Van Arsdell (VA) 216-1 Atrebatic Abstract Type gold stater
For many years, Robert Van Arsdell's Celtic Coinage of Britain, Spink, 1989, has been a difficult book to obtain and used copies were sold for many times the original price. Now, he has built a revised, on line version:
Although there is still more work to be done, and more recently discovered types to be added, all of the 1989 listings are there (with revisions where applicable).
When I first announced my discovery of the British Plastic Style finial, one archaeology blogger who was of the opinion that I should not have purchased it at all said: "a piece of datable metalwork as part of a specific site assemblage may have yielded information if that findspot was noted."
While there is a very small chance that the comment was based on ignorance, I think it more likely to be part of a modern created myth. It gave me a laugh, but I suppose that a beginner to the subject of early Celtic art might have taken it seriously -- envisioning, perhaps, some "princely grave" that is well- known for continental early Celtic art. Contextual archaeology has gained mythic status in recent years - far beyond its practical usefulness, but that might be a subject for some future post. For now, though, I want to focus on the real nature of context in British early Celtic art. The information is not difficult to find:
"A key feature of discussions of British and Irish Early Celtic art has been the separation between considerations of this material and the rest of the evidence from the Iron Age. The lack of graves in Britain for much of the Iron Age means that the majority of the finds counted as Celtic art are from dry land hoards or wet contexts, with a minority from settlements or burials, so they lack the sorts of contextual details that can link them to other aspects of the archaeological record. Dating is also a problem. Even where burials are found, such as in East Yorkshire, Cornwall or Central East Scotland, they are generally poor in grave goods compared to those in other parts of Europe. This paucity of finds in settlements or graves, together with the lack of Celtic art motifs on pottery or bone, means that the corpus of Celtic art has been cut off from more general considerations of the archaeological evidence, becoming a specialized area of study in its own right." Chris Gosden and J. D. Hill, Introduction: re-integrating 'Celtic' art, in: Rethinking Celtic Art, Oxford, 2008. p. 1.
Or, if you prefer, this from Ruth and Vincent Megaw:
"Our knowledge of the Iron Age in the British Isles is also hampered by the nature of the evidence. Burials with clearly datable grave goods are rare; most weapons come from hoards or single finds deposited in or near water, and many ornaments such as brooches are scattered finds. Even that commonest of artefacts, pottery, rarely comes from securely dated sources and attempts to translate relative pottery sequences into absolute dates are largely useless before the firs century BC. Few sites produce evidence for radiocarbon or dendrochronological (tree ring) dating. How much the archaeological evidence can tell us about invasion is also dubious. Those momentous events in early history, the two campaigns of Caesar or later, the Norman Conquest, have left virtually no traces in the archaeological record, and it is possible that archaeologists have detected too few rather than too many invasions" Celtic Art: From Its Beginnings to the Book of Kells, Thames and Hudson, 2001, p. 190.
Martyn Jope says much the same sort of thing in various sections of his Introduction in Jope, E. M., Early Celtic Art in the British Isles, Oxford, 2000.
A myth is not a supposition as popular definition states, it is a primal sort of psychology. Modern myths, in turn, reflect the psychology of the originator and are then passed as memes into the general population. Most often, modern myths are created by those with a particular ax to grind. They are generally insidious and deliberately misleading. A good example being the common phrase "There is no scientific evidence that...". Very often, if you take the time to look into the claim, you will find that no science had actually been done on the subject, or it is a subject that does not yield to the scientific method.
"1: the scientific study of material remains (as fossil relics, artifacts, and monuments) of past human life and activities
2: remains of the culture of a people"
"An approach to archaeological interpretation proposed by Ian Hodder in the mid 1980s in which emphasis is placed on methods of identifying and studying contexts in order to understand meaning. This involves two lines of enquiry. The first is to consider the environmental and behaviour context of action; understanding an object, for example, by placing it in relation to the larger functioning whole from which it is drawn. Second, it involves looking at the networks of associations that objects were placed within in the past and attempting to read meaning from such groupings as if the objects were words in text. The analogy here is that words on their own mean relatively little; it is only when they are put together in structured ways that the overall meaning becomes clear."
As British early Celtic art mostly lacks the first line of inquiry, we all have to rely, greatly, on the second -- and to a degree, this is also true for Continental early Celtic art because even the evidence in "princely graves" do not always inform us of the source of some of the objects. Generally, high status objects can travel much further than locally-produced humble objects like bronze brooches or pottery. The context used in the subject of early Celtic art is mostly the comparisons of design elements and motifs, but other considerations can also come into play such as metal alloys and their trace elements. Where the high status object ended up is of less importance and its interpretation, without corroborative evidence, is only speculation.
