My friend Christy, who lives in the Galapagos and has time to think!!!!, has tweaked me enough, finally awakening me from my stupor so that I try to articulate some coherent thoughts (if they are not coherent, she will jump on any failure in logic like a ton of proverbial bricks). A number of problems, I would argue, have prevented us from understanding visual art, including beads (all of the arts, but I do not have enough energy right now to take on all the arts).
The first problem, as Count Leo Tolstoy claimed -- and he wrote quite insightfully about visual art -- is a failure to define the term. At one time, definition was a first step of the scientific method. No longer. I cannot remember the last time I read anything in the scientific literature -- from biology to social science that provided a theoretical definition. Sad, but true.
A second problem is all the BS -- academic hyperbole -- that obscures the phenomenon and makes understanding difficult if not impossible. One element of the BS/AH is the focus on symbol -- with a failure to define what a symbol is. The argument then becomes when humans first began to symbolize -- at what point (exact day and time) did our minds become capable of symbolizing?
An additional problem is the aesthetic emotion. How can we identify in the prehistory record whether or not the cave person got a thrill looking at the red ochre. I am not even sure we know what the emotion is. Yes, Christy, I am ready for your descriptions of aesthetic thrill. I wonder how it differs from other thrills in life -- how or if? The large human brain has been around a long time -- how do we know when those presumed emotions kicked in?
This brings me to an additional problem, which is testability. We need to stick to hypotheses we can test. It is not possible to know either when the mind began to symbolize or whether or not an item is symbolic. It is a waste of time to talk about such things, at least when we assume we are increasing knowledge and not just listening to the flow of words from our own mouth.
Another problem is that we need to recognize (and would if we defined terms) that symbols are learned -- to the extent they are cultural, symbols involve an association of a spoken explanation (that stands for X) with an object. Culture, remember, is shared--it is not individualistic behavior. We cannot know whether something was symbolic -- had a learned association -- when looking at the prehistoric record.
One thing we can appreciate in both the ethnographic and prehistoric records is replication/copying. In my book I wrote that a minimal difference -- or major one, Christy -- is that so called animal art -- draping vines around one's neck (No, Christy, I did not call this visual art, other art philosophers do) is not noticed and it is not replicated. Surely replication is important and surely it suggests a social element to the object, as we learn from others, generally by watching them as they do something. It also could be argued that replication implies intergenerational ties. To the extent that humans lived in small groups of kin, they learned from kin. The process of learning the techniques of art provided the opportunity for building social relationship and learning (and teaching) the history of one's people. This is why I argue that the process of learning to make art is possibly more important socially -- and we are a social spec ies -- than the art object.
3/26/2010
11/14/2009
The last one with the memory
My grandfather, Percy Taylor Coe, was born into a long lineage of Presbyterians, many of them ministers or missionaries. They were serious about their faith.
Evidence of this was the prayer said before each meal, prayers when one went to bed, service to the poor, giving 10% to the church, trying to love people you did not want to like much less love....One of my memories is riding home with them after church. My grandmother wanted ice cream, but was ashamed to stop at the store to buy it, as buying things on Sunday was not done. Meals for Sunday were to be prepared the day before. I don't know of anyone else with this memory of Presbyterians being so careful about keeping the Sabbath holy. When I once told the story, people looked at me like my ancestors had come from another planet, which, come to think of it, they might have done.
However, this memory is not the one I refer to when I talk about being the last person alive with a particular memory, a memory that will end with me, although my children, having heard the story, possibly will remember the story, not the act.
After my grandfather died, many came to his funeral to say their good byes. They all looked like Presbyterians, men in suits and ties and polished shoes, women in modest dresses and with hats and gloves-- church clothes. What was odd, however, was that at the end of the service, the minister said, we have one last request from Mr. Coe and that is to play his favorite song, The Bells of St. Mary's. "It is," the minister said, "odd that a strong Presbyterian would ask for this song to be played at his funeral. He loved the song and asked us to play it." And they did, leaving me to ponder this mystery for the rest of my life.
