Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.40.0111101426460.5110-100000@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: CYBERMIND@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Subject: This issue is fascinating -[evol-psych] Digest Number 727 (fwd)
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 14:27:04 -0500
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: 10 Nov 2001 10:32:04 -0000 From: evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com To: evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com Subject: [evol-psych] Digest Number 727 To view archive/subscribe/unsubscribe/select DIGEST go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evolutionary-psychology Read The Human Nature Daily Review every day http://human-nature.com/nibbs ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are 13 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. Re: Study finds beauty can be its own reward From: "Anna Michaels" <anna.m@freeuk.com> 2. Why are we particularly good at performing symmetrical movements? From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> 3. Re: Study finds beauty can be its own reward From: "Bernhard Fink" <bernhard.fink@ieee.org> 4. Familial Handedness and Access to Words, Meaning, and Syntax during Sentence Comprehension From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> 5. Humans Descended From Cells Without Nuclei Or Walls From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> 6. Alabama to keep textbook stickers warning that evolution is 'controversial theory' From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> 7. Study finds female beauty is male drug From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> 8. Alabama Retains Disclaimer on Evolution From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> 9. Brain may forge some memories in waves From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> 10. Study: Gay, straight couples have same fights From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> 11. Re: Re: Trask on Chomsky From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> 12. Why Are Deep Thinkers Shallow About Tyranny? From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> 13. What Scientists Learned in the 20th Century. From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 19:12:40 +0000 From: "Anna Michaels" <anna.m@freeuk.com> Subject: Re: Study finds beauty can be its own reward >Public release date: 8-Nov-2001 >Massachusetts General Hospital >http://www.mgh.harvard.edu/ > >Study finds beauty can be its own reward > >Viewing attractive female faces activates the brain's reward circuits in males > From ancient mythology to modern advertising, the face of a beautiful woman has >been regarded as a powerful motivator of men's behavior. Now a group of >researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has shown that, while >heterosexual men recognize attractiveness in both female and male faces, they >will expend effort to increase their viewing of attractive female faces only. >The research also shows that areas of the brain previously identified as >responding to such rewards as food, drugs and money also respond to facial >beauty. The study appears in the November 8 issue of Neuron. [snip] >To answer these questions, the researchers conducted three experiments with >groups of young, heterosexual men. (Men were chosen as study subjects because >other recent research has shown that women?s response to facial stimuli can >change during their menstrual cycles.) Could anyone point towards that research, please? [snip] >The brain imaging study found that the same brain areas previously identified >as part of a "reward circuitry," showed increased response to the viewing of >attractive females only. In fact, the reward areas exhibited decreased activity >when the young male participants viewed the attractive male faces. > >"It looks like there can be a difference between what the brain 'likes,' an >image that is judged to be attractive, and what the brain 'wants,' something >that is regarded as a reward in and of itself," says Breiter, who is a >psychiatrist. "It's particularly interesting that the attractive male faces >actually produced what could be considered an aversion response, even though >they had been recognized as attractive." I wonder quite what criteria of "attractiveness" they use for male faces; what might be termed "pretty" (ie symmetrical), or the craggy looks of Hollywood tradition. As someone who survived from 5 to 17 being persecuted, as have many of my acquaintance, by boys and men (but never women or girls) many times every day, perhaps because I was a "pretty" or "sissy" boy (no one ever bothered to explain, or perhaps they couldn't), until I found safety, and happiness as a girl, I'd really like to know if the "aversion response" reported above, which the researchers consider "hard-wired into the brain by natural selection" in (according to the ABC News report posted here) "reward centers, which include the areas of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, hypothalamus, orbitofrontal cortex and ventral tegmentum, are considered to be evolutionary holdovers from reptiles and have been linked to a range of psychological disorders from addiction to depression" could have been responsible. If so it would nullify not only the blame and self-blame which has been so often laid on the "pretty boy", the "faggot", the "queer", but also the common theories of reaction due to "threat to their flimsy sense of identity" by the attackers (for example, Di Ceglie, Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2000), vol 6, p458). Anna anna.m@freeuk.