Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books

Darwin on Worms

(Charles Darwin)  "Mr. Darwin on the Work of Worms".  A long, four-page review by George Romanes of Darwin's The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms... (1881), published in Nature magazine 13 October 1881, on pages 553-537, and about 3500 words long.  In the original wrappers, removed from larger bound volume.  Very nice.  $95

Charles Darwin on Inheritance

Charles Darwin. "Inheritance".  A short article appearing in Nature, 21 July 1881, on page 257.  The article is about 800 words long.  Uncommon.   Original wrappers.  Nice copy. $95

Rare, Early Work by the Philosopher John Dewey

John Dewey. Mental Development.  Published by the University of Chicago, Department of Philosophy and Pedagogy.  1900  18 leaves, plus cover.  Mimeographed or rapid reproduction, typescript, bound with two brass gathers.  Rare.  Only two copies located in the OCLC, one at Chicago, the other at the University of Rochester.  This is the copy from the Library of Congress "Pamphlet Collection", sent there in 1932 from the U.S. Copyright Office, this copy being stamped "First copy", and received December 3, 1900. 

[Condition:  good copy, or probably a little better, with a little chipping around the edges of the cover.  The original front blank cover/wrapper is present, but detached.]  $950

Classifying Mind Clouds

JF Ptak Science Books

L. Lewin.  Phantastic, die Betaubenden und Erregenden Genussmittel fuer Artze und Nichtarzte.,  Berlin; Verlag von Georg Stiler:  1927.  2nd edition.  465pp.  Cloth.  Fine copy.  $225.00 ("Narcotics and Stimulating Drugs, their Use and Abuse). 

Luke Howard achieved some fame and did the world a great service by (finally) identifying and classifying some of the most-overlooked objects in the natural world--clouds.  Throughout the history of humans giving names to things, even in the groups of the greatest of the classifiers, like Aristotle, clouds managed, somehow, to escape their classifying grid-vision--until Luke Howard, which took until the early 19th century. (I wrote about him here.)

Louis Lewin (1850-1929)--Dr. Lewin--classified another sort of "cloud", more of the internal, botanically-induced psychoactive variety than the outside, high-in-the-actual-sky clouds.  Lewin was  a pharmacologist and leading toxicologist, and what he did, really,was help to establish the field of ethnobotany through his deep scientific investigation of drug use around the world.  This was an entirely new approach to this issue: by investigating how the plants produced their effects Lewin took another step into a new field apart from the prevailing anthropological approach, which looked at the methods and beliefs and such in the use of the drugs. Lewin experimented with peyote, te, heroin, coffee, annabis, alcohol, opium, kava and of course tobacco, as well as many other drugs, and published them in his book Phantastic, die Betaubenden und Erregenden Genussmittel fuer Artze und Nichtarzte ("Narcotics and Stimulating Drugs, their Use and Abuse) in 1924, expanding it in a second edition in 1927. 

Lewin organized and classified the drugs into categories that remained basically unchanged:  Inebriantia (inebriants such as alcohol or ether) ; Exitantia (stimulants such as khat or amphetamine) ; Euphorica (euphoriants and narcotics such as heroin) ; Hypnotica (tranquilizers such as kava); and of course the Phantastica (hallucinogens or entheogens such as peyote or ayahuasca). [This list with links transfered from an article on Lewin from wiki.]

The Old is New Department: Refuting Darwin with Commas, Adjectives, and the Creator

ITEM: (Anon.)  Darwinism Reproved and Refuted.  Washington, D.C., 1873.  7x5 inches, 25pp.  Bound in original wrappers.  Very good copy.  $75   Ref: JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1423

I wasn't going to write anything at all about this pamphlet, but the vocabulary was so strong and vehement, and reminded me so much of what we can read in today's daily press, that I thought to at least pick out some of the choice morsels. 

Darwinism Reproved and Refuted, published in Washington D.C. in 1873, is left without any attribution to the author, the writer not caring to sign his/her name, not even to use as the wood into which some shingle with a weak social sciences/psych/religious Ph.D could be nailed.  It is just left to the imagination or indignation that the writer didn't or couldn't feel confident enough to actually sign their work. 

The author has little room for Mr. Darwin's work¹, clearly on a super-rant over The Descent... and on the theory of evolution, using such colorful words in runny purple prose like "\repugnant, revolting, unsophisticated, outrage, deadening influence, peculiar, fallacious, cunning"--and this coming from the first two paragraphs.  Needless to say, even though  the writer was too weak to sign their name, they did have some strong opinions. 

