The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 53

-. Galileo's Early Notebooks. The Physical Questions (translated from the Latin, with historical and paleographical commentary, by William A. Wallace). Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 1977

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). In 1687, he published Philosophiae Principia Mathematica, in which he offered explanations for the movement of planets. In this work, the abstraction of force (of attraction) is const.i.tuted and a postulate is formulated: every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other with a force whose magnitude depends directly upon the product of their ma.s.ses and inversely upon the square of the distance between the two.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) published in 1916 his contribution as Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativittstheorie, in which he referred to the attraction of ma.s.sive objects. The cosmic reality of such objects and of huge distances and high velocities is quite different from the mechanical universe under consideration by Galileo and Newton. Movement of planets cause the curving of s.p.a.ce. Einstein's theory shows that the curvature of s.p.a.ce time evolves dynamically. Newton's theory turned out to be an approximation of Einstein's more encompa.s.sing model.

John Searle. The Storm Over the University, in The New York Review of Books, 37:19, December 6, 1990, pp. 34-42

Mathematization: the use of mathematical methods or concepts in particular sciences or in the humanities. The conception of mathematics as a model for the sciences as well as for the humanities has been repeatedly expressed throughout history. In some cases, mathematization represents the search for abstract structures. Today mathematization is often taken to mean modeling on computer programs.

Acadmie Franaise: French library academy established by Cardinal Richelieu in 1634. Its original purpose was to maintain standards of literary taste and to establish the literary language. Members.h.i.+p is limited to 40 (Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th Edition, Micropedia, Vol. 1, 1990. p. 50).

Alan Bloom. The Closing of the American Mind. How Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students.

New York: Simon and Schuster. 1987

"Those despised millionaires who set up a university in the midst of a city that seems devoted only to what they had neglected, whether it was out of a sense of what they themselves had issued, or out of bad conscience about what their lives were exclusively devoted to, or to satisfy the vanity of having their names attached to the enterprise," (p. 244).

Bart Simpson, the main character of the animated cartoon series of the same name, created by Matt Groening. Bart was first sketched in 1987; the television series first aired in the winter of 1990.

Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores. Understanding Computers and Cognition. A New Foundation for Design. Norwood NJ: Ablex Publis.h.i.+ng Corporation, 1986.

"Organizations exist as networks of directives and commissives.

Directives include orders, requests, consultations, and offers; commissives include promises, acceptances, and rejections" (p.

157).

They state also: "In fulfilling an organization's external commitments, its personnel are involved in a network of conversations" (p. 158).

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations (Translation by G.E.M. Ans...o...b.. of Philosophische Untersuchungen). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1984 (reprint of the 1968 edition)

If a multiple choice test in World History (given in June, 1992 at Stuyvesant High School in New York City) asks whether the Holocaust is an Italian revolutionary movement, and if Mein Kampf was. .h.i.tler's body guard or his summer retreat, why should anyone be surprised that American students show no better choices than those they are supposed to choose from?

Steve Waite. Interview with Bill Melton, Journal of Bionomics, July 1996.

Family: Discovering the Primitive Future

Statistics on family in the USA and the world are a matter of public record. The processing and interpretation of data, even in the age of electronic processing, takes time once data has been collected. The Statistical Handbook on the American Family (Phoenix AZ: The Orynx Press, 1992), for instance, deals with trends covering 1989-1990. The numbers are intriguing. Well over 85% of the adult population married by the time of their 45th birthday, but only around 60% are currently married. 10% are divorced and almost as many widowed. The general conclusions about the family are: There is a decline in marital stability with over one million children per year affected by the divorce of their parents. Less than 20% of the people see marriage as a lifetime relations.h.i.+p. The POSSLQ (persons of opposite s.e.x sharing living quarters) is well over 5% of the population. The size of the average American household shrank from 3.7 persons over 40 years ago to 2.6 recently. Interracial marriages, while triple in number compared to 1970, include slightly below 2% of the population.

A.F. Robertson. Beyond the Family. The Social Organization of Human Reproduction. Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1991.

Martine Fell. a va, la famille? Paris: Le Hameau, 1983.