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 16:00:38 -0000 From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> Subject: Why are we particularly good at performing symmetrical movements? November 01, 2001 Why are we particularly good at performing symmetrical movements? Max Planck Researchers disprove twenty years old doctrine / Movements are coordinated by way of perception and perceptual imagery, and not in the motoric system In bimanual movements there is a tendency towards mirror symmetry which has often been explained by the co-activation of homologous muscles. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research have now discovered that the symmetry tendency is actually towards perceptual mirror-symmetry, regardless of the muscles involved. Movements which are easily perceived seem to be easily controlled. People are able to perform highly complex, even "impossible" movements, when the perceptual effect of the movement is simple (nature, 1 November 2001). Humans tend to synchronize their hand movements in a mirror-like fashion. Even involuntary slips from asymmetrical movement patterns into symmetry occur, especially with higher movement velocities. How can this spontaneous tendency towards symmetry in bimanual movements be explained? Most researchers have favoured the explanation that the tendency to move in symmetry is closely related to the symmetric structure of the body and the nervous system. In accordance with this traditional belief, the symmetry tendency can be explained by a tendency to co-activate anatomically homologous muscle groups. At first glance, such an explanation appears quite plausible: Homologous muscles, as well as bilaterally situated areas in the two brain hemispheres and in the spinal cord can easily be activated together. Further, they are interconnected through neuronal pathways, which provide for an intensive and effective "express communication". However, there is obviously an alternative possible explanation. Maybe there is no tendency to simultaneously activate homologous muscle groups, but instead a tendency towards spatially symmetric movements, i.e. movements which look and feel symmetric. Maybe we are able to control easily perceived movements particularly well. In a series of simple movement experiments, Franz Mechsner, Dirk Kerzel, G�nther Knoblich, and Wolfgang Prinz at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research demonstrated that the symmetry tendency is actually towards perceptual symmetry, without regard to homologous muscles or motoric neuronal commands. (nature, November 01, 2001). In one of their experiments, the researchers examined bimanual finger oscillation, the classical model to demonstrate the symmetry tendency (see Figure above). In this model, the participant moves both index fingers synchronously to the left and to the right following a metronome beat. Beyond a critical frequency, it can be observed that most participants switch from this "parallel" movement mode into a symmetric mode, where the two index fingers move towards and away from each other. The symmetric mode, on the other hand, is always stable up to the highest frequencies. The researchers at the Max Planck Institute extended this model in a particular way. Similar to the classical model, participants were instructed to move their index fingers in parallel, as well as in symmetry. As an additional and newly introduced condition, one hand was placed palm-up while the other hand was placed palm-down (see Figure below). As for a definition, positions in which both hands are either palm-up or palm-down are called "congruent". Positions where one hand is palm-up and the other palm-down are called "incongruent". Interesting for the experiment are the "incongruent" hand positions, because here the parallel mode of finger oscillation goes together with periodic co-activation of homologous muscle groups. If there actually was a tendency to simultaneously co-activate homologous muscle groups, then here the parallel mode of movement should be more stable than the symmetric mode. On the other hand, if there was a tendency towards perceptual symmetry, then the symmetric mode should still be more stable than the parallel mode, even though non-homologous muscle groups are co-activated. The findings were straightforward. In the congruent as well as in the incongruent hand position, the symmetric finger oscillation pattern is more stable than the parallel one, independent of the muscles involved. Spontaneous switches from a parallel movement mode into a symmetric mode can be observed at higher velocities, but not in the other direction. Conclusion. The spontaneous symmetry tendency in finger oscillation is a tendency towards spatial symmetry, without regard to the muscles or motoric neuronal commands involved. Further experiments by the Max Planck Institute researchers suggest that these findings can be generalized: The symmetry tendency in bimanual movements is generally a tendency towards perceptual spatial symmetry. Franz Mechsner and his colleagues suggest that voluntary movements are organized by way of a representation of the intended perceptual goals, whereas the corresponding motor activity is rather spontaneously and flexibly tuned in. But what is the final explanation for the symmetry tendency? The researchers believe that people tend