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Poision

—Paracelsus (Philip von Hohenheim (1493-1541)

Alle Ding sind Gift, und nichts ohn Gift; allein die Dosis macht, dafβ ein Ding kein Gift ist.

All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous.)

Hawking and Mlodinow’s model-dependent realism

Physicists Stephen W. Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, in their book, The Grand Design, assert that there cannot be a theory-independent , or picture-independent, concept of reality. They point out that either and earth-centered (Ptolemaic) or a sun-centered (Copernican) picture of reality can be made consistent with the motion of celestial bodies; that goldfish physicists living in a curved bowl, though observing curved paths of motion of bodies that we observe as linear, could still formulate predictive laws governing motion as they see it; that we cannot know whether we live in a simulated world, a virtual reality, one that the simulators rendered self-consistent. Each of those concepts of reality are picture- or theory-dependent.

Instead, they articulate a view of reality they call model-dependent realism:

we will adopt a view that we will call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations. This provides a framework with which to interpret modern science.

In adopting model-dependent realism, one would not argue that a model describes a true reality, only that it agrees with observations. If two different models agree with the observation, it does not make sense to consider one more real than the other, that one gives a truer picture of reality than the other, though one or the other may be more convenient, or otherwise more adventageous, to employ in a given situation. A model-dependent realist might prefer one over the other if she finds it more 'elegant', if it has few arbitrary or adjustable components, if explains all described and agreed-upon observations, and if it makes predictions that if not observed would show the model untenable.

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In its main entry for ‘metaphysics’, the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.) gives four ways in which the word has been used:

a. The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things or reality, including questions about being, substance, time and space, causation, change, and identity (which are presupposed in the special sciences but do not belong to any one of them); theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of being and knowing. a1620 M. Fotherby: The Metaphysickes, considering the pure essence of things. | 1739 D. Hume: So far from being able by our senses merely to determine this question, we must have recourse to the most profound metaphysics to give a satisfactory answer to it.

b. The study of phenomena beyond the scope of scientific inquiry.

c. Questions of metaphysics as they relate to a specified subject or phenomenon; the underlying concepts or first principles on which a particular branch of knowledge is based. Usu. with of. 1790 E. Burke: I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty of their political metaphysics. | 1958 W. Stark: A metasociology which would be, not a metaphysics, in so far as metaphysics is divorced from the empirical, but a study of man as he appears in all societies.

d. Philos. Used by logical positivists and some other linguistic philosophers for: any proposition or set of propositions of a speculative nature, considered to be meaningless because not empirically verifiable. 1937 A. Smeaton tr. R. Carnap: The sentences of metaphysics are pseudo-sentences which on logical analysis are proved to be either empty phrases or phrases which violate the rules of syntax. | 1956 J. O. Urmson: The view of Wittgenstein that metaphysics was not merely outdated as the old positivism had it, but was a logically impossible enterprise, being excluded by the essential nature of language.

NB: See the entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for sources of the examples and for additional examples.

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DATE	ABOUT MENDELEEV	COMMENT	RUSSIAN EVENTS	WORLD EVENTS
1834	Birthdate, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev	February 8 (N.S.)	Tsar Nicholas I, 1825-1855, autocratic rule. Increasing ferment in path to revolution.	U.S. President, Andrew Jackson 1829-1837. advances presidential power.
1841-49	Primary school student, Tobolsk.	Ages 7-14 years.....
1850-55	Attends Main Pedagogical Institute St. Petersburg. Graduates, diploma 'Senior Teacher'	Table Cell Table Cell Table	Reformist-minded Tsar Alexander II assumes power.	U.S. President, Franklin Pierce. Gladsen Purchase establishes U.S. southwestern boundary line.
1855-56	Teaches, Odessa middle school.	Cell	Cell	Cell
1857-1890	University of St. Petersberg: Receives degree, Magister of Chemistry (1856) Teaches as Private Docent (1857-59) Docent (1864) Professor (1865-1890)	Table Cell	Serfs freed, 1861	Charles Dickens publishes A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection....
1859-61	Postgraduate research, Heidelberg, Germany.	cell	cell
1861-1864	Teaches, Institute for Railroad Engineering	Table Cell	Table Cell	U.S. Civil War, 1861-1865
1863-1872	St. Petersberg Technological Institute	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
1865	Professorship, University of St. Petersberg	Cell	Cell	Cell
1868	Helps found Russian Chemical Society	Cell	Cell	Cell
Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell
Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell
Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell
Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell
Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell

Russian Events: HISTORY OF RUSSIA. From: History World.

PhilBiol

Elliott Sober speaks to the definition of the philosophy of biology:

Biologists study living things, but what do philosophers of biology study? A cynic might say "their own navels," but I am no cynic. A better answer is that philosophers of biology, and philosophers of science generally, study science. Ours is a second-order, not a first-order, subject. In this respect, philosophy of science is similar to history and sociology of science. A difference may be found in the fact that historians and sociologists study science as it is, whereas philosophers of science study science as it ought to be….its goal being to distinguish good science from bad, better scientific practices from worse.

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Bear with me, 0 mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train. —Wislawa Szymborska, from her poem, "Under One Small Star" (see Works|Poems|Exception Over the Rule)

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Autopoiesis ref

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Survival of the fittest in relation to the environment has importantly influenced the evolved structure and function of Homo sapiens, and given the absolute requirement for food consumption for survival, food as environment played a fundamental role in the determination of human structure and function as the species evolved from its most ancient ancestors. ^[e]

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Adiponectin

Adiponectin, a hormone (a.k.a., adipokine, adipocytokine) produced by adipose tissue cells — adipocytes — and secreted into the bloodstream, induces beneficial effects in medical conditions related to obesity, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, atherosclerosis, chronic inflammation, and cancer.

DMITRI IVANOVITCH MENDELEYEV was a boy who came out of Siberia, traveled westward to Moscow and St. Petersburg to become one of Russia's greatest scientists. It was he who thought so deeply about the universe that he was able to predict the existence of substances which had never —Daniel Q. Posin

DMITRI IVANOVITCH MENDELEYEV was a boy who came out of Siberia, traveled westward to Moscow and St. Petersburg to become one of Russia's greatest scientists. It was he who thought so deeply about the universe that he was able to predict the existence of substances which had never before been seen by man. It was he also who taught his country how to win iron from the Urals, coal from the Donetz Basin, oil from the regions of the Caspian Sea. It was he who exalted the realm of pure science and fervently wished that "many could enter its portals." The Russians finally listened to him, and the country grew industrially, scientifically, and moreover, spiritually, for it was Mendeleyev also who championed the rights of human freedom and protected students from the abuses of the Tsar's regime. Mendeleyev's chart, evolved into the modern form through the work of Moseley, now hangs in almost every chemistry and physics laboratory in the world. Often, through my years of study I have thought of the Russian scientist, but actually I knew little of him. I halfway expected to probe into his life some day, to uncover the facts behind this obscure genius. One day I read of a contest for books on scientific subjects written for the layman. This was the stimulus I had been waiting for. I entered the contest, I read everything I could get hold of on Mendeleyev and by him--there is no full-length biography in English. Most of this I read in Russian, for I was born in Russia, near the Caspian Sea. And I have lived in Siberia also, and come out of there, it almost seems to me, to tell about the bearded prophet of the snows, the champion of the people. —Daniel Q. Posin

Adiponectin, a hormone (a.k.a., adipokine, adipocytokine) produced by adipose tissue cells — adipocytes — and secreted into the bloodstream, induces beneficial effects in medical conditions related to obesity, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, atherosclerosis, chronic inflammation, and cancer.

Adiponectin alters insulin receptor function, diminishes the action of insulin in the liver, alters the metabolism of free fatty acids by liver cells, and protects against inflammation. Adults and children (humans) who have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) show decreased plasma concentrations of adiponectin. Inasmuch as insulin resistance in the liver, and hyperinsulinemia, feature in NAFLD, those finding suggest a link between fatty liver and insulin resistance perhaps in part to reduced adiponectin. NAFLD also features elevated levels of leptin, an adipokine that reduces appetite but also interferes with insulin action in the brain.

Adiponectin exhibits the following actions:

• Perhaps by increasing fatty acid oxidation, a smaller increase in plasma FFA occurs after a high fat meal;
• By enhancing lipid metabolism, insulin sensitivity improves;
• Reduced glucose production by the liver;
• Plasma concentrations associate inversely with endogenous glucose production.

In patients who have had an acute myocardial infarction, the risk of subsequent major adverse cardiovascular events is lowest in patients with the highest plasma concentrations of adiponectin. Some researchers note that in postmenopausal women serum adiponectin concentrations correlate inversely with bone mineral density.

Book review of Language Evolution

This section is an adaptation of a review of the book, Christiansen MH, Kirby S. (editors/authors) (2003) Language evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199244847. | 21 authors, 17 chapters, 395 pages. | Google Books preview., entitled:

Language Evolution

originally published by Szabolcs Számadó and Eörs Szathmáry (2004) in PLoS Biol 2(10): e346..

"... markets are part of advancing the public interest and the left are wrong to say they are not; ...markets are not always in the public interest and the right is wrong to automatically equate the imposition of markets with the public interest." "The challenge for New Labour is, while remaining true to our values and goals, to have the courage to affirm that markets are a means of advancing the public interest; to strengthen markets when they work and to tackle market failures to enable markets to work better." (Gordon Brown's speech to the Social Market Foundation on 3 February, 2003).

A ban in the 1866s by the French Academy of Sciences on publications about the origin of human language must have been one of the strangest bans in the history of sciences. Yet it was highly effective. After the ban, scientists and interested laymen had to wait for more than a century to hold a textbook on language evolution in their hands.

Editors Chritiansen and Kirby present, in Language Evolution, a compilation of essays by a diverse group of respected researchers, is amongst the first books that try to tackle what is arguably one of the hardest scientific problems. The editors set themselves the ambitious target of creating an up-to-date book about this emerging field, and they have to be congratulated for their efforts. Linguists, cognitive scientists, behavioural ecologists, and theoretical biologists all offer their view on the origin of human language and, refreshingly, do not shy from pointing out the real or assumed weaknesses of the other approaches.

One of the main themes of the book is the evolutionary approach and the importance of biological structures and properties that were co-opted in the development of language (pre-adaptations). In one essay, Michael Studdert-Kenedy and Louis Goldstein propose that speech, as a motor function, draws on phylogenetically ancient mammalian oral capacities for sucking, licking, swallowing, and chewing. Thus, our hominid ancestors adopted an apparatus already divided neuroanatomically into discrete components. Complementing this evidence, Marc Hauser and Tecumseh Fitch compare human speech production and perception with that of nonhuman species. They conclude that many traits that were formerly thought to have evolved specifically for speech (such as having a descended larynx or categorical perception) are also present in other species.