I am listening to the song now, sung by Vera Lynn. I am trying to figure out why he loved it so. It is a love song. Either it was about his love for my grandmother -- and we never had doubts that they loved each other even though she was an Eleanor Roosevelt type wife. However, my grandmother told me that when he died, he sat up in his hospital bed (he was dying of cancer), held out his arms, and called out the names of two people --a couple -- who had been friends of his in his youth. He had been skating with them on a pond in Baxter Springs, Kansas, before he and his brothers moved west. As they skated the ice broke and the young couple fell through the ice and drowned before they could be rescued. In dying he called out both their names. "The bells of St. Mary's ...I hear they are calling. The young love, the true love, who calls from the sea, and so my beloved when red leaves are falling, the love...." I always wondered if that song reminded him of his lost friends.
Evidence of this was the prayer said before each meal, prayers when one went to bed, service to the poor, giving 10% to the church, trying to love people you did not want to like much less love....One of my memories is riding home with them after church. My grandmother wanted ice cream, but was ashamed to stop at the store to buy it, as buying things on Sunday was not done. Meals for Sunday were to be prepared the day before. I don't know of anyone else with this memory of Presbyterians being so careful about keeping the Sabbath holy. When I once told the story, people looked at me like my ancestors had come from another planet, which, come to think of it, they might have done.
However, this memory is not the one I refer to when I talk about being the last person alive with a particular memory, a memory that will end with me, although my children, having heard the story, possibly will remember the story, not the act.
After my grandfather died, many came to his funeral to say their good byes. They all looked like Presbyterians, men in suits and ties and polished shoes, women in modest dresses and with hats and gloves-- church clothes. What was odd, however, was that at the end of the service, the minister said, we have one last request from Mr. Coe and that is to play his favorite song, The Bells of St. Mary's. "It is," the minister said, "odd that a strong Presbyterian would ask for this song to be played at his funeral. He loved the song and asked us to play it." And they did, leaving me to ponder this mystery for the rest of my life.
I am listening to the song now, sung by Vera Lynn. I am trying to figure out why he loved it so. It is a love song. Either it was about his love for my grandmother -- and we never had doubts that they loved each other even though she was an Eleanor Roosevelt type wife. However, my grandmother told me that when he died, he sat up in his hospital bed (he was dying of cancer), held out his arms, and called out the names of two people --a couple -- who had been friends of his in his youth. He had been skating with them on a pond in Baxter Springs, Kansas, before he and his brothers moved west. As they skated the ice broke and the young couple fell through the ice and drowned before they could be rescued. In dying he called out both their names. "The bells of St. Mary's ...I hear they are calling. The young love, the true love, who calls from the sea, and so my beloved when red leaves are falling, the love...." I always wondered if that song reminded him of his lost friends.
5/17/2009
early art/symbolism, schmimbolism
World’s Oldest Manufactured Beads Are Older Than Previously Thought
ScienceDaily (May 7, 2009) — A team of archaeologists has uncovered some of the world’s earliest shell ornaments in a limestone cave in Eastern Morocco. The researchers have found 47 examples of Nassarius marine shells, most of them perforated and including examples covered in red ochre, at the Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt.
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The fingernail-size shells, already known from 82,000-year-old Aterian deposits in the cave, have now been found in even earlier layers. While the team is still awaiting exact dates for these layers, they believe this discovery makes them arguably the earliest shell ornaments in prehistory.
The shells are currently at the centre of a debate concerning the origins of modern behaviour in early humans. Many archaeologists regard the shell bead ornaments as proof that anatomically modern humans had developed a sophisticated symbolic material culture. Up until now, Blombos cave in South Africa has been leading the ‘bead race’ with 41 Nassarius shell beads that can confidently be dated to 72,000 years ago.
Aside from this latest discovery unearthing an even greater number of beads, the research team says the most striking aspect of the Taforalt discoveries is that identical shell types should appear in two such geographically distant regions. As well as Blombos, there are now at least four other Aterian sites in Morocco with Nassarius shell beads. The newest evidence, in a paper by the authors to be published in the next few weeks in the Journal of Quaternary Science Reviews, shows that the Aterian in Morocco dates back to at least 110,000 years ago.
Research team leader, Professor Nick Barton, from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, said: ‘These new finds are exciting because they show that bead manufacturing probably arose independently in different cultures and confirms a long suspected pattern that humans with modern symbolic behaviour were present from a very early stage at both ends of the continent, probably as early as 110,000 years ago.’
