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Introduction to Philosophy/What is Political Philosophy

< Introduction to Philosophy

A good definition for Political Philosophy is found only after determining what is politics, which is a sticky question to begin with. Politics could be defined as "the question of how to distribute a scarce amount of resources 'justly.'" Which is, essentially, the way in which people obtain, keep, and exercise power. Political philosophy, then, is the study of the theories behind politics. These theories may be used to gain power or to justify its existence.

Mostly, however, they have been used to justify or legitimate the existence of contemporary political structures by appealing to "rationality," "reason," or, among others, "natural law."

Plato's Republic is a good starting point for political philosophy, however, it's really a treatise on education. It starts out by trying to define Justice (one of Kenneth Burke's "God Terms"). In it, he makes an argument for a sort of acetic life-style by, through a standard Platonic dialogue, laying out a minimally functional society. He then, somewhat parodically, responds to the question of luxury by outlining how to 'justly' lay out a state that will accommodate luxuries for the entitled (a state that looks very similar to Sparta). It's a good starting place, because it lays out his conception of Justice, which, inevitably, is based on his theory of the forms, which is a similar basis of conceptions of natural law.

Skipping a few thousand years and many important texts, we get to Nicolo Machiavelli's The Prince,  which was written in 1513 and published, after his death, in 1532. Machiavelli lived in Florence under the Medici family's rule. During a brief period of reform, the Medicis were chased from power, and Machiavelli became a diplomat. When the Medicis returned, Machiavelli was basically exiled. One reason he might have written The Prince was to try to return to public life in Florence. This book is often criticized for its moral relativism, and, in an inadequate summarization, that power defines moral action.

Moving along, we can get to the social contract theorists, namely Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, and Baruch Spinoza. This, of course, will be a brief and incomplete treatment of them, but it's a starting place. Hobbes' theory is mostly found in his book Leviathan. In it, he defines the state of nature (the prepolitical society) as a place where life is "nasty, brutish, and short." It's important to understand that Hobbes was writing after the Thirty Years War (a religious conflict between, primarily, the English Protestants and the Spanish Catholics), so he had a very pessimistic view of Human Nature. He basically thought that man, left to its own devices, would war against itself, hence the above quotation.

From that, Hobbes had a view that society with a state, at its worst, was better than having no state at all, so he concluded that any state action would be justified if for no other reason than that it is a modus vivendi, a lesser evil. The crux of this, and all social contract theory, is that the citizen has a sort of contract with the state in which people give up some autonomy to make their lives better. For Hobbes, this autonomy was given up to protect life at its most fundamental level.

Locke, however, has an entirely different notion. His view of the state of nature (the prepolitical society) is much nicer. Basically people will respect each other and not infringe on another's person or property. If someone does, then the agressee has the natural right to rectify the situation, and anyone else who witnesses an aggressor has the duty to help the agressee. Locke concedes that property disputes will eventually be numerous enough that this would be time consuming, and in the general interest, people will form a state in order to have someone else protect their property and persons--basically to settle disputes--out of convenience. Much of this is laid out in The Second Treatise on Government. It's important to note that much of the U.S. constitution is based on Locke's political philosophy.

A question, of course, is why these social contract theorists are doing what they're doing. I mean, they're creating these ridiculous constructs of a prepolitical reality through a strange process of abstraction. One answer is that they're justifying the existence of the state and the state's actions. Under Hobbes' view, the state is thus legitimate in anything it does, in any violation of 'human rights' because, well, things would be worse off without it. Locke goes about it in order to have a sort of neutral procedure to protect property rights.

More contemporary social contract theorists include Robert Nozick (his main book on this, Anarchy, the State, and Utopia, is a defense for the libertarian state), John Rawls (whose book A Theory of Justice outlines the philosophy of deontological liberalism, which is a system of redistributive justice), and Bruce Ackerman (who wrote Social Justice in the Liberal State, arguing for a sort of dialogic justice.)

Another important figure is John Stuart Mill who wrote Utilitarianism. Expanding on Jeremy Bentham's notion of Utilitarianism, Mill's short book influenced political calculations for over a hundred years. The main thrust of Utilitarianism is to increase the overall utility for a society. Utility is similar to happiness, so a decision or distributive scheme that would increase the societal level of happiness is better than a scheme that wouldn't--simple enough. The main critique of Bentham's Utilitarianism is the case in which there are three people and a certain distributions would give person A and B 151 utilitons each (the measurement for utility) and give Person C 0 utilitons. In other configurations, each might be able to have 100 utilitons each, however, the extra two utilitons are created by this distribution at the expense of Person C. This would create, to invoke the catchphrase, a "tyranny of the majority." Mill's Utilitarianism responded to this by adding in protections for the minority.

Some more contemporary political philosophers are Hannah Arendt, Jurgen Habermas, Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler, Richard Rorty, and Slavoj Zizek.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Talk:Introduction to Paleoanthropology

Template for chapters
==HEAD==

Intro

===Sub=== text

-

TOC Suggestions
I think there are enough chapters here that it might be worth breaking them up into units to make the chunks more manageable: background basics, earliest hominids, paleolithic, etc. Then perhaps the interior TOC box could be changed to show only the TOC for that unit, so it's not so long and doesn't break up the layout of the page so much.

If I was comfortable enough with templates to fuss with yours, I'd also go ahead and make the bibliography section, and include your "Class notes" reference. With as much text here as there is, people might expect it to be more finished than it really is; if they can see that it's still a draft being converted from lecture notes, it might ward off problems.

Finally, I think it needs more text, either in chapter 1 or immediately before or after it, that focuses on hominids. Most people probably aren't coming to a book on paleoanthropology to read about genetics, or the history of Darwinism, or linguistics, or whatnot -- they're looking for ''Bones! Fossils! Cave Men! Lucy! Neat Stuff!'' The background stuff is important, but we need to give them a substantial appetizer of the neat stuff first, so that they're willing to keep reading the background before getting to the meat of the book, instead of getting frustrated and wandering off in search of fossils elsewhere. At the very least, we need a good description of what a hominid is and what a hominid isn't, and what a paleoanthropologist does and doesn't study. (Chapter 1 made a start on what a paleoanthropologist does and doesn't study, but then it gets muddled in the following chapters.)--Bedawyn 22:07, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

impressive results
Just want to compliment all editors on this wikibook. WbZurp 22:38, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Introduction to Paleoanthropology


text:
User:SimonMayer

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text:
Introduction to Paleoanthropology/Evolution Culture

The concept of progress
Progress is defined as a gradual but predictable bettering of the human condition over time, that is, things are always getting better over time.

History of Progressivism

 * Progressivism has been one of the cornerstones of Western historical and philosophical thought since ancient Greek times.
 * For most of its history (from the Greek period to the 15th century), Progressivism was a purely philosophical or ideological doctrine: in the absence of any empirical evidence of improvement in the human condition, early progressivists devised imaginary scenarios of human history in which they pictured the gradual emergence of enlightened present-day institutions out of earlier and ruder institutions. The defining characteristics of any primitive society, thus conceived, were wholly negative: they were whatever civilization was not.
 * Starting in the late 15th century, ethnographic information about living "primitives," especially in the Americas, increased, providing the progressivists with empirical confirmation for their ideas. Living conditions of these "primitive peoples" conformed in a general way to the imagined early condition of humankind; they were therefore considered as "fossilized" survivals from ancient times, who had somehow failed to progress.
 * In the 19th century, archaeology also began to provide confirmation: evidence of early peoples who had indeed lived without metals, agriculture, or permanent dwellings, just as the progressivists had always imagined.
 * Out of the conjunction of progressivist theory with ethnographic and archaeological researches, the discipline of anthropology was born in the latter half of the 19th century. Early anthropologists arranged that evidence in orderly progression to provide seemingly irrefutable confirmation for what had long been only a philosophical doctrine. Progressivism was transformed into a science named anthropology; "Progress" was renamed "Social Evolution" or "Cultural Evolution." These ideas drew upon Darwinian evolution but incorrectly assigned a directionality and value to evolution. Where Darwinian evolution is not about progress, but rather adapting to a given environmental condition, social evolution was very much about progress, usually conceived in terms of military and economic power over other societies.

Characteristics
Progressivism flourished mainly in optimistic times, that is, times of scientific advances and expanding imaginations:
 * pre-Socratic Greece
 * the Enlightenment (18th century)
 * the Victorian age (19th century)
 * the generation following World War II

Progressivism has been the doctrine that legitimizes all scientific discoveries and labels them as "advances".
 * All progressivists agree, however, that their age is superior to those that preceded it.
 * Human history is perceived with a basic directionality, from worse to better.

What is better?

 * What constitutes "the better"? What causes it? How can it be measured?
 * Answers to these questions have changed in accordance with the ideological preoccupation of different eras, and different philosophies:
 * improved material circumstances
 * intellectual maturation
 * aesthetic achievements

Us vs. Them mentality
The problem with categorizing "progressive" judgments must be viewed in long-term perspective as a struggle between two basically incompatible cultural systems:
 * in the present, us and the others: states/civilizations vs. bands/tribes;
 * in paleoanthropology, us (Homo sapiens) and the others (other hominid species, e.g. Neandertals, Homo erectus).

Historical background of Western nations
Hunting and gathering was predominant as a way of life for about 7 million years, with agriculture and plant domestication beginning around 10,000 years ago, and life in cities or states has been around for only the past 5,000 years or so.

