From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Jared Diamond's _The Third Chimpanzee_
Distribution: world
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 02:06:55 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1993Jan22.003839.9572@eos.arc.nasa.gov> stav@eos.arc.nasa.gov writes:

 > Ovulation in chimpanzees as well as humans is hidden, you can not watch
 > it happen. Howver, in chimps there are physical signs indicating it
 > occurs. This does not happen in humans. There is no external physical
 > indication of ovulation. IT seems like an inflated statement that
 > you can tell when a woman ovulates. As the point was made before, not
 > even woman are good at telling when it happens. That you can do it
 > seems absurd.  I would bet if you lined up 10 women you could do no
 > better than chance to tell which woman was ovulating.  

Yes of course, we neither actually observe the ovum being release from
the  in human nor
chimpanzee females, and I regret my lapse.

What do you mean by no "external physical indication", however?
Excuse me ladies, no red, swollen vulva with a smelly discharge
and whatnot? Is that what you would want me to discuss with you,
were you less "civilised" and gentlemanly?

Lining up ten women would be an interesting exercise, if we could
carry it out at an appropriately cross-cultural level of validity
to be certain of our results (and indeed get away with it without
causing a riot in each village we visited).

 > Seems to me you are misconstruing menstruation with ovulation.

Not at all, although you have perhaps entered this thread late. I have
twice now quite explicitly stated that I am referring to Pre-menstrual
Tension (PMT) as the most commonly visible indicator that ovulation is
taking place, raising the query in why in certain identifiable social
traditions such indication is regarded as an illness, or behavioural
abberation.

I yet wonder that these persistent attempts to obfuscate my argument
with denial of female reproductive processes is part of the very same
phenomenon?

 > >Or is such enquiry to be regarded as "unscientific" here, being too
 > >"socially subversive" perhaps? I am a little weary of people accusing
 > >me of reaching for a "flame-thrower" as I respond vigorously to debate
 > >in this group. Rather than carrying on with such patent nonsense, how
 > >about simply proceeding with the matter at hand?
 >  
 > You flame because your words are pointedly inflammatory, instead of
 > factually refuting. 

Ah, now, are you actually trying to say to me here that my discussing
PMT in refutation of the statement that in human females there are no
external signs ovulation is taking place, is pointedly inflammatory?

What rabid ideology would you be you trying to protect, I wonder?

 > If science simply said it just is, then there would be no need for
 > science, because there would be no question. Why searches for root
 > causes. How examines the process between cause and effect. You statement 
 > is ludicrous from an empirical perspective.

Yes, from an empirical perspective indeed. My question is plainly on
what is to be made of all this empirical data? Surely, before I am
expected to have my resources taken up pursuing it, it is reasonable
for me to ask, "So what?"

Or is all this charade being imposed for no other reason, as someone
else has mailed me, than because I am simply expected to be "part of
science"?

 > The question, to answer the why and how, is about the evolution of behavior.
 > Specifically, it is about reproductive behavior. To understand it requires
 > examining reproductive behavior in a range of environments. To understand it
 > means better understanding human behavior, perhaps with the goal of
 > facilitating tolerance and compassion among humans, and reducing strife.

If with these goals in mind, I then wonder why you would chose to
ignore the sheer complexity of relationships among humans, in order
to bring into focus that we are cousins at the 500,000th remove from
those African chimpanzees. Why go to such absurd lengths to obscure
the substantial data for the sake of this really very tenuous data,
difficult in the extreme to validate against the far more commonly
observeable data we have at our disposal?

Maybe esoterica is part of your game too.

 > Or perhaps simply because of curiousity.

Well, this appears a far more reliable report on your activities in
keeping with my observations. But again, I have made no effort to
interrupt your highly introspective ruminations (inherited from a long
line of English dilletanti, not merely BTW), and I have to ask why you
and your mates feel it necessary to ram it down my throat.

Sorry, but I find other systems far more reliable and useful than the
one you present. Perhaps you can go and do a bit more fieldwork on it
instead of just following so slavishly what someone else publishes for
popular consumption under the patronage of British royalty.

 > These last two paragraphs are not worth commenting on. However, i suggest
 > you rethink your emphasis on accepting the world at face value.

Don't comment then. I don't give a shit whether you do or not, quite
frankly.

Why should I rethink anything at all merely on your admonition? Are you
some sort of high priest or religious fanatic warning me against the
possibility of hell-fire and damnation for my heresies, or what? Or is
there some substantial difference between what is for you "empirical
evidence", and what is for me apparently "the world at face value" you
would like to elaborate on further?

Gil