"Utterly false, radically and fundamentally wrong, futile in the extreme, unreliable, ungrounded, false, short-sighted (in relation to god), ridiculous..." continues the author. The endowments of the Creator stuff doesn't work its way in until the third page, when the adjectival and adverbial assault was already on it way, all without the assistance of any scientific counterexamples--but then the rest of the work is dedicated to proving the godless nature of Darwin's work and its escape from scientific reality.

We find this:  "Evolution is founded on materialism, which is another term for atheism"...."let this doctrine be compared with the Mosaic account of creation, and then the student of nature determine if he will choose for his progenitors Darwin's pair of ring-tailled [sic] monkeys, or 'Adam...' "

And so that's what we get to in the refutation:  the Creator.  Old version of a contemporary complaint to get Darwin tossed out of classrooms to protect the youth of America, replacing it with divination.  The author writes:  "In the investigation of nature which is the proper province of the scientist, the most effectual method of studying it, in order to render this subject clearly intelligible to the human mind, is to regard the economy of nature as a form of government, having God for its founder, its Supreme Ruler, and Law-giver."

There's not too much one can do with that, and even though it sounds antique, isn't necessarily so, because the philosophy exists today, only with fewer commas. 

Notes:

1.  By 1873 Darwin already had produced an epochal body of work, including but not limited to On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859),  On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects (1862), On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants  (1865), The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868), The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), and  The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1873)

An Uncomfortable Caricature: Darwin, the Descent, and the ASPCA (1871)

ITEM:  woodcut cartoon of Charles Darwin by Thomas Nast as it appeared in Harper's Weekly, 1871.  5x4 inches.  Two old worm holes.  Good copy, only.  $35   Re:  JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1422

Poor Mr. Bergh.

I wonder what his reaction was to appearing in this 1871 Harper's Weekly cartoon by the great and indomitable Thomas Nast, linking him in a terrible and probably inscrutable way with the man of the century? 

Henry Bergh was the founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (mainly I think in response to the treatment of work horses and the campaign for anti-sweating rules), and he is grabbing Darwin's shoulder to remind the old man that in the shadow of the publication (earlier that same year) of The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (twelve years after the first edition of the Origin, and two years after the appearance of the Origin in its fifth edition) that a great harm was being done to the weeping gorilla.  Weeping because he was upset at being coupled with Darwin, weeping with the insult that someone such as Charles Darwin could be associated with him, with Mr. Bergh gently but firmly pointing out to Darwin that by connecting himself with the gorilla that he was doing a grave injustice to the gorilla.

Of course Darwin didn't use a gorilla in the Descent, but no matter--it was a quick work by Nast and it contained enough of the stuff of some truth to reach publication.  Nast after all usually produced two of these small sketches plus a full-page work every week, and would do so for decades.  He got his point across--and it was a point shared by many, not the least of which/whom was The Times.

The Times of London gave such an awful review of the book that a review of this review was published in the April edition of the British journal Nature¹.   It was Thomas Stebbing who wrote the response to The Times' inciteful, hateful attack upon the Descent of Man. The Times saw Darwin's work as an attack upon society,  accusing him of undermining authority and principles of morality, opening the way to "the most murderous revolutions".  A "man incurs a grave responsibility when, with the authority of a well-earned reputation, he advances at such a time the disintegrating speculations of this book." Stebbing's review of the review is drippingly sarcastic, pointing out obvious errors in specific and the tone of the article in general in the defense of the book. Darwin's "facile method of observing superficial resemblances" (says The Times) incites Stebbing to issue the following: "they may fancy that truth is worth discovering , even when it seems to involve some contradictions to our pride and some loss of comfort to our finer feelings..." (What a great line!)

And so Thomas Nast piled on, though I'm not sure if he had a personal opinion on the matter--I prefer to think of Nast as rather forward thinking, at least in terms of more-correct thought on Indians/women/Blacks/the KKK/public education/government corruption, though he did have his failures in regards to the Irish, Catholics in general, the Pope, and some other areas².  Nast may have just been reporting on public sentiment, or maybe not.  He at least doesn't depict Darwin in a physically abusive manner like so many others, though Darwin does appear a little on the stubby side. 

But getting back to Bergh--I have my doubts that he would've been entertained by being depicted so.  As I said, he founded the ASPCA, and also founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.  He inherited a fine family fortune, and put it to good use.  He died at home, 429 5th Avenue (around 38th St and 5th, just a couple of blocks from where the NYPL would be) in 1888.  I hope he didn't care; I doubt Charles did. 