Changes, or progress, since the first appearance of urban life and state organization (5,000 yrs ago):
 * non-state tribal peoples persisted in a dynamic equilibrium or symbiotic relationship with states/civilizations
 * states/civilizations developed and remained within their own ecological boundaries
 * this situation lasted for thousands of years

This situation shifted 500 years ago:
 * In the 15th century, Europeans began to expand beyond their long-established frontiers.
 * For about 250 years (until 1750), the expansion was relatively slow, as non-state tribal peoples still seemed secure and successfully adapted to their economically "marginal" refuges.
 * In the mid-eighteenth century, the industrial revolution launched the developing Western nations on an explosive growth in population and consumption called "progress."

The Industrial Revolution
This period marks a major explosion at the scale of humankind:
 * phenomenal increase in population
 * increase in per capita consumption rates
 * totally unparalleled scope
 * these two critical correlates (population and consumption rates) of industrialization quickly led to overwhelming pressure on natural resources

Very quickly, industrial nations could no longer supply from within their own boundaries the resources needed to support further growth or even to maintain current consumption levels.

As a consequence:
 * Industrial revolution led to an unprecedented assault on the world's relatively stable non-Western tribal peoples and their resources.
 * Many of the "underdeveloped" resources controlled by the world's self-sufficient tribal peoples were quickly appropriated by outsiders to support their own industrial progress.
 * In the last 200 years, these tribal cultures have virtually disappeared or have been completely marginalized.

Increased rates of resource consumption, accompanying industrialization, have been even more critical than mere population increase:
 * Industrial civilization is a culture of consumption. In this respect, it differs most strikingly from tribal cultures.
 * Industrial economies are founded on the principle that consumption must be ever expanded.
 * Complex systems of mass marketing and advertising have been developed for that specific purpose.
 * Social stratification in industrial societies is based primarily on inequalities in material wealth and is both supported and reflected by differential access to resources.

Industrial ideological systems and prejudices:
 * place great stress on belief in
 * continual economic growth
 * progress
 * measure "standard of living" in terms of levels of material consumption.

Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the belief in the superiority of one's own culture. It is vital to the integrity of any culture, but it can be a threat to the well-being of other peoples when it becomes the basis for forcing Western standards upon non-Western tribal cultures.

The impact of modern civilization on tribal peoples is a dominant research theme in anthropology and social sciences.

Among economic development writers, the consensus is the clearly ethnocentric view that any contact with superior industrial culture causes non-Western tribal peoples to voluntarily reject their own cultures in order to obtain a better life.

In the past, anthropologists also often viewed this contact from the same ethnocentric premises accepted by government officials, developers, missionaries, and the general public. But in recent years, there has been considerable confusion in the enormous culture change literature regarding the basic question of why tribal cultures seem inevitably to be acculturated or modernized by industrial civilization.

 * There is therefore a problem to conceptualize the causes of the transformation process in simple nonethnocentric terms.
 * This apparent inability may be due to the fact that the analysts are members of the culture of consumption that today happens to be the dominant world culture type.
 * The most powerful cultures have always assumed a natural right to exploit the world's resources wherever they find them, regardless of the prior claims of indigenous populations.

Arguing for efficiency and survival of the fittest, old-fashioned colonialists elevated this "right" to the level of an ethical and legal principle that could be invoked to justify the elimination of any cultures that were not making "effective" use of their resources.

This viewpoint has found its way into modern theories of cultural evolution, expressed as the "Law of Cultural Dominance": any cultural system which exploits more effectively the energy resources of a given environment will tend to spread in that environment at the expense of other less effective (indigenous) systems.
 * These old attitudes of social Darwinism are deeply embedded in our ideological system.
 * They still occur in the professional literature on culture change.

While resource exploitation is clearly the basic cause of the destruction of tribal peoples, it is important to identify the underlying ethnocentric attitudes that are often used to justify what are actually exploitative policies.

Apart from the obvious ethical implications involved here, upon close inspection all of these theories expounding the greater adaptability, efficiency, and survival value of the dominant industrial culture prove to be quite misleading.

Of course, as a culture of consumption, industrial civilization is uniquely capable of consuming resources at tremendous rates, but this certainly does not make it a more effective culture than low-energy tribal cultures, if stability or long-run ecological success is taken as the criterion for "effectiveness."

Likewise, we should expect, almost by definition, that members of the culture of consumption would probably consider another culture's resources to be underexploited and to use this as a justification for appropriating them.

Among some writers, it is assumed that all people share our desire for what we define as material wealth, prosperity, and progress and that others have different cultures only because they have not yet been exposed to the superior technological alternatives offered by industrial civilization. Supporters of this view seem to minimize the difficulties of creating new wants in a culture and at the same time make the following highly questionable and clearly ethnocentric assumptions:
 * 1) The materialistic values of industrial civilization are cultural universals.
 * 2) Tribal cultures are unable to satisfy the material needs of their peoples.
 * 3) Industrial goods are, in fact, always superior to their handcrafted counterparts.

Assumption 1 - Unquestionably, tribal cultures represent a clear rejection of the materialistic values of industrial civilization, yet tribal individuals can indeed be made to reject their traditional values if outside interests create the necessary conditions for this rejection. The point is that far more is involved here than a mere demonstration of the superiority of industrial civilization.

Assumption 2 - The ethnocentrism of the second assumption is obvious. Clearly, tribal cultures could not have survived for millions of years if they did not do a reasonable job of satisfying basic human needs.

Assumption 3 - Regarding the third assumption, there is abundant evidence that many of the material accoutrements of industrial civilization may well not be worth their real costs regardless of how appealing they may seem in the short term.


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Talk:Japanese/Grammar/Nouns

Untitled
Dinky adjective section replaced with text from Japanese grammar... -- EmperorBMA|話す 23:56, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

General plural thoughts
More emphasis should probably be made that -tachi and -ra are almost never used with non-personified nouns. Is Hoshi-tachi a good example? I've never heard stars said that way before. If I did, I would probably think you were talking to the stars as if they were people or something. I'm not a native Japanese speaker, but that's my impression.

 * Hi there, I'm a native Japanese speaker. Yes, we usually say 星々 (hoshi-boshi for stars), 木々 (ki-gi for trees), 家々 (ie-ie for houses), 人々 (hito-bito for people) etc... And, for animals, birds or fish, we use -tachi such as 動物達. Just FYI. e-Goat 15:49, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC) p.s. If you need more examples, then I can help.

Rewrite this page?
Not to be rude, but this page is suffering pretty badly. I'm not convinced the writer of this page speaks and understands Japanese language.

Nouns in Japanese are very simple. You just learn one word for one thing. That's it! You don't have learn a plural form as in English. Nor is there "grammatical gender" as there is in many other languages. Again, like English, gender is something in what the word represents, not in the word. And since this page is written in English and not Italian, gender can be entirely ignored. Let's not over-complicate things. :-)Newtonsfig (discuss • contribs) 03:56, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

title: Talk:Japanese/Grammar/Nouns


text:
Dutch/Lesson 5

Gesprek 5-1

Notice that John uses the polite forms "alstublieft" (please) and "hartelijk dank" (thank you very much) to a total stranger rather than the more informal "alsjeblieft and "dank je".

Grammatica 5-1 ~ Conjugation of verbs; the four moods
Dutch has a relatively simple system of verbs with four moods and eight tenses. The Dutch verb has a few more endings than the English one. We will focus on three forms:

 * 1) stem
 * 2) stem + -t
 * 3) stem + -en

Imperative mood
The simplest form is the imperative mood. As in English it is simply the stem of the verb:

 * Neem! - take!

There is a (rather archaic) plural of the imperative, that takes an extra -t:

 * Neemt! - take (you all!).

Often imperatives are 'softened' to a kind request or encouragement with modal adverbs like maar or even:

 * Ga weg  - Go away! (This is pretty curt, even offensive: Get lost!)
 * Ga even weg - Please leave me alone for a moment (A kind request: do me a favor)
 * Ga maar weg - You can go now, that's OK. (An encouragement or permission)

In polite address with 'u' often a -t is added, although grammarians don't always consider that an imperative :

 * Gaat u zitten - please sit down
 * Weest u niet bang - don't be afraid

Indicative mood in the present tense
By far the most important mood is the indicative one and its tenses. We will look at the present tense only here. The first person singular has the same form as the imperative:

 * neem! - take!
 * ik neem - I take

The third person (he/she) singular acquires a final -t in the present. In English it gets a -s instead:

 * ik volg - I follow
 * hij volgt - he follows

In contrast to English this also applies to the second person singular:

 * jij vindt - you find (informal)
 * U kunt - you can (formal, polite)

However, the -t ending is lost for the informal jij form, when the word order is reversed, e.g. when asking a question:
 * Vind je dat ook niet?

The Dutch verb has a 'plural' form that generally ends in -en, which is used for all plural persons and for the infinitive as well:

 * vertellen - to tell
 * wij nemen - we take
 * jullie volgen - you (all) follow
 * zij kunnen - they can

Notice that the vowel usually does not change and therefore we are doubling either consonants or vowels when we go from one syllable to two:

 * vertel - vertelt - vertelˑlen => single e remains [ɛ] in syllable closed by extra l.
 * loop - loopt - loˑpen => o remains [o], even in the closed syllable, as indicated by "oo".