But perhaps the most interesting idea about pre-adaptation comes from the work of neuroscientist Michael Arbib on ‘mirror’ neurons in monkeys. These neurons are a subset of the grasp-related premotor neurons that discharge not only, as other premotor neurons do, when the monkey executes a certain class of actions, but also when the monkey observes more or less similarly meaningful hand movements made by the experimenter (or by another monkey). The area in which these grasp-related neurons are found is analogous with the Broca's area in human brains, which is involved in assessing the syntax of words. This observation serves as the basis for the mirror-system hypothesis, which postulates that Broca's area in humans evolved from a basic mechanism not originally related to communication but rather from the mirror system for grasping in the common ancestor of monkey and human. As a result, the mirror system provides a possible ‘neural link’ in the evolution of human language.

There is still much debate about the selection pressures that led to the evolution of language. Observing the overabundance of potential selective scenarios for why language evolved, the linguist Derek Bickerton voices his scepticism: ‘The fact that these and similar explanations flourish side by side tells one immediately not enough constraints are being used to limit possible explanations.’ One frequent source of confusion, he notes, is equating language with speech by not distinguishing between modality, lexicon, and structure. Hauser and Fitch share Bickerton's scepticism and urge scientists to rely more on the traditional comparative approach, which was always the strength of Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Primatologist Robin Dunbar, who originally proposed that grooming (group bonding) could have provided the stimulus for language, dismisses two other possible scenarios—hunting and tool-making—as potential ecological contexts for the evolution of human language. Gestural origins are also dismissed in his theory, because gestural languages do not seem to develop spontaneously and also require a line-of-sight contact making them useless at night.

Interestingly, Steven Pinker rules out both Dunbar's theory of grooming and Geoffrey Miller's theory of sexual selection, whereas Bickerton rules out grooming, gossip, mating contract, and Machiavellian intelligence as likely contexts for the origin of human language.

Also under fire in the book is the idea that the human brain is somehow equipped at birth with a ‘universal grammar’ out of which all human languages later develop. Several authors try to provide alternatives to innate predispositions, such as the importance of function to categorization (Michael Tomasello) and the importance of cultural transmission to the structure of language (Simon Kirby and Morton Christiansen). Arbib explicitly questions the traditional Chomskyan theory of innate linguistic predispositions and argues that what humans have and had in the past is ‘language readiness’ rather than a fixed universal grammar.

Neuroscientist Terrence Deacon also puts an alternative theory forward. According to Deacon, many of the language universals reflect semiotic constraints inherent in the requirements for producing symbolic reference rather than innate predispositions. Thus, neither evolved innate predispositions nor culturally evolved and transmitted regularities can be considered as the ultimate source of language universals. He draws a parallel with mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, etc.) and with prime numbers. Symbolic reference, he argues, is constrained by the structure it refers to.

The editors claim, in the light of this diversity, that ‘this book is intended to bring together, for the first time, all the major perspectives on language evolution’. We have two concerns with this aim. First, two books of the same organization and scope have been published in the past six years based on the material from language evolution conferences (Hurford et al. 1998; Knight et al. 2000). Although this first concern might be just splitting hairs, the second is more substantial: several crucial aspects of language evolution are not represented at all or are just touched superficially.

One of these missing themes is the selective advantage of early language. As discussed, many of the contributors express their scepticism towards the selective scenarios found in the literature—and indeed towards such constructions in general—but there is no review and no balanced evaluation of these selective scenarios. Since one of the key questions of language evolution is the selective advantage of early language, the lack of such a review is a major weakness. A balanced account could have been presented even if the editors and most of the contributors are frustrated by the plethora of selective scenarios.

Related to the possible selective advantage of language is the issue of genetic background. Although there is mention of the so-called FOX genes—some mutations of which are associated with language disorders—there is no detailed discussion of our current knowledge of genetics related to language.

Another lightly treated theme is the neural basis of language and language evolution. Understandably it is one of the most difficult issues concerning human language, and no one expects the editors or any of the contributors to come up with an answer to all the questions. What is missing again is a good survey outlining the problems and the current findings of the field.

The weaknesses of the book come from its structure and organization. The editors, instead of outlining a structure and asking specialists to contribute to that structure, appear to have let every contributor write freely about their current ideas and current research without regard to the bigger picture. This definitely shows the interests of the contributors and outlines the current state of the art; it leaves gaps, however, in the coverage of crucial topics related to the evolution of human language.

References:

Hurford JR, Studdert-Kennedy M, Knight C (1998) Approaches to the evolution of language: Social and cognitive bases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 452 p.

Knight C, Studdert-Kennedy M, Hurford JR (2000) The evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 438 p.

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Articles I started

Biographies: Alcmaeon;  John Dalton;  Vesalius [Andreas Vesalius];  Alfred Russel Wallace;

Biology:  Life.....

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Our entire body operates by electricity. Gnarled living electrical cables extend into the depths of our brains; intense electric and magnetic force fields stretch into our cells, flinging food or neuro- transmitters across microscopic barrier membranes; even our DNA is controlled by potent electrical forces.       — David Bodanis

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3CO₂ + 6H₂O +343 kcal light energy → C₃H₆O₃ [triose] + 30₂ +3H₂O

Test E&B

In the science of biology the concept of energy occupies a central and critical position, inasmuch as living systems could not exist without an ultimate source of energy from the external non-biological world,  and could not have emerged from the abiotic world in the first place.

refs

Many citations to the journal articles listed below include abstracts of the articles; they often amplify the information contained in the Citizendium article. Some book citations will have attached excerpts that further amplify the information contained in the Citizendium article.

Most citations to articles listed here include links to full-text, access to which may require personal or institutional subscription. Nevertheless, usually the links will show the abstracts of the articles, free without subscription. Links to books variously may open to full-text, or to the publishers' description of the book with or without downloadable selected chapters, reviews, and table of contents. Books with links to Google Books often offer extensive previews of the books' text.

Alcmaeon's extant fragments

Health is the equality of rights of the functions.

J.B. Wilbur lists the English translation of the extant fragments of Alcmaeon's book:

• Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Peirithous, said the following to Brotinus and Leon and Bathyllus: concerning things unseen, (as) concerning things mortal, the gods have certainty, whereas to us as men conjecture (only is possible).

• Men perish because they cannot join the beginning to the end.

• (In mules, the males are sterile because of the fineness and coldness of the seed, and the females because their wombs do not open).

• Health is the equality of rights of the functions, wet-dry, cold-hot, bitter-sweet and the rest; but single rule among them causes disease; the single rule of either pair is deleterious. Disease occurs sometimes from an internal cause such as excess of heat or cold, sometimes from an external cause such as excess or deficiency of food, sometimes in a certain part, such as blood, marrow or brain; but these parts also are sometimes affected by external causes, such as certain waters or a particular site or fatigue or constraint or similar reasons. But health is the harmonious mixture of the qualities.

• It is easier to guard against an enemy than against a friend.

Notes from SEP re Alcmaeon

lcmaeon from SEP

Book written between 500-450 BC. 1st to identify brain as seat of understanding Distinguished unerstandin rom perception Sense organs connected to brain by hannels Developed argument for soul immortality Physiology: sleep, death, embryonic development Influenced later greek philosopher

Aristotle wrote a treatise responding to him, Plato adopted his argument for the immortality of the soul, and both Plato and Philolaus accepted his view that the brain is the seat of intelligence.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Boxed epigraphs

A deterministic emergence of life would reflect an essential continuity between physics, chemistry, and biology. It would show that a part of the order we recognize as living is thermodynamic order inherent in the geosphere, and that some aspects of Darwinian selection are expressions of the likely simpler statistical mechanics of physical and chemical self-organization. —Harold Morowitz and Eric Smith We propose that the only absolute requirements [for life] are a thermodynamic disequilibrium and temperatures consistent with chemical bonding. —S. A. Benner et al. Organisms do not maintain their complexity, and become more complex, in a vacuum. Their high organization and low entropy is made up for by pollution, heat, and entropic export to their surroundings. —Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan

A deterministic emergence of life would reflect an essential continuity between physics, chemistry, and biology. It would show that a part of the order we recognize as living is thermodynamic order inherent in the geosphere, and that some aspects of Darwinian selection are expressions of the likely simpler statistical mechanics of physical and chemical self-organization.
  —Harold Morowitz and Eric Smith

We propose that the only absolute requirements [for life] are a thermodynamic disequilibrium and temperatures consistent with chemical bonding.
  —S. A. Benner et al.

Organisms do not maintain their complexity, and become more complex, in a vacuum. Their high organization and low entropy is made up for by pollution, heat, and entropic export to their surroundings.
  —Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan

Bionets

Biological networks resemble many types of man-made networks, types of systems of diverse structure and function, each a collection of parts, the parts themselves differing in type, with multiple copies of each type, parts capable of interconnecting, the interconnections tying all the parts together into a whole structure made up of subtructures and modules of subtructures, the interconnected parts capable of interacting, the interactions capable of producing particular changes in the structure of each other or in the structures' properties, enabling intercommunication with signals that convey information, the whole structure a functional unit designed for a purpose.

Biological networks differ from such man-made networks, however, in having no human designer, having emerged from nature by organic evolutionary processes, its foundational system a biological cell, a biocomputer, designed basically to live and reproduce itelf, autonomous, capable of cooperating with other cells to generate multicellular structures that can intelligently design networks, inorganic as well as organic ones.

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<a href="http://www.quackit.com/html/html_table_tutorial.cfm" target="_top">HTML Tables</a>

epigraph code

Our entire body operates by electricity. Gnarled living electrical cables extend into the depths of our brains; intense electric and magnetic force fields stretch into our cells, flinging food or neuro- transmitters across microscopic barrier membranes; even our DNA is controlled by potent electrical forces.       — David Bodanis

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<blockquote> <p style="margin-left:2.0%; margin-right:6%;font-size:0.95em;"><font face="Comic Sans MS, Trebuchet MS, Consolas"> Text </font> <ref>xx</ref></p> </blockquote>

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3CO₂ + 6H₂O +343 kcal light energy → C₃H₆O₃ [triose] + 30₂ +3H₂O

Alcmaeon's extant fragments

Health is the equality of rights of the functions.

J.B. Wilbur lists the English translation of the extant fragments of Alcmaeon's book:

• Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Peirithous, said the following to Brotinus and Leon and Bathyllus: concerning things unseen, (as) concerning things mortal, the gods have certainty, whereas to us as men conjecture (only is possible).

• Men perish because they cannot join the beginning to the end.

• (In mules, the males are sterile because of the fineness and coldness of the seed, and the females because their wombs do not open).

