12:18, Saturday 5 Jul., 2003 Link

Science historians ponder naming 'enemies' in science literature [via robotwisdom]. For example,

"The kind of rhetoric that is used in the context of invasive species is completely ghastly. No one thinks very much about what all the metaphors mean. Haven't species moved around the globe all the time? Isn't it a prime example of evolution at work when a 'invasive' species comes in and actually out-competes a so-called 'native' species? Isn't this the competition that we teach everyone about in introductory biology that leads to adaptation?" Laubichler said. "Yet the metaphors lead us to assume that this is 'unnatural.' This can easily turn into something that gets completely out of hand."

(Related thought: We use the word 'expect' for unconscious unexpectations, or rather, implicit understandings of the behaviour of things, even though we shouldn't: we don't 'expect' the sound from the radio to devolve into pack struggle, alpha phonemes dominating words, re-packing into different meanings as the constitution of the pack changes according to the echo pattern of the room. That's not an axis of variation. But whereas I positively expect to be hungry later (if I don't eat), I don't 'expect' in the same way the absence of all the constraints that make radio radio, and I don't have an 'expectation' of radio (expectation is too active), but I can recognise it when it's there. New word needed.)