Brief exercise
Choose the correct form of the verb, then hover you mouse over the verb to see the right answer.

Fill in the correct verb form in the blank. Hover to check the answer.

 * [werken]. Waar jij?
 * [gaan]. Zij allebei naar het concert.
 * [bibberen]. Het kindje van de kou.
 * [pakken]. Ik de kaart even.
 * [eten].  u graag pannenkoeken met spek?

Infinitive mood
The plural form is also the infinitive of the verb:

 * wij maken - we make
 * maken - to make

It occasionally takes 'te' as in English 'to' but that is more exceptional in Dutch. The form with te is known as the extended infinitive and it has its own uses. Some of them are quite comparable to what happens in English:

 * dat is moeilijk te maken - that is hard to make

The infinitive can be used as a noun where English uses the gerund in -ing. It is always neuter in gender:

 * het vertellen van volkverhalen is een leuk tijdverdrijf.
 * the telling of folktales is a nice pastime.

 * het eten - the food, the meal
 * het eten is klaar! - dinner's ready!
 * het leven - life

There is a present participle, it ends in -end(e) rather than -ing. It is used mostly as an adjective :
 * de week die volgt → de volgende week
 * the week that follows → the following week
 * volgend jaar
 * next year

There are forms ending in -ing in Dutch but they are (feminine) nouns of action only loosely associated with the verb they derive from, e.g.

 * vertalen - to translate
 * de vertaling - the translation

We will revisit verbal nouns much more extensively in one of the later lessons.

Some verbs are monosyllabic, e.g.
 * zien - to see
 * ik zie - I see
 * hij ziet - he sees
 * zij zien - they see

Subjunctive mood
The subjunctive mood is even rarer in Dutch than it is in English. It only exists in third person singular and (with few exceptions) present tense. It looks like the infinitive minus -n:

 * Men neme twee pond gehakt
 * lit. (May) one take two pounds of ground beef (minced meat)
 * Het zij zo - be it so

It is only mentioned here for the sake of completeness. It is only used in a few wishes and recipes.

Some irregular verbs
Of course, there are a number of irregular verbs in Dutch, but often they are the same ones as in English. In English can and may do not take an -s in the third person. In Dutch a similar thing happens:
 * kunnen
 * ik kan - I can
 * jij kunt - you can
 * hij kan - he can (no t in Dutch - no s in English)

 * mogen
 * ik mag - I may
 * jij mag - you may
 * hij mag - he may (no t - no s)

We will revisit irregulars later.

Exercise 5.1
Read conversation 5.1 again and underline all verbs. Mark all endings as 0) - none 1) - t and 2) -en and identify in each case why this ending is used.

Exercise 5.2
Translate into Dutch:

Clitics revisited
As shown before many personal pronouns have a strong and a weak form:

 * mij, me - me (object)
 * jij, je - you (subject)
 * jou, je - you (object)
 * wij, we - we
 * zij, ze - they or she
 * hen, ze - them

The weak forms me, je, we and ze are used when the emphasis lies on some other part of the sentence. The strong form expresses mild emphasis.

 * Hij ziet me in de spíégel - He sees me in the mirror (not on television).
 * Hij ziet míj in de spiegel - He sees me in the mirror (not my mother).

Some pronouns do not have clitics, like u and jullie. In the spoken language there are more weak forms than in the written one, e.g. for he (ie), him ('m) and for her (d'r or 'r)

 * Dat heeft-ie niet gedaan - He ain't done it
 * Hij heeft 'r geslagen -  He beat 'r up
 * Ze hebben 'm gezien   -- They spotted 'im

In the written language they are often written in full hij, haar and hem.

For possessive pronouns the same holds. Compare:

 * Mijn motor is een Honda. Wat is jouw motor? - My bike is a Honda. What is your bike?
 * Ik wil graag een ritje op je motor maken. - I'd love to ride y'r bike!

 * mijn, m'n - my
 * jouw, je  - your
 * zijn, z'n - his
 * haar, (d'r)- her

Again the spoken language has a clearer distinction than the written one. The forms m'n, z'n, and especially d'r are often written as mijn, zijn and haar in formal writing. The form je is pretty much the only clitic possessive generally accepted in writing.

Quizlet
The vocabulary of this lesson can be trained at Quizlet (27 terms)

Progress made
If you have studied this lesson well, you should
 * 1) know the four moods of the verb
 * 2) know how to form a present tense
 * 3) be able to use Dutch personal pronouns in all their forms

Cumulative term count
 * Cycle 1: 579 terms
 * Cycle 2:
 * Lesson 5: 25 terms

 * Grand total 604 terms

title: Dutch/Lesson 5


text:
Introduction to Paleoanthropology/Darwinian Thought

Pre-Darwinian Thoughts on Evolution
Throughout the Middle Ages, there was one predominant component of the European world view: stasis.
 * All aspects of nature were considered as fixed and change was unconceivable.
 * No new species had appeared, and none had disappeared or become extinct.
 * Strongly thought that if any new species were to appear, it would be through sexual intercourse through multiple different species.

The social and political context of the Middle Ages helps explain this world view:
 * shaped by feudal society - hierarchical arrangement supporting a rigid class system that had changed little for centuries
 * shaped by a powerful religious system - life on Earth had been created by God exactly as it existed in the present (known as fixity of species).

This social and political context, and its world view, provided a formidable obstacle to the development of evolutionary theory. In order to formulate new evolutionary principles, scientists needed to:
 * overcome the concept of fixity of species
 * establish a theory of long geological time

From the 16th to the 18th century, along with renewed interest in scientific knowledge, scholars focused on listing and describing all kinds of forms of organic life. As attempts in this direction were made, they became increasingly impressed with the amount of biological diversity that confronted them.

These scholars included:
 * John Ray (1627-1705) - put some order into the diversity of animal and plant life, by creating the concepts of species and genus.
 * Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) - added two more categories (class and order) and created a complex system of classification (taxonomy) still used today; also innovated by including humans in his classification of animals.
 * Georges-Louis Leclerc (1707-1788) - innovated by suggesting the changing nature of species, through adaptation to local climatic and environmental conditions.
 * Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) - offered a comprehensive system to explain species changes; postulated that physical alterations of organic life would occur in relation to changing environmental circumstances, making species better suited for their new habitat; also postulated that new traits would be passed on to offspring (the theory known as inheritance of acquired characteristics).

Therefore, the principle of "fixity of species" that ruled during the Middle Ages was no longer considered valid.

In the mid-19th century, Charles Darwin offered a new theory which pushed further the debate of evolutionary processes and marks a fundamental step in their explanation by suggesting that evolution works through natural selection.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Charles Darwin's life as a scientist began when he took a position as naturalist aboard HMS Beagle, a ship charting the coastal waters of South America. As the ship circled the globe over a five-year period (1831-1836), Darwin puzzled over the diversity and distribution of life he observed. Observations and collections of materials made during these travels laid the foundation for his life's work studying the natural world.

As an example, the Beagle stopped five weeks in the Galapagos archipelago. There Darwin observed an unusual combination of species and wondered how they ended up on this island.

Darwin's observations on the diversity of plants and animals and their particular geographical distribution around the globe led him to question the assumption that species were immutable, established by a single act of creation. He reasoned that species, like the Earth itself, were constantly changing. Life forms colonized new habitats and had to survive in new conditions. Over generations, they underwent transmutation into new forms. Many became extinct. The idea of evolution slowly began to take shape in his mind.

In his 1859 publication On the Origin of Species, Darwin presented some of the main principles that explained the diversity of plants and animals around the globe: adaptation and natural selection. According to him, species were mutable, not fixed; and they evolved from other species through the mechanism of natural selection.

Darwin's theory of natural selection
In 1838, Darwin, at 28, had been back from his voyage on the Beagle for two years. He read Thomas Malthus's Essay on Population, which stated that human populations invariably grow until they are limited by starvation, poverty, and death, and realized that Malthus's logic could also apply to the natural world. This realization led Darwin to develop the principle of evolution by natural selection, which revolutionized our understanding of the living world.

His theory was published for the first time in 1859 in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Darwin's Postulates
The theory of adaptation and how species change through time follows three postulates:
 * Struggle for existence: The ability of a population to expand is infinite, but the ability of any environment to support populations is always finite.
 * Example: Animals require food to grow and reproduce. When food is plentiful, animal populations grow until their numbers exceed the local food supply. Since resources are always finite, it follows that not all individuals in a population will be able to survive and reproduce.

 * Variation in fitness: Organisms in populations vary. Therefore, some individuals will possess traits that enable them to survive and reproduce more successfully (producing more offspring) than others in the same environment.

 * Inheritance of variation: If the advantageous traits are inherited by offspring, then these traits will become more common in succeeding generations. Thus, traits that confer advantages in survival and reproduction are retained in the population, and traits that are disadvantageous disappear.

Examples of adaptation by natural selection
During his voyage on the HMS Beagle, Darwin observed a curious pattern of adaptations among several species of finches (now called Darwin's finches) that live on the Galapagos Islands.

Several traits of finches went through drastic changes in response to changes in their environment. One example is beak depth:
 * There was huge variation in beak depth among finches on the island; it affected the birds' survival and adaptation to local environmental changes.
 * During a drought, finches with deeper beaks were more likely to survive than finches with shallow beaks (which were at a disadvantage because it was harder for them to crack larger and harder seeds).

 * Parents and offsprings had similar beak depths.

