Sometimes I think the defense of slavery has been as pernicious as slavery itself, if for no other reason than it discourages logical thinking.
Charleston in the years after the revolution included plantation owners willing to experiment with new technology. By the time of the nullification crisis around 1830 innovators still existed, but they weren’t respected for their efforts. Slaves, not machines, were the only answer for economic challenges.
Scientific thinking posits the sanctity of facts, and assumes scientists will change their theories when those theories no longer can explain observed reality. Thomas Kuhn showed men don’t always live up to that ideal, that when they’re confronted with anomalies they propose more and more absurd solutions to sustain their basic beliefs. However, he also showed that over time, the value of experience does alter theory, the underlying value holds.
One cannot support scientific thinking if one is so wedded to a practice like slavery that no contrary facts can be admitted. Once facts cannot be recognized, then they must be explained away, turned into something that supports the overarching theory. Bending reality becomes acceptable.
Today, we have people who deny the observed realities of climate change because the proposed explanation threatens some part of their world view. For some, it’s the idea that nature isn’t as rigid as suggested by Genesis. For others, it’s the concept of human responsibility and the consequences for accountability for one’s actions that’s troubling. And, of course, there are those who see an economic threat.
The result is an attack on science itself.
Recently, Mary Beard reviewed a book by Donald Kagan which she saw as attacking Thucydides for praising the behavior of Pericles in the Peloponnesian war which Kagan thinks is like that of those who wouldn’t put more resources into winning the war in Viet Nam. Since Kagan believes those actions led to unnecessary defeat, so Pericles must be redefined as leading his country to disaster.
The result is an attack on the academy itself which tries to sift evidence to develop explanations. When certain conclusions are forbidden, reality must be subverted.
Since the protests against the Vietnam war, discrimination against Blacks and abortion in the late 1960's, we have seen a growing number of people who cannot accept the validity of criticism of any kind. If schools needed to change to fit social ideals, then education must be rejected. And so, a generation developed who rejected the very tools they needed to survive in the changing economy.
Now the economy is in crisis and those who’ve been left behind are the most vehement in protesting any policy that might prevent further or repeated problems, simply because the people who propose those solutions are associated with other ideas that are unacceptable. The basic thinking seems to be, if you have the wrong idea about abortion, then you can’t be trusted with the money supply.
The final result has been an attack on the constitution itself, which distributes power among groups in the population. Since those left behind cannot change, then the constitution must be reinterpreted. The tools that come to hand are those developed by men in the south who defended slavery - nullification and the primacy of minority rights.
Elections are no longer legitimate if the wrong man wins.
Notes:
Beard, Mary. "Which Thucydides Can You Trust?," The New York Review of Books, 30 September 2010, on Donald Kagan’s Thucydides: The Reinvention of History.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962.
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
South Carolina - DNA Studies
Gregor Mendel was doing his pea inheritance experiments at the same time Darwin was developing the theory of natural selection, but the monk’s work was not publicized until 1900.
Breeders already had enough experience with the variability of hybrids to recognize the statistical patterns he described, that people with blue eyes inherit their eye color from both parents because the blue allele is recessive, and that crossing a red and white pea would produce a red or white flower 25% of the time, and a pink the rest.
Rose growers confirmed his work, especially when they took a hybrid and backcrossed it with one of its parents. It’s easy for them to say Chapmneys Pink Cluster introduced a recessive gene for reblooming because their efforts produced results that confirmed their expectations.
In 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published their work on the structure of DNA and scientists began using sophisticated instruments to determine exactly where each gene resided, and what each controlled.
Results for rice specialists have not been as satisfying as those for roses. Dormancy, that single domestication event posited by earlier researchers, was no longer simple because dormancy isn’t a physical trait like color, but either results from the structure of the outer layer of the seed or from the embryo. Its appearance isn’t tied to a single gene, but to areas of DNA that exists on several chromosomes.
A Chinese team found five quantitative trait loci have been identified on five chromosomes, and that dormancy increased in only four cases when they introduced an allele from a highly dormant indica cultivar. They learned the more genes they altered, the greater the dormancy.
A group in Korea found similar complexity when they looked at the literature on shattering, another trait hypothesized to have been central to domestication. The ability for the seed to separate easily at maturity without breaking is the consequence of hormonal processes that create a hardened abscission layer on the pedicel stem that holds the seed to the head.
They found reports that four alleles on four of rice’s twelve chromosomes have been linked to shattering, of which two are involved with the creation of the abscission layer. They also found six broader quantitative trait loci had been identified on six chromosomes.
The group created a shattering mutation by treating a non-shattering japonica variety with N-methyl-N-nitrosourea, then crossed it with five cultivars, including its parent. The results suggested the recessive sh-h gene on chromosome 7 was responsible for shattering. They noted that area was closely linked to the Rc location that controls red hull color and the qSDs-7-1 experimentally tied to dormancy.