• Health is the equality of rights of the functions, wet-dry, cold-hot, bitter-sweet and the rest; but single rule among them causes disease; the single rule of either pair is deleterious. Disease occurs sometimes from an internal cause such as excess of heat or cold, sometimes from an external cause such as excess or deficiency of food, sometimes in a certain part, such as blood, marrow or brain; but these parts also are sometimes affected by external causes, such as certain waters or a particular site or fatigue or constraint or similar reasons. But health is the harmonious mixture of the qualities.

• It is easier to guard against an enemy than against a friend.

Notes from SEP re Alcmaeon

lcmaeon from SEP

Book written between 500-450 BC. 1st to identify brain as seat of understanding Distinguished unerstandin rom perception Sense organs connected to brain by hannels Developed argument for soul immortality Physiology: sleep, death, embryonic development Influenced later greek philosopher

Aristotle wrote a treatise responding to him, Plato adopted his argument for the immortality of the soul, and both Plato and Philolaus accepted his view that the brain is the seat of intelligence.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Liven in croton, so italy Physician-pilosopher Strong medical tradition developed in crotonj

Pythagorean or not? Aristotle wrote a separate book on Alcmaeon

The overwhelming majority of scholars since 1950 have accordingly regarded Alcmaeon as a figure independent of the Pythagoreans (e.g., Guthrie 1962 and Lloyd 1991, 167; Zhmud 1997, 70-71, is one of the few exceptions), although, as a fellow citizen of Croton, he will have been familiar with their thought.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

One group of scholars dates the publication of Alcmaeon's book to around 500 (Burkert 1972, 292; Kirk, Raven, Schofield 1983, 339 [early 5th]) so that he would have been born around 540. Another group has him born around 510 so that his book would have been published in 470 or later (Guthrie 1962, 358 [480-440 BC]; Lloyd 1991, 168 [490-430 BC]). In either case Alcmaeon probably wrote before Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Philolaus. He is either the contemporary or the predecessor of Parmenides.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

He thus takes the stance of the scientist who draws inferences from what can be perceived, and he implicitly rejects the claims of those who base their account of the world on the certainty of a divine revelation (e.g., Pythagoras, Parmenides B1).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Socrates connects this view of the brain with an empiricist epistemology, which Aristotle will later adopt (Posterior Analytics 100a3 ff.). This epistemology involves three steps: first, the brain provides the sensations of hearing, sight and smell, then, memory and opinion arise from these, and finally, when memory and opinion achieve fixity, knowledge arises. Some scholars suppose that this entire epistemology is Alcmaeon's (e.g., Barnes 1982, 149 ff.), while others more cautiously note that we only have explicit evidence that Alcmaeon took the first step (e.g., Vlastos 1970, 47, n.8).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

he only conclusions we can reasonably draw about Alcmaeon from the passage are that he excised the eyeball of an animal and observed poroi (channels, i.e. the optic nerve) leading from the eye in the direction of the brain (Lloyd 1975). Theophrastus' account of Alcmaeon's theory of sensation implies that he thought that there were such channels leading from each of the senses to the brain: All the senses are connected in some way with the brain. As a result, they are incapacitated when it is disturbed or changes its place, for it then stops the channels, through which the senses operate. (DK, A5)

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

It would be a serious mistake then to say that Alcmaeon discovered dissection or that he was the father of anatomy, since there is no evidence that he used dissection systematically or even that he did more than excise a single eyeball.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

The idea that health depends on a balance of opposed factors in the body is a commonplace in Greek medical writers. Although Alcmaeon is the earliest figure to whom such a conception of health is attributed, it may well be that he is not presenting an original thesis but rather drawing on the earlier medical tradition in Croton. Perhaps what is distinctive to Alcmaeon is the use of the specific political metaphor and terminology (isonomia, monarchia). Just as Anaximander explained the order of the cosmos in terms of justice in the city-state, so Alcmaeon used a political metaphor to explain the order of the human body.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Contrary to a popular Greek view, which regarded the father alone as providing seed, a view that would be followed by Aristotle (Lloyd 1983, 86 ff.), Alcmaeon argued that both parents contribute seed (DK, A13) and that the child takes the sex of the parent who contributes the most seed (DK, A14).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

More significantly, he used analogies with animals and plants in developing his accounts of human physiology. Thus, the pubic hair that develops when human males are about to produce seed for the first time at age fourteen is analogous to the flowering of plants before they produce seed (DK, A15); milk in mammals is analogous to egg white in birds (DK, A16).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/> Alcmaeon agrees with these Pythagoreans in regarding the opposites as principles of things. Aristotle complains, however, that Alcmaeon did not arrive at a definite set of opposites but spoke haphazardly of white, black, sweet, bitter, good, bad, large and small, and only threw in vague comments about the remaining opposites. It may well be that Alcmaeon's primary discussion of opposites was in relation to his account of the human body (DK, B4; see the discussion of his medical theories above). Aristotle's language supports this suggestion to some extent, when he summarizes Alcmaeon's view as that "the majority of human things (tôn anthrôpinôn) are in pairs" (Metaph. 986a31). Isocrates (DK, A3) says that Alcmaeon, in contrast to Empedocles, who postulated four elements, said that there were only two, and, according to a heterodox view, Alcmaeon posited fire and earth as basic elements (Lebedev 1993).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

• Long, A. A., (ed.), 1999, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

• Taylor, C. C. W., (ed.), 1997, Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume 1: From the Beginning to Plato, London: Routledge

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Sep au Carl Huffman

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Bionets

Biological networks resemble many types of man-made networks, types of systems of diverse structure and function, each a collection of parts, the parts themselves differing in type, with multiple copies of each type, parts capable of interconnecting, the interconnections tying all the parts together into a whole structure made up of subtructures and modules of subtructures, the interconnected parts capable of interacting, the interactions capable of producing particular changes in the structure of each other or in the structures' properties, enabling intercommunication with signals that convey information, the whole structure a functional unit designed for a purpose.

Biological networks differ from such man-made networks, however, in having no human designer, having emerged from nature by organic evolutionary processes, its foundational system a biological cell, a biocomputer, designed basically to live and reproduce itelf, autonomous, capable of cooperating with other cells to generate multicellular structures that can intelligently design networks, inorganic as well as organic ones.

tbl

Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

<a href="http://www.quackit.com/html/html_table_tutorial.cfm" target="_top">HTML Tables</a>

Re lemma

• Calorie restriction [r]: Long-term reduction of food energy intake to, or nearly to, the minimum consistent with the absence of malnutrition, a procedure that robustly and reproducibly improves health and extends lifespan across animal species. ^[e]

Adiponectin

Adiponectin, a hormone (a.k.a., adipokine, adipocytokine) produced by adipose tissue cells — adipocytes — and secreted into the bloodstream, induces beneficial effects in medical conditions related to obesity, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, atherosclerosis, chronic inflammation, and cancer.

Adiponectin alters insulin receptor function, diminishes the action of insulin in the liver, alters the metabolism of free fatty acids by liver cells, and protects against inflammation. Adults and children (humans) who have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) show decreased plasma concentrations of adiponectin. Inasmuch as insulin resistance in the liver, and hyperinsulinemia, feature in NAFLD, those finding suggest a link between fatty liver and insulin resistance perhaps in part to reduced adiponectin. NAFLD also features elevated levels of leptin, an adipokine that reduces appetite but also interferes with insulin action in the brain.

Adiponectin exhibits the following actions:

• Perhaps by increasing fatty acid oxidation, a smaller increase in plasma FFA occurs after a high fat meal;
• By enhancing lipid metabolism, insulin sensitivity improves;
• Reduced glucose production by the liver;
• Plasma concentrations associate inversely with endogenous glucose production.

In patients who have had an acute myocardial infarction, the risk of subsequent major adverse cardiovascular events is lowest in patients with the highest plasma concentrations of adiponectin. Some researchers note that in postmenopausal women serum adiponectin concentrations correlate inversely with bone mineral density.

Book review of Language Evolution

This section is an adaptation of a review of the book, Christiansen MH, Kirby S. (editors/authors) (2003) Language evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199244847. | 21 authors, 17 chapters, 395 pages. | Google Books preview., entitled:

Language Evolution

originally published by Szabolcs Számadó and Eörs Szathmáry (2004) in PLoS Biol 2(10): e346..

A ban in the 1866s by the French Academy of Sciences on publications about the origin of human language must have been one of the strangest bans in the history of sciences. Yet it was highly effective. After the ban, scientists and interested laymen had to wait for more than a century to hold a textbook on language evolution in their hands.

Editors Chritiansen and Kirby present, in Language Evolution, a compilation of essays by a diverse group of respected researchers, is amongst the first books that try to tackle what is arguably one of the hardest scientific problems. The editors set themselves the ambitious target of creating an up-to-date book about this emerging field, and they have to be congratulated for their efforts. Linguists, cognitive scientists, behavioural ecologists, and theoretical biologists all offer their view on the origin of human language and, refreshingly, do not shy from pointing out the real or assumed weaknesses of the other approaches.

One of the main themes of the book is the evolutionary approach and the importance of biological structures and properties that were co-opted in the development of language (pre-adaptations). In one essay, Michael Studdert-Kenedy and Louis Goldstein propose that speech, as a motor function, draws on phylogenetically ancient mammalian oral capacities for sucking, licking, swallowing, and chewing. Thus, our hominid ancestors adopted an apparatus already divided neuroanatomically into discrete components. Complementing this evidence, Marc Hauser and Tecumseh Fitch compare human speech production and perception with that of nonhuman species. They conclude that many traits that were formerly thought to have evolved specifically for speech (such as having a descended larynx or categorical perception) are also present in other species.

But perhaps the most interesting idea about pre-adaptation comes from the work of neuroscientist Michael Arbib on ‘mirror’ neurons in monkeys. These neurons are a subset of the grasp-related premotor neurons that discharge not only, as other premotor neurons do, when the monkey executes a certain class of actions, but also when the monkey observes more or less similarly meaningful hand movements made by the experimenter (or by another monkey). The area in which these grasp-related neurons are found is analogous with the Broca's area in human brains, which is involved in assessing the syntax of words. This observation serves as the basis for the mirror-system hypothesis, which postulates that Broca's area in humans evolved from a basic mechanism not originally related to communication but rather from the mirror system for grasping in the common ancestor of monkey and human. As a result, the mirror system provides a possible ‘neural link’ in the evolution of human language.

