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
Administrative Off to the wilds of Oxfordshire 14 May 2010 So, tomorrow I fly to Oxford (well, to Heathrow, and bus to Oxford) to this conference on religion and toleration. It looks to be an interesting conference, and I am commenting on a paper by one of my favourite anthropologist/psychologists, Ara Norenzayan from UBC. It includes such luminaries as Amartya… Read More
Biology More on David Hull 4 Dec 20104 Oct 2017 There’s a special issue of Biology and Philosophy in the wings on the late David Hull. So far, the editorial introduction by Kim Sterelny and a fair summary of his work by Peter Godfrey-Smith have appeared Online First. Springer appear to be making these open access. Update: Michael Ruse’s memoir… Read More
Evolution Conference on religion as an evolutionary byproduct 18 Apr 2011 If you are in the UK, and if you are a postgraduate, there will be a conference on religion as an evolutionary byproduct (the “spandrel” account of religion) at the University of Birmingham on 17 May. They will cover the travel costs of graduate speakers. Contact Naomi Thompson (nxt915@bham.ac.uk) by… 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.)