The level of amylose, a form of starch, is used to differentiate sticky japonica from fluffy indica rices. However, the tropical japonica javanica falls between the two.
In 1983, researchers for the Carnegie Institution discovered the Wx or waxy gene controlled amylose content in maize pollen and kernels. The gene has since been found in wheat, barley, millet and rice. In rice, the Wxa allele is associated with dryland indica and Wxb is found with wetland japonica.
However, a group of Japanese scientists found both existed in the two subspecies and that Wxb predominates. The distinction between the two occurs during the encoding process when a nucleotide that follows the pattern AGGT in nirvana and rufipogon mutates to AGTT.
In other words, the causative agent isn’t the genetic allele, but something working on that allele during reproduction. Further, the change isn’t permanent, but can revert in the next generation. Another Japanese team found the same kind of change in the African glaberrima rice came from deleting and inserting a new unit in the nucleotide sequence, rather than substituting a T for a G.
Scientists now know a great deal more about rice, but without specimens with known provenance, they can’t say where Hezeiah Maham or John Joshua Ward got his seed. Richard Porcher has found the plats to Maham’s plantation and hopes to unearth some grains. Depending on the results, geneticists may be able to guess if Ward’s Carolina Gold was the direct, but mutant, offspring of Ward, or like the Blush Noisette, has another as yet unidentified parent that blew in from another field.
Researchers have, however, done something more extraordinary, unintentionally duplicated the daily experience of planters who were constantly surprised when their gold hulled rice turned white, or their white turned red. The very randomness of such traits forced them to become better observers, and thus more open to an explanation like that provided by Darwin when it became available.
Notes:
Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. "Searching the Origins of Carolina Gold," The Rice Paper November 2009.
Ji, Hyeon-So, Sang-Ho Chu, Wenzhu Jiang, Young-Il Cho, Jang-Ho Hahn, Moo-Young Eun, Susan R. McCouch, and Hee-Jong Koh. "Characterization and Mapping of a Shattering Mutant in Rice That Corresponds to a Block of Domestication Genes," Genetics 173: 995–1005:2006.
Shure, M., SR Wessler, N. Federoff. "Molecular Identification and Isolation of the Waxy Locus in Maize," Cell 35:225-233, 1983.
Umeda M, H. Ohtsubo, and E. Ohtsubo. "Diversification of the Rice Waxy Gene by Insertion of Mobile DNA Elements into Introns," The Japanese Journal of Genetics 66:569-86:1991.
Wan, J. M., L. Jiang, J.Y. Tang, C.M. Wang, M.Y. Hou, W. Jing and L.X. Zhang. "Genetic Dissection of the Seed Dormancy Trait in Cultivated Rice (Oryza sativa L.)," Plant Science 170:786-792:2006.
Yamanaka, Shinsuke, Ikuo Nakamura, Kazuo N. Watanabe, and Yo-Ichiro Sato. "Identification of SNPs in the Waxy Gene among Glutinous Rice Cultivars and Their Evolutionary Significance during the Domestication Process," Theoretical and Applied Genetics 108:1200-124:2004.
Breeders already had enough experience with the variability of hybrids to recognize the statistical patterns he described, that people with blue eyes inherit their eye color from both parents because the blue allele is recessive, and that crossing a red and white pea would produce a red or white flower 25% of the time, and a pink the rest.
Rose growers confirmed his work, especially when they took a hybrid and backcrossed it with one of its parents. It’s easy for them to say Chapmneys Pink Cluster introduced a recessive gene for reblooming because their efforts produced results that confirmed their expectations.
In 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published their work on the structure of DNA and scientists began using sophisticated instruments to determine exactly where each gene resided, and what each controlled.
Results for rice specialists have not been as satisfying as those for roses. Dormancy, that single domestication event posited by earlier researchers, was no longer simple because dormancy isn’t a physical trait like color, but either results from the structure of the outer layer of the seed or from the embryo. Its appearance isn’t tied to a single gene, but to areas of DNA that exists on several chromosomes.
A Chinese team found five quantitative trait loci have been identified on five chromosomes, and that dormancy increased in only four cases when they introduced an allele from a highly dormant indica cultivar. They learned the more genes they altered, the greater the dormancy.
A group in Korea found similar complexity when they looked at the literature on shattering, another trait hypothesized to have been central to domestication. The ability for the seed to separate easily at maturity without breaking is the consequence of hormonal processes that create a hardened abscission layer on the pedicel stem that holds the seed to the head.
They found reports that four alleles on four of rice’s twelve chromosomes have been linked to shattering, of which two are involved with the creation of the abscission layer. They also found six broader quantitative trait loci had been identified on six chromosomes.