There is still much debate about the selection pressures that led to the evolution of language. Observing the overabundance of potential selective scenarios for why language evolved, the linguist Derek Bickerton voices his scepticism: ‘The fact that these and similar explanations flourish side by side tells one immediately not enough constraints are being used to limit possible explanations.’ One frequent source of confusion, he notes, is equating language with speech by not distinguishing between modality, lexicon, and structure. Hauser and Fitch share Bickerton's scepticism and urge scientists to rely more on the traditional comparative approach, which was always the strength of Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Primatologist Robin Dunbar, who originally proposed that grooming (group bonding) could have provided the stimulus for language, dismisses two other possible scenarios—hunting and tool-making—as potential ecological contexts for the evolution of human language. Gestural origins are also dismissed in his theory, because gestural languages do not seem to develop spontaneously and also require a line-of-sight contact making them useless at night.

Interestingly, Steven Pinker rules out both Dunbar's theory of grooming and Geoffrey Miller's theory of sexual selection, whereas Bickerton rules out grooming, gossip, mating contract, and Machiavellian intelligence as likely contexts for the origin of human language.

Also under fire in the book is the idea that the human brain is somehow equipped at birth with a ‘universal grammar’ out of which all human languages later develop. Several authors try to provide alternatives to innate predispositions, such as the importance of function to categorization (Michael Tomasello) and the importance of cultural transmission to the structure of language (Simon Kirby and Morton Christiansen). Arbib explicitly questions the traditional Chomskyan theory of innate linguistic predispositions and argues that what humans have and had in the past is ‘language readiness’ rather than a fixed universal grammar.

Neuroscientist Terrence Deacon also puts an alternative theory forward. According to Deacon, many of the language universals reflect semiotic constraints inherent in the requirements for producing symbolic reference rather than innate predispositions. Thus, neither evolved innate predispositions nor culturally evolved and transmitted regularities can be considered as the ultimate source of language universals. He draws a parallel with mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, etc.) and with prime numbers. Symbolic reference, he argues, is constrained by the structure it refers to.

The editors claim, in the light of this diversity, that ‘this book is intended to bring together, for the first time, all the major perspectives on language evolution’. We have two concerns with this aim. First, two books of the same organization and scope have been published in the past six years based on the material from language evolution conferences (Hurford et al. 1998; Knight et al. 2000). Although this first concern might be just splitting hairs, the second is more substantial: several crucial aspects of language evolution are not represented at all or are just touched superficially.

One of these missing themes is the selective advantage of early language. As discussed, many of the contributors express their scepticism towards the selective scenarios found in the literature—and indeed towards such constructions in general—but there is no review and no balanced evaluation of these selective scenarios. Since one of the key questions of language evolution is the selective advantage of early language, the lack of such a review is a major weakness. A balanced account could have been presented even if the editors and most of the contributors are frustrated by the plethora of selective scenarios.

Related to the possible selective advantage of language is the issue of genetic background. Although there is mention of the so-called FOX genes—some mutations of which are associated with language disorders—there is no detailed discussion of our current knowledge of genetics related to language.

Another lightly treated theme is the neural basis of language and language evolution. Understandably it is one of the most difficult issues concerning human language, and no one expects the editors or any of the contributors to come up with an answer to all the questions. What is missing again is a good survey outlining the problems and the current findings of the field.

The weaknesses of the book come from its structure and organization. The editors, instead of outlining a structure and asking specialists to contribute to that structure, appear to have let every contributor write freely about their current ideas and current research without regard to the bigger picture. This definitely shows the interests of the contributors and outlines the current state of the art; it leaves gaps, however, in the coverage of crucial topics related to the evolution of human language.

References:

Hurford JR, Studdert-Kennedy M, Knight C (1998) Approaches to the evolution of language: Social and cognitive bases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 452 p.

Knight C, Studdert-Kennedy M, Hurford JR (2000) The evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 438 p.

consider for user page

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list
Common misspellings

---

Articles I started

Biographies: Alcmaeon;  John Dalton;  Vesalius [Andreas Vesalius];  Alfred Russel Wallace;

Biology:  Life.....

epigraph code

Our entire body operates by electricity. Gnarled living electrical cables extend into the depths of our brains; intense electric and magnetic force fields stretch into our cells, flinging food or neuro- transmitters across microscopic barrier membranes; even our DNA is controlled by potent electrical forces.       — David Bodanis

block

<blockquote> <p style="margin-left:2.0%; margin-right:6%;font-size:0.95em;"><font face="Comic Sans MS, Trebuchet MS, Consolas"> Text </font> <ref>xx</ref></p> </blockquote>

ps

3CO₂ + 6H₂O +343 kcal light energy → C₃H₆O₃ [triose] + 30₂ +3H₂O

Test E&B

In the science of biology the concept of energy occupies a central and critical position, inasmuch as living systems could not exist without an ultimate source of energy from the external non-biological world,  and could not have emerged from the abiotic world in the first place.

Alcmaeon's extant fragments

Health is the equality of rights of the functions.

J.B. Wilbur lists the English translation of the extant fragments of Alcmaeon's book:

• Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Peirithous, said the following to Brotinus and Leon and Bathyllus: concerning things unseen, (as) concerning things mortal, the gods have certainty, whereas to us as men conjecture (only is possible).

• Men perish because they cannot join the beginning to the end.

• (In mules, the males are sterile because of the fineness and coldness of the seed, and the females because their wombs do not open).

• Health is the equality of rights of the functions, wet-dry, cold-hot, bitter-sweet and the rest; but single rule among them causes disease; the single rule of either pair is deleterious. Disease occurs sometimes from an internal cause such as excess of heat or cold, sometimes from an external cause such as excess or deficiency of food, sometimes in a certain part, such as blood, marrow or brain; but these parts also are sometimes affected by external causes, such as certain waters or a particular site or fatigue or constraint or similar reasons. But health is the harmonious mixture of the qualities.

• It is easier to guard against an enemy than against a friend.

Notes from SEP re Alcmaeon

lcmaeon from SEP

Book written between 500-450 BC. 1st to identify brain as seat of understanding Distinguished unerstandin rom perception Sense organs connected to brain by hannels Developed argument for soul immortality Physiology: sleep, death, embryonic development Influenced later greek philosopher

Aristotle wrote a treatise responding to him, Plato adopted his argument for the immortality of the soul, and both Plato and Philolaus accepted his view that the brain is the seat of intelligence.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Bionets

Biological networks resemble many types of man-made networks, types of systems of diverse structure and function, each a collection of parts, the parts themselves differing in type, with multiple copies of each type, parts capable of interconnecting, the interconnections tying all the parts together into a whole structure made up of subtructures and modules of subtructures, the interconnected parts capable of interacting, the interactions capable of producing particular changes in the structure of each other or in the structures' properties, enabling intercommunication with signals that convey information, the whole structure a functional unit designed for a purpose.

Biological networks differ from such man-made networks, however, in having no human designer, having emerged from nature by organic evolutionary processes, its foundational system a biological cell, a biocomputer, designed basically to live and reproduce itelf, autonomous, capable of cooperating with other cells to generate multicellular structures that can intelligently design networks, inorganic as well as organic ones.

tbl

Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

<a href="http://www.quackit.com/html/html_table_tutorial.cfm" target="_top">HTML Tables</a>

epigraph code

Our entire body operates by electricity. Gnarled living electrical cables extend into the depths of our brains; intense electric and magnetic force fields stretch into our cells, flinging food or neuro- transmitters across microscopic barrier membranes; even our DNA is controlled by potent electrical forces.       — David Bodanis

block

<blockquote> <p style="margin-left:2.0%; margin-right:6%;font-size:0.95em;"><font face="Comic Sans MS, Trebuchet MS, Consolas"> Text </font> <ref>xx</ref></p> </blockquote>

ps

3CO₂ + 6H₂O +343 kcal light energy → C₃H₆O₃ [triose] + 30₂ +3H₂O

Alcmaeon's extant fragments

Health is the equality of rights of the functions.

J.B. Wilbur lists the English translation of the extant fragments of Alcmaeon's book:

• Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Peirithous, said the following to Brotinus and Leon and Bathyllus: concerning things unseen, (as) concerning things mortal, the gods have certainty, whereas to us as men conjecture (only is possible).

• Men perish because they cannot join the beginning to the end.

• (In mules, the males are sterile because of the fineness and coldness of the seed, and the females because their wombs do not open).

• Health is the equality of rights of the functions, wet-dry, cold-hot, bitter-sweet and the rest; but single rule among them causes disease; the single rule of either pair is deleterious. Disease occurs sometimes from an internal cause such as excess of heat or cold, sometimes from an external cause such as excess or deficiency of food, sometimes in a certain part, such as blood, marrow or brain; but these parts also are sometimes affected by external causes, such as certain waters or a particular site or fatigue or constraint or similar reasons. But health is the harmonious mixture of the qualities.

• It is easier to guard against an enemy than against a friend.

Notes from SEP re Alcmaeon

lcmaeon from SEP

Book written between 500-450 BC. 1st to identify brain as seat of understanding Distinguished unerstandin rom perception Sense organs connected to brain by hannels Developed argument for soul immortality Physiology: sleep, death, embryonic development Influenced later greek philosopher

Aristotle wrote a treatise responding to him, Plato adopted his argument for the immortality of the soul, and both Plato and Philolaus accepted his view that the brain is the seat of intelligence.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Liven in croton, so italy Physician-pilosopher Strong medical tradition developed in crotonj

Pythagorean or not? Aristotle wrote a separate book on Alcmaeon

The overwhelming majority of scholars since 1950 have accordingly regarded Alcmaeon as a figure independent of the Pythagoreans (e.g., Guthrie 1962 and Lloyd 1991, 167; Zhmud 1997, 70-71, is one of the few exceptions), although, as a fellow citizen of Croton, he will have been familiar with their thought.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

One group of scholars dates the publication of Alcmaeon's book to around 500 (Burkert 1972, 292; Kirk, Raven, Schofield 1983, 339 [early 5th]) so that he would have been born around 540. Another group has him born around 510 so that his book would have been published in 470 or later (Guthrie 1962, 358 [480-440 BC]; Lloyd 1991, 168 [490-430 BC]). In either case Alcmaeon probably wrote before Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Philolaus. He is either the contemporary or the predecessor of Parmenides.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

He thus takes the stance of the scientist who draws inferences from what can be perceived, and he implicitly rejects the claims of those who base their account of the world on the certainty of a divine revelation (e.g., Pythagoras, Parmenides B1).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Socrates connects this view of the brain with an empiricist epistemology, which Aristotle will later adopt (Posterior Analytics 100a3 ff.). This epistemology involves three steps: first, the brain provides the sensations of hearing, sight and smell, then, memory and opinion arise from these, and finally, when memory and opinion achieve fixity, knowledge arises. Some scholars suppose that this entire epistemology is Alcmaeon's (e.g., Barnes 1982, 149 ff.), while others more cautiously note that we only have explicit evidence that Alcmaeon took the first step (e.g., Vlastos 1970, 47, n.8).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

he only conclusions we can reasonably draw about Alcmaeon from the passage are that he excised the eyeball of an animal and observed poroi (channels, i.e. the optic nerve) leading from the eye in the direction of the brain (Lloyd 1975). Theophrastus' account of Alcmaeon's theory of sensation implies that he thought that there were such channels leading from each of the senses to the brain: All the senses are connected in some way with the brain. As a result, they are incapacitated when it is disturbed or changes its place, for it then stops the channels, through which the senses operate. (DK, A5)

