Old Email Archive

digest 2006-04-01 #001.txt

litsci-l-digest        Saturday, April 1 2006        Volume 01 : Number
152



In this issue:

     stopping the abstracts?
     List problems on LITSCI-L
     need 2 more panelists - SLSA 2006
     SUB 06  Nabokov, Goethe, and Morphology in Evolution
     SUB06 Cosmic Evolution: Origins, Development and Uses of an Idea

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Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 07:32:17 -0500
From: Robyn Smith 
Subject: stopping the abstracts?

Hi folks,

Sorry to send this to everyone, but I couldn't find a more appropriate 
address. I guess I missed something but I can't understand why all these

abstract submission are coming out to the whole litsci list. Is there 
some way that they can just go to the appropriate person?  Also, why do 
we get four of each?!

Thanks,
Robyn
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls 


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Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 10:30:39 -0500
From: "Wayne Miller" 
Subject: List problems on LITSCI-L

Hi everyone,
 
My apologies for the email message duplication of the last few days.
 
I believe I have gotten a handle on it - list messages appear to have
been looping automatically through one of the email addresses back to
the list again. It's something I've never seen before. 
 
It may take some time for all the misrouted messages to clear out of
the email system. Please contact me on my email address (not the list!)
if the problem continues past today.
 
Best,
 
Wayne
 
 
 
Wayne Miller
Director, Educational Technologies
Duke University School of Law
(919) 613-7243
Fax: (919) 613-7237
wmiller@law.duke.edu 



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>>>  3/31/2006 12:11:08 PM >>>

PANEL PROPOSAL FOR SLSA 2006
PANEL ABSTRACT: Imagining Transportation Systems-Past, Present, Future
Chair: Sam Smiley/AstroDime Transit Authority

How have imagined transportation systems functioned in the literature of
science and science fiction?  In imagining a transportation system, what
are the constraints, the goals, the ideas, the imagined people or beings
who take them? How has class, race, or gender functioned in the imagined
construction of a public transportation system? How would a
transnational
public transportation system function?

Looking for 2 panelists who are interested in engaging with these
questions, or who do so in their work. An invitation to historians who
are
studying history of transportation in relation to class/race/gender, or
social theorists who are interested in imagined transportation systems
and
the communities they affect. Social scientists, artists, engineers,
historians welcome.

Contact sam smiley
smiley@virtualberet.net

keywords: transportation, engineering, history of technology, science
fiction, literature of science, gender and technology, art, social
science

------------------------------


>>> Stephen Blackwell  3/31/2006 1:18:46 PM >>>

Paper proposal: Nabokov, Goethe, and Morphology in Evolution
Stephen H. Blackwell, University of Tennessee

Vladimir Nabokov's work as a professional lepidopterist is famous but
poorly known.  Even less known are his efforts in the field of
evolutionary theory.  Some of these were fictional, in the form of
writings by his character in The Gift and its supplement "Father's
Butterflies," Konstantin Godunov-Cherdyntsev.  Others are to be found in
his scientific papers published in the 1940s and -50s.  Careful analysis
of these theoretical proposals reveals that they are all closely allied
with what is now called "Goethean" science: a science focused on a
detailed phenomenological study of nature, one which approaches nature
"holistically" and resists Newtonian quantification.  In this paper I
explore important unities linking Nabokov's scientific work and his
"fictional" science, demonstrating how Nabokov creates his own
idiosyncratic theory of evolution, based in part on ideas drawn from
German Romantic Naturphilosophie, in part on his own scientific
research.  This personal theory in turn can serve as a valuable
heuristic in assessing the significance of his works' complex
structures, which express artistically various aspects of the theory.

Keywords: Nabokov, Goethean Science, holistic science, Evolutionary
Theory, taxonomic theory, Morphology, Naturphilosophie, phenomenology,
epistemology, subjectivity, consciousness, emergence 

-- 
Stephen H. Blackwell
Associate Professor of Russian 
Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures
701 McClung Tower
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-0470

Phone: 865-974-4536
Fax:   865-974-7096
Office: 703 Mclung Tower
------------------------------

>>> "Steve Dick"  4/1/2006 9:37:34 PM >>>

Re: SUB06 Cosmic Evolution: Origins, Development and Uses of an Idea
keywords: cosmic evolution, SETI, astrobiology, NASA



Cosmic evolution has become the conceptual framework within which
modern astronomy is undertaken, and is the guiding principle of
major NASA programs such as Origins and Astrobiology.  While
there are 19th- and early 20th century antecedents, it was only
at mid-20th century that full-blown cosmic evolution began to be
articulated and accepted as a research paradigm extending from
the Big Bang to life, intelligence and the evolution of culture. 
Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley was particularly important in
spreading the idea to the public in the 1950s, and NASA embraced
the idea in the 1970s as part of its SETI program and later its
exobiology and astrobiology programs.  Eric Chaisson, Carl Sagan
and others were early proponents of cosmic evolution, and it
continues to be elaborated in ever more subtle form as a
scientific research program.  It is taught in some universities
as ?�Big History,?� the ultimate in Fernand Braudel??s longue dur?�e
history.  It also has religious and philosophical implications;
Arthur Peacocke, a biochemist and an Anglican priest, has termed
cosmic evolution "Genesis for the Third Millennium."  This paper
documents the development of the idea, and argues that it will
play an increasingly important role in the Third Millennium.



Steven J. Dick

NASA Chief Historian

NASA HQ

Washington, DC

steven.j.dick@nasa.gov