Through natural selection, average morphology (an organism's size, shape and composition) of the bird population changed so that birds became better adapted to their environment.

Individual Selection
Adaptation results from competition among individuals, not between entire populations or species.

Selection produces adaptations that benefit individuals. Such adaptation may or may not benefit the population or species. In the case of finches' beak depth, selection probably does allow the population of finches to compete more effectively with other populations of seed predators. However, this need not be the case. Selection often leads to changes in behavior or morphology that increase the reproductive success of individuals but decrease the average reproductive success and competitive ability of the group, population, and species.
 * Example of conflict between individual and group interests: All organisms in the population produce many more offspring than are necessary to maintain the species. A female monkey may, on average, produce 10 offspring during her lifetime. In a stable population, perhaps only two of these offspring will survive and reproduce. From the point of view of the species, the other eight are a waste of resources. The species as a whole might be more likely to survive if all females produced fewer offspring.

The idea that natural selection operates at the level of the individual is a key element in understanding adaptation.

Directional Selection
Instead of a completely random selection of individuals whose traits will be passed on to the next generation, there is selection by forces of nature. In this process, the frequency of genetic variants for harmful or maladaptive traits within the population is reduced while the frequency of genetic variants for adaptive traits is increased.

Natural selection, as it acts to promote change in gene frequencies, is referred to as directional selection.

Stabilizing Selection
Finches' beaks (Example)

Large beaks have benefits as well as disadvantages. Birds with large beaks are less likely to survive their juvenile period than birds with small beaks, probably because they require more food to grow.

Evolutionary theory prediction:
 * Over time, selection will increase the average beak depth in a population until the costs of larger-than-average beak size exceed the benefits.
 * At this point, finches with average beak size in the population will be the most likely to survive and reproduce, and finches with deeper or shallower beaks than the new average will be at a disadvantage.

At this point, the population reaches equilibrium with regard to beak size. The process that produces this equilibrium state is called stabilizing selection.

Even though average characteristics of the beak in the population will not change in this situation, selection is still going on. The point to remember here is that populations do not remain static over the long run; if so, it is because a population is consistently favored by stabilizing selection.

Rate of Evolutionary Change
In Darwin's day, the idea that natural selection could change a chimpanzee into a human, much less that it might do so in just a few million years (which is a brief moment in evolutionary time), was unthinkable.

Today, most scientists believe that humans evolved from an apelike creature in only 5 to 10 million years. In fact, some of the rates of selective change observed in contemporary populations are far faster than necessary for natural selection to produce the adaptations that we observe.
 * The human brain has roughly doubled in the last 2 million years (rate of change of 0.00005% per year); that is 10,000 times slower than the rate of change observed among finches in the Galapagos Islands.

Therefore the real puzzle is why the change in the fossil record seem to have been quite slow.

The fossil record is still very incomplete.

It is quite likely that some evolutionary changes in the past were rapid, but the sparseness of the fossil record prevents us from detecting them.

Darwin's Difficulties
In On the Origin of Species, Darwin proposed that new species and other major evolutionary changes arise by the accumulation of small variations through natural selection.

This idea was not widely embraced by his contemporaries.
 * Many accepted the idea that new species arise through the transformation of existing species.
 * Many accepted the idea that natural selection is the most important cause of organic change.
 * But only a few endorsed Darwin's view that major changes occur through the accumulation of small variations.

Darwin's critics raised a major objection to his theory: The actions of selection would inevitably deplete variation in populations and make it impossible for natural selection to continue.

Yet Darwin couldn't convince his contemporaries that evolution occurred through the accumulation of small variations because he could not explain how variation is maintained, because he and his contemporaries did not yet understand the mechanics of inheritance.

For most people at the time, including Darwin, many of the characteristics of offspring were thought to be an average of the characteristics of their parents. This phenomena was believed to be caused by the action of blending inheritance, a model of inheritance that assumes the mother and father each contribute a hereditary substance that mixes, or "blends", to determine the characteristics of the offspring.

The solution to these problems required an understanding of genetics, which was not available for another half century. It was not until well into the 20th century that geneticists came to understand how variation is maintained, and Darwin's theory of evolution was generally accepted.


text:
Introduction to Paleoanthropology/Genetics/Introduction

Although Charles Darwin is credited with discovering the first observations of natural selection, he never explained how or why the process happens. Other scholars tackled these problems.

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
Darwin recognized the importance of individual variation in process of natural selection, but could not explain how individual differences were transmitted from one generation to another. Although none of main scientists in the 19th-century debate about evolution knew it, the key experiments necessary to understand how genetic inheritance really worked had already been performed by an obscure monk, Gregor Mendel, who lived near Brno, in the Czech Republic.

Between 1856 and 1863, Mendel performed many breeding experiments using the common edible garden pea plants. He meticulously recorded his observations and isolated a number of traits in order to confirm his results.

In 1866, Mendel published a report where he described many features of the mode of inheritance which Darwin was seeking. He proposed the existence of three fundamental principles of inheritance: Segregation; Independent Assortment; Dominance and Recessiveness.

Because the basic rules of inheritance Mendel discovered apply to humans as well as to peas, his work is of prime relevance for paleoanthropology and human evolution.

Nevertheless Mendel's work was beyond the thinking of the time; its significance was overlooked and unrecognized until the beginning of the 20th century.

Mendel's research
Mendel observed that his peas had seven easily observable characteristics, with only two forms, or variants, for each trait: After crossing plants, Mendel noted and carefully recorded the number of plants in each generation with a given trait. He believed that the ratio of plant varieties in a generation of offspring would yield clues about inheritance, and he continually tested his ideas by performing more experiments. From his controlled experiments and the large sample of numerous breeding experiments, Mendel proposed the existence of three fundamental principles of inheritance:
 * Segregation
 * Independent Assortment
 * Dominance and Recessiveness

Segregation
Mendel began crossing different varieties of purebred plants that differed with regard to a specific trait. For example, pea color.

In the experiment:
 * The first generation (parental, Fo) of plants were either green or yellow. As they matured, the first hybrid offspring generation was not intermediate in color, as blending theories of inheritance (Darwin) would have predicted. To the contrary, they were all yellow.
 * Next, Mendel allowed these plants to self-fertilize and produce a second generation of plants (generation F1). But this time, only 3/4 of offspring plants were yellow, and the remaining 1/4 were green.

These results suggested an important fact:
 * Different expressions of a trait were controlled by discrete units, which occurred in pairs, and that offspring inherited one unit from each parent.

This is Mendel's first principle of inheritance: principle of segregation.

Independent Assortment
Mendel also made crosses in which two traits were considered simultaneously to determine whether there was a relationship between them. For example: Plant height and seed color.

Results of experiments: No relationship between the two traits were found; nothing to dictate that a tall plant must have yellow (or green) seeds; therefore, expression of one trait is not influenced by the expression of the other trait.

Based on these results, Mendel stated his second principle of inheritance: the principle of independent assortment. This principle says that the genes that code for different traits assort independently of each other.

Dominance and Recessiveness
Mendel also recognized that the trait that was absent in the first generation of offspring plants had not actually disappeared at all - it had remained, but was masked and could not be expressed.

To describe the trait that seemed to be lost, Mendel used the term recessive; the trait that was expressed was said to be dominant.

Thus the important principle of dominance and recessiveness was formulated; and it remains today an essential concept in the field of genetics.

Implications of Mendel's research
Mendel thought his findings were important, so he published them in 1866.

Scientists, especially botanists studying inheritance, in the late 19th century, should have understood the importance of Mendel's experiments. But instead, they dismissed Mendel's work, perhaps because it contradicted their own results or because he was an obscure monk.

Soon after the publication of his work, Mendel was elected abbot of his monastery and was forced to give up his experiments.

His ideas did not resurface until the turn of the 20th century, when several botanists independently replicated Mendel's experiments and rediscovered the laws of inheritance.

The role of cell division in inheritence
Mitosis and Meiosis

By the time Mendel's experiments were rediscovered in 1900, some facts were well known: In order for plants and animals to grow and maintain good health, body cells of an organism must divide and produce new cells. Cell division is the process that results in the production of new cells.
 * virtually all living organisms are built out of cells;
 * all the cells in complex organisms arise from a single cell through the process of cell division.

Two types of cell division have been identified:
 * Mitosis: a process when chromosomes (and genes) replicate, forming a second pair that duplicates the original pair of chromosomes in the nucleus. Thus, mitosis produces new cells (daughter cells) that have exactly the same number of chromosome pairs and genes, as did the parent cell

 * Meiosis: while mitosis produces new cells (which	contain a pair of homologous chromosomes), meiosis leads to development of new individuals, known as gametes (which contain only one copy of each chromosome). With this process, each new cell (containing only one copy of each chromosome) is said to be haploid: when new individual is conceived, a haploid sperm from father unites with a haploid egg from the mother to produce a diploid zygote. The zygote is a single cell that divides mitotically over and over again to produce the millions and millions of cells that make up an individual's body.

Mendel and chromosomes
Mendel stated in 1866 that an organism's observed traits are determined by "particules" (later named genes by the American geneticist T.H. Morgan) acquired from each of the parents. This statement was only understood by further research.

Between the time of Mendel's initial discovery of the nature of inheritance and its rediscovery at the turn of the century, a crucial feature of cellular anatomy was discovered: the chromosome.
 * Chromosomes are small, linear bodies contained in every cell and replicated during cell division.