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

It would be a serious mistake then to say that Alcmaeon discovered dissection or that he was the father of anatomy, since there is no evidence that he used dissection systematically or even that he did more than excise a single eyeball.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

The idea that health depends on a balance of opposed factors in the body is a commonplace in Greek medical writers. Although Alcmaeon is the earliest figure to whom such a conception of health is attributed, it may well be that he is not presenting an original thesis but rather drawing on the earlier medical tradition in Croton. Perhaps what is distinctive to Alcmaeon is the use of the specific political metaphor and terminology (isonomia, monarchia). Just as Anaximander explained the order of the cosmos in terms of justice in the city-state, so Alcmaeon used a political metaphor to explain the order of the human body.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Contrary to a popular Greek view, which regarded the father alone as providing seed, a view that would be followed by Aristotle (Lloyd 1983, 86 ff.), Alcmaeon argued that both parents contribute seed (DK, A13) and that the child takes the sex of the parent who contributes the most seed (DK, A14).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

More significantly, he used analogies with animals and plants in developing his accounts of human physiology. Thus, the pubic hair that develops when human males are about to produce seed for the first time at age fourteen is analogous to the flowering of plants before they produce seed (DK, A15); milk in mammals is analogous to egg white in birds (DK, A16).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/> Alcmaeon agrees with these Pythagoreans in regarding the opposites as principles of things. Aristotle complains, however, that Alcmaeon did not arrive at a definite set of opposites but spoke haphazardly of white, black, sweet, bitter, good, bad, large and small, and only threw in vague comments about the remaining opposites. It may well be that Alcmaeon's primary discussion of opposites was in relation to his account of the human body (DK, B4; see the discussion of his medical theories above). Aristotle's language supports this suggestion to some extent, when he summarizes Alcmaeon's view as that "the majority of human things (tôn anthrôpinôn) are in pairs" (Metaph. 986a31). Isocrates (DK, A3) says that Alcmaeon, in contrast to Empedocles, who postulated four elements, said that there were only two, and, according to a heterodox view, Alcmaeon posited fire and earth as basic elements (Lebedev 1993).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

• Long, A. A., (ed.), 1999, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

• Taylor, C. C. W., (ed.), 1997, Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume 1: From the Beginning to Plato, London: Routledge

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Sep au Carl Huffman

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Bionets

Biological networks resemble many types of man-made networks, types of systems of diverse structure and function, each a collection of parts, the parts themselves differing in type, with multiple copies of each type, parts capable of interconnecting, the interconnections tying all the parts together into a whole structure made up of subtructures and modules of subtructures, the interconnected parts capable of interacting, the interactions capable of producing particular changes in the structure of each other or in the structures' properties, enabling intercommunication with signals that convey information, the whole structure a functional unit designed for a purpose.

Biological networks differ from such man-made networks, however, in having no human designer, having emerged from nature by organic evolutionary processes, its foundational system a biological cell, a biocomputer, designed basically to live and reproduce itelf, autonomous, capable of cooperating with other cells to generate multicellular structures that can intelligently design networks, inorganic as well as organic ones.

tbl

Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

<a href="http://www.quackit.com/html/html_table_tutorial.cfm" target="_top">HTML Tables</a>

ply

Bear with me, 0 mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train. —Wislawa Szymborska, from her poem, "Under One Small Star" (see Works|Poems|Exception Over the Rule)

This is a paragraph with some text in it. This is a paragraph with some text in it. This is a paragraph with some text in it. This is a paragraph with some text in it.

UTC time

To get UTC time now, edit this section (click edit), follow instructions, then save page.

00:12, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Re lemma

• Food and human evolution [r]: This is a draft in User space, not yet ready to go to Citizendium's main space, and not meant to be cited. The {{subpages}} template is designed to be used within article clusters and their related pages.
  It will not function on User pages.
  

Survival of the fittest in relation to the environment has importantly influenced the evolved structure and function of Homo sapiens, and given the absolute requirement for food consumption for survival, food as environment played a fundamental role in the determination of human structure and function as the species evolved from its most ancient ancestors. ^[e]

Adiponectin

DMITRI IVANOVITCH MENDELEYEV was a boy who came out of Siberia, traveled westward to Moscow and St. Petersburg to become one of Russia's greatest scientists. It was he who thought so deeply about the universe that he was able to predict the existence of substances which had never before been seen by man. It was he also who taught his country how to win iron from the Urals, coal from the Donetz Basin, oil from the regions of the Caspian Sea. It was he who exalted the realm of pure science and fervently wished that "many could enter its portals." The Russians finally listened to him, and the country grew industrially, scientifically, and moreover, spiritually, for it was Mendeleyev also who championed the rights of human freedom and protected students from the abuses of the Tsar's regime. Mendeleyev's chart, evolved into the modern form through the work of Moseley, now hangs in almost every chemistry and physics laboratory in the world. Often, through my years of study I have thought of the Russian scientist, but actually I knew little of him. I halfway expected to probe into his life some day, to uncover the facts behind this obscure genius. One day I read of a contest for books on scientific subjects written for the layman. This was the stimulus I had been waiting for. I entered the contest, I read everything I could get hold of on Mendeleyev and by him--there is no full-length biography in English. Most of this I read in Russian, for I was born in Russia, near the Caspian Sea. And I have lived in Siberia also, and come out of there, it almost seems to me, to tell about the bearded prophet of the snows, the champion of the people. —Daniel Q. Posin

Adiponectin, a hormone (a.k.a., adipokine, adipocytokine) produced by adipose tissue cells — adipocytes — and secreted into the bloodstream, induces beneficial effects in medical conditions related to obesity, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, atherosclerosis, chronic inflammation, and cancer.

Adiponectin alters insulin receptor function, diminishes the action of insulin in the liver, alters the metabolism of free fatty acids by liver cells, and protects against inflammation. Adults and children (humans) who have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) show decreased plasma concentrations of adiponectin. Inasmuch as insulin resistance in the liver, and hyperinsulinemia, feature in NAFLD, those finding suggest a link between fatty liver and insulin resistance perhaps in part to reduced adiponectin. NAFLD also features elevated levels of leptin, an adipokine that reduces appetite but also interferes with insulin action in the brain.

Adiponectin exhibits the following actions:

• Perhaps by increasing fatty acid oxidation, a smaller increase in plasma FFA occurs after a high fat meal;
• By enhancing lipid metabolism, insulin sensitivity improves;
• Reduced glucose production by the liver;
• Plasma concentrations associate inversely with endogenous glucose production.

In patients who have had an acute myocardial infarction, the risk of subsequent major adverse cardiovascular events is lowest in patients with the highest plasma concentrations of adiponectin. Some researchers note that in postmenopausal women serum adiponectin concentrations correlate inversely with bone mineral density.

Book review of Language Evolution

This section is an adaptation of a review of the book, Christiansen MH, Kirby S. (editors/authors) (2003) Language evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199244847. | 21 authors, 17 chapters, 395 pages. | Google Books preview., entitled:

Language Evolution

originally published by Szabolcs Számadó and Eörs Szathmáry (2004) in PLoS Biol 2(10): e346..

A ban in the 1866s by the French Academy of Sciences on publications about the origin of human language must have been one of the strangest bans in the history of sciences. Yet it was highly effective. After the ban, scientists and interested laymen had to wait for more than a century to hold a textbook on language evolution in their hands.

Editors Chritiansen and Kirby present, in Language Evolution, a compilation of essays by a diverse group of respected researchers, is amongst the first books that try to tackle what is arguably one of the hardest scientific problems. The editors set themselves the ambitious target of creating an up-to-date book about this emerging field, and they have to be congratulated for their efforts. Linguists, cognitive scientists, behavioural ecologists, and theoretical biologists all offer their view on the origin of human language and, refreshingly, do not shy from pointing out the real or assumed weaknesses of the other approaches.

One of the main themes of the book is the evolutionary approach and the importance of biological structures and properties that were co-opted in the development of language (pre-adaptations). In one essay, Michael Studdert-Kenedy and Louis Goldstein propose that speech, as a motor function, draws on phylogenetically ancient mammalian oral capacities for sucking, licking, swallowing, and chewing. Thus, our hominid ancestors adopted an apparatus already divided neuroanatomically into discrete components. Complementing this evidence, Marc Hauser and Tecumseh Fitch compare human speech production and perception with that of nonhuman species. They conclude that many traits that were formerly thought to have evolved specifically for speech (such as having a descended larynx or categorical perception) are also present in other species.

But perhaps the most interesting idea about pre-adaptation comes from the work of neuroscientist Michael Arbib on ‘mirror’ neurons in monkeys. These neurons are a subset of the grasp-related premotor neurons that discharge not only, as other premotor neurons do, when the monkey executes a certain class of actions, but also when the monkey observes more or less similarly meaningful hand movements made by the experimenter (or by another monkey). The area in which these grasp-related neurons are found is analogous with the Broca's area in human brains, which is involved in assessing the syntax of words. This observation serves as the basis for the mirror-system hypothesis, which postulates that Broca's area in humans evolved from a basic mechanism not originally related to communication but rather from the mirror system for grasping in the common ancestor of monkey and human. As a result, the mirror system provides a possible ‘neural link’ in the evolution of human language.

There is still much debate about the selection pressures that led to the evolution of language. Observing the overabundance of potential selective scenarios for why language evolved, the linguist Derek Bickerton voices his scepticism: ‘The fact that these and similar explanations flourish side by side tells one immediately not enough constraints are being used to limit possible explanations.’ One frequent source of confusion, he notes, is equating language with speech by not distinguishing between modality, lexicon, and structure. Hauser and Fitch share Bickerton's scepticism and urge scientists to rely more on the traditional comparative approach, which was always the strength of Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Primatologist Robin Dunbar, who originally proposed that grooming (group bonding) could have provided the stimulus for language, dismisses two other possible scenarios—hunting and tool-making—as potential ecological contexts for the evolution of human language. Gestural origins are also dismissed in his theory, because gestural languages do not seem to develop spontaneously and also require a line-of-sight contact making them useless at night.