to perform movements which can be easily controlled via perception and mental imagery. This notion is contrary to traditional theories which have argued that movements are coordinated in motoric neuronal structures. According to these theories, coherent motoric representations, i.e. muscle-oriented neuronal activation patterns, are organized in the motoric system. The Max-Planck researchers argue that we do not control our movements indirectly by way of such motor activation plans, but rather directly by way of perceptions and mental imagery. The researchers' proposal was corroborated in a further experiment: Subjects bimanually rotated two non-visible cranks under a table, each of which controlled the circular movements of a visible flag. The left flag circled directly above the left crank and hand, whereas the right flag circled in a 4:3 frequency ratio to the right crank and hand, owing to a gear system. The subject was instructed to circle the visible flags in isofrequency, either in symmetry or in an asymmetrical mode called antiphase. In both cases, the hands have to circle in a 4:3 frequency ratio. This is a highly complex movement, which is impossible for naive subjects. The different movement patterns of the flags are not discernable from the hand movement pattern. Thus, symmetry and antiphase in the flags cannot be produced by coordinating muscular activation patterns. Despite this, subjects were successful in controlling the instructed patterns, solely by way of visual strategies and "forgetting" their hands. This means: In order to perform the instructed simple flag movements, participants easily perform otherwise impossible body movements. Conclusion: Through targeting simple effects, we can perform highly complex movements, as long as we attend to the intended effect, rather than the exact bodily movements. Apparently we directly control movements through perception and imagery, rather than indirectly through coordination processes in the motor system. The corresponding motor activity of sometimes high formal complexity is rather spontaneously and automatically tuned in without having to be organized as an integrated whole. Contact: Dr. Franz Mechsner Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research Cognition and Action Amalienstrasse 33 80799 Munich, Germany Phone: +49 - 89 - 3 86 02 - 2 48 Telefax: +49 - 89 - 3 86 02 - 1 99 E-mail: mechsner@mpipf-muenchen.mpg.de http://www.mpg.de/news01/news0119.htm ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 21:20:52 +0100 From: "Bernhard Fink" <bernhard.fink@ieee.org> Subject: Re: Study finds beauty can be its own reward > [snip] > > >To answer these questions, the researchers conducted three experiments with > >groups of young, heterosexual men. (Men were chosen as study subjects because > >other recent research has shown that women?s response to facial stimuli can > >change during their menstrual cycles.) > > Could anyone point towards that research, please? Johnston, V.S., Hagel, R., Franklin, M., Fink, B. & Grammer, K. (2001). Male facial attractiveness: Evidence for hormone mediated adaptive design. Evolution and Human Behavior, 22(4), 251-267. Penton-Voak, I. S., Perrett, D. J., Castles, D. L., Kobayashi, T., Burt, D. M., Murray, L. K., & Minamisawa, R. (1999). Menstrual cycle alters face preference. Nature, 399, 741-742. Penton-Voak, I. S., & Perrett, D. I. (2000). Female preference for male faces change cyclically: Further evidence. Evolution and Human Behavior, 21, 39-48. > >The brain imaging study found that the same brain areas previously identified > >as part of a "reward circuitry," showed increased response to the viewing of > >attractive females only. In fact, the reward areas exhibited decreased activity > >when the young male participants viewed the attractive male faces. > > > >"It looks like there can be a difference between what the brain 'likes,' an > >image that is judged to be attractive, and what the brain 'wants,' something > >that is regarded as a reward in and of itself," says Breiter, who is a > >psychiatrist. "It's particularly interesting that the attractive male faces > >actually produced what could be considered an aversion response, even though > >they had been recognized as attractive." > > I wonder quite what criteria of "attractiveness" they use for male faces; > what might be termed "pretty" (ie symmetrical), or the craggy looks of > Hollywood tradition. Participants were asked to rate facial attractiveness on a 7-pont LIkert scale. The authors did the same in a pilot study for "averageness" and "beauty". ****************************************** Mag.Bernhard Fink Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology c/o Institute for Anthropology University of Vienna Althanstrasse 14 A-1090 Vienna phone: ++43 1 4277 54766 fax: ++43 1 4277 9547 email: bernhard.fink@ieee.org WWW: http://evolution.anthro.univie.ac.at ****************************************** ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 4 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 09:36:41 -0000 From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> Subject: Familial Handedness and Access to Words, Meaning, and Syntax during Sentence Comprehension Brain and Language Vol. 78, No. 3, September 1, 2001 pp. 308-331 Familial Handedness and Access to Words, Meaning, and Syntax during Sentence Comprehension David J. Townsend*, Caroline Carrithers, Thomas G. Bever *Montclair State University Rutgers University University of Arizona (Published electronically