NOTES

1. Nature,  1871, volume 3, 20 April 1871.

2. He hated Gen. George McClellan so far as I can tell, which gives him an "A" rating in my book.
 

Darwin on Pangenesis, 1871

Darwin,  Charles:  "Pangenesis", article published in  London's  Nature,  1871.    Nature Magazine, 27 April 1871, volume 78    8vo.  Original printed wrappers.  Very good condition.  $100   This is a 600-word (or so) effort by The Great Man, occupying one page in the weekly issue of Nature for the end of April in 1871. We offer the entire issue with its scarce outer wrappers, removed from a larger bound collection. Nice copy. This is only the third year of the first appearance in print of this term: "Pangenesis was Charles Darwin's hypothetical mechanism for heredity. He presented this 'provisional hypothesis' in his 1868 work The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication and felt that it brought 'together a multitude of facts which are at present left disconnected by any efficient cause'. The etymology of the word comes from the Greek words pan (a prefix meaning "whole", "encompassing") and genesis (birth) or genos (origin)." (Wiki)  

 

Book Review of Darwin's Different Forms of FLowers, 1878, in the Leading Semi-Popular Science Journal in Great Britain, 1877

JF Ptak Science Books

(Darwin),  Charles:  Review of Darwin's new work, Different Forms of Flowers, printed in  London in 1878, as it appeared in Nature, 17(440), 4 April 1878      Original printed wrappers.  Very good condition.    This is a long, strong review of Darwin's The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species, published by John Murray in 1877, occupying pp 445-447, and running around 1750 words. This is offered in the original outer wrappers and ads, removed from a larger bound volume. The review is unsigned.  $125

Alston Householder and Neural Nets, 1939-1941

Six interesting works by Alston S. Householder, all found in The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 1939-19412.  Offered in six individual issues of the journal, scarce in their original wrappers. Six issues, $850.00 

Includes:

Householder, Alston.  Mathematical biophysics of cellular forms and movements. The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics (1941) 3: 27-38, March 01, 1941.   Rashevsky's equations for describing the joint variation of cell shape and concentration of a metabolite are discussed. Conditions for the existence of non-spherical equilibria and the location of these are obtained and involve only two parametersa andA. Sufficient (but not necessary) conditions for the stability of these equilibria can also be expressed in terms of these parameters alone. Necessary conditions involve in some cases a third parameterB. Quasi-periodic fluctuations about a stable nonspherical equilibrium may occur, but only in caseB lies on a certain finite range which can be defined in terms of a and A....

Householder, Alston S.  A theory of steady-state activity in nerve-fiber networks II: The simple circuit. The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics (1941) 3: 105-112, September 01, 1941.  It is found that for a simple circuit of neurons, if this contains an odd number of inhibitory fibers, or none at all, or if the product of the activity parameters is less than unity, then the stimulus pattern always determines uniquely the steady-state activity. For circuits not of one of these types, it is possible to classify exclusively and exhaustively all possible activity patterns into three types, here called “odd”, “even”, and “mixed”. For any pattern of odd type and any pattern of even type there always exists a stimulus pattern consistent with both, but in no other way can such an association of activity patterns be made.

Householder, Alston S. A theory of steady-state activity in nerve-fiber networks: I. Definitions and preliminary lemmas. The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics (1941) 3: 63-69, June 01, 1941.  As an essay towards the determination of the effect of structural relations among nerve fibers upon the character of their activity, preliminary consideration is given to the steady-state activity of some simple neural structures. It is assumed as a first approximation that while acted upon by a constant stimulus, each fiber reaches a steady-state activity whose intensity is a linear function of the applied stimulus. It is shown by way of example that for a simple two-fiber circuit of inhibitory neurons knowledge of the stimuli applied to the separate fibers does not necessarily suffice to determine uniquely the activity that will result. On the other hand, there are deduced certain restrictions on the possible types of activity that may be consistent with a given pattern of applied stimulation.

Householder, Alston S.  A note on the horopter. The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics (1940) 2: 135-140, September 01, 1940.  By assuming the fixity (but not the symmetry) of corresponding points on the two retinae, it is possible to derive the equation of any horopter when one is known. In particular when, as experiment shows, one horopter is linear, then all horopters must be conics. These have the form given by Ogle, but whereas Ogle leaves one parameter undetermined at each fixation, on our assumption the only arbitrary parameter is determined by the position of the linear horopter.

Householder, A. S.  A neural mechanism for discrimination: II. Discrimination of weights. The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics (1940) 2: 1-13, March 01, 1940.  A theoretical central mechanism for the discrimination of intensities as previously developed, together with plausible assumptions concerning the receptors, are employed for the derivation of the discriminable difference between lifted weights as a function of the smaller of these weights. The function so derived depends upon three parameters, one parameter being the weight of the supporting member. Some empirical data are compared with the theoretical predictions, and a few remarks are added to describe the physiological significance of the parameters.