Interestingly, Steven Pinker rules out both Dunbar's theory of grooming and Geoffrey Miller's theory of sexual selection, whereas Bickerton rules out grooming, gossip, mating contract, and Machiavellian intelligence as likely contexts for the origin of human language.

Also under fire in the book is the idea that the human brain is somehow equipped at birth with a ‘universal grammar’ out of which all human languages later develop. Several authors try to provide alternatives to innate predispositions, such as the importance of function to categorization (Michael Tomasello) and the importance of cultural transmission to the structure of language (Simon Kirby and Morton Christiansen). Arbib explicitly questions the traditional Chomskyan theory of innate linguistic predispositions and argues that what humans have and had in the past is ‘language readiness’ rather than a fixed universal grammar.

Neuroscientist Terrence Deacon also puts an alternative theory forward. According to Deacon, many of the language universals reflect semiotic constraints inherent in the requirements for producing symbolic reference rather than innate predispositions. Thus, neither evolved innate predispositions nor culturally evolved and transmitted regularities can be considered as the ultimate source of language universals. He draws a parallel with mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, etc.) and with prime numbers. Symbolic reference, he argues, is constrained by the structure it refers to.

The editors claim, in the light of this diversity, that ‘this book is intended to bring together, for the first time, all the major perspectives on language evolution’. We have two concerns with this aim. First, two books of the same organization and scope have been published in the past six years based on the material from language evolution conferences (Hurford et al. 1998; Knight et al. 2000). Although this first concern might be just splitting hairs, the second is more substantial: several crucial aspects of language evolution are not represented at all or are just touched superficially.

One of these missing themes is the selective advantage of early language. As discussed, many of the contributors express their scepticism towards the selective scenarios found in the literature—and indeed towards such constructions in general—but there is no review and no balanced evaluation of these selective scenarios. Since one of the key questions of language evolution is the selective advantage of early language, the lack of such a review is a major weakness. A balanced account could have been presented even if the editors and most of the contributors are frustrated by the plethora of selective scenarios.

Related to the possible selective advantage of language is the issue of genetic background. Although there is mention of the so-called FOX genes—some mutations of which are associated with language disorders—there is no detailed discussion of our current knowledge of genetics related to language.

Another lightly treated theme is the neural basis of language and language evolution. Understandably it is one of the most difficult issues concerning human language, and no one expects the editors or any of the contributors to come up with an answer to all the questions. What is missing again is a good survey outlining the problems and the current findings of the field.

The weaknesses of the book come from its structure and organization. The editors, instead of outlining a structure and asking specialists to contribute to that structure, appear to have let every contributor write freely about their current ideas and current research without regard to the bigger picture. This definitely shows the interests of the contributors and outlines the current state of the art; it leaves gaps, however, in the coverage of crucial topics related to the evolution of human language.

References:

Hurford JR, Studdert-Kennedy M, Knight C (1998) Approaches to the evolution of language: Social and cognitive bases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 452 p.

Knight C, Studdert-Kennedy M, Hurford JR (2000) The evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 438 p.

consider for user page

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list
Common misspellings

---

Articles I started

Biographies: Alcmaeon;  John Dalton;  Vesalius [Andreas Vesalius];  Alfred Russel Wallace;

Biology:  Life.....

epigraph code

Our entire body operates by electricity. Gnarled living electrical cables extend into the depths of our brains; intense electric and magnetic force fields stretch into our cells, flinging food or neuro- transmitters across microscopic barrier membranes; even our DNA is controlled by potent electrical forces.       — David Bodanis

block

<blockquote> <p style="margin-left:2.0%; margin-right:6%;font-size:0.95em;"><font face="Comic Sans MS, Trebuchet MS, Consolas"> Text </font> <ref>xx</ref></p> </blockquote>

ps

3CO₂ + 6H₂O +343 kcal light energy → C₃H₆O₃ [triose] + 30₂ +3H₂O

Test E&B

In the science of biology the concept of energy occupies a central and critical position, inasmuch as living systems could not exist without an ultimate source of energy from the external non-biological world,  and could not have emerged from the abiotic world in the first place.

Alcmaeon's extant fragments

Health is the equality of rights of the functions.

J.B. Wilbur lists the English translation of the extant fragments of Alcmaeon's book:

• Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Peirithous, said the following to Brotinus and Leon and Bathyllus: concerning things unseen, (as) concerning things mortal, the gods have certainty, whereas to us as men conjecture (only is possible).

• Men perish because they cannot join the beginning to the end.

• (In mules, the males are sterile because of the fineness and coldness of the seed, and the females because their wombs do not open).

• Health is the equality of rights of the functions, wet-dry, cold-hot, bitter-sweet and the rest; but single rule among them causes disease; the single rule of either pair is deleterious. Disease occurs sometimes from an internal cause such as excess of heat or cold, sometimes from an external cause such as excess or deficiency of food, sometimes in a certain part, such as blood, marrow or brain; but these parts also are sometimes affected by external causes, such as certain waters or a particular site or fatigue or constraint or similar reasons. But health is the harmonious mixture of the qualities.

• It is easier to guard against an enemy than against a friend.

Notes from SEP re Alcmaeon

lcmaeon from SEP

Book written between 500-450 BC. 1st to identify brain as seat of understanding Distinguished unerstandin rom perception Sense organs connected to brain by hannels Developed argument for soul immortality Physiology: sleep, death, embryonic development Influenced later greek philosopher

Aristotle wrote a treatise responding to him, Plato adopted his argument for the immortality of the soul, and both Plato and Philolaus accepted his view that the brain is the seat of intelligence.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Bionets

Biological networks resemble many types of man-made networks, types of systems of diverse structure and function, each a collection of parts, the parts themselves differing in type, with multiple copies of each type, parts capable of interconnecting, the interconnections tying all the parts together into a whole structure made up of subtructures and modules of subtructures, the interconnected parts capable of interacting, the interactions capable of producing particular changes in the structure of each other or in the structures' properties, enabling intercommunication with signals that convey information, the whole structure a functional unit designed for a purpose.

Biological networks differ from such man-made networks, however, in having no human designer, having emerged from nature by organic evolutionary processes, its foundational system a biological cell, a biocomputer, designed basically to live and reproduce itelf, autonomous, capable of cooperating with other cells to generate multicellular structures that can intelligently design networks, inorganic as well as organic ones.

tbl

Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

<a href="http://www.quackit.com/html/html_table_tutorial.cfm" target="_top">HTML Tables</a>

epigraph code

Our entire body operates by electricity. Gnarled living electrical cables extend into the depths of our brains; intense electric and magnetic force fields stretch into our cells, flinging food or neuro- transmitters across microscopic barrier membranes; even our DNA is controlled by potent electrical forces.       — David Bodanis

block

<blockquote> <p style="margin-left:2.0%; margin-right:6%;font-size:0.95em;"><font face="Comic Sans MS, Trebuchet MS, Consolas"> Text </font> <ref>xx</ref></p> </blockquote>

ps

3CO₂ + 6H₂O +343 kcal light energy → C₃H₆O₃ [triose] + 30₂ +3H₂O

Alcmaeon's extant fragments

Health is the equality of rights of the functions.

J.B. Wilbur lists the English translation of the extant fragments of Alcmaeon's book:

• Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Peirithous, said the following to Brotinus and Leon and Bathyllus: concerning things unseen, (as) concerning things mortal, the gods have certainty, whereas to us as men conjecture (only is possible).

• Men perish because they cannot join the beginning to the end.

• (In mules, the males are sterile because of the fineness and coldness of the seed, and the females because their wombs do not open).

• Health is the equality of rights of the functions, wet-dry, cold-hot, bitter-sweet and the rest; but single rule among them causes disease; the single rule of either pair is deleterious. Disease occurs sometimes from an internal cause such as excess of heat or cold, sometimes from an external cause such as excess or deficiency of food, sometimes in a certain part, such as blood, marrow or brain; but these parts also are sometimes affected by external causes, such as certain waters or a particular site or fatigue or constraint or similar reasons. But health is the harmonious mixture of the qualities.

• It is easier to guard against an enemy than against a friend.

Notes from SEP re Alcmaeon

lcmaeon from SEP

Book written between 500-450 BC. 1st to identify brain as seat of understanding Distinguished unerstandin rom perception Sense organs connected to brain by hannels Developed argument for soul immortality Physiology: sleep, death, embryonic development Influenced later greek philosopher

Aristotle wrote a treatise responding to him, Plato adopted his argument for the immortality of the soul, and both Plato and Philolaus accepted his view that the brain is the seat of intelligence.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Liven in croton, so italy Physician-pilosopher Strong medical tradition developed in crotonj

Pythagorean or not? Aristotle wrote a separate book on Alcmaeon

The overwhelming majority of scholars since 1950 have accordingly regarded Alcmaeon as a figure independent of the Pythagoreans (e.g., Guthrie 1962 and Lloyd 1991, 167; Zhmud 1997, 70-71, is one of the few exceptions), although, as a fellow citizen of Croton, he will have been familiar with their thought.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

One group of scholars dates the publication of Alcmaeon's book to around 500 (Burkert 1972, 292; Kirk, Raven, Schofield 1983, 339 [early 5th]) so that he would have been born around 540. Another group has him born around 510 so that his book would have been published in 470 or later (Guthrie 1962, 358 [480-440 BC]; Lloyd 1991, 168 [490-430 BC]). In either case Alcmaeon probably wrote before Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Philolaus. He is either the contemporary or the predecessor of Parmenides.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

He thus takes the stance of the scientist who draws inferences from what can be perceived, and he implicitly rejects the claims of those who base their account of the world on the certainty of a divine revelation (e.g., Pythagoras, Parmenides B1).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Socrates connects this view of the brain with an empiricist epistemology, which Aristotle will later adopt (Posterior Analytics 100a3 ff.). This epistemology involves three steps: first, the brain provides the sensations of hearing, sight and smell, then, memory and opinion arise from these, and finally, when memory and opinion achieve fixity, knowledge arises. Some scholars suppose that this entire epistemology is Alcmaeon's (e.g., Barnes 1982, 149 ff.), while others more cautiously note that we only have explicit evidence that Alcmaeon took the first step (e.g., Vlastos 1970, 47, n.8).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

he only conclusions we can reasonably draw about Alcmaeon from the passage are that he excised the eyeball of an animal and observed poroi (channels, i.e. the optic nerve) leading from the eye in the direction of the brain (Lloyd 1975). Theophrastus' account of Alcmaeon's theory of sensation implies that he thought that there were such channels leading from each of the senses to the brain: All the senses are connected in some way with the brain. As a result, they are incapacitated when it is disturbed or changes its place, for it then stops the channels, through which the senses operate. (DK, A5)

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

It would be a serious mistake then to say that Alcmaeon discovered dissection or that he was the father of anatomy, since there is no evidence that he used dissection systematically or even that he did more than excise a single eyeball.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