The group created a shattering mutation by treating a non-shattering japonica variety with N-methyl-N-nitrosourea, then crossed it with five cultivars, including its parent. The results suggested the recessive sh-h gene on chromosome 7 was responsible for shattering. They noted that area was closely linked to the Rc location that controls red hull color and the qSDs-7-1 experimentally tied to dormancy.
The level of amylose, a form of starch, is used to differentiate sticky japonica from fluffy indica rices. However, the tropical japonica javanica falls between the two.
In 1983, researchers for the Carnegie Institution discovered the Wx or waxy gene controlled amylose content in maize pollen and kernels. The gene has since been found in wheat, barley, millet and rice. In rice, the Wxa allele is associated with dryland indica and Wxb is found with wetland japonica.
However, a group of Japanese scientists found both existed in the two subspecies and that Wxb predominates. The distinction between the two occurs during the encoding process when a nucleotide that follows the pattern AGGT in nirvana and rufipogon mutates to AGTT.
In other words, the causative agent isn’t the genetic allele, but something working on that allele during reproduction. Further, the change isn’t permanent, but can revert in the next generation. Another Japanese team found the same kind of change in the African glaberrima rice came from deleting and inserting a new unit in the nucleotide sequence, rather than substituting a T for a G.
Scientists now know a great deal more about rice, but without specimens with known provenance, they can’t say where Hezeiah Maham or John Joshua Ward got his seed. Richard Porcher has found the plats to Maham’s plantation and hopes to unearth some grains. Depending on the results, geneticists may be able to guess if Ward’s Carolina Gold was the direct, but mutant, offspring of Ward, or like the Blush Noisette, has another as yet unidentified parent that blew in from another field.
Researchers have, however, done something more extraordinary, unintentionally duplicated the daily experience of planters who were constantly surprised when their gold hulled rice turned white, or their white turned red. The very randomness of such traits forced them to become better observers, and thus more open to an explanation like that provided by Darwin when it became available.
Notes:
Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. "Searching the Origins of Carolina Gold," The Rice Paper November 2009.
Ji, Hyeon-So, Sang-Ho Chu, Wenzhu Jiang, Young-Il Cho, Jang-Ho Hahn, Moo-Young Eun, Susan R. McCouch, and Hee-Jong Koh. "Characterization and Mapping of a Shattering Mutant in Rice That Corresponds to a Block of Domestication Genes," Genetics 173: 995–1005:2006.
Shure, M., SR Wessler, N. Federoff. "Molecular Identification and Isolation of the Waxy Locus in Maize," Cell 35:225-233, 1983.
Umeda M, H. Ohtsubo, and E. Ohtsubo. "Diversification of the Rice Waxy Gene by Insertion of Mobile DNA Elements into Introns," The Japanese Journal of Genetics 66:569-86:1991.
Wan, J. M., L. Jiang, J.Y. Tang, C.M. Wang, M.Y. Hou, W. Jing and L.X. Zhang. "Genetic Dissection of the Seed Dormancy Trait in Cultivated Rice (Oryza sativa L.)," Plant Science 170:786-792:2006.
Yamanaka, Shinsuke, Ikuo Nakamura, Kazuo N. Watanabe, and Yo-Ichiro Sato. "Identification of SNPs in the Waxy Gene among Glutinous Rice Cultivars and Their Evolutionary Significance during the Domestication Process," Theoretical and Applied Genetics 108:1200-124:2004.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
South Carolina - Rice and Roses
Hezekiah Maham and John Champneys are an unlikely pair to be the ones responsible for Charleston’s antebellum wealth and beauty. It’s even odder, given South Carolina’s current reputation for fundamentalism, that the actions of the two contributed to the growing body of experience that led people to accept Charles Darwin’s 1859 suggestion that natural selection was the operative cause of evolution.
After the war, Maham needed seed rice for his Pineville area plantation. He died four years later. In the years since he was so deeply in debt, he must have had some success, because the next year, his younger daughter, Mary’s husband, George Haig died and left the slaves he’d acquired from Maham to his wife for her life.
In 1800, Joshua John Ward was born at Brook Green plantation to Maham’s niece, Elizabeth Cook, and John Ward. Thirty-seven years later, his overseer, James C. Thompson, noticed part of a rice head that was larger than any other Ward had seen.
Ward saved the seed, and planted it the next year on the margins of an old field where it was nearly destroyed by standing water and rats. The following year, he and Thompson planted the seed they’d been able to salvage in a large tub in Thompson’s yard, only to have a slave leave the gate open and a hog eat most of the crop. They transplanted the survivors, and most of the rice was sterile.
In 1840, they took what had survived the hog and rot, and planted half an acre. The next year, Ward planted 21 acres at Brook Green, which his factor sold above the market price. In 1842, Ward tried 400 acres, and the following year planted nothing but the new large grain.
