Morgan's canon, Garner's phonograph, and the evolutionary origins of language and reason

`Morgan's canon' is a rule for making inferences from animal behaviour about animal minds, proposed in 1892 by the Bristol geologist and zoologist C. Lloyd Morgan, and celebrated for promoting scepticism about the reasoning powers of animals. Here I offer a new account of the origins and early career of the canon. Built into the canon, I argue, is the doctrine of the Oxford philologist F. Max Mu$ller that animals, lacking language, necessarily lack reason. Restoring the Mu$ llerian origins of the canon in turn illuminates a number of changes in Morgan's position between 1892 and 1894. I explain these changes as responses to the work of the American naturalist R. L. Garner. Where Morgan had a rule for interpreting experiments with animals, Garner had an instrument for doing them: the Edison cylinder phonograph. Using the phonograph, Garner claimed to provide experimental proof that animals indeed spoke and reasoned

Illinois occultation summary, 1. 1977 - 1978

Instrumentation and data acquisition techniques used to record lunar occultations at the University of Illinois Prairie Observatory are described. Tables and graphs summarize data from 64 events which include 30 observations of stars brighter than 7th magnitude, 40 reappearances, 4 angular diameter measurements, 8 observations of binary stars, and 6 observations which may indicate multiplicity

Ambiguity and the Digital Archivist

This article presents an exploratory study of the use and interpretation of the position title “digital archivist,” and considers issues in how this term is used and understood, particularly in regard to working with born-digital materials. It looks at discussions of terminology and mentions of the digital archivist title in professional literature and provides a brief content analysis of digital archivist position advertisements from between 1995 and 2012 that focuses on responsibilities of working with born-digital versus digitization. The lack of clarity and consensus regarding what a digital archivist is or does reflects uncertainty within the archival profession even as its members and organizations declare the need for consistent or agreed-upon terminology

The 10 February 1977 lunar occultation of Uranus. Radius, limb darkening, and polar brightening at 6900 A

Contact timings, corrected for lunar limb effects, indicate an equatorial radius of 25700 + or - 500 km for the visible disk for Uranus. A modified Minnaert function is used to model limb darkening and polar brightening. Least squares fits to the observed light curve indicate that Uranus is slightly limb darkened in the passband of the observations (450 A FWHM centered near 6900 A) and that polar brightening is present

The Unmaking of a Modern Synthesis: Noam Chomsky, Charles Hockett, and the Politics of Behaviorism, 1955–1965

A familiar story about mid-twentieth-century American psychology tells of the replacement of behaviorism by cognitive science. Between these two, however, lay a borderland, muddy and much trespassed-upon. This paper relocates the origins of the Chomskyan program in linguistics there. Following his introduction of transformational generative grammar, Chomsky (b. 1928) mounted a highly publicized attack on behaviorist psychology. Yet when he first developed that approach to grammar, he was a defender of behaviorism. His anti-behaviorism emerged only in the course of what became a systematic repudiation of the work of the Cornell linguist C. F. Hockett (1916–2000). In the name of the positivist Unity-of-Science movement, Hockett had synthesized (i) an approach to grammar based on statistical communication theory; (ii) a behaviorist view of language acquisition in children as a process of association and analogy; and (iii) an interest in uncovering the Darwinian origins of language. In criticizing Hockett on grammar, Chomsky came to engage gradually and critically with the whole Hockettian synthesis. Situating Chomsky thus within his own disciplinary matrix suggests lessons for students of disciplinary politics generally and – famously with Chomsky – the place of political discipline within a scientific life

SB29-23/24: Resolution Revising Article IV Section 7, Interview Committee

This resolution passed 17Y-0N on a roll call vote during the April 24, 2024 meeting of the Associated Students of the University of Montana (ASUM)

Observation and Interpretation of Lunar Occultations

The importance of timings and high resolution astrometry in occultation observations is discussed as well as the occultation process itself. The design and operation of the telescope, photodetector, and data acquisition systems are described. Methods are presented for data analysis and model fitting. Observations of beta Capricorni and Uranus occultations are examined. General conclusions concerning occultation observations are explored and future activities at Prairie Observatory are discussed

The Origin of Enhanced Activity in the Suns of M67

We report the results of the analysis of high resolution photospheric line spectra obtained with the UVES instrument on the VLT for a sample of 15 solar-type stars selected from a recent survey of the distribution of H and K chromospheric line strengths in the solar-age open cluster M67. We find upper limits to the projected rotation velocities that are consistent with solar-like rotation (i.e., v sini ~< 2-3 km/s) for objects with Ca II chromospheric activity within the range of the contemporary solar cycle. Two solar-type stars in our sample exhibit chromospheric emission well in excess of even solar maximum values. In one case, Sanders 1452, we measure a minimum rotational velocity of vsini = 4 +/- 0.5 km/s, or over twice the solar equatorial rotational velocity. The other star with enhanced activity, Sanders 747, is a spectroscopic binary. We conclude that high activity in solar-type stars in M67 that exceeds solar levels is likely due to more rapid rotation rather than an excursion in solar-like activity cycles to unusually high levels. We estimate an upper limit of 0.2% for the range of brightness changes occurring as a result of chromospheric activity in solar-type stars and, by inference, in the Sun itself. We discuss possible implications for our understanding of angular momentum evolution in solar-type stars, and we tentatively attribute the rapid rotation in Sanders 1452 to a reduced braking efficiency.Comment: accepted by Ap

Genetic Determinism in the Genetics Curriculum: An Exploratory Study of the Effects of Mendelian and Weldonian Emphases

Twenty-first century biology rejects genetic determinism, yet an exaggerated view of the power of genes in the making of bodies and minds remains a problem. What accounts for such tenacity? This article reports an exploratory study suggesting that the common reliance on Mendelian examples and concepts at the start of teaching in basic genetics is an eliminable source of determinism. Undergraduate students who attended a standard “Mendelian approach” university course in introductory genetics on average showed no change in their determinist views about genes. By contrast, students who attended an alternative course which, inspired by the work of a critic of early Mendelism, W. F. R. Weldon (1860-1906), replaced an emphasis on Mendel’s peas with an emphasis on developmental contexts and their role in bringing about phenotypic variability, were less determinist about genes by the end of teaching. Improvements in both the new Weldonian curriculum and the study design are in view for the future