David Friedman
2010-02-08 21:09:38 UTC
So if you want to
and training there is useful in the civilian world. In the
Middle Ages the technology was quite limited.
Further, I don't know why you say that the Middle Ages were
orders of magnitude more conflict-free than the modern world.
You aren't following the argument. He didn't "say that the ...," heargue that in the middle ages they were equally easy, well, you need
to put a lot of effort into explaining exactly what was so massively
different about the middle ages. For example, were the middle ages
several orders of magnitude more conflict-free than the modern world?
I'm not sure I understand. Today's army is quite technologicalto put a lot of effort into explaining exactly what was so massively
different about the middle ages. For example, were the middle ages
several orders of magnitude more conflict-free than the modern world?
and training there is useful in the civilian world. In the
Middle Ages the technology was quite limited.
Further, I don't know why you say that the Middle Ages were
orders of magnitude more conflict-free than the modern world.
asked a rhetorical question to which the expected answer was "they were
not."
As a person who was in high school and college prior to 1970,
I say that Constantinople is dead wrong.
First you have to figure out what he is saying.I say that Constantinople is dead wrong.
What I was taught was that Lamarck believed that traits developed
by one individual could be (not *were*) transmitted to their
descendants. In other words, that life experience somehow
affected one's genes.
I was also taught that Lamarck was wrong and that experiment
after experiment had failed to show any inheritance of acquired
traits.
Yes. Everyone agrees about that.by one individual could be (not *were*) transmitted to their
descendants. In other words, that life experience somehow
affected one's genes.
I was also taught that Lamarck was wrong and that experiment
after experiment had failed to show any inheritance of acquired
traits.
The argument isn't about inheritance of acquired characteristics. The
question is whether Lamarck thought that all living things descended
from a common ancestor or not.
According to James and Constantinople, the accepted opinion of
historians of science used to be that he got that right, got wrong the
mechanism that produced the variation--thought (mistakenly) that it was
via the inheritance of acquired characteristics. According to them, that
view was suddenly revised a few decades back, to a version in which he
also got common descent wrong--thought that different organisms had
originated separately.
If I understand James' view correctly, he thinks the change was
motivated by ideology, and he is offering it as evidence that academic
belief really is driven by some sort of ideological conspiracy,
analogous to the way in which beliefs were controlled in _1984_ or under
Stalin, although with less direct mechanisms.
I think his theory is that common descent had to be taken away from
Lamarck in order that it could be made the distinguishing feature of
Darwin's contribution, in order to deemphasize Darwin's actual ideas,
because those ideas clashed with then current political ideology--in
particular, implied that there was no particular reason to assume that
different human races, as the term was used by Darwin and is still used
in common speech, didn't differ in substantial ways beyond the obvious
differences of appearance.
I'm taking no position on whether he is correct--I've never read
Lamarck, nor have I checked what histories of science written at
different times say. But that's his argument, as best I can tell, and
you seem to have completely missed it.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of
_Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_,
Cambridge University Press.
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of
_Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_,
Cambridge University Press.