Also leading the research team Dr Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, from the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine in Morocco, said: ‘The archaeological and chronological contexts of the Taforalt discoveries suggest a much longer tradition of bead-making than previously suspected, making them perhaps the earliest such ornaments in the world.’
Archaeologists widely believe that humans in Europe first started fashioning purely symbolic objects about 40,000 years ago, but in Africa this latest evidence shows that humans were engaged in this activity at least 40,000 years before this.
Excavations in April 2009 also continued in the upper levels of Taforalt to investigate a large well-preserved cemetery dating to around 12,500 years ago. The project, co-ordinated by Dr Louise Humphrey, from the Natural History Museum in London, has found adult as well as infant burials at the site. The infant burials throw an interesting light on early burial traditions as many of the infants seem to be buried singly beneath distinctive blue stones with the undersides smeared with red ochre. By contrast, studies by Dr Elaine Turner of the Römisch Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz, show that the adults’ grave pits were generally marked by the horn cores of wild barbary sheep. Taforalt remains the largest necropolis of the Late Stone Age period in North Africa presently under excavation.
Professor Barton said: ‘Taking our new discovery of the shell beads at Taforalt, together with the discoveries of the decorated burials excavated by Dr Louise Humphrey, it shows that the cave must have retained its special interest for different groups of people over many thousands of years. One of its unique attractions and a focal point of interest seems to have been a freshwater spring that rises next to the cave.’
__________________
Hum, it looks like a duck. Could that be because I was just watching a film of Konrad Lorenz walking with his ducks.
ScienceDaily (May 7, 2009) — A team of archaeologists has uncovered some of the world’s earliest shell ornaments in a limestone cave in Eastern Morocco. The researchers have found 47 examples of Nassarius marine shells, most of them perforated and including examples covered in red ochre, at the Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The fingernail-size shells, already known from 82,000-year-old Aterian deposits in the cave, have now been found in even earlier layers. While the team is still awaiting exact dates for these layers, they believe this discovery makes them arguably the earliest shell ornaments in prehistory.
The shells are currently at the centre of a debate concerning the origins of modern behaviour in early humans. Many archaeologists regard the shell bead ornaments as proof that anatomically modern humans had developed a sophisticated symbolic material culture. Up until now, Blombos cave in South Africa has been leading the ‘bead race’ with 41 Nassarius shell beads that can confidently be dated to 72,000 years ago.
Aside from this latest discovery unearthing an even greater number of beads, the research team says the most striking aspect of the Taforalt discoveries is that identical shell types should appear in two such geographically distant regions. As well as Blombos, there are now at least four other Aterian sites in Morocco with Nassarius shell beads. The newest evidence, in a paper by the authors to be published in the next few weeks in the Journal of Quaternary Science Reviews, shows that the Aterian in Morocco dates back to at least 110,000 years ago.
Research team leader, Professor Nick Barton, from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, said: ‘These new finds are exciting because they show that bead manufacturing probably arose independently in different cultures and confirms a long suspected pattern that humans with modern symbolic behaviour were present from a very early stage at both ends of the continent, probably as early as 110,000 years ago.’
Also leading the research team Dr Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, from the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine in Morocco, said: ‘The archaeological and chronological contexts of the Taforalt discoveries suggest a much longer tradition of bead-making than previously suspected, making them perhaps the earliest such ornaments in the world.’
Archaeologists widely believe that humans in Europe first started fashioning purely symbolic objects about 40,000 years ago, but in Africa this latest evidence shows that humans were engaged in this activity at least 40,000 years before this.
Excavations in April 2009 also continued in the upper levels of Taforalt to investigate a large well-preserved cemetery dating to around 12,500 years ago. The project, co-ordinated by Dr Louise Humphrey, from the Natural History Museum in London, has found adult as well as infant burials at the site. The infant burials throw an interesting light on early burial traditions as many of the infants seem to be buried singly beneath distinctive blue stones with the undersides smeared with red ochre. By contrast, studies by Dr Elaine Turner of the Römisch Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz, show that the adults’ grave pits were generally marked by the horn cores of wild barbary sheep. Taforalt remains the largest necropolis of the Late Stone Age period in North Africa presently under excavation.