The idea that health depends on a balance of opposed factors in the body is a commonplace in Greek medical writers. Although Alcmaeon is the earliest figure to whom such a conception of health is attributed, it may well be that he is not presenting an original thesis but rather drawing on the earlier medical tradition in Croton. Perhaps what is distinctive to Alcmaeon is the use of the specific political metaphor and terminology (isonomia, monarchia). Just as Anaximander explained the order of the cosmos in terms of justice in the city-state, so Alcmaeon used a political metaphor to explain the order of the human body.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Contrary to a popular Greek view, which regarded the father alone as providing seed, a view that would be followed by Aristotle (Lloyd 1983, 86 ff.), Alcmaeon argued that both parents contribute seed (DK, A13) and that the child takes the sex of the parent who contributes the most seed (DK, A14).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

More significantly, he used analogies with animals and plants in developing his accounts of human physiology. Thus, the pubic hair that develops when human males are about to produce seed for the first time at age fourteen is analogous to the flowering of plants before they produce seed (DK, A15); milk in mammals is analogous to egg white in birds (DK, A16).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/> Alcmaeon agrees with these Pythagoreans in regarding the opposites as principles of things. Aristotle complains, however, that Alcmaeon did not arrive at a definite set of opposites but spoke haphazardly of white, black, sweet, bitter, good, bad, large and small, and only threw in vague comments about the remaining opposites. It may well be that Alcmaeon's primary discussion of opposites was in relation to his account of the human body (DK, B4; see the discussion of his medical theories above). Aristotle's language supports this suggestion to some extent, when he summarizes Alcmaeon's view as that "the majority of human things (tôn anthrôpinôn) are in pairs" (Metaph. 986a31). Isocrates (DK, A3) says that Alcmaeon, in contrast to Empedocles, who postulated four elements, said that there were only two, and, according to a heterodox view, Alcmaeon posited fire and earth as basic elements (Lebedev 1993).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

• Long, A. A., (ed.), 1999, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

• Taylor, C. C. W., (ed.), 1997, Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume 1: From the Beginning to Plato, London: Routledge

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Sep au Carl Huffman

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Bionets

Biological networks resemble many types of man-made networks, types of systems of diverse structure and function, each a collection of parts, the parts themselves differing in type, with multiple copies of each type, parts capable of interconnecting, the interconnections tying all the parts together into a whole structure made up of subtructures and modules of subtructures, the interconnected parts capable of interacting, the interactions capable of producing particular changes in the structure of each other or in the structures' properties, enabling intercommunication with signals that convey information, the whole structure a functional unit designed for a purpose.

Biological networks differ from such man-made networks, however, in having no human designer, having emerged from nature by organic evolutionary processes, its foundational system a biological cell, a biocomputer, designed basically to live and reproduce itelf, autonomous, capable of cooperating with other cells to generate multicellular structures that can intelligently design networks, inorganic as well as organic ones.

tbl

Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

<a href="http://www.quackit.com/html/html_table_tutorial.cfm" target="_top">HTML Tables</a>

Re lemma

• Calorie restriction [r]: Long-term reduction of food energy intake to, or nearly to, the minimum consistent with the absence of malnutrition, a procedure that robustly and reproducibly improves health and extends lifespan across animal species. ^[e]

Adiponectin

Adiponectin, a hormone (a.k.a., adipokine, adipocytokine) produced by adipose tissue cells — adipocytes — and secreted into the bloodstream, induces beneficial effects in medical conditions related to obesity, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, atherosclerosis, chronic inflammation, and cancer.

Adiponectin alters insulin receptor function, diminishes the action of insulin in the liver, alters the metabolism of free fatty acids by liver cells, and protects against inflammation. Adults and children (humans) who have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) show decreased plasma concentrations of adiponectin. Inasmuch as insulin resistance in the liver, and hyperinsulinemia, feature in NAFLD, those finding suggest a link between fatty liver and insulin resistance perhaps in part to reduced adiponectin. NAFLD also features elevated levels of leptin, an adipokine that reduces appetite but also interferes with insulin action in the brain.

Adiponectin exhibits the following actions:

• Perhaps by increasing fatty acid oxidation, a smaller increase in plasma FFA occurs after a high fat meal;
• By enhancing lipid metabolism, insulin sensitivity improves;
• Reduced glucose production by the liver;
• Plasma concentrations associate inversely with endogenous glucose production.

In patients who have had an acute myocardial infarction, the risk of subsequent major adverse cardiovascular events is lowest in patients with the highest plasma concentrations of adiponectin. Some researchers note that in postmenopausal women serum adiponectin concentrations correlate inversely with bone mineral density.

Book review of Language Evolution

This section is an adaptation of a review of the book, Christiansen MH, Kirby S. (editors/authors) (2003) Language evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199244847. | 21 authors, 17 chapters, 395 pages. | Google Books preview., entitled:

Language Evolution

originally published by Szabolcs Számadó and Eörs Szathmáry (2004) in PLoS Biol 2(10): e346..

A ban in the 1866s by the French Academy of Sciences on publications about the origin of human language must have been one of the strangest bans in the history of sciences. Yet it was highly effective. After the ban, scientists and interested laymen had to wait for more than a century to hold a textbook on language evolution in their hands.

Editors Chritiansen and Kirby present, in Language Evolution, a compilation of essays by a diverse group of respected researchers, is amongst the first books that try to tackle what is arguably one of the hardest scientific problems. The editors set themselves the ambitious target of creating an up-to-date book about this emerging field, and they have to be congratulated for their efforts. Linguists, cognitive scientists, behavioural ecologists, and theoretical biologists all offer their view on the origin of human language and, refreshingly, do not shy from pointing out the real or assumed weaknesses of the other approaches.

One of the main themes of the book is the evolutionary approach and the importance of biological structures and properties that were co-opted in the development of language (pre-adaptations). In one essay, Michael Studdert-Kenedy and Louis Goldstein propose that speech, as a motor function, draws on phylogenetically ancient mammalian oral capacities for sucking, licking, swallowing, and chewing. Thus, our hominid ancestors adopted an apparatus already divided neuroanatomically into discrete components. Complementing this evidence, Marc Hauser and Tecumseh Fitch compare human speech production and perception with that of nonhuman species. They conclude that many traits that were formerly thought to have evolved specifically for speech (such as having a descended larynx or categorical perception) are also present in other species.

But perhaps the most interesting idea about pre-adaptation comes from the work of neuroscientist Michael Arbib on ‘mirror’ neurons in monkeys. These neurons are a subset of the grasp-related premotor neurons that discharge not only, as other premotor neurons do, when the monkey executes a certain class of actions, but also when the monkey observes more or less similarly meaningful hand movements made by the experimenter (or by another monkey). The area in which these grasp-related neurons are found is analogous with the Broca's area in human brains, which is involved in assessing the syntax of words. This observation serves as the basis for the mirror-system hypothesis, which postulates that Broca's area in humans evolved from a basic mechanism not originally related to communication but rather from the mirror system for grasping in the common ancestor of monkey and human. As a result, the mirror system provides a possible ‘neural link’ in the evolution of human language.

There is still much debate about the selection pressures that led to the evolution of language. Observing the overabundance of potential selective scenarios for why language evolved, the linguist Derek Bickerton voices his scepticism: ‘The fact that these and similar explanations flourish side by side tells one immediately not enough constraints are being used to limit possible explanations.’ One frequent source of confusion, he notes, is equating language with speech by not distinguishing between modality, lexicon, and structure. Hauser and Fitch share Bickerton's scepticism and urge scientists to rely more on the traditional comparative approach, which was always the strength of Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Primatologist Robin Dunbar, who originally proposed that grooming (group bonding) could have provided the stimulus for language, dismisses two other possible scenarios—hunting and tool-making—as potential ecological contexts for the evolution of human language. Gestural origins are also dismissed in his theory, because gestural languages do not seem to develop spontaneously and also require a line-of-sight contact making them useless at night.

Interestingly, Steven Pinker rules out both Dunbar's theory of grooming and Geoffrey Miller's theory of sexual selection, whereas Bickerton rules out grooming, gossip, mating contract, and Machiavellian intelligence as likely contexts for the origin of human language.

Also under fire in the book is the idea that the human brain is somehow equipped at birth with a ‘universal grammar’ out of which all human languages later develop. Several authors try to provide alternatives to innate predispositions, such as the importance of function to categorization (Michael Tomasello) and the importance of cultural transmission to the structure of language (Simon Kirby and Morton Christiansen). Arbib explicitly questions the traditional Chomskyan theory of innate linguistic predispositions and argues that what humans have and had in the past is ‘language readiness’ rather than a fixed universal grammar.

Neuroscientist Terrence Deacon also puts an alternative theory forward. According to Deacon, many of the language universals reflect semiotic constraints inherent in the requirements for producing symbolic reference rather than innate predispositions. Thus, neither evolved innate predispositions nor culturally evolved and transmitted regularities can be considered as the ultimate source of language universals. He draws a parallel with mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, etc.) and with prime numbers. Symbolic reference, he argues, is constrained by the structure it refers to.

The editors claim, in the light of this diversity, that ‘this book is intended to bring together, for the first time, all the major perspectives on language evolution’. We have two concerns with this aim. First, two books of the same organization and scope have been published in the past six years based on the material from language evolution conferences (Hurford et al. 1998; Knight et al. 2000). Although this first concern might be just splitting hairs, the second is more substantial: several crucial aspects of language evolution are not represented at all or are just touched superficially.

One of these missing themes is the selective advantage of early language. As discussed, many of the contributors express their scepticism towards the selective scenarios found in the literature—and indeed towards such constructions in general—but there is no review and no balanced evaluation of these selective scenarios. Since one of the key questions of language evolution is the selective advantage of early language, the lack of such a review is a major weakness. A balanced account could have been presented even if the editors and most of the contributors are frustrated by the plethora of selective scenarios.

Related to the possible selective advantage of language is the issue of genetic background. Although there is mention of the so-called FOX genes—some mutations of which are associated with language disorders—there is no detailed discussion of our current knowledge of genetics related to language.

Another lightly treated theme is the neural basis of language and language evolution. Understandably it is one of the most difficult issues concerning human language, and no one expects the editors or any of the contributors to come up with an answer to all the questions. What is missing again is a good survey outlining the problems and the current findings of the field.

The weaknesses of the book come from its structure and organization. The editors, instead of outlining a structure and asking specialists to contribute to that structure, appear to have let every contributor write freely about their current ideas and current research without regard to the bigger picture. This definitely shows the interests of the contributors and outlines the current state of the art; it leaves gaps, however, in the coverage of crucial topics related to the evolution of human language.