May 29, 2001) Abstract We compared right-handed familial dextral (FS-) and familial sinistral (FS+) participants who were aged either 10-13 years (children) or 18-23 years (adults). In word probe and associative probe tasks, FS+ adults responded faster than all other groups and FS+ children responded more slowly than all other groups. In the word probe task, only the FS- adults showed a significant effect of the serial position of the target word. We interpret these differences to support an analysis-by-synthesis model of comprehension in which individuals who differ in familial handedness and age emphasize different linguistic representations during comprehension. In general, FS+ individuals focus on words and meaning, while FS- individuals focus on syntactic representations. In FS+ individuals, age-related experiences with language produce a shift in responding from compositional meaning to words and their associations. In FS- individuals, age-related experiences with language produce a shift toward responding based more on detailed syntactic representations, including the serial order of words and possibly the structural roles of clauses. Copyright 2001 Academic Press. Key Words: Key Words: sentence comprehension; language acquisition; cerebral asymmetries; individual differences Address correspondence and reprint requests to David J. Townsend, Department of Psychology, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043. E-mail: townsendd@mail.montclair.edu. This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Education and Montclair State University. Beth De Forest, Jeff Keller, and Vickie Larsen assisted in scoring results. We are grateful to Ms. Gertrude Goldstein at the Woodward School for allowing us to test students, to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript, and to students in the Psychology Honors Seminar at Montclair State University. http://www.idealibrary.com/links/doi/10.1006/brln.2001.2469 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 5 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 09:44:24 -0000 From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> Subject: Humans Descended From Cells Without Nuclei Or Walls Humans Descended From Cells Without Nuclei Or Walls Research on components of the brain's electrical signaling system has answered a basic question about our human evolution, confirming scientific belief that we two-legged, computer-using creatures are descended from prokaryotes -- cellular organisms so primitive and simple that they exist without nuclei or cell walls. The study, led by Zhe Lu, MD, PhD, an Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine were recently published in the journal Nature. The research by Lu and his colleagues focused on the structure and function of molecules called potassium channels, which are essential to how the brain works. When potassium channels open and close, they control the flow of potassium ions across cell membranes. The current contributes to the electrical signals in nerve, muscle and endocrine cells. Scientists who study the brain's electrical signals have relied on a blue-print developed from functional studies of eukaryotic (neuronal) potassium channels and structural studies of prokaryotic (bacterial) potassium channels, based on the assumption that the two channels are essentially the same. However this assumption has recently been challenged. Lu and his collaborators devised a project in which the pore of a prokaryote's potassium channel (the interior core of the channel) was substituted for the pore of a potassium channel in a euokaryote. The scientists found that the eukarotic channel continued to function essentially as it had previous to the substitution. "This has very profound implications for evolution," Lu said. "It appears the potassium channels in advanced brains and hearts of mammals have evolved from something like this bacterial channel. So what we learn from the more easily studied bacterial channels can be directly applied to our understanding of potassium channels in human brains." In the study, Lu worked with Penn colleagues Angela Klem, research specialist, and Yajamana Ramu, PhD. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health. - By Ellen O'Brien [Contact: Ellen O'Brien] 09-Nov-2001 http://unisci.com/stories/20014/1109011.htm ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 6 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 09:41:54 -0000 From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> Subject: Alabama to keep textbook stickers warning that evolution is 'controversial theory' Alabama to keep textbook stickers warning that evolution is 'controversial theory' Copyright � 2001 AP Online By PHILLIP RAWLS, Associated Press MONTGOMERY, Ala. (November 9, 2001 9:35 a.m. EST) - In 1996, there was plenty of debate when Alabama began putting stickers in its students' biology textbooks warning that evolution is a "controversial theory." There was no dissent Thursday when the Alabama Board of Education voted to put the disclaimer on the front of 40,000 new biology textbooks bound for public school classrooms. The teaching of evolution, the theory that humans and other living beings evolved into their present form over millions of years, has been debated by school boards in several states. But no other state has used a disclaimer sticker in textbooks statewide, said Eric Meikle, outreach director of the National Center of Science Education. In Alabama, the state Board of Education approves