Old Email Archive

digest 1997-02-01 #001



11:28 PM 1/31/97 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 31 Jan 1997 01:01:14 -0800
From: H-NEXA Editor Michael Gregory 
Subject: APPLAUSE: Re: Reply: Re: idiot question--and fast! (Gregory)
Robert Maxwell Young, Richard Nash and Joseph Duemer:
A beautiful example of collaborative research on a major subject, of
timely
use for me, having just begun teaching "The Darwinian
Revolution" with the
gifted comparative anatomist Bernard Goldstein in our NEXA 389 at SFSU.
(BTW, all are welcome to look
in at H-NEXA, where Joe Duemer's star also shines brightly --
LISTSERV@h-net.msu.edu, SUB H-NEXA Firstname Lastname, affiliation.)
I saw but somehow lost the learned discussion of textual revisions of
_Origin_.  Please, could someone post it to me at ?
I'd be much obliged!
Mike Gregory
>>Return-Path: 

>Errors-To: 

>Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 21:40:44 -0500
>From: Joseph Duemer 
>Organization: Clarkson University
>To: Society for Literature and Science 

>Subject: Re: Reply: Re: idiot question--and fast! (Gregory)
>References: 

>Reply-To: Society for Literature and Science 

>X-Subscription-Address: liststar@humnet.ucla.edu
>
>richard nash wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 30 Jan 1997, Robert Maxwell Young wrote:
>>
>> >         I can find no reference to 'entangled; in the last
paragraphs of
>> > _The Descent of Man_, but I have only looked at the last
three ones.
>> >
>> In my edition of _The Descent of Man_, "Reprinted from the
Second English
>> Edition, Revised and Augmented,"  _The Descent_ concludes
with a "General
>> Summary and Conclusion," followed by "A Supplemental
Note on Sexual
>> Selection in Relation to Monkeys."  The last two
paragraphs of the
>> General Summary and Conclusion are set off by a line break. 
What
>> follows, begins with these words:
>>
>>   "The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely,
that man is
>> descended from some lowly organized form, will, I regret to
think, be
>> highly distasteful to many.  But there can hardly be a doubt
that we are
>> descended from barbarians.  The astonishment which I felt on
first seeing
>> a party of Fuegians on a WILD AND BROKEN SHORE will never be
forgotten by
>> me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind--such were
our
>> ancestors.  These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with
paint,
>> their long hair was TANGLED, etc."
>>
>> My initial point in alluding to this was a modest offering as
to why Joe,
>> working from memory, may have located the "tangled
bank" passage at the
>> end of _Descent_ rather than _Origin_.  I am not sure if there
will ever
>> be more that can be legitimately made of it.  Nonetheless, the
word
>> "tangled" does in fact appear at the conclusion of
_Descent_, and we have
>> the more sublime image of a "wild and broken shore"
substituting for its
>> pastoral corollary, the "tangled bank."  In a similar
vein, we might note
>> that BOTH "tangled bank" passages in _Origin_
(Damashek provides both
>> citations) invoke the metaphor of clothing, where at the end of
_Descent_
>> we are, as it were, confronted with "absolutely naked
[savages]."  The
>> "tangled bank" passages, I take it, are generally
read as endorsing a
>> notion of complex law rather than chance at work in nature--a
position
>> that can be rendered amenable both to enlightenment arguments
about
>> probability and contemporary arguments about chaos and
complexity.  It
>> may be worth asking a Darwinist, if the tangled hair of the
Fuegians who
>> astonish Darwin on a wild and broken shore at the conclusion of
_Descent_
>> register a change in vision from the image of beautiful
complexity with
>> which the _Origin_ concludes?  But I am not a Darwinist.
>>
>> Richard
>
>Nor am I a Darwinist, but having now checked the passages, and also
>looked at Mike Merrill's quote from Wells, I have the sense that
when
>Darwin concluded the _Descent_ he expresses either a changed
attitue
>from the edenic view at the end of _Origin_, or that at the least
he
>reveals an ambiguity in his view of nature. In the _Descent_ Darwin
>makes the arguement that humans are just another part of the
natural
>world, but at the end he seems appalled by the sight of what he
takes to
>be a "natural" man. He says that modern and supposedly
civilized men are
>doubtless descended from barbarians, but here he mistakes his own
>biological theory for a social one; the mistake would later be
>normalized under the label of social darwinism. Without having gone
back
>into either text very deeply recently, I think we see evidence in
his
>two endings--always rhetorically charged moments in a text--of
Darwin's
>ambivalence.
>
>Joe Duemer
>
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 31 Jan 1997 06:41:22 -0800
From: Marc Damashek 
Subject: Re: tangled webs -- a gold mine
Indeed... Let's push on a little farther.
I revisited the e-text of Origin that I had downloaded from
