
>system if one wishes to learn about how human culture operates." How is
>this extreme at all?
I think that there's some equivocation there about the term "value
judgment." In some contexts, value judgments are, of course,
inappropriate or irrelevant. But it's not a "value judgment" to
observe that oral traditions are unreliable. It's a statement of
fact, which may or may not be true.
>
>I suppose you may have been thrown by my use of the words "right"
>and "wrong." I used them in quotes in my original post to try ot
>indicate the implict value judgment, and I suppose the terrible medium
>through which we're communicating obscured that intent. A scinetist
>can say that something is inaccurate based on certain evidence, without
>being ethnocentric and biased. What a scientist shouldn't say is that
>it's "wrong," with the implication that it's therefore valueless,
>foolish, and backward.
You're obviously an academic; you seem obsessively concerned with
wording your conclusions in exactly the right sensitive language. I
don't think that the term "wrong" has the connotation of "foolish and
backward;" I think it's a synonym for "inaccurate."
>
>> Your
>> version of cultural relativism was rather neatly punctured by Alan
>> Sokal, in his wonderful prank in which he got _Social Text_ to print
>> an article asserting that gravity was social construct.
>
>How does "My version of cultural relativism" get "punctured" by such a
>statement? I strongly suspect that you're reading more into my
>position than is there. That someone can publish a paper whose
That may be possible. There are at least some folks who have claimed
that because science is a social construct, it is equivalent to other
"ways of knowing," and that various "ways of knowing" are all equal in
their ability to find truth.
>conclusions are obviously false punctures nothing but the reputation of
>the journal editor.
Sokal's paper was quite consistent with a certain school of thought.
If he'd never revealed that it was a prank, they wouldn't have known.
>
>> Let's take an example of conflicting epistimologies, shall we? Now,
>> like many people, I've heard about the Cargo Cults, (which I'm sure is
>> an un-PC term), which sprang up on various islands after WWII.
>
>"Cargo cult" is an appropriate term, and one which is gaining a wider
>application than to cargo cults proper. It is currently being applied
>to any new religious movement. The implict suggestion is that such
>religious movements operate under the same sort of rules as the very
>well-understood cargo cults.
OK. Good to know that I wasn't being politically incorrect by
accident, that time.
>
>> (My
>> example will be valid, even if you tell me that the Cargo Cults are an
>> urban myth. Are they, by the way?)
>
>Not at all. Thye're very well-documented, and very well-understood
>social phenomena with a wide distribution in both time and space.
>(FYI: the earliest examples predate WWII be several decades. Several
>similar cults were even reported in the 19th century, if I recall
>correctly.)
Any good books that I might pick up?
>
>> Question: if the Cargo Cultists believed that the bamboo airplanes
>> really and truly would fly, if they performed the right rituals, would
>> you believe them?
>
>Of course not. I'm more than aware of principles of aerodynamics, and
>the functioning of the internal combustion engine, and such. Saying
>that the bamboo planes won't fly isn't an anthropological issue,
>though. It has to do with physics and engineering.
Well, at least you're sane.
I take it then that you believe that there is a real world out there,
and that science is a way of describing the world and engineering is a
way of manipulating it? Even if science itself arose out of a
particular culture, it illuminates truths which don't depend on the
culture in which it developed for their validity?
>
>Now, suppose I were an anthropologist studying cargo cults. I can say
>the planes won't fly. Great. What does that have to do with human
>culture? I can say that cargo cults are followed by people who believe
>stupid and obviously false things. That doesn't tell me anything about
>*WHY* they believe those things, or *HOW* they came to belive those
>things, or *WHAT* those beliefs do for them. All it does is, rather
>arbitrarily, declare the cultists to be stupid.
>
>A scientific anthropologist isn't interested in why the planes will or
>will not fly. Not at all. Not in the least little bit. What a
>scientific anthropologist is concerned about is why would rational,
>intelligent people *THINK* that bamboo planes would fly. That's an
>entirely different issue.
That sounds right to me. But that doesn't require that one be
committed to cultural relativism, or that one believe that the views
of the cargo cultists are entitled to any respect at all. It only
requires that one focus on the intellectual task at hand.
You're still admitting that the scientific understanding of how planes
work is better than the cargo-cultist understanding. I'm not sure why
we can't do the same regarding the relative reliability of DNA
evidence and oral traditions, even if, politically, the Native
Americans might be able to make their oral traditions stick.
>
>> If the answer is yes, you're an idiot, and if the
>> answer is no, then, at some level, you believe in the primacy of
>> scientific understanding over various other epistimologies.