several biology textbooks from different publishers, and the local public school boards select which books will go into their schools, most often into 10th-grade classrooms. The stickers that will be added to those books say, in part, that evolution is "a controversial theory. ... Instructional material associated with controversy should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." The board included the same statement in course guidelines for science teachers. Full text http://www.nandotimes.com/healthscience/story/167085p-1601359c.html ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 7 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 09:47:04 -0000 From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> Subject: Study finds female beauty is male drug Study finds female beauty is male drug Brain scans show a man's reaction to seeing beautiful women is similar to an addict's when he get his fix. The study seems to be proof feminine beauty affects the male brain at its most basic level. Pictures of attractive women activated the same reward circuits in the brains of heterosexual men as food and cocaine. The study may help prove we are born knowing what is beautiful and what is not. Dan Ariely, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of the study, said: "This is hard-core circuitry. Beauty is working similar to a drug." In a second, related study, men were shown random pictures of women for several seconds, but could extend or cut the viewing time by pressing keys on a keypad. Attractive women were viewed an average of 8.7 seconds while others were viewed for 5.2 seconds. The men worked frantically to keep the beautiful women on the screen, each pressing the keyboard an average of more than 6,700 times in 40 minutes. A researcher said: ''These guys look like rodents bar-pressing for cocaine." Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital have published their work in the journal Neuron. Story filed: 16:42 Friday 9th November 2001 http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_445698.html?menu=news.scienceanddiscovery ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 8 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 09:54:45 -0000 From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> Subject: Alabama Retains Disclaimer on Evolution NEW YORK TIMES November 10, 2001 Alabama Retains Disclaimer on Evolution By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS MONTGOMERY, Ala., Nov. 9 � Alabama is maintaining its distinction as the only state where biology textbooks include a sticker warning students that evolution is a "controversial theory" that they should question. The State Board of Education voted without dissent on Thursday to place the disclaimer on the front of 40,000 new biology textbooks to be used in public schools. After calling evolution a controversial theory, the statement says, "Instructional material associated with controversy should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered." The board included the same statement in guidelines for teachers. Full text http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/10/education/10ALAB.html ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 9 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 09:53:29 -0000 From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> Subject: Brain may forge some memories in waves Science News Online Week of Nov. 10, 2001; Vol. 160, No. 19 Brain may forge some memories in waves Bruce Bower Although people effortlessly remember all sorts of everyday events, scientists are struggling to explain how the brain makes this possible. In two critical brain areas, such memory may hinge more on the timing than on the strength of neural activity, according to a team of neuroscientists. As volunteers study word lists, clusters of neurons in the rhinal cortex and the hippocampus�adjacent brain areas already implicated in memory�fire synchronized electrical bursts that pave the way for remembering those words later, argue J�rgen Fell of the University of Bonn in Germany and his colleagues. Moreover, the coordination of cell activity in the same two brain regions plummets for a fraction of a second just after participants remember a word from the list, possibly signaling an end to a coordinated neural effort, Fell's team proposes in an article slated to appear in Nature Neuroscience. Full text http://www.sciencenews.org/20011110/fob6.asp ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 10 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 09:56:47 -0000 From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> Subject: Study: Gay, straight couples have same fights Study: Gay, straight couples have same fights by Gay.com U.K. Gay, lesbian and straight couples fight about the same things, according to a German study. Psychologist Safet Seferovic, who conducted the study for the Braunschweig base of the Christoph Dornier Foundation, told Reuters Health: "It was very interesting to see that statistically the most common problems experienced by couples, be they gay, lesbian or heterosexual, were identical." "The most common problem was in bed, sexual problems. Then came personal habits or irritations, followed by jealousy, and then domestic arrangements such as who does the most housework and then arguments about careers or jobs," he said. Full text http://www.gay.com/news/article.html?2001/11/09/4 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 11 Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 