What I’m reading

frontispiece

Sometimes you can learn so much about a book just from its front matter.

Public lecture: Montgomery McFate

The Institute for Information Technology and Culture (IITC) presents a continuation of
“This is Dangerous Territory: Social Research Out of Bounds”
with its final presenter:

Montgomery McFate, Ph.D., J. D.
Friday, December 12, at 4 p.m.

McGregor Memorial Conference Center
Wayne State University

Refreshments to follow the presentation.

Montgomery McFate is a cultural anthropologist who works on defense and national security issues and is currently the Senior Social Scientist for the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS). The U.S. Army developed HTS to study social groups, currently in Iraq and Afghanistan, by using anthropologists to provide military commanders with information about the population in order to help reduce military and civilian conflict. This lecture tries to put HTS in context, by describing the transformation that has occurred within the Department of Defense over the past few years, of which HTS is a small, but significant part.

To say that Dr. McFate is a controversial figure in anthropological circles would be a gross understatement, not only because of her current work but her past association with her mother’s security firm. The circumstances under which the HTS does its work in conjunction with direct military objectives raises enormous ethical issues, and I have grave misgivings about the way in which this sort of work has been done in the past and the present. Does she nonetheless deserve a hearing? Yes, of course: the sort of skeptical, rigorous attention to which any scholar’s work must be subjected. I am pleased that my institution will be hosting her talk, and I plan to be there.

Jargonicity, circa 1870

http://wondermark.com/?p=2911
Source: http://wondermark.com/?p=2911

Preach it!

Doorworks 3: Paleolithic numerical marks

Pl. LXXV
Lartet and Christy 1875: Pl. LXXV

As early as the 1860s, archaeologists began to realize that Paleolithic humans were very different from their modern counterparts. These Upper Paleolithic notched bone and antler artifacts from the Dordogne in France were identified by the archaeologist Rupert Jones as arithmetical notations, tallies, or calendars. Jones’ identification was speculative, based on their appearance alone, and many of these may just as plausibly be simply decorative marks. Later work on Paleolithic numeration and arithmetic has focused on experimental and cognitive approaches to these artifacts (Marshack 1972, d’Errico and Cacho 1994). How might you determine what their true function was?

Works Cited

d’Errico, Francesco and Carmen Cacho. 1994. Notation Versus Decoration In The Upper Paleolithic – A Case-Study From Tossal-De-La-Roca, Alicante, Spain. Journal Of Archaeological Science 21 (2): 185-200.
Lartet, Edouard and Henry Christy. 1875. Reliquiae Aquitanicae, being contributions to the archaeology and paleontology of the Périgord. Edited by Rupert Jones. London: Baillière.
Marshack, Alexander. 1972. The Roots of Civilization. New York: McGraw-Hill.

(See also: Paleolithic Notation Bibliography)

Five paragraphs on the pentathlon

In news from the burgeoning field of the anthropology of numbers, the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne has decided that the pentathlon will now comprise only four distinct events, combining the shooting and running components into a single event. But this change in structure will not be accompanied by a change in nomenclature, sparking a barrage from the linguistic blogosphere, such as this Language Log post, discussing the change and the inevitable cries of etymological impurity. Now Bill Poser at LL has very sensibly pointed out that since the shooting and running event is a two-event sport (thus a biathlon), three events plus a biathlon is still five separate disciplines and the etymological issue is a non-starter.

These issues involving numerical prefixes are very obvious instances where we think that the etymology should correspond to reality. Of course if something involves the prefix penta-, it should involve five, right? Not so fast. This is really a special case of the logical fallacy known as the etymological fallacy: the notion that the current meaning of words ought to reflect their etymology. It rarely does, and there is no reason we should expect every language user to be a language historian.

The etymological fallacy in English is normally applied only to a particular set of words: scientific and technical vocabulary that form part of the Greek and Latin superstrate introduced into the language from the 16th century onward. Latin and Greek vocabulary is often seen to be logical, rational, and predictable, in contrast to wayward Anglo-Saxon and French elements in the modern English lexicon. It isn’t true, as anyone who has studied classical languages for any period of time will attest. Rather, when borrowing and developing this aspect of the English lexicon, early modern wordsmiths borrowed fairly regular elements (predictable morphemes that could be combined with others), and left a lot of the complexity behind, leaving the illusion that Latin is a purely logical language.

I grant that if someone tried to redefine triskaidekaphobia as fear of the number 11, I might feel a bit put out. The semantic transparency of numerical prefixes contributes to the sensible notion that we should know what they mean unambiguously. But by that logic, we ought to insist that decimate be used to describe only the destruction of one-tenth of something (which earned the word a spot on the annual Banished Words List some years back). And don’t even get me started on the debate between biannual and semiannual. In this case, the ‘quinquemation’ of the pentathlon doesn’t bother me in the least.

(Crossposted to the Phrontistery)