Nicolas Caparros. Crisis de la Familia. Revolucin del Vivir.

Buenos Aires: Ediciones Pargieman, 1973.

Adrian Wilson. Family. London: Travistock Publications, 1985.

Charles Franklin Thwing. The Family. An Historical and Social Study. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1887.

Edward L. Kain. The Myth of Family Decline. Understanding Families in a World of Rapid Social Change. Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1990. Herbert Kretschmer. Ehe und Familie. Die Entwicklung von Ehe und Familie im Laufe der Geschichte.

Dornach, Switzerland: Verlag am Goetheanum, 1988.

Andr Burguire, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Martine Segalen, Franoise Zonabend, Editors. Histoire de la famille (preface by Claude Lvi-Strauss)..Paris: Armand Colin, 1986.

Family is established in extension of reproductive drives and natural forms of cooperation. Regardless of the types leading to what was called the family nucleus (husband and wife), families embody reciprocal obligations. The formalization of family life in marriage contracts was stimulated by writing.

J.B.M. Guy. Glottochronology Without Cognate Recognition.

Canberra: Department of Linguistics Research, School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1980.

Although the processes leading to the formation of nations is relatively recent, nations were frequently characterized as an extended family, although the processes reflect structural characteristics of human practical experiences different from those at work in the const.i.tution of the family.

Martin B. Duberman. About Time. Exploring the Gay Past. New York: Gay Presses of New York City, 1986.

Jeffrey Weeks. Against Nature. Essays on History, s.e.xuality, and Ident.i.ty. London: Rivers Oram, 1991.

Bernice Goodman. The Lesbian. A Celebration of Difference.

Brooklyn: Out & Out Books, 1977.

Jean Bethke Elshtain. Against Gay Marriage, in Commonweal, November 22, 1991, pp. 685-686.

Brent Hartinger. A Case for Gay Marriage, in Commonweal, November 22, 1991, pp. 675, 681-686.

Not in The Best Interest (Adoption by Lesbians and Gays), in Utne Reader, November/December, 1991, p. 57.

William Plummer. A Mother's Priceless Gift, in People Weekly, August 26, 1991, pp. 40-41.

Nelly E. Gupta and Frank. Feldinger. Brave New Baby (ZIFT Surrogacy), in Ladies Home Journal, October, 1989, pp. 140-141.

Mary Thom. Dilemmas of the New Birth Technologies, in Ms., May, 1988, pp. 4, 66, 70-72.

Cleo Kocol. The Rent-A-Womb Dilemma, in The Humanist, July/August, 1987, p. 37.

Marsha Riben. A Last Resort (excerpt from Shedding Light on the Dark Side of Adoption), in Utne Reader, November/December, 1991, pp. 53-54.

Lisa Gubernick. How Much is that Baby in the Window? in Forbes, October 14, 1991, pp. 90-91.

Self-sufficiency, reflecting contexts of existence of limited scale, marks the Amish and Mennonite families. The family contract is very powerful. Succeeding generations care for each other to the extent that the home always includes quarters for the elderly. Each new generation is endowed in order to maintain the path of self-sufficiency. The Amish wedding (the subject of Stephen Scott's book of the same t.i.tle, Intercourse PA: Good Books, 1988), as well as the role the family plays in educating children (Children in Amish Society: Socialization and Community Education, by J.A. Hosteter and G. Enders Huntington, New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1971) are indicative of this family life.

Andy Grove. Only the Paranoid Survive. New York: Doubleday, 1996.

The CEO of Intel, one of the world's most successful companies, discussed the requirement of genetic update and his own, apparently dated, corporate genes.

Adam Smith. The Theory of Moral Sentiments (D.D. Raphael and A.L.

Macfie, Editors). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature (L.A. Selby-Bigge, Editor). 2nd edition. Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press, 1978.

-. Inquiries concerning human understanding and concerning the principles of morals (L.A. Selby-Bigge, Editor). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

Takeo Doi. Amae no kozo. Tokyo: Kobundo, 1971. Translated as The Anatomy of Dependence by John Bester. Tokyo/New York: Kodansho International and Harper & Row, 1973.