20:35:17 -0500 From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> Subject: Re: Re: Trask on Chomsky on 11/8/01 10:46 AM, Larry Trask at larryt@cogs.susx.ac.uk wrote: [snip] > > I'm sorry, but this does not follow. The ability to "count" has been > demonstrated in a startling range of species, including some birds. But > this ability does not entail the cognitive basis for language. See Stephen > Budiansky's book If a Lion Could Talk for a wonderfully dismissive account > of counting animals. My sense is that this seems to involve the perceptual recognition of numerosity and is only good for small values (less than 10, often no more that 4 or 5). It's not at all clear that this involves one-by-one cumulative enumeration of items. > > Anyway, counting is clearly a late development in human history -- very > much later than language. Until not so long ago, there were probably no > human languages on earth which possessed counting systems going beyond two > or three, and in fact there are still quite a few languages spoken today > which have no counting systems. Human beings do not invent counting > systems until they have something to count, and hunter-gatherers apparently > have no need to count. And arithmetic must be even more recent than > counting systems, since I don't see how you can do much arithmetic if you > don't have names for the numbers. Stanislas Dahaene's *The Number Sense* discusses this briefly. Initial moves beyond three seems to have involved counting body parts. Note that we've got some ancient bones (c. 30,000 years old) marked with numerous notches; this is interpreted as ennumerating some set of objects, but obviously doesn't require number names or syntax. > >> So what is all the fuss about? Why worry about Chomsky? > > A fair question. The reason for worrying about Chomsky is that he is > prominent and influential. And thus Steven Pinker could write a rather good popular book about language without even suggesting there was any approach to grammar other than Chomsky's. This is certainly not the case. There is no approach to grammar that is as widely accepted among linguists as, for example, Darwinian evolution is accepted among biologists. > > On the one hand, Chomsky has persuaded thousands of linguists to embrace > his research program, and so to devote their energies to abstract > theorizing rather than to other tasks which some of us consider more > valuable. > > On the other, non-linguists very commonly have the impression that Chomsky > speaks for linguistics, and that what Chomsky and his followers do simply > *is* linguistics. This is not so, and the fact needs to be pointed out. My understanding is that, more than any other figure (except perhaps for Jakobson), Chomsky is the one who made linguistics important to non-linguists. I think his review of 1959 B. F. Skinner's *Verbal Behavior* was important here. This obscure linguist, proposing arcane arguments about sentence structure, took on the leading proponent of the leading school of academic psychology and wrote a devastating review of his theory of language. The effect of this review was to convince many that the structure of language was the royal road to the structure of the human mind. And so philosophers and psychologists became interested in Chomsky's theories. I don't know whether the philosophers ever did much with Chomsky (though Fodor, for better or worse, gave us the modular mind), but psychologists created modern psycholinguistics largely out of attempts to ascertain the psychological plausibility of Chomsky's theories. -- William L. Benzon 708 Jersey Avenue, Apt. 2A Jersey City, NJ 07302 201 217-1010 "you won't get a wild heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds"--george ives ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 12 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 09:59:38 -0000 From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> Subject: Why Are Deep Thinkers Shallow About Tyranny? NEW YORK TIMES November 10, 2001 Q & A Why Are Deep Thinkers Shallow About Tyranny? Mark Lilla, a professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, recently published "The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics," about how writers and intellectuals have ended up justifying communism, fascism and other tyrannies. Eric Alterman spoke with him. Is there a special gene among intellectuals that lends itself to the embrace of tyranny? Are they less sensible than the general populace? If by "intellectuals" we mean those devoted to the life of the mind, we can see why they face more intensely a problem all human beings face: that of negotiating the distance between ideas and social reality. What intellectuals are prone to forget is that this distance poses not only conceptual difficulties but ethical ones as well. It is a moral challenge to determine how to comport oneself simultaneously in relation to abstract ideas and a recalcitrant world. Full text http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/10/arts/10QNA.html ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 13 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 10:06:15 -0000 From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com> Subject: What Scientists Learned in the 20th Century. NEW YORK TIMES November 11, 2001 'The Age of Science': Back Issues By LOREN GRAHAM THE AGE OF SCIENCE What Scientists Learned in the 20th Century. By Gerard Piel. Illustrated by Peter Bradford. 