In 1902, a graduate student from Columbia University, (Walter Sutton) made the connection between chromosomes and properties of inheritance discovered by Mendel's principles:
 * genes reside on chromosomes because individuals inherit one copy of each chromosome from each parent
 * therefore an organism's observed traits are determined by genes from both parents
 * these propositions are consistent with the observation that mitosis transmits a copy of both chromosomes to every daughter cell, so every cell contains copies of both the maternal and paternal chromosomes.

Molecular genetics
In first half of the 20th century, geneticists made substantial progress in:
 * describing the cellular events that took place during mitosis and meiosis
 * understanding the chemistry of reproduction.

By the middle of the 20th century it was known that chromosomes contain two structurally complex molecules: protein and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). It was also determined that the particle of heredity postulated by Mendel was DNA, not protein - though exactly how DNA might contain and convey the information essential to life was still a mystery.

In the early 1950s, several biologists (led by Francis Crick and James Watson), at Cambridge University, made a discovery that revolutionized biology: they deduced the structure of DNA.

Through this discovery, we now know how DNA stores information and how this information controls the chemistry of life, and this knowledge explains why heredity leads to the patterns Mendel describes in pea plants, and why there are sometimes new variations.

Molecular Components
Cells Cells are basic units of life in all living organisms. Complex multicellular forms (plants, insects, birds, humans, ...) are composed of billions of cells, all functioning in complex ways to promote the survival of the individual.

DNA Molecules Complex molecule with an unusual shape: like two strands (called nucleotides) of a rope (composed of alternating sequences of phosphate and sugar molecules) twisted around one another (double helix). Chemical bases that connect two strands constitute code that contains information to direct production of proteins.

It is at this level that development of certain traits occurs;. . Yet, since the DNA in a single chromosome is millions of bases long, there is room for a nearly infinite variety of messages.

DNA molecules have the unique property of being able to produce exact copies of themselves: as long as no errors are made in the replication process, new organisms will contain genetic material exactly like that in ancestral organisms.

Genes A Gene is a short segment of the DNA molecule that directs the development of observable or identifiable traits. Thus genetics is the study of how traits are transmitted from one generation to the next.

Chromosomes Each chromosome contains a single DNA molecule, roughly two meters long that is folded up to fit in the nucleus. Chromosomes are nothing more than long strands of DNA combined with protein to produce structures that can actually be seen under a conventional light microscope

Each kind of organism has characteristic number of chromosomes, which are usually found in pairs. For example, human cells contain 23 pairs.

Cellular processes
DNA Replication In addition to preserving a message faithfully, hereditary material must be replicable. Without the ability to make copies of itself, the genetic message that directs the activities of living cells could not be spread to offspring, and natural selection would be impossible.

Cells multiply by dividing in such a way that each new cell receives a full complement of genetic material. For new cells to receive the essential amount of DNA, it is first necessary for the DNA to replicate:
 * Specific enzymes break the bonds between bases in the DNA molecule, leaving the two previously joined strands exposed
 * When process is completed, there are two double-stranded DNA molecules exactly like the original one.

Protein Synthesis One of most important functions of DNA is that it directs protein synthesis within the cell. Proteins are complex, three-dimensional molecules that function through their ability to bind to other molecules.

Proteins function in myriad ways: Proteins are not only major constituents of all body tissues, but also direct and perform physiological and cellular functions. Therefore critical that protein synthesis occur accurately, for, if it does not, physiological development and metabolic activities can be disrupted or even prevented.
 * Collagen is most common protein in body and major component of all connective tissues
 * Enzymes are also proteins; their function is to initiate and enhance chemical reactions
 * Hormones are another class.

Evolutionary significance of cellular processes
Meiosis is a highly important evolutionary innovation, since it increases variation in populations at a faster rate than mutation alone can do in asexually reproducing species.

Individual members of sexually reproducing species are not genetically identical clones of other individuals. Therefore each individual represents a unique combination of genes that has never occurred before and will never occur again.

Genetic diversity is therefore considerably enhanced by meiosis. If all individuals in a population are genetically identical over time, the natural selection and evolution cannot occur. Therefore, sexual reproduction and meiosis are of major evolutionary importance because they contribute to the role of natural selection in populations.

Synthesizing the knowledge
Darwin believed that evolution proceeded by the gradual accumulation of small changes. But Mendel and the biologists who elucidated the structure of the genetic system around the turn of the century proved that inheritance was fundamentally discontinuous.

Yet turn-of-the-century geneticists argued that this fact could not be reconciled with Darwin's idea that adaptation occurs through the accumulation of small variations.
 * If generation of parent plants are tall and short, then there will be no intermediate in the generation of offspring and size of peas cannot change in small steps. In a population of short plants, tall ones must be created all at once by mutation, not gradually lengthened over time by selection.

These arguments convinced most biologists of the time, and consequently Darwinism was in decline during the early part of the 20th century.

In the early 1930s, a team of British and American biologists showed how Mendelian genetics could be used to explain continuous variation. Their insights led to the resolution of two main objections to Darwin's theory:
 * the absence of a theory of inheritance
 * the problem of accounting for how variation is maintained in populations

When their theory was combined with Darwin's theory of natural selection and with modern biological studies, a powerful explanation of organic evolution emerged. This body of theory and the supporting empirical evidence is now called the modern synthesis.

Variation maintained
Darwin knew nothing about genetics, and his theory of adaptation by natural selection was framed as a "struggle for existence": there is variation of observed traits that affects survival and reproduction, and this variation is heritable.

Also, the blending model of inheritance appealed to 19th century thinkers, because it explained the fact that for most continuously varying characters, offspring are intermediate between their parents.

 * When yellow and blue parents are crossed to 	produce a green offspring, the blending model posits 	that the hereditary material has mixed, so that when two green individuals mate they produce only green offspring.

According to Mendelian genetics, however, the effects of genes are blended in their expression to produce a green phenotype, but the genes themselves remain unchanged. Thus, when two green parents mate, they can produce blue, yellow and green offspring.

Sexual reproduction produces no blending in the genes themselves, despite the fact that offspring may appear to be intermediate between their parents. This is because genetic transmission involves faithful copying of the genes themselves and reassembling them in different combinations in zygotes.

The only blending that occurs takes place at the level of the expression of genes in phenotypes (ex. Beak depth, pea color). The genes themselves remain distinct physical entities.

Yet, these facts do not completely solve the problem of the maintenance of variation. Indeed, even is selection tends to deplete variation, there would still be variation of traits due to environmental effects. In fact, without genetic variation there can be no further adaptation.

Mutation
Genes are copied with amazing fidelity, and their messages are protected from random degradation by a number of molecular repair mechanisms.

However, every once in a while, a mistake in copying is made that goes unrepaired. These mistakes damage the DNA and alter the message that it carries.

These changes are called mutations, and they add variation to a population by continuously introducing new genes, some of which may produce novel traits that selection can assemble into adaptations. Although rates of mutation are very slow, this process plays an important role in generating variation.

More importantly, this process provides the solution to one of Darwin's dilemma: the problem of accounting for how variation is maintained in populations.

Twentieth century research has shown that there are two pools of genetic variation: hidden and expressed. Mutation adds new genetic variation, and selection removes it from the pool of expressed variation. Segregation and recombination shuffle variation back and forth between the two pools with each generation.

In other words: if individuals with a variety of genotypes are equally likely to survive and reproduce, a considerable amount of variation is protected (or hidden) from selection; and because of this process, a very low mutation rate can maintain variation despite the depleting action of selection.

Human evolution and adaptation are intimately linked to life processes that involve cells, replication and decoding of genetic information, and transmission of this information between generations. Because physical anthropologists are concerned with human evolution, adaptation, and variation, they must have a thorough understanding of the factors that lie at very root of these phenomena. Because it is genetics that ultimately links or influences many of the various subdisciplines of biological anthropology.


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User:Vuara/Catalan Hyperencyclopaedia

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The Catalan Hyperencyclopaedia is a project that has been developed by the Comissionat per a la Societat de la Informació and Enciclopèdia Catalana.

The Hyperencyclopaedia is the most comprehensive collection of terms related to Catalonia: its towns and cities, history, most outstanding personalities, and characteristics. Taken directly from the documentary collections of the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, the first encyclopaedia of universal scope ever written in Catalan about Catalonia, this work will now be available to the public in English. Search for anything relating to our country, and you will get a list of words in alphabetical order, including a brief description, and links leading you to complete Encyclopaedia entries on that subject.

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text:
Cookbook:Beer Marinated Shrimp

This is an excellent shrimp dish that must be marinated overnight, so if you need dinner half an hour from now this isn't for you.