In 1844, Ward made Carolina Gold available commercially. From then until the civil war, the Brook Green rice "commanded the highest price of any rice on the world market in Paris and London."
Ward claimed his 1838 seed was descended from that planted by his great-uncle in 1785.
Sometime in the early 1800's, either 1802 or 1810 or 1811, John Champneys found a new rose growing on his plantation which appeared to be a cross between a white musk, cultivated in Europe since the Crusades, and Parson’s Pink, which had been introduced to England from China in 1759.
Philippe Noisette, a son of the head gardener to the future Louis XVIII, had moved to Charleston in 1795 with his Haitian wife after the revolution there. He experimented with the rose, now called Champneys’ Pink Cluster, and in 1814 sent either seeds or plants to his brother who had a nursery in Paris. Either Philippe or Louis Claude crossed the plant with another rose; the hybrid was introduced in Europe as Blush Noisette in 1819.
Meantime, plant stock of some kind was sent to William Price, Jr., who had the best known American nursery on Long Island, and traded plants with his English suppliers. Two years before Champneys died, the Loddiges Nursery outside London offered a new rose, Champigny, in 1818.
Noisettes were the first roses to introduce the recessive gene for reblooming isolated by the Chinese into a fragrant European species. A number of new varieties appeared in France in the 1820's and 1830's. By the 1840's, they were crossed with tea roses, which led in 1867 to La France, the first hybrid tea released by Jean-Baptiste André Guillot the younger.
At the time, Louis Claude Noisette and other French growers were becoming aware of the mechanics of plant reproduction. When Rudolph Jacob Camerarius had argued in 1694 that plants had sexual organs, and pollen was the male agent of fertilization, most ignored him.
In 1729 a 22-year-old Carl Linnaeus expanded his ides to suggest a method of classifying plants in Introduction to the Floral Nuptials. He continued his work to make reproduction the basis for his description of the natural world and external characteristics, the morphology, the criteria naturalists would use to distinguish species.
The most important work for breeders appeared in 1793, when Christian Konrad Sprengel described his practical experiments with pollination. Still, more than a generation passed before the first controlled rose hybrid was introduced by Beauregard in Angiers in 1839. Safrano, a grandparent of La France, combined a yellow China with a Bourbon, itself a spontaneous hybrid of Parson’s Pink and a damask found on La Réunion in 1823 by Edouard Perichon.
At the time Maham acquired his gold husked seed and Champneys bought his pink shrub rose, observation and selection were the only methods available to farmers to improve their crops. In 1843, Ward’s relative through his mother’s sister, Robert Allston complained that poor rice came from the "commingling of the grain" which happened when different varieties were planted in adjacent fields, and planters were "careless" in selecting their seed stock.
The year before Ward introduced Carolina Gold, Allston described the types of rice then growing in the state. His classification criteria were morphological: seed husk color, size, shape, and awns, also called beards.
The most important variety, which he attributed to Maham, had a gold shell. This coexisted with white rice, which had a creamy hull; guinea rice, which he said looked like guinea corn, a form of African sorghum or millet, and proud rice, a red grain with a white husk and awn like gold seed.
Allston contrasted these with attempts to improve the quality of the crop, either through introducing new seed or careful selection. His example of the first was a bearded variety brought from the East Indies the year before. As an illustration of "improvement" through "a long-continued, careful selection of the seed," he mentioned the long grain rice about to be introduced by Ward.
At the time Carolina Gold and Safrano were introduced in 1844 and 1839, Darwin was back in England from his five year voyage on the Beagle and working out an explanation for the endemic species he’d seen in the Galapagos islands.
It’s his name we associate with the revolution in plant breeding, even though he drew on the work of men like Sprengel. Similarly, while J. J. Ward and Louis Claude Noisette received the credit and profits for developing new plant varieties, they needed the experience of Hezekiah Maham and John Champneys, and the support of men like Robert Allston and Philipe Nosette.
Innovation can only come from a combination of shared interests and special individuals.
Notes: Mary Charlotte Cook, Ward’s maternal aunt, married Benjamin Allston Sr. Allston’s uncle was William Allston, the father of Robert Francis Withers Allston.
Allston, Robert. A Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South Carolina, 1843, reprinted in several other publications, including James Dunwoody, The Industrial Resources, Etc., of the Southern and Western States, volume 2, 1852.
Camerarius, Rudolph Jacob. Epistolae de Sexa Plantarum, 1694.
Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. "Searching the Origins of Carolina Gold," The Rice Paper, November 2009; the "highest price" quotation.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species, 1859.
Hurst, C. C. "Notes on the Origin and Evolution of Our Garden Roses," 1941, reprinted in Graham Stuart Thomas, The Old Shrub Roses, 1955.