Professor Barton said: ‘Taking our new discovery of the shell beads at Taforalt, together with the discoveries of the decorated burials excavated by Dr Louise Humphrey, it shows that the cave must have retained its special interest for different groups of people over many thousands of years. One of its unique attractions and a focal point of interest seems to have been a freshwater spring that rises next to the cave.’
__________________
Hum, it looks like a duck. Could that be because I was just watching a film of Konrad Lorenz walking with his ducks.
4/24/2009
What has science brought about?
I have been working on a paper about American Indian elders. To prepare for writing this paper, I reviewed many academic tomes, from biology to culture, and many decades worth of writings. I not only want to describe elderly American Indians, but -- more than that -- I want to build the argument that in virtually all species with large brains, and long childhoods, elders become important. This is as true in caribou as it is in humans. This is as true in American Indians as it is in Whites, who have seen their elders migrate, like lemmings to the sea, to the Sun Cities of the world.
It was a bit startling to move from the period that encompassed the late 1800s to the 1940s. This literature included strong and clear descriptions of the role of elders, the wisdom of their words, and the respect that position held. We read detailed descriptions of the importance of the knowledge of the elders - how their wisdom saved their people-- and stories of great personal self-sacrifice on the part of the elders to protect the young. We read about the time that elders put into nurturing and educating and protecting the young and the vulnerable
Beginning in the 1950s, however, new approaches appear and slowly, with decade building upon decade, we begin to read about another picture of elders taking up resources, acting in self-interested ways, and repressing the young, because of elder selfishness. Elder influence of the young was no longer seen as a means to an end of pro-social behavior, no longer was it seen to be important to restrain the behavior of the young, encouraging such things as good manners or thoughtfulness.
Now a review of google scholar shows where all this scientific study probably led, and it is a pretty dismal picture,to paper after paper on AI elder dementia, diabetes, cognitive impairment, elder abuse, depression, and coping strategies for careworn care givers.
One has to ask, where did all those studies of noble elders go? There may be two answers here, or a million answers. First, when traditions that encourage altruism and compassion and socially skilled behaviors are lost, we see the influx of depression, abuse, and other problems. Second, there still are strong and resilient elders, our studies, unfortunately, by and large are just not focusing on them. Public health so often involves curious approaches, so often focusing on problems that need to be solved and not on what is working. We look to psychology for solutions, not at what is working in the real world. Where are the studies of those elders? Where are the studies of resilience, nobility, compassion, honesty, justice, service? One has to wonder whether or not a focus on what works, not just on what is broken, might not be important.
It was a bit startling to move from the period that encompassed the late 1800s to the 1940s. This literature included strong and clear descriptions of the role of elders, the wisdom of their words, and the respect that position held. We read detailed descriptions of the importance of the knowledge of the elders - how their wisdom saved their people-- and stories of great personal self-sacrifice on the part of the elders to protect the young. We read about the time that elders put into nurturing and educating and protecting the young and the vulnerable
Beginning in the 1950s, however, new approaches appear and slowly, with decade building upon decade, we begin to read about another picture of elders taking up resources, acting in self-interested ways, and repressing the young, because of elder selfishness. Elder influence of the young was no longer seen as a means to an end of pro-social behavior, no longer was it seen to be important to restrain the behavior of the young, encouraging such things as good manners or thoughtfulness.
Now a review of google scholar shows where all this scientific study probably led, and it is a pretty dismal picture,to paper after paper on AI elder dementia, diabetes, cognitive impairment, elder abuse, depression, and coping strategies for careworn care givers.
One has to ask, where did all those studies of noble elders go? There may be two answers here, or a million answers. First, when traditions that encourage altruism and compassion and socially skilled behaviors are lost, we see the influx of depression, abuse, and other problems. Second, there still are strong and resilient elders, our studies, unfortunately, by and large are just not focusing on them. Public health so often involves curious approaches, so often focusing on problems that need to be solved and not on what is working. We look to psychology for solutions, not at what is working in the real world. Where are the studies of those elders? Where are the studies of resilience, nobility, compassion, honesty, justice, service? One has to wonder whether or not a focus on what works, not just on what is broken, might not be important.
12/02/2008
Raising Homo sapiens children to be sapien
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