Ingredients

 * 2 pounds (900 g) peeled raw shrimp
 * 1 onion, sliced
 * 3 cloves garlic, minced
 * 12 ounces (340 ml) of beer
 * Tabasco sauce
 * Salt
 * Pepper
 * Butter

Procedure

 * 1) Combine onion, garlic, shrimp, and beer in a plastic or glass bowl.
 * 2) Add as much Tabasco as you'd like (start with 1 tbsp) and some salt and pepper to taste.
 * 3) Cover and marinate overnight.
 * 4) Remove shrimp from marinade, and discard marinade.
 * 5) Melt some butter in a pan and sauté shrimp until pink and done. Don't overcook the shrimp or they'll be rubbery. You can also grill the shrimp.

title: Cookbook:Beer Marinated Shrimp


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User:Vuara/Artcyclopedia

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/

About the Artcyclopedia Our mission is to become the definitive and most effective guide to museum-quality fine art on the Internet: definitive: We have compiled a comprehensive index of every artist represented at hundreds of museum sites, image archives, and other online resources. We have started out by covering the biggest and best sites around, and have links for most well-known artists to keep you surfing for hours. Update February/2002: We have now indexed 1200 arts sites, and offer more than 32,000 links to an estimated 100,000 works by 7,500 renowned artists.

most effective: The Artcyclopedia's custom search engine is already the fastest way to search the Net for information about fine artists. Period.

museum-quality: There are scads of artists with home pages on the Web, many of whom are extremely talented. But we can't list every site, and we really don't want to set ourselves up as arbiters of who produces "quality" art and who doesn't - making such a judgment is impossible over the Internet in any case. We feel that fairest approach is to rely on the worldwide network of museum professionals to make that call. So our general policy is, if an artist is in an arts museum collection, then he or she is qualified to be listed in our database. See our Information for Artists page for more specific information.

What is and is not in the Artcyclopedia's database? We only provide references to sites on the World Wide Web where artists' works can be viewed online. For calendars of real-world museum exhibits, try a resource such as Gallery Guide Online, or Traditional Fine Arts Online, or the Art Museum Network's ExCalendar, all of which seem to do an excellent job. The vast majority of the fine artists in our database specialize in painting and sculpture. We do include other artistic media where possible. Examples of these types of media are: photography (e.g. Ansel Adams, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Alfred Stieglitz, and Cindy Sherman) decorative arts (e.g. Carl Fabergé, René Lalique, and Louis Comfort Tiffany) installation art (e.g. Dan Flavin and Ed Kienholz) video, digital and web-based art (e.g. Jenny Holzer, Bill Viola, and Nam June Paik) naïve art/folk art/outsider art (e.g. Edward Hicks and Grandma Moses) architecture (e.g. Frank Lloyd Wright and Andrea Palladio) Note that we are primarily oriented to searching by artist name, although we intend to add more and more access by artistic movement, nation, timeline and medium. At the moment we do not have entries for artworks by unknown artists. This includes works with such attributions as "follower of", "workshop of", or "school of" given artists. We do have entries for certain notable individual artists whose names have been lost (for example, the Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece). Who is behind this project? The Artcyclopedia was created by John Malyon, an IT professional, web developer, and entrepreneur currently living in Calgary, Canada. Here is a brief overview of John's background:

17 years in the software industry 10 years project leader roles 9 years data modeling and online interface design first exposed to the Internet through the WELL, the legendary online community, of which he was a member for several years in the early nineties fine arts webmaster for 3 years sometime writer (one professional credit to date: At the Robot Olympics, published in the Whole Earth Review, Spring 1992) John's current project is to develop a system for commercializing the Artcyclopedia in such a way as to add value for visitors (by providing them with additional useful and relevant information), rather than subtracting value (e.g. through indiscriminate use of banners). You can contact John at this address:

John Malyon Artcyclopedia 51 Tuscany Hills Terrace N.W. Calgary, Alberta Canada   T3L 2G7

Phone: (403) 547-9692 Fax: (403) 547-1506 Email: jmalyon@artcyclopedia.com

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why isn't artist X listed on your site? Can you tell me everything about artist X? How much is this etching/edition by artist X worth? How much is this painting by artist X worth? I think I own a valuable painting. What should I do?

Why isn't artist X listed on your site? Keep in mind that our site is an Internet search tool, not a forum for assessing which artists are "museum-quality" and which aren't. If an artist's work doesn't happen to be viewable online at one of the sites we have indexed, then they won't be in our database. If you want to suggest an artist for inclusion, please look over our guidelines. Note that we already have a backlog of suggestions, and adding links in this way is a rather time-consuming process. Can you tell me everything about artist X? Pretty much everything we can tell you about an artist we put on the artist pages. If you need more than is available at any of the sites the Artcyclopedia links to, I suggest heading to Alta Vista and Google, which I find to be the largest and most effective search engines. Another excellent place to research fine artists is the Grove Dictionary of Art site. It's a pay site, but as of this writing you can still register for a 24-hour free trial. You can also find the print edition of the Grove in better libraries. For better-known artists, you'll probably find entire books about them there, or within the inter-library loan system. How much is this etching/edition by artist X worth? Valuation of prints and etchings is very complicated, and I don't have any resources in this area whatsoever. I recommend finding a gallery who has some knowledge of the field and paying them for an appraisal - the cost is usually reasonable. For collectible artists, a site like Ebay may also give you some insight into the real-world value of your work. How much is this painting by artist X worth? Here are some tools to help you come up with some idea of what your original work of art might be worth. Prices for works by a given artist vary widely and wildly for many reasons, including: auction prices are usually lower than gallery "list" prices size: larger is better, within reason medium: oil paintings are almost invariably the most valuable, followed distantly by watercolors, pastels, drawings, etc. period: is it from the artist's best period? subject matter: is it characteristic of the artist's most sought-after work? if a realistic work: does it have a girl or a horse in it? if an abstract work: do the dominant colors match common shades of sofas and drapes? provenance: has it been in the Rothschild family collection since they bought it from the artist 200 years ago (good), or does it have no traceable lineage before, say, 1946 (very very bad)? certainty of authentication: even if the work is signed by the artist it could be a forgery, or it could be a genuine work from the period on which the signature has been forged where the auction took place, geographically: is there a natural market for the artist's work? uncontrollable factors: rain, full moon, sunspot activity, etc. lastly, (and sometimes least) the actual artistic merit of the work Keeping the above in mind, it is possible to look up auction records in the reference section of your local library, to get a general idea of what an artist's works fetch. There are several annual publications which list hundreds of thousands of sales results. The public library I use, which is good but by no means world class, has three sets by different publishers. One good online resource is Artcult, which has a freely accessible database of price ranges for many artists. And if you are willing to pay, you can get full auction results online at several sites, including artnet.com and artprice.com. I think I own a valuable artwork. What should I do? First, what not to do: do NOT clean it, or reframe it, or restore it, by yourself. If it's on paper, do not give it too much light and never let it receive direct sunlight. And resist the temptation to remove layers of paint to see if the artist painted the women naked under their clothes. (I have recently discovered a nice page at the North Carolina Museum of Art site which discusses conservation issues related to the display, storage, and transport of fine art.) Now, if you think you have a valuable work of art, here's what to do: Take a trip to the library to familiarize yourself with the artist's oeuvre and find out how much his works are typically worth (see above for more on this). This will help you determine how much is would be sensible to spend on the next few steps. Have the work authenticated and appraised. Insure the work as soon as possible. Get advice from a professional conservator. Sell the work, if you wish. Now, if you have reason to believe you own a valuable work of art, you should probably have it appraised. Sothebys and Christie's offer this service, as do many galleries. You can also find professional fine art appraisers in the Yellow Pages (under "appraisers" where I live). They should also be able to advise about authentication of your work. +++

Reviews We launched in February, 1999 with no publicity, and have been just overwhelmed with the response we have received. Thanks to everyone who has emailed us and entered comments into our guestbook, and thanks to all of the hundreds of sites which now link to us. And especially, thanks to the following professional surfers and searchers who have reviewed us in the last few months: The New York Times Learning Network July 26, 2000 Site of the Day http://www.nytimes.com/learning/parents/siteofday/20000726.html

The Calgary Herald June 22, 2000 The Art of Being Online: "A Calgary entrepreneur finds success bringing the world of fine art to the masses through the Web" http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/technology/stories/000622/4323092.html

The Washington Post May 7, 1999 www.worth it: "If you're trying to soak up some culture on the Web, going about it by plugging a name into a search engine is bound to be frustrating. Artcyclopedia offers another option: Enter an artist's name and it will plumb its own database of art-oriented Web-dom for relevant sites. It couldn't have been much fun assembling this database, but it works well and doesn't make you wait." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/tech/ffwd/0599/wit0507.htm

The San Jose Mercury News March 12, 1999 Minister Of Information: "Ever since one of my favorite sites, Greatest Painters on the Web, closed down a few weeks back because of copyright issues, I've been keeping an eye out for a replacement, and now I think I have one." http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/columns/minister/docs/march.shtml

The Guardian Newspaper (Great Britain) August 13, 1999 "If you are still getting your Manets confused with your Monets, or your Carpaccios with your Caravaggios, then this site will help clear your fog. Over 5,000 artists are listed but, most usefully, it guides you to the online collections that house a given work. Type in "Rossetti", for example, and you will soon be flitting about the world's major museums viewing all the Pre-Raphaelite master's works."

The British Library Subject Resources on the Internet: One of 4 (as of this writing) Art & Design websites recommended as "the most valuable subject specific resources available." http://www.britishlibrary.net/subject_guides.html

USA Today March 13, 1999 (web site), March 21, 1999 (print edition) Hot Site of the Day http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/chc0413.htm

Florida Times-Union April 16, 1999 Best Bets on the Net http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/webwatch/archives/041699.html

The Bangkok Post April 2, 1999 Netscope: "By now, the sheer abundance of art on the Internet is such that a guide is needed to explore even a small part of it. Search engines and image finders are some help, as are the Art sections of the big metapages like Yahoo! and Netcenter. But for a more efficient and entertaining way to find what you want, take a look at Artcyclopedia... this is a site to marvel at in its comprehensiveness and usefulness."