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/books.html at Carnegie-Mellon (the text is headed
"THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES by Charles Darwin 1859") This time,
however, I
searched on 'tangl', and found more than the two passages that I noted
the
other day. The passages found are as follows:
1) [Section: Complex Relations of all Animals and Plants to each other
in the
Struggle for Existence] When we look at the plants and bushes clothing
an
entangled bank, we are tempted to attribute their proportional numbers
and
kinds to what we call chance.
2) [Deep in Ch. 7, MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF NATURAL
SELECTION]
When a branch was placed on its face, the vibracula became entangled,
and
they made violent efforts to free themselves.
3) [In EMBRYOLOGY: RUDIMENTARY ORGANS, Classification] We shall never,
probably, disentangle the inextricable web of the affinities between
the
members of any one class; but when we have a distinct object in view,
and
do not look to some unknown plan of creation, we may hope to make sure
but
slow progress.
4) [Last paragraph of book] It is interesting to contemplate a tangled
bank...
- ----------
But when we turn to The Voyage of the Beagle (same source, derived
from the Harvard Classics edition, Vol. 29, 1909), the plot thickens.
We
now see that author Darwin was deeply smitten by the word 'entangle.'
Based
on the evidence below (comprising all occurrences in the book), and
discounting the few instances here in which it is used in its more
literal
sense, the aura of mortality, death, decay, and chaos with which he
invested this word is unmistakeable.
1)  [Just before the end of Ch. 2] I once, however, saw in a hot-house
in
Shropshire a large female wasp caught in the irregular web of a quite
small
spider; and this spider, instead of cutting the web, most perseveringly
continued to entangle the body, and especially the wings, of its prey.
2) [Just before the end of Ch. 3] A small fragment examined under the
microscope appeared, from the number of minute entangled air or perhaps
steam bubbles, like an assay fused before the blowpipe.
3) [Midway through Ch. 4] In fighting, his first attempt is to throw
down
the horse of his adversary with the bolas, and when entangled by the
fall
to kill him with the chuzo.
4) [Next-to-last paragraph of Ch. 4] On one occasion, when in a boat,
we
were so entangled by these shallows that we could hardly find our way.
5) [September 12 & 13]  Two spears were stuck in the ground
twenty-five
yards apart, but they were struck and entangled only once in four or
five
times.
6) .  [December 6] The little spider, when first coming in contact with
the
rigging, was always seated on a single thread, and not on the
flocculent
mass.  This latter seems merely to be produced by the entanglement of
the
single threads.
7) [May 16] In the evening we came across a small herd.  One of my
companions, St. Jago by name, soon separated a fat cow. He threw the
bolas,
and it struck her legs, but failed in becoming entangled.
8) [May 19] Each man carries four or five pair of the bolas; these he
throws one after the other at as many cattle, which, when once
entangled,
are left for some days.
9) [December 17, 1832] A group of Fuegians partly concealed by the
entangled forest, were perched on a wild point overhanging the sea; and
as
we passed by, they sprang up and  their tattered cloaks sent forth a
loud
and sonorous shout.
10) [December 17, 1832] The old man had a fillet of white feathers tied
round his head, which partly confined his black, coarse, and entangled
hair.
11) [Eight paragraphs later] The entangled mass of the thriving and the
fallen reminded me of the forests within the tropics -- yet there was a
difference: for in these still solitudes, Death, instead of Life,
seemed
the predominant spirit.
12) [December 25] These poor wretches were stunted in their growth,
their
hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy,
their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their gestures
violent.
Viewing such men, one can hardly make one's self believe that they are
fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world.
13) [Five long paragraphs before June 8] The gloomy woods are inhabited
by
few birds: ... A little, dusky-coloured wren (Scytalopus Magellanicus)
hops
in a skulking manner among the entangled mass of the fallen and
decaying
trunks.
14) [Paragraph preceding entry of June 8] The number of living creatures
of
all Orders, whose existence intimately depends on the kelp, is
wonderful...
On shaking the great entangled roots, a pile of small fish, shells,
cuttle-fish, crabs of all orders, sea-eggs, star-fish, beautiful
Holuthuriae, Planariae, and crawling nereidous animals of a multitude
of
forms, all fall out together.
15) [June 10] The equable, humid, and windy climate of Tierra del Fuego
extends, with only a small increase of heat, for many degrees along the
west coast of the continent... Stately trees of many kinds, with smooth
and