>
>Of course I believe "in the primacy of scientific understanding." I
>was born and raised in a cultural milieu in which that was the
>prevalent, hegemonic paradigm. I can't escape that paradigm easily, if
Now I see equivocation. Do you think that the scientific method works
because it's the "hegemonic paradigm," or because it's a better way of
understanding the world?
>at all, and I certainly can't escape it just because a cultist tells me
>differently.
>
>But if I intend to learn interesting things about how human culture
>works, I must try to mediate the bias that such a worldview introduces,
>in order to understand the principles by which other rational,
>intelligent people (who do not have such Western biases) would accept
>such statements as true.
Before you acted like you understood that our airplanes work while
theirs don't because we've got a better understanding of the universe.
Now you're equivocating -- making it as if your preference for the
scientific world view is simply a matter of an arbitrary bias.
>
>> Oh, I can see how it might be _undiplomatic_ to tell the Native
>> Americans in question that their oral tradition may or may not be
>> true.
>
>I'm not talking about truth or untruth (which, by the way, are
>philosophical terms that I can't even begin to define). What I'm
A statement is truthful to the extent that it provides an accurate
picture of the real world.
>talking about is value judgments about a cultural system, which
>explicitly or implicitly devalue a particular way of viewing the world
>because the speaker possesses a different worldview.
>
>I can see now that "right" and "wrong" were clearly some of the most
>unfortunate choices of words I've made in a long time.
>
>When you declare that Western science is the ultimate authority on what
>happened in the past, and that Native American views will have no input
>into the discussion, what you're doing is implicitly saying that Native
>American views are worthless. That they don't matter, and have nothing
No, they're not worthless, They're just not as good a way of
determining what happened in the past. Oral traditions are better
than nothing. Written records are better than oral traditions, and
actual physical evidence is better than a written record.
>interesting to add. In a great many cases, this is just verifiably
>false in the Western scientific sense. In all cases, this reveals a
I didn't say that they were _worthless_. They're just not something
that you'd take literally, at face value. Let me give a different
example: in the Bible, it says that God parted the Red Sea, and let
his chosen folk pass, only to drown the Egyptian troops in hot
pursuit. Now, I certainly don't think that this happened the way it's
presented in the movie _The Ten Commandments_, with the literal walls
of water crashing down on the Egyptian army, but it's quite possible
that a drought or some other natural phenomenon created a path over
land that would have been inaccessible normally, and that the Egyptian
troops who followed were killed in a flash flood.
Likewise, oral traditions may well have true stories buried within.
However, to recognize that the story may have been embellished is not
to dismiss it as worthless. If I told you about some huge fish that I
caught, you might reasonably conclude that I had, indeed, caught a
fish, but that the size of the fish had been somewhat exaggerated.
Physical evidence would surely trump my tale.
>fundamental hypocrisy in the society that claims to be trying to
>include Native Americans as full members. And in all cases, it
>obscures the cultural processes behind Native American beliefs.
>
>> >(Cultural relativism is itself a whole new barrel of worms, but it
>most
>> >certainly does NOT mean that "everybody's right--anything goes--let's
>> >hug.")
>>
>> You will now attempt to do intellectual backflips to distinguish
>> between the Native American oral tradition case and the Cargo Cult
>> case. I'll get the popcorn.
>
>I have no idea how to reply to this, because I have no idea what you're
>trying to say. If cultural relativism does NOT mean that everybody's
>right, as I clearly assert above, why should I have to "do intellectual
>backflips" to reconcile my statement that we must respect Native
>American worldviews and my statement that bamboo planes can't fly?
I originally took you for being a stronger relativist than you are.
It still strikes me that you're equivocating a bit, though.
>
>> And the idea that you shouldn't jump out the windows of skyscrapers is
>> culturally based on the idea that you can't fly like Superman.
>
>The idea that you *SHOULDN'T* jump is obviously culturally based. It's
>a value judgment about the utility and "rightness" of an action. The
>idea that you can't fly like superman is also culturally based, but in
>a much more muted way, and has a much, much stronger possibility of
>accurately reflecting the real state of the external universe.
My point is that my ability to fly, like Superman, is not going to ba
affected, on way or another, by my culture.
>
>> There's abundant evidence for the existence of DNA, and for the fact
>> that it can show degrees of relationship. It's not just something we
>> made up one day.
>
>No, there's evidence of certain instruments acting in a certain way, by
>which we infer the existence of an invisible object called "DNA."
>Furthermroe, there is abundant evidence for said instruments acting in
>similar or identical ways when used on samples of known biological
>relationship, by which we infer that DNA is a signal of biological
>relatedness.