Infoseek/Go Network 3 stars (highest rating) http://infoseek.go.com/WebDir/Entertainment/The_arts

MSNBC March 13-15, 1999 Featured "Web Pick"

The Kim Komando Radio Show April 23, 1999 "They cover the biggest and best sites around, and have enough links for most well-known artists to keep you surfing for hours." http://www.komando.com/other/kool_sites/art/19990423_2209.shtml California State Library/Librarians' Index to the Internet Best of...: "Claims to be a work in progress, and an impressive one it is." http://lii.org/search?query=Artists&subsearch=Artists&searchtype=subject

ResearchBuzz March 23, 1999 "This thing is neat. There's a featured artist (this month: Van Gogh!) an attempt at listing the most popular artists on the Internet, a browsable and searchable list of artists, links to museums and archives, etc. Recommended." http://www.researchbuzz.com/news/FebMar99arx.html

The Scout Report April 2, 1999 "If you are just getting started searching for fine art on the Web and you are looking for works by a particular artist, Artcyclopedia is a great jumping off place... While the hit list does not give you any idea of how much material a given Website might have on your artist, this does not detract from Artcyclopedia's value as a good place to start." http://wwwscout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/1999/scout-990402.html#15

title: User:Vuara/Artcyclopedia


text:
User:Vuara/Art Movements

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/

Art Movements

Abstract Expressionism Academic Art The American Scene Art Deco Art Nouveau The Arts & Crafts Movement The Ashcan School The Barbizon School Baroque Art Bauhaus Byzantine Art Camden Town Group Classicism Contemporary Realism Cubism Dada Der Blaue Reiter Die Brücke Die Neue Sachlichkeit Expressionism Fauvism Fantasy Art Futurism Golden Age of Illustration Gothic Art The Group Of Seven The Harlem Renaissance History Painting The Hudson River School Impressionism Magic Realism Mannerism Minimalism Les Nabis Neoclassicism Neo-Plasticism Op Art Orientalism Photorealism Pointillism Pop Art Post-Impressionism Precisionism The Pre-Raphaelites Realism Regionalism The Renaissance Early Renaissance High Renaissance Mannerism Northern Renaissance The Rococo Style Romanticism The Sensation Show Social Realism Surrealism Symbolism Ukiyo-e Printmaking Western Art Wildlife Art

title: User:Vuara/Art Movements


text:
User:Vuara/Glossaries

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/scripts/glossary.html

Glossaries

• Glossary of Fine Art Terms (from ArtLex) • Glossary of Greek and Roman Mythology (from Encyclopedia Mythica) • Glossary of Christian Saints (excerpted from the Catholic Encyclopedia, Catholic Forum, Catholic Online and Olga's Gallery)

title: User:Vuara/Glossaries


text:
User:Vuara/Household Cyclopedia

http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/The_Household_Cyclopedia_of_General_Information/

Household Information - Past and Present

Household information is what this site is about and there are over 300 articles here. The genesis of this site was a book published in 1881 called the Household Cyclopedia of General Information. Many of the articles are from that book and are fascinating from a historical perspective and for research purposes. At LoveToKnow, we liked the idea of a site for general household information a lot, so we decided to add articles that are up to date and germane to today's living and challenges.

Select a category below for articles from the Late 19th Century:

Agricultural Articles - Includes soil information, oats, barley, hay making, grafting a tree, etc. Old Fashioned Recipes - Includes Old Fashioned gingerbread, cake, pudding, home made wine and many more. Household Advice and Information - Includes articles like: Old Fashioned Cologne; How to live, Avoiding Nightmares, etc. Paints and Dyes - Includes articles on how to make dyes, paints, pastes, etc. Printing and Engraving - Includes articles on copying, printing, engraving and etching. Metallurgy - Includes articles on assaying, casting, methods of steel making and more. Home Crafts and Necessities - How to make Chinaware, tobacco pipes, stoneware pottery, etc. Weights and Measures - Information on weight values, gravity of liquids, reading barometers, etc Miscellaneous - Fishing history, dog age calculation, breeding canary's, etc.

New Articles:

Golfsmith Disney Italian Charms Kelly Blue Book Italian Charms Franklin Covey Discover Credit Cards eHarmony Cheap Italian Charms Platinum engagement rings Design your own engagement ring

More New Articles

JJ Kent Italian Charms Home Equity Line of Credit

Other Recommended Sites:

What are heraldry, family crests and coats of arms? Proper Wedding Invitation and Wording Public Bookshelf

title: User:Vuara/Household Cyclopedia


text:
User:Vuara/Cyclopedia Cryptologia

http://www.disappearing-inc.com/

Cyclopedia Cryptologia

Welcome to Cyclopedia Cryptologia. This is an online encyclopedia of cryptographic protocols. There will be coverage of a few related topics such as encryption/decryption algorithms and a few historical references, but for the most part, the intent here is to be a reference on cryptographic protocols. Although my intent is to be as exhaustive as possible, the literature is increasingly broad and deep; the coverage I give it here will probably never be truly exhaustive.

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Foreword

This work is a cyclopedia, or a collection of articles relating to a particular field. In this case, the field is cryptographic protocols and protocol design.

There are many thousands of papers in the field that have been published in recent years. Each of these has been developed by a single author or small group of authors, and generally each has evolved its own terminology and notation. They are published at academic conferences held at various intervals and by various organizations, or as thesis papers by various graduate students or academic researchers from different universities.

A lot of the mental effort of reading these papers is devoted to learning the different notations and terminology preferred by each different team of writers, and a lot of the information is hard to collect and publish directly because of the diversity of the sources and of course the conflicts of copyright. The publication formats themselves range from plain text, to TeX, to HTML, to PostScript, to mere ink on paper.

The purpose of a cyclopedia such as this is to collect as much of this information as possible together, with a unified notation, in a single electronic format, and under a single copyright. Of course, I will try to concentrate on that which is most useful, since there will necessarily be omissions.

For now this cyclopedia is a work in progress. At some point in the future, when I am reasonably satisfied with it, I will probably publish it as a printed book. Regardless, the HTML version of it will remain available on the web, and work on it will most likely continue.

My purpose in writing such a work is simply this: I want people to have in their hands the means of protecting themselves from eavesdroppers, blackmailers, extortionists, embezzlers, thieves, and worse. Now that information is mainly digital and electronic, the only meaningful protection from such entities is a working knowledge of cryptographic protocols.

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Introduction

Cyclopedia Cryptologia is a work in progress. There are a lot of articles that need to be written, and I've written only some of them. Twice a week or so, I sit down, review the last ten "404 not found" errors the site has generated, and pick one of them to write an article about, so that that particular URL will quit generating 404 errors. So far, the articles aren't very broadly researched -- They are mainly placeholders to be replaced by later versions as I bring the whole up to professional standards.

Protocols are the heart and soul of applied cryptography. Protocols are the methods by which cryptography is used to get things done.

For many centuries, cryptography was mainly involved only in the very simplest protocol -- sending secret messages. But the fact of the matter is, cryptography is also useful for many other types of transactions. Cryptography is a general tool for the management of information. There are a lot of things that can be done with cryptography, and this site is about how to do them.

While encryption and decryption algorithms provide some of the materials of which useful structures are made, the materials have to be organized in a useful way to make useful structures. And that is what protocol designers do. We're going to cover a few encryption/decryption algorithms, but this cyclopedia is about protocols. Everyone can figure out how to make a mud hut; similarly, everyone can find the "secret message" protocol -- it's the simplest protocol in the universe. But just as a good building architect/engineer can develop a workable plan for a cathedral, a good protocol architect/engineer can develop incredibly useful complex cryptographic protocols, with surprising and subtle properties.

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Notation and Terminology If someone has to spend a full second thinking about what notation means, then the author has clearly made a mistake. With that simple but exacting criterion in mind, here is the complete vocabulary of mathematical primitives that this work will use.

Parentheses denote a subexpression. Calculations inside a subexpression are to be done before the calculations outside of it. For example (2 * 3) + 5 = 11 but 2 * (3 + 5) = 16 Parentheses also enclose the arguments of a function. A, AB, A1 etc. Identifiers starting with a capital letter and including only capital letters or numbers represent strings or numbers. In this work, we do not differentiate between strings and numbers. Alice, Bob, etc. Capitalized identifiers represent actors in various protocols. Traditionally, these are alphabetic and alternate in gender, starting with Alice and Bob. Also, certain roles are traditionally associated with certain names: Trent is the trusted authority, Eve is the eavesdropper, Mallory is the active attacker, etc. These "special" names are outside and additional to the alphabetic run of names representing ordinary participants. asterisk, slash, the plus sign, the minus sign, and the percent sign are infix operators for multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, and the modulo operator, respectively. The minus sign may also be used as a unary prefix operator for negation (subtraction from zero). , Comma is used as an infix operator for concatenation. &, |, !, << >> The Ampersand, vertical bar, exclamation point, double left-angle, and double right-angle are the infix operators for binary and, binary or, binary inversion, leftward shift, and rightward shift. trunc, frac, time, pubkey, hash, etc. identifiers in lower case, followed by parentheses, are functions. Functions are always followed by an open-paren, their arguments if any, and a close paren. For now some of these just have to stand, but when I'm pulling together all the loose ends before publication I'll try to provide definitions for them all.

