When philosophy meets historical taxonomy 5 Apr 2010 Chris Taylor does this absolutely amazing blog. I find myself checking to see if he’s done another one of his wonderful taxon posts, where he picks some usually obscure group of animals and makes them interesting and alive. He’s done it again, for indrids, a group of lemurs, but what I love most of all is that he cites a philosopher of science, Ian Hacking. That’s some serious blogging. Biology Ecology and Biodiversity Philosophy Science Species and systematics Systematics
Philosophy On the straits of philosophy 11 Apr 2010 My recent post on “Mammals” led one commentator at Panda’s Thumb to reiterate the old joke about philosophy being like mathematicians but without erasers and rubbish bins, and more serious comments about philosophy having a GIGO problem. Coincidentally, Jason Stanley has a piece in the Times Higher Education Supplement bemoaning… Read More
Accommodationism Accommodating Science: What is the problem? 20 Feb 201423 Feb 2014 [As I write the first draft of my accommodationism book, I will post chapters here under the Category “Accommodationism”. Here is the latest – which comes before Undefining Religion] The religion-versus-science debate took a special turn in the West because of the existence not only of doctrinal religion but of… Read More
Biology On abortion 9 Nov 2010 A fertilised fetus is a collection of cells that will, if all goes well, and it doesn’t in a large percentage of cases, become a baby. As much as 70% of all pregnancies may abort in the first 20 weeks, due to genetic or developmental defects. But up until a… Read More
Chris’s blog is one of my favorites, too: I typically check it right afte seeing if there is anything new on Darren Naish’s “Tetrapod Zoology.” — The (sadly debunked) story about the name “Indri” coming from a misunderstanding of a native informant’s utterance seems to be a linguistic urban myth: a story that just seems so RIGHT that it stays alive (and reproduces: note the existence of variants with different examples) despite debunking. Do you know of any genuine examples of words stemming from such misunderstandings?(*) — (*) Samuel Johnson in his dictionary included the etymology “from French coeur méchant” for ‘curmudgeon’, attributing it to an “anonymous correspondent.” I have been told be people I trust (but can’t document) that a plagiarizing dictionary publisher said ‘courmudgeon’ was “from the French ‘coeur,’ anonymous, and méchant,’ a correspondent.” The French word for a transom over a door is ‘vasistas,’ which (according to Robert) is from the German ‘Wass ist das,’ but I don’t know if this stems from genuine confusion or some attempt at humor.
All flattery is gratefully received! Allen, the Hacking paper I cited comments on the example of the French ‘vasistas’. Hacking suggests that the word does come from German and simply refers to the function of the vasistas as somewhere you can look out from to see who (or what) is there before opening the door.
The derivation of ‘vasistas’ seems quite plausible to me, given that there is a respectable type of furniture known in English as a Whatnot. (You were probably sold it as a cake stand.)