460 pp. New York: A Cornelia and Michael Bessie Book/Basic Books. $40. In May 1948 Gerard Piel, a former science editor for Life, started a new science magazine bearing the purchased title of a moribund periodical, Scientific American. Within a few years he and several associates created a model for science journalism that has had worldwide influence. By 1986 Scientific American had a circulation of over a million and was printed in English and nine other languages. Full text http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/books/review/11GRAHAMT.html ________ The Age of Science: What Scientists Learned in the Twentieth Century by Gerard Piel, Peter Bradford (Illustrator) Hardcover - 400 pages (October 16, 2001) Basic Books; ISBN: 0465057551 AMAZON - US http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465057551/darwinanddarwini/ AMAZON - UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465057551/humannaturecom/ From Publishers Weekly Because scientists have amassed an enormous amount of new knowledge over the past century, attempts to summarize it all in a single volume are unlikely to succeed. From his unique former position as publisher of Scientific American for 38 years, Piel seems as equipped as anyone to achieve such an undertaking. Unfortunately, even his effort falls short. Piel organizes his material into seven sections: the fundamental forces of nature, quantum mechanics, cosmology, molecular biology, geology, the evolution of life and human evolution. Each chapter appears to have been written for a different audience; the ones focusing on physics require fairly sophisticated understanding ("In the cloud chamber, lithium yielded a two-prong track at the point of collision, signifying its break-up into two alpha particles"). Those on biology and geology are much more accessible to lay readers ("evidence is strong that Mendel designed his experiments to test his hunch that a trait is carried thus intact from one generation to the next"). No field of study, however, is handled in a completely satisfying manner, whoever the intended audience. Piel simply does not supply more than a cursory overview of any topic. Many subjects deserving of attention, given the book's title, are omitted; there is virtually no discussion of any medical topic, of the creation and dissemination of computing technology or of environmental advances, to name just a few. Although the book is generous with illustrations (mostly maps and diagrams), their cartoonish style renders them more distracting than enlightening. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Booklist This is an excellent survey of science's major breakthroughs written by someone who has had decades of practice in communicating scientific issues to the interested lay public; Piel was the publisher of Scientific American from the late 1940s to the late 1980s. Here, he is effectively supported by dozens of illustrations; still, the clarity emanates from his prose through its precision and seamless integration of science's disciplines. Physics, the king of the natural sciences, permeates the book, and the history of physics proper constitutes three-fifths of his text. After providing an overview of how scientists comprehend the natural world, Piel dives into the divinations of motion, gravitation, and light, then spotlights the glaring shortcomings in classical theories, circa 1900. From the revolutionary ideas of a Planck and an Einstein, Piel presses on through the experiments and theories regarding the subatomic particle and the big bang. Turning terrestrial, he discusses the anatomy of the cell, evolution, the symbiosis between life and geology, and, finally, human origins. A masterfully presented science primer. Gilbert Taylor Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved -Lynn Margulis, author of What Is Life? and Symbiotic Planet "I love the manuscript. The flair and inspiration of the old Scientific American have resurfaced with great aplomb." Book Description A sweeping overview of the scientific achievements of the 20th century, without question the greatest century for science in human history, by the legendary former publisher of Scientific American. When historians of the future come to examine western civilization in the twentieth century, one area of intellectual accomplishment will stand out above all others: more than any other era before it, the twentieth century was an age of science. Not only were the practical details of daily life radically transformed by the application of scientific discoveries, but our very sense of who we are, how our minds work, how our world came to be, how it works and our proper role in it, our ultimate origins, and our ultimate fate were all influenced by scientific thinking as never before in human history. In The Age of Science, the former editor and publisher of Scientific American gives us a sweeping overview of the scientific achievements of the twentieth century, with chapters on the fundamental forces of nature, the subatomic world, cosmology, the cell and molecular biology, earth history and the evolution of life, and human evolution. Beautifully written and illustrated, this is a book for the connoisseur: an elegant, informative, magisterial summation of one of the twentieth century's greatest cultural achievements. About the Author Gerard Piel was a founder of the revived Scientific American and served as its publisher from 1948 until his retirement in 1986. He lives in New York City. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/