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Acknowledgements First of all, I need to give thanks to the many people who've contributed knowledge which I present here.

Probably first among these is Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Security Systems, who wrote a book called Applied Cryptography, which serves as a one-volume introduction to the field. But there is a sharp limit to what can really be covered in one volume, and Mr. Schneier recognized this. In order that the inevitable shortcomings of a single volume would not hinder his readers from future research, his book has an extensive bibliography. He also maintains at his website an extensive bibliography of cryptographic papers available online, which has been a great help. I cannot state often enough how great a service to a researcher a good bibliography is, particularly in a field like Cryptography. Cryptography, until the last few decades, has not been much studied in the private sector, and publications about it have tended to be rare and secret. Since the revolution in studying cryptography that started to happen in the 1970's, where it's been coming out into the open and mathematicians have been getting to sink their teeth into it and shake, there's been a fever of scholarly articles, published in small journals and circulated to a few thousand people. These articles have covered huge amounts of ground, come out with truly breathtaking insights and mathematical techniques. But these articles were mostly unknown and inaccessible to the public -- until Schneier enumerated them in his bibliography. Since Schneier's book came out, it's been ten times easier to do research in the field of cryptography than it was before. Schneier has continued to contribute to the field with his company, Counterpane Systems, and with his email newsletter, the Crypto-gram.

The second name I want to mention here is David Kahn, for his earlier work, The Code Breakers. This book purports to be a history of cryptography and cryptology throughout history, and in fact about half of it is devoted to that purpose. But the other half is mainly a history of cryptography and cryptology in the second world war. Prior to its publication in 1967, there had been nothing but a vast deep silence concerning cryptography, disturbed by the natterings of sunday-paper puzzle ciphers and occasional scandals of traitors divulging secrets and being quickly discredited and hushed up.

Kahn had a daunting task before him in researching and reporting the cryptographic history of the world, and he did an admirable job. And like Schneier did after him, he compensated for his book being just one book by including a fantastically complete bibliography, to drag all the obscure sources that people would otherwise never have heard of out into the light. It is not too much to say that Kahn's book, by bringing knowledge of ciphers to a broader audience, may be one of the primary forces (the other being the seminal paper new directions in cryptography by Diffie and Hellman in 1976) which set off the astounding revolution in the study of cryptography that Schneier had before him when he started to write his book.

The third major source of information I want to mention is not so well known as the other two: It is a book titled Advances in Cryptology 1981-1997, edited by Kevin McCurley and Claus Dieter Zeigler. The book is primarily an index to every paper published at these two conferences for 16 years, and is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing PDF copies of all the publications. While the publications of these conferences have been necessarily made in small runs and are therefore expensive and rare, this electronic document collecting sixteen highly eventful years of these publications has been a font of knowledge unsurpassed by any other single resource I have available to me and has saved me much effort in tracking down copies of publications long out of print and gathering dust in someone's attic. It turns the bibliography question on its head, taking the large data storage capacity available in an electronic format and simply putting all the papers there for perusal. And of course each paper has its own bibliography, so taken as a whole the bibliography given in this work eclipses either of the two above.

Fourth, there is a team of three authors: Alfred J. Menezes, Paul C. van Oorschot, and Scott A. Vanstone. These gentlemen are responsible for a book called the Handbook of Applied Cryptography. This is a book strictly about the mathematics and implementation of cryptography - while there is an entire chapter on the oft-overlooked problem of key management and other trust issues, it does not concern itself much with protocols and history. It is strictly a book about engineering, implementation and analysis, and for that purpose, it excels.

I want to make a special thanks to Ronald Rivest, both for having a lot of truly neat ideas, and for taking the time and energy to make his publications available on the World Wide Web. People like Rivest realize that the march of progress is not just about ideas. It's also about access to ideas, and the general public benefits from ideas as well as the few peers in the field that receive the specialized publications in which these papers come out. So, to Rivest and other researchers like him, who take care to make their ideas available to more than just the specialists in their own disciplines, I'd like to extend a sincere and heartfelt thanks.

title: User:Vuara/Cyclopedia Cryptologia


text:
User:Vuara/Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/cyclopedia.html

Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography

This six-volume biographical dictionary was published between 1887 and 1889 and was one of the first and most definitive works of its kind published in America. It can still be found as a reference source in many libraries throughout America, and was republished in 1968 by the Gale Research Company. Unfortunately, a large number of its biographical sketches (perhaps as many as 200 of them) are entirely fictitious (a fact which Gale did not publicize when it reprinted the work). The fictitious entries were not discovered until almost thirty years after the original publication of the volumes. Almost all the false sketches describe pre-nineteenth century European scientists who travelled to the New World to study its natural history.

Some of the false entries are more obvious in retrospect than others. For instance, the biography of Charles Henry Huon de Penanster, identified as a French botanist, almost exactly parallels the real life of Nicolas Thiery de Menonville (whose biography also appears in the Cyclopedia). The biography of Nicolas Henrion, a French scientist, reports that he arrived in South America in 1783, just as the Asiatic cholera broke out there. However, epidemic Asiatic cholera first broke out in South America only in 1835. Miguel da Fonseca e Silva Herrera, a Brazilian historian, was said to have been presented with a gold medal by the historical institute of Rio de Janeiro in 1820, even though this society was not founded until 1838.

Most of the false entries are fairly dry, but a few are more colorful, such as that of Jean Pierre de Vogué, a Flemish adventurer who apparently ended his days wandering through the Brazilian rainforest in search of the fabled "Mountain of Wealth", and the Spanish geographer Andres Vicente y Bennazar who reportedly published a map of the world clearly displaying both North and South America sixteen years before Columbus sailed to the Americas. The author (or authors) of the false entries is not known, but the motive for writing the pieces was probably financial since contributors to the Cyclopedia were paid by space, and the articles were generally checked only for form.

References: Barnhart, John Hendley. "Some Fictitious Botanists." Journal of the New York Botanical Garden 20 (September 1919): 171-81. O'Brien, Frank M. "The Wayward Encyclopedias", New Yorker, XII (May 2, 1936), pp. 71-74. Schindler, Margaret Castle. "Fictitious Biography." American Historical Review 42 (1937), pp. 680-90. Dobson, John Blythe. "The Spurious Articles in Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography—Some New Discoveries and Considerations." Biography 16(4) 1993: 388-408.

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A Partial List of Entries Known to be Fictitious in Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography

Harmand, Louis Gustave Henrion, Nicolas Herauld, André Herbette, André Paul Hermstaedt, Nicholas Piet Hernandez, Vicente Herrera, Miguel da Fonseca e Silva Hjorn, Oscar Horne, Antoine Houdetot, François Lauriot de Huden, Lucas Van Huet de Navarre Hühne, Bernhard Huon de Penanster, Charles Henry Huss, Magnus Igolino, Giuseppe Kehr, Gustav Herman Kerckhove, Lorenz Wenceslas Kjoeping, Oläus Klüber, Melchior Koehler, Alexander Daniel Lotter, Frederic August Monteil, Nicolas Antoine Mortier, Édouard Louis Nascher, Friedrich Wilhelm Neé, Isidore Charles Sigismond Ramée, Stanislas Henri de la Sylvie, Édouard Tapin, Richard Thibaudin, Gaston Louis Verden, Karl von Verdugo, Vicente Verhuen, Jacobus Veuillot, Désiré Viana, Miguel Pereira Vicente y Bennazar, Andres Vigier, George Villadarias, Manoel Duarte Caldeiras Centenera de Villiers, Jean Pierre Vilmot, Charles Stanislas Vivier, Jacques du Vogué, Jean Pierre Voisin, Charles Antoine Voisin, Pierre Joseph Voiture, Nicolas Auguste Wallerton, Charles Louis Auguste Watteau, Boudoin Louis

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VOGUÉ, Jean Pierre de, Flemish adventurer, b. in Malines in 1570; d. in Brazil in 1630. He was a captain in the Spanish army when, hearing the fabulous description of the country of the Es- meraldas, he went to Espiritu Santo, in Brazil, and succeeded to the command of the colony that had been founded there. The establish- ment soon dissolved, as the adventurers were only anxious for riches; and Vogué, having announced that he knew the location of the Mountain of Wealth, was soon at the head of a host, and led an expedition to the interior of the Mamalucos country, wandering for several years through cen- tral and south Brazil, and suffering many mis- fortunes. His confidence in ultimate success was never shaken, but he was abandoned by his follow- ers, and fell at last into the hands of the Charcas Indians. It is supposed that he died during his captivity, although the "Colleccão de alguns manu- scriptos curiosos" credits to him the work "Jor- nada por el descobrimento de las Serras Esme- raldas" (Seville, 1690).

From Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography

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VICENTE Y BENNAZAR, Andres (ve-then'- tay), Spanish geographer, lived in the second half of the 15th century. He published at Antwerp in 1476 four charts, representing the four conti- nents of the world. Unlike Columbus, he did not imagine America to be part of Asia, but repre- sented it as a distinct continent and, what is more remarkable, as a continent divided into two parts by an isthmus. This publication, at so early a date, and before columbus's discovery, has caused much discussion. Some authorities think that Vicente y Bennazar had arrived at the conclusion that America existed as a distinct continent; others, that such an opinion was general among scientific circles in the 15th century; and still others, that he only intended to reproduce the lost Atlantis spoken of by Plato and the ancients.

From Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography