With playfulness and a large dose of wit, Robert Merton traces the origin of Newton's aphorism, "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Using as a model the discursive and digressive style of Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Merton presents a whimsical yet scholarly work which deals with the questions of creativity, tradition, plagiarism, the transmission of knowledge, and the concept of progress. "This book is the delightful apotheosis of donmanship: Merton parodies scholarliness while being faultlessly scholarly; he scourges pedantry while brandishing his own abstruse learning on every page. The most recondite and obscure scholarly squabbles are transmuted into the material of comedy as the ostensible subject is shouldered to one side by yet another hobby horse from Merton's densely populated stable. He has created a jeu d'esprit which is profoundly suggestive both in detail and as a whole."--Sean French, Times Literary SupplementImagine, then, my surprise and pleasure to discover ...quite by chance, I think (wish I could remember how) that Merton (who died last year at the age of 92) had just published another book, on one of my very favorite subjects, and that the book was written more than 40 years ago...
The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity : A Study in Historical Semantics and the Sociology of Science (see the amazon.com record).
I'm reading it slowly, savoring its erudition and playfulness... and reflecting on how important the fundamental notion of serendipity has been to me since I first happened upon it ...quite by chance, I think (wish I could remember how).
Pretty much anything leads to other somethings, and a taste for following digressive paths is one of the things I hope to infect you with. Yesterday I was looking at Jaime's Thoughts on turkey farms in the US... and it inspired me to some explorations, and connected also with some materials I'd found a few days before while looking for materials on poultry more generally. There's also a link to a recent Science article on Poultry Genetic Resources , which raises some general issues about agriculture and selection and the BIG picture of 'biotechnology'.
These finds connect with the general subject of what we think we know, and how it evolves as we look at new material. Another bit of serendipitous intersection found me reading Pollan's Botany of Desire ...which connects back to my dissertation research, and to a family connection with Jonathan Chapman --"Johnny Appleseed" (see Harper's 18?? and Appleseed Alley)
...and Susannah asks about apples and tobacco, and tobacco figures in Matt's and Nancy's wonderings too.
my apples map (R:/global/apples.mxd)
Sustainability of three apple production systems JOHN P. REGANOLD et al. Nature 410, 926 - 930 (2001)
U.S. Apple Association, Washington Apple Commission, Core Values Northeast ("An eco-label that stands for Product Quality * Resource Stewardship * Economic Opportunity"), Michigan Apples, Apple Products Research and Education Council...
apple genotypes and Comprehensive Apple Variety List
Farms as % of Households --compare with Megan's map of Farms per County
Sustainability...
Sustainability Science Robert W. Kates et al. Science Volume 292, Number 5517, Issue of 27 Apr 2001, pp. 641-642Overkill and Sustainable Use Martyn Murray Science Volume 299, Number 5614, Issue of 21 Mar 2003, pp. 1851-1853
Long Term Research on Agricultural Systems project has been evaluating the sustainability and environmental impact of conventional & alternative agriculture since 1993 (UC Davis)
A quick JSTOR search suggests that the word 'sustainability' didn't start to show up until the early 1980's...
The Concept of Environmental Sustainability R Goodland Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, November 1995, Vol. 26: 1-24
Traditional Agriculture in America R. S. Loomis Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 15. (1984), pp. 449-478.