References:

Hurford JR, Studdert-Kennedy M, Knight C (1998) Approaches to the evolution of language: Social and cognitive bases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 452 p.

Knight C, Studdert-Kennedy M, Hurford JR (2000) The evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 438 p.

consider for user page

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list
Common misspellings

---

Articles I started

Biographies: Alcmaeon;  John Dalton;  Vesalius [Andreas Vesalius];  Alfred Russel Wallace;

Biology:  Life.....

epigraph code

Our entire body operates by electricity. Gnarled living electrical cables extend into the depths of our brains; intense electric and magnetic force fields stretch into our cells, flinging food or neuro- transmitters across microscopic barrier membranes; even our DNA is controlled by potent electrical forces.       — David Bodanis

block

<blockquote> <p style="margin-left:2.0%; margin-right:6%;font-size:0.95em;"><font face="Comic Sans MS, Trebuchet MS, Consolas"> Text </font> <ref>xx</ref></p> </blockquote>

ps

3CO₂ + 6H₂O +343 kcal light energy → C₃H₆O₃ [triose] + 30₂ +3H₂O

Test E&B

In the science of biology the concept of energy occupies a central and critical position, inasmuch as living systems could not exist without an ultimate source of energy from the external non-biological world,  and could not have emerged from the abiotic world in the first place.

Alcmaeon's extant fragments

Health is the equality of rights of the functions.

J.B. Wilbur lists the English translation of the extant fragments of Alcmaeon's book:

• Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Peirithous, said the following to Brotinus and Leon and Bathyllus: concerning things unseen, (as) concerning things mortal, the gods have certainty, whereas to us as men conjecture (only is possible).

• Men perish because they cannot join the beginning to the end.

• (In mules, the males are sterile because of the fineness and coldness of the seed, and the females because their wombs do not open).

• Health is the equality of rights of the functions, wet-dry, cold-hot, bitter-sweet and the rest; but single rule among them causes disease; the single rule of either pair is deleterious. Disease occurs sometimes from an internal cause such as excess of heat or cold, sometimes from an external cause such as excess or deficiency of food, sometimes in a certain part, such as blood, marrow or brain; but these parts also are sometimes affected by external causes, such as certain waters or a particular site or fatigue or constraint or similar reasons. But health is the harmonious mixture of the qualities.

• It is easier to guard against an enemy than against a friend.

Notes from SEP re Alcmaeon

lcmaeon from SEP

Book written between 500-450 BC. 1st to identify brain as seat of understanding Distinguished unerstandin rom perception Sense organs connected to brain by hannels Developed argument for soul immortality Physiology: sleep, death, embryonic development Influenced later greek philosopher

Aristotle wrote a treatise responding to him, Plato adopted his argument for the immortality of the soul, and both Plato and Philolaus accepted his view that the brain is the seat of intelligence.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Bionets

Biological networks resemble many types of man-made networks, types of systems of diverse structure and function, each a collection of parts, the parts themselves differing in type, with multiple copies of each type, parts capable of interconnecting, the interconnections tying all the parts together into a whole structure made up of subtructures and modules of subtructures, the interconnected parts capable of interacting, the interactions capable of producing particular changes in the structure of each other or in the structures' properties, enabling intercommunication with signals that convey information, the whole structure a functional unit designed for a purpose.

Biological networks differ from such man-made networks, however, in having no human designer, having emerged from nature by organic evolutionary processes, its foundational system a biological cell, a biocomputer, designed basically to live and reproduce itelf, autonomous, capable of cooperating with other cells to generate multicellular structures that can intelligently design networks, inorganic as well as organic ones.

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Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
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Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

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epigraph code

Our entire body operates by electricity. Gnarled living electrical cables extend into the depths of our brains; intense electric and magnetic force fields stretch into our cells, flinging food or neuro- transmitters across microscopic barrier membranes; even our DNA is controlled by potent electrical forces.       — David Bodanis

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ps

3CO₂ + 6H₂O +343 kcal light energy → C₃H₆O₃ [triose] + 30₂ +3H₂O

Alcmaeon's extant fragments

Health is the equality of rights of the functions.

J.B. Wilbur lists the English translation of the extant fragments of Alcmaeon's book:

• Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Peirithous, said the following to Brotinus and Leon and Bathyllus: concerning things unseen, (as) concerning things mortal, the gods have certainty, whereas to us as men conjecture (only is possible).

• Men perish because they cannot join the beginning to the end.

• (In mules, the males are sterile because of the fineness and coldness of the seed, and the females because their wombs do not open).

• Health is the equality of rights of the functions, wet-dry, cold-hot, bitter-sweet and the rest; but single rule among them causes disease; the single rule of either pair is deleterious. Disease occurs sometimes from an internal cause such as excess of heat or cold, sometimes from an external cause such as excess or deficiency of food, sometimes in a certain part, such as blood, marrow or brain; but these parts also are sometimes affected by external causes, such as certain waters or a particular site or fatigue or constraint or similar reasons. But health is the harmonious mixture of the qualities.

• It is easier to guard against an enemy than against a friend.

Notes from SEP re Alcmaeon

lcmaeon from SEP

Book written between 500-450 BC. 1st to identify brain as seat of understanding Distinguished unerstandin rom perception Sense organs connected to brain by hannels Developed argument for soul immortality Physiology: sleep, death, embryonic development Influenced later greek philosopher

Aristotle wrote a treatise responding to him, Plato adopted his argument for the immortality of the soul, and both Plato and Philolaus accepted his view that the brain is the seat of intelligence.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Liven in croton, so italy Physician-pilosopher Strong medical tradition developed in crotonj

Pythagorean or not? Aristotle wrote a separate book on Alcmaeon

The overwhelming majority of scholars since 1950 have accordingly regarded Alcmaeon as a figure independent of the Pythagoreans (e.g., Guthrie 1962 and Lloyd 1991, 167; Zhmud 1997, 70-71, is one of the few exceptions), although, as a fellow citizen of Croton, he will have been familiar with their thought.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

One group of scholars dates the publication of Alcmaeon's book to around 500 (Burkert 1972, 292; Kirk, Raven, Schofield 1983, 339 [early 5th]) so that he would have been born around 540. Another group has him born around 510 so that his book would have been published in 470 or later (Guthrie 1962, 358 [480-440 BC]; Lloyd 1991, 168 [490-430 BC]). In either case Alcmaeon probably wrote before Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Philolaus. He is either the contemporary or the predecessor of Parmenides.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

He thus takes the stance of the scientist who draws inferences from what can be perceived, and he implicitly rejects the claims of those who base their account of the world on the certainty of a divine revelation (e.g., Pythagoras, Parmenides B1).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Socrates connects this view of the brain with an empiricist epistemology, which Aristotle will later adopt (Posterior Analytics 100a3 ff.). This epistemology involves three steps: first, the brain provides the sensations of hearing, sight and smell, then, memory and opinion arise from these, and finally, when memory and opinion achieve fixity, knowledge arises. Some scholars suppose that this entire epistemology is Alcmaeon's (e.g., Barnes 1982, 149 ff.), while others more cautiously note that we only have explicit evidence that Alcmaeon took the first step (e.g., Vlastos 1970, 47, n.8).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

he only conclusions we can reasonably draw about Alcmaeon from the passage are that he excised the eyeball of an animal and observed poroi (channels, i.e. the optic nerve) leading from the eye in the direction of the brain (Lloyd 1975). Theophrastus' account of Alcmaeon's theory of sensation implies that he thought that there were such channels leading from each of the senses to the brain: All the senses are connected in some way with the brain. As a result, they are incapacitated when it is disturbed or changes its place, for it then stops the channels, through which the senses operate. (DK, A5)

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

It would be a serious mistake then to say that Alcmaeon discovered dissection or that he was the father of anatomy, since there is no evidence that he used dissection systematically or even that he did more than excise a single eyeball.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

The idea that health depends on a balance of opposed factors in the body is a commonplace in Greek medical writers. Although Alcmaeon is the earliest figure to whom such a conception of health is attributed, it may well be that he is not presenting an original thesis but rather drawing on the earlier medical tradition in Croton. Perhaps what is distinctive to Alcmaeon is the use of the specific political metaphor and terminology (isonomia, monarchia). Just as Anaximander explained the order of the cosmos in terms of justice in the city-state, so Alcmaeon used a political metaphor to explain the order of the human body.

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Contrary to a popular Greek view, which regarded the father alone as providing seed, a view that would be followed by Aristotle (Lloyd 1983, 86 ff.), Alcmaeon argued that both parents contribute seed (DK, A13) and that the child takes the sex of the parent who contributes the most seed (DK, A14).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

More significantly, he used analogies with animals and plants in developing his accounts of human physiology. Thus, the pubic hair that develops when human males are about to produce seed for the first time at age fourteen is analogous to the flowering of plants before they produce seed (DK, A15); milk in mammals is analogous to egg white in birds (DK, A16).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/> Alcmaeon agrees with these Pythagoreans in regarding the opposites as principles of things. Aristotle complains, however, that Alcmaeon did not arrive at a definite set of opposites but spoke haphazardly of white, black, sweet, bitter, good, bad, large and small, and only threw in vague comments about the remaining opposites. It may well be that Alcmaeon's primary discussion of opposites was in relation to his account of the human body (DK, B4; see the discussion of his medical theories above). Aristotle's language supports this suggestion to some extent, when he summarizes Alcmaeon's view as that "the majority of human things (tôn anthrôpinôn) are in pairs" (Metaph. 986a31). Isocrates (DK, A3) says that Alcmaeon, in contrast to Empedocles, who postulated four elements, said that there were only two, and, according to a heterodox view, Alcmaeon posited fire and earth as basic elements (Lebedev 1993).

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

• Long, A. A., (ed.), 1999, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

• Taylor, C. C. W., (ed.), 1997, Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume 1: From the Beginning to Plato, London: Routledge

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Sep au Carl Huffman

Pasted from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/alcmaeon/>

Bionets

Biological networks resemble many types of man-made networks, types of systems of diverse structure and function, each a collection of parts, the parts themselves differing in type, with multiple copies of each type, parts capable of interconnecting, the interconnections tying all the parts together into a whole structure made up of subtructures and modules of subtructures, the interconnected parts capable of interacting, the interactions capable of producing particular changes in the structure of each other or in the structures' properties, enabling intercommunication with signals that convey information, the whole structure a functional unit designed for a purpose.

Biological networks differ from such man-made networks, however, in having no human designer, having emerged from nature by organic evolutionary processes, its foundational system a biological cell, a biocomputer, designed basically to live and reproduce itelf, autonomous, capable of cooperating with other cells to generate multicellular structures that can intelligently design networks, inorganic as well as organic ones.

tbl

Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

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