Lineaus, Carl. Praeludia Sponsaliorum Plantarum, 1730.
_____. Systema Naturae, first edition 1735.
Spengle, Christian Konrad. Das entdeckte Geheimnis der Natur im Bau und in der Befruchtung der Blumen, 1793.
Ward, Joshua John. Letter to Robert Allston, 16 November 1843, incorporated in later editions by Allston and reprinted by the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, The Rice Paper, November 2009.
After the war, Maham needed seed rice for his Pineville area plantation. He died four years later. In the years since he was so deeply in debt, he must have had some success, because the next year, his younger daughter, Mary’s husband, George Haig died and left the slaves he’d acquired from Maham to his wife for her life.
In 1800, Joshua John Ward was born at Brook Green plantation to Maham’s niece, Elizabeth Cook, and John Ward. Thirty-seven years later, his overseer, James C. Thompson, noticed part of a rice head that was larger than any other Ward had seen.
Ward saved the seed, and planted it the next year on the margins of an old field where it was nearly destroyed by standing water and rats. The following year, he and Thompson planted the seed they’d been able to salvage in a large tub in Thompson’s yard, only to have a slave leave the gate open and a hog eat most of the crop. They transplanted the survivors, and most of the rice was sterile.
In 1840, they took what had survived the hog and rot, and planted half an acre. The next year, Ward planted 21 acres at Brook Green, which his factor sold above the market price. In 1842, Ward tried 400 acres, and the following year planted nothing but the new large grain.
In 1844, Ward made Carolina Gold available commercially. From then until the civil war, the Brook Green rice "commanded the highest price of any rice on the world market in Paris and London."
Ward claimed his 1838 seed was descended from that planted by his great-uncle in 1785.
Sometime in the early 1800's, either 1802 or 1810 or 1811, John Champneys found a new rose growing on his plantation which appeared to be a cross between a white musk, cultivated in Europe since the Crusades, and Parson’s Pink, which had been introduced to England from China in 1759.
Philippe Noisette, a son of the head gardener to the future Louis XVIII, had moved to Charleston in 1795 with his Haitian wife after the revolution there. He experimented with the rose, now called Champneys’ Pink Cluster, and in 1814 sent either seeds or plants to his brother who had a nursery in Paris. Either Philippe or Louis Claude crossed the plant with another rose; the hybrid was introduced in Europe as Blush Noisette in 1819.
Meantime, plant stock of some kind was sent to William Price, Jr., who had the best known American nursery on Long Island, and traded plants with his English suppliers. Two years before Champneys died, the Loddiges Nursery outside London offered a new rose, Champigny, in 1818.
Noisettes were the first roses to introduce the recessive gene for reblooming isolated by the Chinese into a fragrant European species. A number of new varieties appeared in France in the 1820's and 1830's. By the 1840's, they were crossed with tea roses, which led in 1867 to La France, the first hybrid tea released by Jean-Baptiste André Guillot the younger.
At the time, Louis Claude Noisette and other French growers were becoming aware of the mechanics of plant reproduction. When Rudolph Jacob Camerarius had argued in 1694 that plants had sexual organs, and pollen was the male agent of fertilization, most ignored him.
In 1729 a 22-year-old Carl Linnaeus expanded his ides to suggest a method of classifying plants in Introduction to the Floral Nuptials. He continued his work to make reproduction the basis for his description of the natural world and external characteristics, the morphology, the criteria naturalists would use to distinguish species.
The most important work for breeders appeared in 1793, when Christian Konrad Sprengel described his practical experiments with pollination. Still, more than a generation passed before the first controlled rose hybrid was introduced by Beauregard in Angiers in 1839. Safrano, a grandparent of La France, combined a yellow China with a Bourbon, itself a spontaneous hybrid of Parson’s Pink and a damask found on La Réunion in 1823 by Edouard Perichon.
At the time Maham acquired his gold husked seed and Champneys bought his pink shrub rose, observation and selection were the only methods available to farmers to improve their crops. In 1843, Ward’s relative through his mother’s sister, Robert Allston complained that poor rice came from the "commingling of the grain" which happened when different varieties were planted in adjacent fields, and planters were "careless" in selecting their seed stock.
The year before Ward introduced Carolina Gold, Allston described the types of rice then growing in the state. His classification criteria were morphological: seed husk color, size, shape, and awns, also called beards.
The most important variety, which he attributed to Maham, had a gold shell. This coexisted with white rice, which had a creamy hull; guinea rice, which he said looked like guinea corn, a form of African sorghum or millet, and proud rice, a red grain with a white husk and awn like gold seed.
Allston contrasted these with attempts to improve the quality of the crop, either through introducing new seed or careful selection. His example of the first was a bearded variety brought from the East Indies the year before. As an illustration of "improvement" through "a long-continued, careful selection of the seed," he mentioned the long grain rice about to be introduced by Ward.
