The Pioneer Primatologist

- Posted: 02.Sep.2008.




American psychologist Henry W. Nissen has virtually no net-presence (not even a Wikipedia stub) though he deserves it. He was after all the first westerner to live with chimpanzees in the wild for a period of three months. His 1931 report appears unavailable online but his joint paper with Robert Yerkes "Pre-linguistic Sign behaviour in Chimpanzee" must be one of the first modern publications relevant to PrimatePoetics. Ala, even though it was published in 1936 it is still behind academic lock and key. Who can help me with a copy? Jane Goodall has singlehandedly kept him from slipping into total oblivion:

Although the chimpanzee has been known to science for nearly three centuries, and although, because of its striking resemblance to man, it has been used extensively as an experimental animal in medical and other fields, no attempts had been made to study this ape in its natural habitat until Dr. Henry W. Nissen made his pioneer study in French Guinea. I found his 1931 report invaluable as I prepared my own program.

Shamans? What Shamans? Rock Art Forensics!

- Posted: 19.Aug.2007.




Kevin Sharpe and Leslie Van Gelder appear to be the most important scholars on Finger Fluting. Sharpe has his own website which he uses to (re-)publish his articles, much of them related to Theology, but, luckily for Crystalpunk, it also contains the rock art papers. The most important aspect of Scharpe's and Van Gelders's work is that they have found ways to get verifiable facts from rock-art, a field of study often filled with wild speculation. Now Crystalpunk is not afraid of speculation, but we like our facts too. Let's quote from 'Human uniqueness and upper paleolithic ‘art’' to show what these in-the-mud researchers know about the ancient artists, giving them back their individuality.

1. Whether the fluter was a young child or someone older (from the three-finger widths); studies have shown, for instance, children aged five or under probably made flutings of three-finger widths of 30 millimeters or less.

2. An indication of the gender of the fluter (from the relative heights of finger 2 to finger 4); studies have shown that 2F/4F < 1 suggests a male and 2F/4F >or= 1 suggests a female.

3. The number of individuals who fluted (from the three-finger width and finger profile; experiments have shown that the widths of the three central fingers held close together vary on average 0.5 millimeters with different pressures and media).

4. Which fluter fluted which flutings, including (sometimes, depending how many fingers the fluter used) the fluted images.

5. The handedness of the fluter (if the fluter usually fluted with a particular hand).

6. The height of the fluter (arm stretch vertically or horizontally suggests this). And

7. Something about the character of the fluter (for example, from whether the flutings of this person usually show pressure and forcefulness).

Facts which they use to blow to pieces any argument for rock-art as predominantly shamanistic. It seems unlikely two-and-a-half years olds to be shamans.

One last qoute related to nomenclature:

... We use quotation marks around the word ‘art’ because, while the corpus of such artifacts contains some artistic images, not all of it obviously appears as such and its creators may not have intended it all as art.

The Unspoken Basic of Water Polo for Dolphins

- Posted: 03.Apr.2007.

In his talk David Parlett mentioned the revealing outcome of a scientific experiment on gameplay mentioned in 'Lost Lives: The Illusion of Rules' by Darrell G. King

Obviously, our ability to participate in a particular game is dependent on our knowledge of many "rules" which no one has ever spelled out to us. Yet it is easy to overlook this simple fact. In When Elephants Weep, the authors tell about a group of scientists who attempted to teach dolphins to play water polo. Although the dolphins were able to learn how to put the ball in the net (and seemed to derive pleasure from doing so), when the trainers tried to get them to stop the other team from "scoring," the dolphins launched an all-out war on the other team's players, using methods that no person steeped in the concepts of sportspeopleship would ever use.

After this experience, the trainers gave up their effort, apparently concluding that their task was hopeless, that dolphins couldn't be taught to play the sport. My guess is that they assumed that all the dolphins needed to be taught were the recorded rules of water polo and the creatures would be able to play the game like adult human beings. These scientists evidently did not realize how much of our knowledge of proper game behavior precedes the learning of the statable constraints of a particular sport.

But suppose these trainers had recognized, after their initial failure, that they had to provide their trainees with some more fundamental "rules" of game-playing. Would they ever have been able to teach dolphins all they need to know to play a single "human" game? Are dolphins capable of understanding fairness and sportscreatureship, "time in" vs. "time out," practice vs. competition, winning and losing. And even if they are, how would we go about teaching these concepts to them? Wouldn't we have to teach them much of our culture in order for them to play the game as we do?

Your Data = False * UPDATE *

- Posted: 03.Jul.2009.