Our inference of that object is based on very strong evidence, though,
and it has been subject to a great deal of testing. We have real,
strong reasons to believe that objects with the characteristics we
attribute to DNA exist.
>
>At no point do we have evidence for DNA directly. (For the record, a
>strict definition of evidence must be restricted to the direct
>sensations provided by human senses. Such sensations are, after all,
>the only direct input into the human brain.)
Why? We have strong reasons to believe that the instruments that we
use to measure the universe are themselves accurate. I see no reason
to limit the term "evidence" to things which are directly sensed.
_That_ strikes me as an example of an arbitrary bias.
>
>No, DNA is not just something that we made up. It is a theory with a
>very high probability of accurately reflecting the real state of an
>external universe. But since there is no perfect epistemology, the
>real existence of DNA can never be proven beyond all doubt.
Which doesn't alter the fact that our theories about DNA have a very
good chance of being true.
>
>The epistemology by which the instruments were constructed and their
>results interpreted is a Western, scientific epistemology. Therefore,
>the belief that DNA exists and represents biological relatedness is
>ultimately biased by the Western, scientific paradigm. No matter how
>likely it is to exist in the real world.
My point -- the one that you're doing backflips to avoid conceding --
is that the "Western, Scientific epistemology" _works_, in a way that
other world views don't.
>
>[Concerning the legislative scope of NAGPRA]
>> Oh, great. So you want to restrict everybody, not just those who get
>> money from the feds.
>
>Damn straight. There are exactly two groups of people who have a
>justifiable reason to have anything to do with human remains:
>scientists and descendants. "I own the land," is not a good excuse,
>and neither is "Grampa gave it to me."
Note that this is an example of cultural bias. You're part of this
subculture, and it says that claims of scientists and descendants take
precedence over property rights. Isn't that an example of a "Value
Judgment" which you are, you claim, forbidden to engage in?
FWIW, I'm a libertarian, and in _my_ culture, we take property rights
seriously, far more seriously than claims by descendants and
scientists. How dare you make a value judgment denigrating my
culture!
>
>> >have to guidelines for how to act properly in these situations, and
>it
>> >was essentially written by some of the best minds in archaeological
>> >ethics this country has now. You can be sure that they considered
>all
>>
>> Don't lead with your chin, Chad.
>
>Again, huh? Kintigh and Goldstein *are* some of the best minds in
>archaeological ethics in the US today. Their work on repatriation
>issues has done more in the last fifteen years to repair scientist-
>Native relations than the entire history of anthropologists up to that
>point.
It strikes me that you're conflating the political question of how to
repair relations with the scientific question of what the truth is. I
agree with you that _for purposes of resolving a political dispute_,
it might be worthwhile to take Native American claims at face value.
As a scientist, however, your God is truth, and you can have no other
gods before her.
(Note that a property rights regime cuts through all these annoying
questions -- determine who owns the land, and then, well, what they
say, goes. If the Native Americans own the land, they can make the
scientists do handsprings and rub blue mud in their bellybuttons
before seeing the remains, or simply deny access based on a whim. If
some rancher owns the land, well, he can put the rights to the remains
up for bid.)
>
>And, having spoken to Kintigh myself on many occassions, I can say that
>he is a frighteningly intelligent man, with an almost encyclopedic
>knowledge of the relevant literature. You may disagree with his
>conclusions, but you can hardly claim that he's not qualified to speak
>on the issue.
>
>> So what? The notion that we acquire any actual "power" because bones
>> are tested is rather obviously superstitious nonsense.
>
><SIGH> It's "rather obviously superstitious nonsense" to you, because
>you're evaluating the issue from a Western, scientific worldview. To a
>Native Hawaiian, in whose opinion mana is a real, powerful force in the
>universe, such a conclusion is anything by "obvious." In fact, it is
>obviously false.
Well, yes. You're equivocating again, though. You want to admit that
the scientific method works, because failing to admit that will make
you seem like a loon, and yet you keep returning to this "all cultures
are equally valid" nonsense. The scientific worldview has given us
the Boeing 747. If the Hawaiian native can transport three hundred
people from Chicago to Hawaii nonstop, well, then I'll listen.
>
>And, may I take a moment here to step out of my anthropoplogist's shoes
>and make a personal statement? It has been a long time since I've
>heard anyone make so blatantly bigoted a statement in a public forum.
>I've never been to Hawaii, and I have never met any Native Hawaiians,
>but I am personally disgusted.
<glyph of tongue sticking out>
I say the same thing about Western religious beliefs, too, Chad. It's
not as if I pick on Hawaiians; I pretty much think that all religion
is superstitious nonsense.