At the time Carolina Gold and Safrano were introduced in 1844 and 1839, Darwin was back in England from his five year voyage on the Beagle and working out an explanation for the endemic species he’d seen in the Galapagos islands.
It’s his name we associate with the revolution in plant breeding, even though he drew on the work of men like Sprengel. Similarly, while J. J. Ward and Louis Claude Noisette received the credit and profits for developing new plant varieties, they needed the experience of Hezekiah Maham and John Champneys, and the support of men like Robert Allston and Philipe Nosette.
Innovation can only come from a combination of shared interests and special individuals.
Notes: Mary Charlotte Cook, Ward’s maternal aunt, married Benjamin Allston Sr. Allston’s uncle was William Allston, the father of Robert Francis Withers Allston.
Allston, Robert. A Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South Carolina, 1843, reprinted in several other publications, including James Dunwoody, The Industrial Resources, Etc., of the Southern and Western States, volume 2, 1852.
Camerarius, Rudolph Jacob. Epistolae de Sexa Plantarum, 1694.
Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. "Searching the Origins of Carolina Gold," The Rice Paper, November 2009; the "highest price" quotation.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species, 1859.
Hurst, C. C. "Notes on the Origin and Evolution of Our Garden Roses," 1941, reprinted in Graham Stuart Thomas, The Old Shrub Roses, 1955.
Lineaus, Carl. Praeludia Sponsaliorum Plantarum, 1730.
_____. Systema Naturae, first edition 1735.
Spengle, Christian Konrad. Das entdeckte Geheimnis der Natur im Bau und in der Befruchtung der Blumen, 1793.
Ward, Joshua John. Letter to Robert Allston, 16 November 1843, incorporated in later editions by Allston and reprinted by the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, The Rice Paper, November 2009.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Aluminum and Steel
One of the most striking things about the current group of fundamentalist thinkers who dominate the media is how little regard they have for what is literally true. It’s as if their argument that everything described in Genesis actually occurred allows them to say anything they like about things not included in the holy book.
The separation of what one wants to be true from what, in my undergraduate days, my philosophy student friends used to call really real reality has become so commonplace, I sometimes wonder how people manage to drive home safely. The laws of physics that state two objects can’t fill the same space at the same time still prevail, no matter how optimistic the passer.
A couple weeks ago, my boss’s eighty-some-year-old mother was working on making a rent sign. I had bought the white metal blanks, she had had a stencil made, and her son’s foreman had painted the signs. She discovered she would need to buy several sets of self-sticking numbers to get enough zeros for the prices, and was wondering what would be cheaper.
The foreman suggested refrigerator magnets.
She answered they were too expensive.
I looked at them both and said it’s aluminum.
They looked as me as if to say "so," and returned to the pros and cons of using magnets.
I thought, how do I explain grade school science to a woman raised to be a flapper and a young man raised in another country?
I can still vaguely remember some boy bringing two of those gray and red horseshoe magnets to school and showing them attracting screws and repelling each other. The lesson, no doubt, was reinforced by Mr. Wizard.
The magic remains. Last summer I was in a mineral store with a friend, and there was a box labeled with the name of some iron ore, perhaps lodestone. Naturally, I wanted to know. The store owner knew his customers and had placed a magnet next to the box. Now I know.
I suppose the combination of cartoons and advertising that show things like sponges attracting and unattracting spills destroy the wonder of magnets for very small children. Perhaps they learn to use the refrigerator decorations before they can sense the physical attraction when the magnet gets close to the door and, even if they let go, will attach.
The virtual world of the media, the familiarity of the commonplace destroy the sense of wonder that made iron workers so important to early man. It’s a link with a very ancient past that’s being lost.
The woman’s next idea was using a magic marker and turpentine. I didn’t even want to consider explaining the properties of powder coating or surface adhesion or any of the other aspects of physics that made that a questionable idea, and so just shouted back "Cheap, cheap, cheap!"
After they left, I took a magnet from the steel file case and put it near the white frame where spots of red showed through. The excitement still exists when the power of attraction takes over. Then I put it on the sign and watched it slide to the floor.
My world view was reified. Aluminum’s still aluminum and steel’s still steel, and all the blathering otherwise won’t change those facts.
The separation of what one wants to be true from what, in my undergraduate days, my philosophy student friends used to call really real reality has become so commonplace, I sometimes wonder how people manage to drive home safely. The laws of physics that state two objects can’t fill the same space at the same time still prevail, no matter how optimistic the passer.
A couple weeks ago, my boss’s eighty-some-year-old mother was working on making a rent sign. I had bought the white metal blanks, she had had a stencil made, and her son’s foreman had painted the signs. She discovered she would need to buy several sets of self-sticking numbers to get enough zeros for the prices, and was wondering what would be cheaper.