Householder, A. S.   Studies in the mathematical theory of excitation.  The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics (1939) 1: 129-141, September 01, 1939.  The general linear two-factor nerve-excitation theory of the type of Rashevsky and Hill is discussed and normal forms are derived. It is shown that in some cases these equations are not reducible to the Rashevsky form.

Other contributors to these six journals include:

Rashevsky.  Note on the mathematical biophysics of temporal sequences of stimuli.  The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics (1941) 3: 89-92, September 01, 1941. By  Rashevsky, N.   Some general considerations are given regarding the effects of temporal sequences of stimuli in a neuronic network, which consists of a set of parallel chains of excitatory fibers with cross-connections made of inhibitory fibers. It is shown that, in general, the excitation produced by any individual stimulus of the series is a function of the order and duration of the previous stimuli, and that the effect of each stimulus thus depends on the whole temporal pattern considered.

Rashevsky, N.  A note on the nature of correlations between different characteristics of organisms. The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics (1941) 3: 93-95, September 01, 1941.  Different anatomical and physiological characteristics of organisms affect their interreaction with the inorganic world as well as their mutual interreactions. In this way they all may affect indirectly the total rate of reproduction of a species. It is shown that the requirement of a maximum rate of reproduction defines the distribution functions of the different characteristics and through those distribution functions determines statistical correlations between the characteristics.

Reviewing an Attack-Review of The Descent of Man, 1871

ITEM:

(Darwin),  Charles.  REVIEW of Review: The Descent of Man.  London:  Nature,  1871, volume 3, 20 April 1871.  Original printed wrappers.  Very good condition.  $250.00

"But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws." W. WHEWELL: Bridgewater Treatise.

"To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in both.." BACON: Advancement of Learning.

The quotes above stand alone, the first things that the readers see, sitting on the half-title page of  Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (first published in 1859 in an almost-immediately sold out run of 1250 copies.) It is an extraordinary, epochal book that was a lightning rod for reception both good and bad, heaven and hell, the Boschian hells of which were clearly not deserved, then or now.  (It is easier to understand a poorly-reviewd Origin in 1859 or through the 1860's or even through the rest of the 19th century or even somehow through the early twentieth, but not afterwards.)  Darwin helped Earthlings into modernity in the Origin, making the complicated into the complex, into a very deep understanding seldom witnessed in any branch of the history of science

Twelve years after the first edition of the Origin (and two years after the appearance of the Origin in its fifth edition) came his elegant and powerful  The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.  This work on evolutionary theory sprung from his 1866 The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, in which it was supposed to appear as a chapter, but the "chapter" grew so long and involved that it worked itself naturally into book form, appearing in 1871 as the Descent. 

The Times of London gave such an awful review of the book that a review of this review was published in the April edition of Nature.   [(Darwin),  Charles.  REVIEW of Review: The Descent of Man.  London:  Nature,  1871, volume 3, 20 April 1871].  The book was alsready quite popular by this time, almost a "best seller" for its day, with 4,500 copies in print by the end of the next month. It was curious, though, that The Times came down so very heavily against the book, as it really didn't contain the revolutionary impact of the Origin--though it did very widely address social, moral and philosophical issues raised by evolutionary theory.  It was Thomas Stebbing ((A British zoologist, 1836-1926, describing himself as "a serf to natural history, principally employed about Crustacea", and who as a long and vocal proponent of Darwinism lost his job in pursuit of his cause) who wrote the response to The Times' incitful, hateful attack upon the Descent of Man. The Times saw Darwin's work as an attack upon society,  accusing him of undermining authority and principles of morality, opening the way to "the most murderous revolutions".  A "man incurs a grave responsibility when, with the authority of a well-earned reputation, he advances at such a time the disintegrating speculations of this book." Stebbing's review of the review is drippingly sarcastic, pointing out obvious errors in specific and the tone of the article in general in the defense of the book. Darwin's "facile method of observing superficial resemblances" (says The Times) incites Stebbing to issue the following: "they may fancy that truth is worth discovering , even when it seems to involve some contradictions to our pride and some loss of comfort to our finer feelings..." (What a great line!) The article runs about 1000 words, and is a two-column, 1-page bit.

"No one ought to feel surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained in regard to the origin of species and varieties, if he makes due allowance for our profound ignorance in regard to the mutual relations of all the beings which live around us." Darwin, leading the last paragraphs of the end of the introduction to the Origin, page 7.