Patrick Tierney's Darkness in Eldorado is an attack on Napoleon Chagnon's work on the Yanomami/Yanomamö, see his anthro-classic The Fierce People. Tierney argues, amongst other thing, that Chagnon is a crypto-fascist whose ideology shaped his portrayal of the Yanomami as fierce and violent, while they are not, and that Chagnon's interference witting an unwitting created the violence he saw and documented. Worse; the feasts and wars Chagnon staged for his films were not only faked but caused war after he'd gone. And there is more, much more. Very Dr. Strangelove.

On books.google I have perused some academic writing making sense of the controversy created by Tierney and I have not been able to determine what the consensus is, but Tierney is definitely not making things up.

UPDATE

It turns out that the case was still under investigation and the final argument, just in, is that Tierney is a 'nutcase'. It leaves unexplained where the incredible detailed (or so it seems) information Tierney gives comes from, (like Chagnon's fondness for large fighting dogs he put onto his students), but he was definitely making things up.

Coleridge and the invention of the word 'science'

- Posted: 05.Oct.2006.

Qouted from a blogger currently writing a book about E.coli:

"It was in that year that William Whewell, a British philosopher, geologist, and all-around bright bulb, coined the word scientist. His mentor, the poet Samuel Coleridge, thought the English language needed a term for someone who studied the natural world but who did not inhabit the lofty heights of philosophy (like Coleridge)."


VIA

Miller-Urey

- Posted: 24.May.2006.


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Bio-stuff first made in a jar in 1953
VIA picture

Plankton Bloom

- Posted: 05.Dec.2006.




It looks badly mixed soy-milk in your tea but it is a satellite picture of blooms of Emiliania huxleyi. The coccolith platelets carried by the cells cause reflection of light, making the sea look brighter and hence distinctive in satellite images.

SOURCE

Maxwells Little mind

- Posted: 10.Nov.2006.


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... if we conceive of a being whose faculties are so sharpened that he can follow every molecule in its course, such a being, whose attributes are as essentially finite as our own, would be able to do what is impossible to us. For we have seen that molecules in a vessel full of air at uniform temperature are moving with velocities by no means uniform, though the mean velocity of any great number of them, arbitrarily selected, is almost exactly uniform. Now let us suppose that such a vessel is divided into two portions, A and B, by a division in which there is a small hole, and that a being, who can see the individual molecules, opens and closes this hole, so as to allow only the swifter molecules to pass from A to B, and only the slower molecules to pass from B to A. He will thus, without expenditure of work, raise the temperature of B and lower that of A, in contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics.


MAXWELL

LAPLACE

PICTURE

Seed mag on Bacteria

- Posted: 06.Nov.2006.


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Scientists had previously hypothesized that an organism couldn't have a genome with fewer than 400,000 nucleotides, the units that compose a strand of DNA. But Carsonella's genome has evolved right past that theoretical limit, weighing in at a mere 160,000 bases. In fact, it is the smallest genome ever sequenced.

LINK


There are many scholarly papers documenting the collective motion of bacteria in suspension. Even more people have seen swarms of bacteria beneath a cover-slip or in a droplet of fluid moving together like nose-plugged synchronized-swimmers creating whirling patterns. But, what choreographs this complex dance?

LINK


Satellites, aerial photography, and computerized geographic imaging systems have enabled us to map the Earth with unprecedented accuracy. Planes now feature screens that let passengers monitor the flight's path, while real-time websites map highway traffic flow with stunning precision. But when it comes to mapping another travel pattern—that of bacteria within the human body—scientists have only a vague idea of what is going on.



LINK


PICTURE

How Things Become

- Posted: 15.Apr.2008.


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The following quote from Paul M. Churchland’s Matter and Consciousness, about chemical evolution and how things become from nothing, has been a long favourite. Here it is:

Consider a glass box, full of water with a constant heat source at one end, and a constant heat sink (something to absorb heat energy) at the other. Dissolved in the water is some nitrogen and some carbon dioxide. One end of the box will grow quite hot, but as fast as the fire pours energy into this end of the system, it is conducted away toward the cooler end and out again. The average temperature inside the box is therefore a constant.

Consider the effect this will have on the thin soup inside the box. At the hot end of the box, the high-energy end, the molecules and atoms absorb this extra energy and are raised to excited states. As they drift around the system, these energized parts are free to form high-energy chemical bonds with each other, bonds that would have been statically impossible with the system in global equilibrium. A variety of complex compounds is therefore likely to form and to collect toward the cool end of the system, compounds of greater variety and greater complexity than could have been formed without the constant flux of heat energy. Collectively, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen are capable of literally millions of different chemical combinations. With the heat flux turned on, this partially open or semiclosed system starts vigorously to explore these combinatorial possibilities.