The foreman suggested refrigerator magnets.
She answered they were too expensive.
I looked at them both and said it’s aluminum.
They looked as me as if to say "so," and returned to the pros and cons of using magnets.
I thought, how do I explain grade school science to a woman raised to be a flapper and a young man raised in another country?
I can still vaguely remember some boy bringing two of those gray and red horseshoe magnets to school and showing them attracting screws and repelling each other. The lesson, no doubt, was reinforced by Mr. Wizard.
The magic remains. Last summer I was in a mineral store with a friend, and there was a box labeled with the name of some iron ore, perhaps lodestone. Naturally, I wanted to know. The store owner knew his customers and had placed a magnet next to the box. Now I know.
I suppose the combination of cartoons and advertising that show things like sponges attracting and unattracting spills destroy the wonder of magnets for very small children. Perhaps they learn to use the refrigerator decorations before they can sense the physical attraction when the magnet gets close to the door and, even if they let go, will attach.
The virtual world of the media, the familiarity of the commonplace destroy the sense of wonder that made iron workers so important to early man. It’s a link with a very ancient past that’s being lost.
The woman’s next idea was using a magic marker and turpentine. I didn’t even want to consider explaining the properties of powder coating or surface adhesion or any of the other aspects of physics that made that a questionable idea, and so just shouted back "Cheap, cheap, cheap!"
After they left, I took a magnet from the steel file case and put it near the white frame where spots of red showed through. The excitement still exists when the power of attraction takes over. Then I put it on the sign and watched it slide to the floor.
My world view was reified. Aluminum’s still aluminum and steel’s still steel, and all the blathering otherwise won’t change those facts.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Malaria and Men
It all began with a grammar error.
On August 3rd of this year, Nathan Wolfe told readers of the Huffington Post "today, me and my colleagues from Cameroon, Germany and the United States announced our discovery of the origin of malaria."
If he had said "my colleagues and I," I wouldn’t have noticed the many violations of scientific etiquette embedded in his posting. But instead, he baldly declared "me discovery."
Now anyone who’s read the history of science or novels by C. P. Snow knows scientific etiquette is, at best, a veneer disguising ambition, jealousy and all the other human emotions that characterize the interactions of competitive individuals. Wolfe’s comment is only noteworthy for revealing the contemporary narcissistic form, "it’s all about me."
The National Academy of Science did indeed publish an on-line article that day, "The Origin of Malignant Malaria," with Stephen Rich as the lead author. After whatever jockeying for credit occurred, Wolfe came out last in the list of 14.
He wasn’t the only co-author to promote an independent narrative. Number 13, Francisco Ayala, used the University of California at Irvine as his more discrete, third-party platform. Unlike Wolfe, he at least did admit Rich was the lead author, but not without emphasizing Rich had been one of his students.
Reuters apparently used the Irvine news release for its story the next day, while the Associated Press relied on Wolfe. The New York Times picked up the latter, thereby giving Wolfe the edge in kudos for the team’s research.
Ayala, now in his 70's, is of an age when men secretly hope to win a Nobel Prize to recognize their lifetime achievements, and he has been one of the pioneers investigating the evolution of the malaria parasite. Irvine’s story emphasized that his work probes one of the great questions of contemporary medicine, how diseases like AIDS and influenza migrate between animals and humans.
But, as is the way with science, he is not alone in his presumed quest for recognition from that notoriously factious, political group in Sweden. In May of this year another team, this one centered in France and Gabon, published their findings that documented genetic similarities between the human and primate forms of malaria. Either team could make the final breakthrough that might receive the award.
Wolfe is younger and no doubt knows only one prize is awarded each year in any field and every year there are more scientists in more countries doing innovative work. He probably also knows that historians have found most scientists make their most important contribution before they are 30, and if they haven’t achieved some fame by then, they probably won’t. He’s nearing 40.
California has developed an alternative paradigm for the young that promises them celebrity at an early age if they can patent something that can be sold. Wolfe has already been tempted by that siren. Last year, Frank Rijsberman, of Google’s philanthropic group, gave money to support Wolfe’s work with the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative and declared "Nathan is going to be a rock star in this field." Wolfe’s Huffington Post release emphasized the possibilities of a sellable product, a vaccine.
Ayala represents pure science grappling with the workings of nature, while Wolfe is promoting practical applications for that knowledge. A malaria vaccine would certainly be useful, but will face the same cultural and financial impediments the Bill Gates’ foundation confronts now in fighting malaria in Africa. The individual or group who finds the best way to convince humans to change their behavior without coercion may be the one who should win the prize.
Notes:
Associated Press. "First Origin of Malaria May Have Been Found," 3 August 2009.