<snip>
>
>There are situations in which we must sacrifice scientific
>investigation due to political situations. For example, no American
>can do archaeology in Iraq right now, despite the fact that Americans
>count among some of the most knoweldgeable Mesopotamian archaeologists
>in the world. If Kennewick had been reburied immediately without
>study, that situation would have been no different.
>
I agree with that part. I understand that political compromises often
have to be made. That has nothing to do with the question of what the
truth is, though.
--
Pete McCutchen
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
: hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu wrote:
: : I believe I understand what you intend by "purely arbitrary" in the
: : opening sentence above -- I understand you to be referring to an abstract
: : concept of "pure math" where the particular symbols used to represent the
: : underlying mathematical "truths" are arbitrary and interchangeable (e.g.,
: : whether we measure angles in degrees or rads).
: This doesn't feel like an abstract concept to me. Using 400 or 360
: degrees is like counting "one two three four" or "taha ua tolu
: fa". Different languages. So?
Well, I was trying to feel out a sense of how "abstract" was being used in
the conversation, rather than assuming a meaning -- in your different
languages example, I'd say the "abstract concept" part is the underlying
number, as opposed to the name used to label it.
: : And once we've chosen an arbitrary (but
: : motivated) system for representing mathematical concepts (such as the
: : division of a circle, or the measurement of time or space) then the nature
: : of that arbitrary system, and the ways in which it interacts with our
: : physical existence, strongly affect the ways in which we perceive and
: : interact with the world via numbers.
: This sounds like a mathematical version of the Sapir-Whorf
: hypothesis. I don't buy the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for linguistics,
: and I'm not at all sure that I buy it for mathematics.
Depends on whether you're assuming the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis (i.e., that the available language _dictates_ thought patterns
-- which pretty much _nobody_ ever bought) or the weak version (i.e.,
that the way in which our native language organizes and labels meaning
will _affect_ thought patterns), which can be demonstrated by things like
reaction-time experiments.
: But I'd regard this more as an example of the kind of thing that
: Berlin and Kay discuss in regard to color terms. Color terms used to
: be regarded as one of the prime examples of the Sapir Whorf
: hypothesis. Language would give you a selection of color terms and so
: that's how you perceived color.
<Snip details of Berlin & Kay color studies -- hey, aren't we keeping
track of the average cycle time for Berlin & Kay to come up on this
newsgroup?>
: I would suggest that mathematical symbolism would be like color terms;
: the more developed the math, the more developed the symbolism. That
: this symbolism is as arbitrary as color names, but it represents
: reasoning processes that are just as universal as humn color
: perceptions. Given by our brain wiring.
Actualy the color-linguistics work is a great example of what I was trying
to bring up about mathematics. Because, as you noted (in the part I've
snipped) color language is far from arbitrary -- it's motivated (but not
dictated) by the physiology of how we interact with the world (just as
certain aspects of our mathematical languages/concepts are motivated by
the physiology of our interactions with the world), but conversely, the
way we structure color concepts in our language affects how we perceive
them. For example, no matter how many basic color categories a language
has, reaction-time studies show that a person will distinguish two colors
as different more quickly (although perhaps more quickly on a very small
scale) if the two colors belong to different basic color categories in
their language.
On the other hand, the different between different color systems isn't a
single scale of more versus less "developed". (The initial Berlin & Kay
study seemed to indicate that, but further work in the field has modified
a lot of the original conclusions.) For example, while the focal point of
color categories is determined by aspects of vision physiology, the
boundaries between categories may reflect several different strategies,
e.g. whether hue or saturation is considered more important.
An example a little closer to the mathematics example is the study by
Gentner and Gentner on problem-solving with mental models of electricity.
People (who already had a basic knowledge of electricity and how to solve
equations and problems in that field) were primed with a description of
the behavior of electricity as either being like moving particles or
flowing water. Following this "priming", they were timed solving various
electrical problems, and showed patterns of difference in timing depending
on whether the "particle" or "flow" model worked better for the particular
problem.
That's the sort of angle I was trying to bring up on mathematics -- that
the way different "math cultures" structure information and understanding
can affect (not dictate) how we (as human beings) understand and apply
mathematical concepts, even if we accept that the underlying abstract
mathematical principles are the same in all "math cultures" (just as the
underlying light wavelengths are the same in all "color cultures").