highly coloured barks, are loaded by parasitical monocotyledonous
plants;
large and elegant ferns are numerous, and arborescent grasses entwine
the
trees into one entangled mass to the height of thirty or forty feet
above
the ground.
16) [September 24] The puma, after eating its fill, covers the carcass
with
many large bushes, and lies down to watch it... The puma is easily
killed.
In an open country, it is first entangled with the bolas, then lazoed,
and
dragged along the ground till rendered insensible.
17) [December 6] We stayed three days in this harbour, on one of  which
Captain Fitz Roy, with a party, attempted to ascend to the summit of
San
Pedro... In vain we tried to gain the summit: the forest was so
impenetrable, that no one who has not beheld it can imagine so entangled
a
mass of dying and dead trunks.
18) [January 7, 1835] In all parts of Chiloe and Chonos, two very
strange
birds occur, which are allied to, and replace, the Turco and Tapacolo
of
central Chile...  It then busily hops about the entangled mass of
rotting
cones and branches, with its little tail cocked upwards.
19) [April 6] A few miles north of Keeling there is another small
atoll,
the lagoon of which is nearly filled up with coral-mud.  Captain Ross
found
embedded in the conglomerate on the outer coast, a well-rounded fragment
of
greenstone, rather larger than a man's head: he and the men with him
were
so much surprised at this, that they brought it away and preserved it as
a
curiosity.  The occurrence of this one stone, where every other particle
of
matter is calcareous, certainly is very puzzling.  The island has
scarcely
ever been visited, nor is it probable that a ship had been wrecked
there.
From the absence of any better explanation, I came to the conclusion
that
it must have come entangled in the roots of some large tree: when,
however,
I considered the great distance from the nearest land, the combination
of
chances against a stone thus being entangled, the tree washed into the
sea,
floated so far, then landed safely, and the stone finally so embedded as
to
allow of its discovery, I was almost afraid of imagining a means of
transport apparently so improbable.
20) [Two paragraphs before August 6] Such are the elements of the
scenery,
but it is a hopeless attempt to paint the general effect.  Learned
naturalists describe these scenes of the tropics by naming a multitude
of
objects, and mentioning some characteristic feature of each. To a
learned
traveller this possibly may communicate some definite ideas: but who
else
from seeing a plant in an herbarium can imagine its appearance when
growing
in its native soil?  Who from seeing choice plants in a hothouse, can
magnify some into the dimensions of forest trees, and crowd others into
an
entangled jungle?
- -------
Has this ground been trodden before?
Marc Damashek
mdamash@afterlife.ncsc.mil
>This is turning into quite a detective story.  I was incompletely
convinced
>that the _Descent_ passage echoed the _Origin_, but to my eye the
passage
>from Wells does look like an echo of one or both of the Darwin
passages.
>
>It's possible, I suppose, that they are all shaped by some larger
>convention governing tangled vegetation.  One would like to run a
search on
>"tangled near bank" in a hypothetical database more
complete than
>Chadwyck-Healey's.
>
>Too bad that this interesting sequence will be archived for
posterity under
>the thread title of "Re: idiot question."
>
>Ted Underwood                   wu10@cornell.edu
>Department of English
>Cornell University
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 31 Jan 1997 09:39:27 -0800
From: "Wayne Miller" 
Subject: Re: APPLAUSE: Re: Reply: Re: idiot question--and fast! (Gre
From Mike Gregory:
>I saw but somehow lost the learned discussion of textual revisions
of
>_Origin_.  Please, could someone post it to me at ?
>I'd be much obliged!
And from Ted Underwood:
>Too bad that this interesting sequence will be archived for
posterity under
>the thread title of "Re: idiot question."
Hi,
I'll take this opportunity to remind the list members of a web-based
searchable archive of LITSCI-L Digests at:
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/listsearches.html
Thus the thread title becomes less of a hindrance than an artifact!
Wayne
/-------------------------------------------------------/
Wayne Miller                     waynem@humnet.ucla.edu
Germanic Languages               2326 Murphy Hall, UCLA
Humanities Computing Facility    343 Kinsey Hall,  UCLA
(310) 206-2004                   FAX:    (310) 825-7428                 

/-------------------------------------------------------/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 31 Jan 1997 13:44:24 -0800
From: Joseph Duemer 
Subject: Re: tangled webs -- a gold mine
More applause for Marc Damashek! What a useful compilation of quotes.
I'm looking forward to going over them corefully tonight, just as soon
as I've finished grading that stack of papers on my desk. Many thanks
for your e-search, Marc.
Joe Duemer