Fitzenberger, Jennifer. "Scientists Report Original Source of Malaria," University of California at
Irvine news release, 3 August 2009, has best discussion of research in the field.
Ollomo, Benjamin and 7 others. "A New Malaria Agent in African Hominids," PLoS Pathog, 29 May 2009.
Reuters. "Malaria May Have Come from Chimps," 4 August 2009, edited by Xavier Briand.
Rich Stephen and 13 others. "The Origin of Malignant Malaria," National Academy of Sciences, online Proceedings for 3 August 2009.
Svoboda, Elizabeth. "Nathan Wolfe: Deep in the Rain Forest, Stalking the Next Pandemic," The New York Times, 20 October 2008.
Vasich, Tom. "Biologist Francisco J. Ayala Wins National Medal of Science," University of California at Irvine news release, 9 May 2002.
Wolfe, Nathan. "The Origin of Malaria: Discovered," Huffington Post, 3 August 2009.
On August 3rd of this year, Nathan Wolfe told readers of the Huffington Post "today, me and my colleagues from Cameroon, Germany and the United States announced our discovery of the origin of malaria."
If he had said "my colleagues and I," I wouldn’t have noticed the many violations of scientific etiquette embedded in his posting. But instead, he baldly declared "me discovery."
Now anyone who’s read the history of science or novels by C. P. Snow knows scientific etiquette is, at best, a veneer disguising ambition, jealousy and all the other human emotions that characterize the interactions of competitive individuals. Wolfe’s comment is only noteworthy for revealing the contemporary narcissistic form, "it’s all about me."
The National Academy of Science did indeed publish an on-line article that day, "The Origin of Malignant Malaria," with Stephen Rich as the lead author. After whatever jockeying for credit occurred, Wolfe came out last in the list of 14.
He wasn’t the only co-author to promote an independent narrative. Number 13, Francisco Ayala, used the University of California at Irvine as his more discrete, third-party platform. Unlike Wolfe, he at least did admit Rich was the lead author, but not without emphasizing Rich had been one of his students.
Reuters apparently used the Irvine news release for its story the next day, while the Associated Press relied on Wolfe. The New York Times picked up the latter, thereby giving Wolfe the edge in kudos for the team’s research.
Ayala, now in his 70's, is of an age when men secretly hope to win a Nobel Prize to recognize their lifetime achievements, and he has been one of the pioneers investigating the evolution of the malaria parasite. Irvine’s story emphasized that his work probes one of the great questions of contemporary medicine, how diseases like AIDS and influenza migrate between animals and humans.
But, as is the way with science, he is not alone in his presumed quest for recognition from that notoriously factious, political group in Sweden. In May of this year another team, this one centered in France and Gabon, published their findings that documented genetic similarities between the human and primate forms of malaria. Either team could make the final breakthrough that might receive the award.
Wolfe is younger and no doubt knows only one prize is awarded each year in any field and every year there are more scientists in more countries doing innovative work. He probably also knows that historians have found most scientists make their most important contribution before they are 30, and if they haven’t achieved some fame by then, they probably won’t. He’s nearing 40.
California has developed an alternative paradigm for the young that promises them celebrity at an early age if they can patent something that can be sold. Wolfe has already been tempted by that siren. Last year, Frank Rijsberman, of Google’s philanthropic group, gave money to support Wolfe’s work with the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative and declared "Nathan is going to be a rock star in this field." Wolfe’s Huffington Post release emphasized the possibilities of a sellable product, a vaccine.
Ayala represents pure science grappling with the workings of nature, while Wolfe is promoting practical applications for that knowledge. A malaria vaccine would certainly be useful, but will face the same cultural and financial impediments the Bill Gates’ foundation confronts now in fighting malaria in Africa. The individual or group who finds the best way to convince humans to change their behavior without coercion may be the one who should win the prize.
Notes:
Associated Press. "First Origin of Malaria May Have Been Found," 3 August 2009.
Fitzenberger, Jennifer. "Scientists Report Original Source of Malaria," University of California at
Irvine news release, 3 August 2009, has best discussion of research in the field.
Ollomo, Benjamin and 7 others. "A New Malaria Agent in African Hominids," PLoS Pathog, 29 May 2009.
Reuters. "Malaria May Have Come from Chimps," 4 August 2009, edited by Xavier Briand.
Rich Stephen and 13 others. "The Origin of Malignant Malaria," National Academy of Sciences, online Proceedings for 3 August 2009.
Svoboda, Elizabeth. "Nathan Wolfe: Deep in the Rain Forest, Stalking the Next Pandemic," The New York Times, 20 October 2008.
Vasich, Tom. "Biologist Francisco J. Ayala Wins National Medal of Science," University of California at Irvine news release, 9 May 2002.
Wolfe, Nathan. "The Origin of Malaria: Discovered," Huffington Post, 3 August 2009.
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