It is easy so see that some kind of competition is taking place inside the box. Some types of molecule are not very stable, and will tend to fall apart soon after formation. Other types are made of sterner stuff, and will hang around for awhile. Other types, though very unstable, may be formed very frequently, and so there will be quite a few of them in the system at any given time. Some types catalyze the formation of their own building blocks, thus enhancing further formation. Other types engage in mutually beneficial catalytic cycles, and form a symbiotic pair of prosperous types. In these ways and others, the various types of molecule compete for dominance of the liquid environment. Those types with high stability and/or high formation rates will form the largest populations.

The typical result of such a process is that the system soon displays a great many instances of a fairly small variety of distinct types of complex, energy-storing molecules. (Which types, from the millions of types possible, actually come to dominate the system is dependent on and highly sensitive to the initial make-up of the soup, and to the flux level.) The system displays an order, and a complexity, and an unbalanced energy distribution that would be unthinkable without the flux of energy through the system. The flux pumps the system. It forces the system away from its initial chaos, and towards the many forms of order and complexity of which it is capable. What was improbable has become inevitable.

Siri is damn fine Indian elephant who likes to draw

- Posted: 09.May.2007.




Elephants are known to draw by themselves in the sand with the tip of their trunk, or by using sticks or pebbles. When drawing on paper all drawings fit the page, on some occasions doing 2 drawings on one sheet. Siri's keeper send his drawing to artists and scientists for comments. The scientists declined, not because they don't want to acknowledge the idea that animals have a mind that makes them want to draw as is most often the undertone, but because, I believe, they lack a yardstick which allows them so say anything about it that is scientific.

Elephant Ruby at the Phoenix Zoo gets excited when hearing the word 'paint'.

Biologist Douglas Chadwick reports that she may select other colors that correspond to an unfamiliar object nearby, so that if an orange truck is parked in her view, she may pick orange paint. "A zoo visitor was once taken ill while watching Ruby paint, and paramedics were called to the scene. They wore blue suits. It might have been a coincidence that after they left, Ruby painted a blue blob surrounded by a swirl of red."

From Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy; When Elephants Weep, The Emotional Lives of Animals; Delta 1995

Mind Manifestation

- Posted: 01.Oct.2007.


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Did you know 'Psychedelic' is Greek for Mind Manifesting? Alexander Shulgin is the inventor/discoverer of many psychedelic drugs, working from home, like an alchemist. And this makes him a legend. This piece on him is a good introduction. The most interesting thing about the online part of his "PIHKAL, Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved: A Chemical Love Story By Alexander and Ann Shulgin" are not the detailed chemical instructions on how to synthesize 127 (!) different mind-altering drugs (some if not most of them illegal), but the commentary about what they do and how they work. Shulgin was his own lab-rat and between large segments of objective banter about metabolites and neurotoxicity you will find all sorts of observations and confessions you would not expect to find in a proper science text. To my knowledge this is one of the best published accounts that shows, between the lines, the day-to-day reality of the scientist. How he proceeds by navigating both on past results and experience as well as by 'inspiration' and gut-feeling.

Unrelated Picture

Radical Anthropology #2

- Posted: 22.Oct.2008.


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Fresh from the press: Radical Anthropology Journal nr two. When going through the gallery of contributor-faces, the overwhelming impression is one of old marxists with unkept beards but all in the name of learning what being human is all about. This annual journal comes as a free download and one of the many things you can learn from this is that Chomsky is as sphinx-like in his scientific interviews as in his political ones.

Subcultured Mycelium

- Posted: 13.Jul.2009.




Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running in an interview with Derrick Jensen:

Jensen: In your book you say that animals are more closely related to fungi than they are to plants or protozoa or bacteria.

Stamets: Yes. For example, we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide; so do fungi. One of the big differences between animals and fungi is that animals have their stomachs on the inside. About 600 million years ago, the branch of fungi leading to animals evolved to capture nutrients by surrounding their food with cellular sacs — essentially primitive stomachs. As these organisms evolved, they developed outer layers of cells — skins, basically — to prevent moisture loss and as a barrier against infection. Their stomachs were confined within the skin. These were the earliest animals.

Mycelia took a different evolutionary path, going underground and forming a network of interwoven chains of cells, a vast food web upon which life flourished. These fungi paved the way for plants and animals. They munched rocks, producing enzymes and acids that could pull out calcium, magnesium, iron, and other minerals. In the process they converted rocks into usable foods for other species. And they still do this, of course.