We may agree on this more than we disagree -- but feel free to disagree
about that. :)
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
: On Mon, 08 May 2000 05:47:52 GMT, Chad Ryan Thomas <crth...@asu.edu>
: wrote:
:>Not exactly. If a language has no term for "green," then it uses "leaf-
:>colored" instead of green. It doesn't necessarily make a comparison
:>with some primary color term. It's just like English--we use words
: Something about that sentence didn't scan for me. "If they don't have
: a word for 'green,' they use 'leaf-colored' instead." Well, in that
: particularly language, isn't "leaf-colored" the word for green, then?
: Under your theory, our language doesn't have a word for the color
: orange, because an orange is both a color and a fruit. That's silly.
That's one of the questions that gets hashed out a lot in the field of
color linguistics. The original idea was to make a distinction between
"basic color terms", which were defined as mono-morphemic, non-borrowed
words that had no meaning in the language _other_ than the color. The
idea was to find a definition that would describe a closed set of words
that could provide an "index" to the basic color-categories in the
language. The major stumbling block that was eventually run into was how
to determine when a word passed into this category. How long ago did a
word have to be borrowed before it was no longer excluded? (E.g., modern
Welsh has distinct "blue" and "green" categories, but the "green" word is
borrowed originally from Latin -- at what date did it begin to count as a
"basic Welsh color term"?) When did "scarlet" become solely a color term
in English rather than the name of a type of fabric? Is "aubergine" a
color-term in English while "eggplant" is not?
I believe that the current approach (although I'd have to double-check
this with the people I know who are doing research in the field), rather
than trying to define basic color terms on by linguistic rules, is to work
from what color words the informant comes up with on their own when
labelling color-chips. So, if one English-speaker takes a bunch of purple
color-chips and sorts them out into groups they label "purple",
"lavender", "maroon", "aubergine", "plum", etc., and another only sorts
them into "purple" and "lavender", then those two people have different
numbers of basic color terms in English. A sort of
"micro-culture" approach.
Chad Ryan Thomas
Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Something about that sentence didn't scan for me. "If they don't have
> a word for 'green,' they use 'leaf-colored' instead." Well, in that
> particularly language, isn't "leaf-colored" the word for green, then?
Yes, but it's not a "primary color term," which is what the researchers
in question were interested in. Primary color terms are those whose
only meaning is a color. Secondary color terms are those whose
(first/primary/original/etc.) meaning was some object, and whose color
meaning derives from comparison with the object.
(By the way, the linguistic evidence seems to suggest that "orange" was
originally a color term, and only later extended to the fruit. Or such
was the response of my linguistics prof when I asked the same question.)
> The observations that some words _just_ mean "color x," while other
> words share the color with a paradigmatic example of color x strikes
> me as, well, uninteresting.
Well, I suggest you don't bother to read the article then. There's not
a whole lot of meat to it beyond that observation and the order in
which the terms develop.
> Besides, the language-forms-thought types
> were claiming that folks who didn't have the word "green" in their
> language couldn't recognize green as a distinct color
Which language-forms-thought types? Are you talking about Sapir and
Whorff? It's been a while since I read their work, but I sincerely
doubt that's what they meant. If you mean someone else, care to
elaborate?
Heather Anne Nicoll
> Well, yes. You're equivocating again, though. You want to admit that
> the scientific method works, because failing to admit that will make
> you seem like a loon, and yet you keep returning to this "all cultures
> are equally valid" nonsense. The scientific worldview has given us
> the Boeing 747. If the Hawaiian native can transport three hundred
> people from Chicago to Hawaii nonstop, well, then I'll listen.
Pondering . . . .
I'm reminded, in an ObSF sort of way, of Douglas Adams' dolphins. Now I
need to find my copy of the scripts to quote the passage. --Bleah. it's
still In A Box Somewhere.
The line is something like, however:
"Man had long thought himself smarter than the dolphins because
of all he had accomplished -- wars, the bomb, New York, and so on, and
all the dolphins did was muck about in the water and have a good time.
The dolphins, on the other hand, thought themselves smarter than man,
for precisely the same reason."
I'd argue that the point of much of this is that the value of
transporting three hundred people from Chicago to Hawaii nonstop is only
self-evident within the Western-scientific-culture-thing (henceforth
WSCT) that's under discussion. Using a WSCT concern to measure the
'validity' of the concerns of other cultures is only going to measure
how closely they align to the WSCT.
To a culture which focuses less on technical innovation and
environmental restructuring, this would be silly; a student from such a
culture might well look at the WSCT and say, "Well, when this Westerner
can properly determine his relationship with the gods, well, then I'll
listen."
The placement of secular, technological achievment as the pinnacle of
human achievment is the WSCT's equivalent of an oral creation myth.