Fungi are fundamental to life on earth. They are ancient, they are widespread, and they have formed partnerships with many other species. We know from the fossil record that evolution on this planet has largely been steered by two cataclysmic asteroid impacts. The first was 250 million years ago. The earth became shrouded in dust. Sunlight was cut off, and in the darkness, massive plant communities died. More than 90 percent of species disappeared. And fungi inherited the earth. Organisms that paired with fungi through natural selection were rewarded. Then the skies cleared, and light came back, and evolution continued on its course until 65 million years ago, bam! It happened again. We were hit by another asteroid, and there were more massive extinctions. That’s when the dinosaurs died out. Again, organisms that paired with fungi were rewarded. So these asteroid impacts steered life toward symbiosis with fungi: not just plants and animals, but bacteria and viruses, as well.

Jensen: Can you give some examples of these partnerships?

Stamets: A familiar one is lichens, which are actually a fungus and an alga growing symbiotically together. Another is “sleepy grass”: Mesoamerican ranchers realized that when their horses ate a certain type of grass, the horses basically got stoned. When scientists studied sleepy grass, they found that it wasn’t the grass at all that was causing the horses to get stoned, but an endophytic fungus, meaning one that grows within a plant, in the stems and leaves.

Life Inside The Cell

- Posted: 07.Feb.2007.




This video of the life inside a cell, made at Harvard, should win the Oscars. Bloody hell.

The way proteins are unzipped from their RNA (I think it is) is a special effect worth seeing.

Do not forget to turn off sound though.

Wilhelm Steinitz [The Bore]

- Posted: 30.Jan.2007.




The name Wilhelm Steinitz occures often in compendiums of chess quotes and so I looked him up at Wikipedia. And Lo and Behold, evil in chess does have a name, as here we have the man who turned the game into a 'science'. The culprit who surrendered the Romantic attitude to Logic and Calculation. In horror I quote:

Steinitz began to play professional chess at the age of 26 in England. His play at this time was no different than that of his contemporaries: sharp, aggressive, and full of sacrificial play. In 1873 however, his play suddenly changed. He gave immense concern to what we now call the positional elements in chess: pawn structure, space, outposts for knights, etc. Slowly he perfected his new method of play that helped form him into the first Chess World Champion.

What Steinitz gave to chess could be compared to what Newton gave to Physics: he made it a true science. By isolating a number of positional features on the board, Steinitz came to realize that all brilliant attacks resulted from a weakness in the opponent's defense. By studying and developing the ideas of these positional features, he perfected a new art of defense that sharply elevated the current level of play. Furthermore, he outlined the idea of an attack in chess formed off of what we now know as "Accumulation Theory", the slow addition of many small advantages.

Though it was not immediately evident, Steinitz had just given the chess world its greatest gift. Though tactics were, and still are, the most basic element to strong play, his new theory gave greater opportunity to both defend and use the brilliant combinations the era was renowned for.

When he fought for the first World Championship in 1886 against Zukertort, it became evident that Steinitz was playing on another level. Though he suffered a series of defeats at the beginning of the match, it becomes evident when watching the games who understood the game better (for example, in the third game he was strategically superior but failed to pull it together at the end). Over time however, Steinitz's level of play continued to improve and finished with a solid victory(+10 -5 =5).

Perhaps the evaluation of Steinitz's impact on chess can best be evaluated by a fellow master of strategy, Tigran Petrosian: "The significance of Steinitz's teaching is that he showed that in principle chess has a strictly defined, logical nature."

The picture shows Steinits play against Lasker

Kanzi signs

- Posted: 31.May.2007.




Kanzi signs to Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh the world's foremost expert on language in animals. One anecdote:

Paul Raffaele, at Savage-Rumbaugh's request, performed a Maori War Dance for the Bonobos. This dance includes thigh-slapping, chest-thumping, and hollering. Almost all the Bonobos present interpreted this as an aggressive display, and reacted with loud screams, tooth-baring, and pounding the walls and floor. All but Kanzi, who remained perfectly calm, and conveyed in Bonobo language (interpreted by Savage-Rumbaugh to Raffaele) that he knew that no threat was meant, but that the performance should be apart from the other Bonobos so as not to upset them.

What does a Fruit Fly do when locked up in a Sensory Deprivation Tank?

- Posted: 21.May.2007.




Take the heavy math with you: what way does a fruit fly turn when flying in an environment where it does not matter? Is it random or does it have left-hand or right-hand preference? The paper described why this is not a trivial question. While over at scienceblogs you are helped getting it if the sciencific jargon scares you.