Paul Jacobsthal, in Early Celtic art, Oxford, 1944 (second edition, 1969), instituted the use of Patterns (PP) in his work which were line drawings of the motifs and elements found on the objects, and since then scholars of early Celtic art have used such comparisons (whether defined by numbered patterns or within their text) to trace the sources of stray finds or archaeological site examples of early Celtic art. So, of course, this is also contextual, but with a greater scientific basis than merely noting what other objects were found nearby. There is a great measure of subjectivity in the latter, as Hodder, himself, is quick to point out.
One of my favorite quotes about the definition of archaeology is from David Clarke, quoted here:
"[Archaeology is] the discipline with the theory and practice for the recovery of unobservable hominid behavior patterns from indirect traces in bad samples."
One of my own definitions is that archaeology is the study of what has been lost or abandoned, but that is somewhat "tongue-in-cheek". Nevertheless, most of what we find are the things that are most prone to loss -- in early Celtic art, these include brooches, sword pommels, coins, chariot linchpin terminals. and so on -- things which might break from their parent object in use, or are small and easily dropped. Second, (in instances) are hoards of various sorts.
There are, of course, problems: much does not survive because of corrosion and other sorts of decay, or because the material is commonly recycled. So it is a study of losses, not so much of creations. Another problem with the format picked by Jacobsthal and some others since, is that the material is divided, primarily, by the type of object and only secondly by the patterns (PP). This is not an insurmountable problem, but it does make navigation through the material more difficult.
As for the myths -- always look to the underlying psychology and motives. In other words (wait for it) look at the context in which the statements appear!
It has only been a week short of two months since I adopted Tristan from the City of Calgary and his training is going very well: he knows all the basics -- to sit, stay, come and not to pull on the leash. He is also learning to better control his instinct to lunge after any small animal or bird in his vicinity. Squirrels and jackrabbits present the biggest challenge, together with anything (or anyone) who runs by, or away from him. Joggers are a common problem. It is always wise not to jog by any dog -- but jogging by a coyote or a coyote hybrid is especially wrong. Of course, most people do not recognize a coyote hybrid. Warning them as they approach is usually not possible as they all seem to be listening to music while they jog, so when Tristan jumps at them, I give a short tug on the leash at just the right moment which flips him around in mid-air. I find it is best to treat him as a coyote -- it is his dominant trait. As far as I can see, coyote philosophy is very simple -- if it is small, it is food. If it is large, then do not let it approach you. His likes and dislikes are different from domestic dogs: more than any other creature, he dislikes small yappy dogs; he is fairly tolerant of cats (actually, coyotes have a few cat-like traits themselves). With other dogs, and typical for many dogs, he feels at a disadvantage while on a leash and will warn them not to come close by raising his hackles and growling at them. He will also try to charge at them. This is almost totally show, although I never give him the chance, he would most likely just nip at them -- rather like the way a border collie would nip at the heels of a sheep. He also really likes fruit, especially watermelon, smashed grapes, and blueberries. He is fond of avocado too. His favorite food treat (and one of mine too) is wild Sockeye Salmon sashimi.
This week, I decided that his training had advanced to the point that I might let him run free at a dog park for the first time. Of course, this decision had some caveats -- I would not set him free if there were small dogs -- or small children in the park. So of course, as we arrive at the park I see a procession of a grandfather and grandmother; two very small children (toddlers) and four small yappy terriers! We stayed on the other side of the fence. Tristan voiced his displeasure with his usual bark that turns very quickly into a series of high-pitched coyote yips. As the procession came close to where we were standing, the grandfather said "He wants to play!" I explained that he is a coyote hybrid and not good with other dogs. I was tempted to say "Well, he sometimes likes to play with his food!" but I thought better of it. Eventually, they left the park, and as no one else was there, I took him off the leash and let him run. He came whenever I called him or whistled, and generally had a great time following the scent of the terriers that had just passed by, or by just running around or chasing after sticks I would throw.
After about half an hour, a young woman entered the park with a toddler in a stroller and a large, older, crossbreed dog -- it looked like a Black Lab/Husky cross. Tristan spotted them at once on the other side of the park and ran over to them at top speed (coyotes can reach 45 km per hour, and Tristan is not much slower). Being off the leash, Tristan did not threaten the other dog and they went through the usual sniffing rituals. Tristan decided that he wanted to play, but the older dog was less enthused and told Tristan as much by baring his teeth. I was happy to see Tristan act friendly toward the woman and her small son, and I went over to talk to her. Her dog was also a rescue dog and was six and a half years old. If Tristan got too close to the child, the older dog "told" him to back off with the use of body language only. The only difficulty in communication was that once Tristan tried to lick the side of the dog's face. Coyotes greet each other that way -- but dogs usually do not. The dog was confused and backed away. Generally, it was a good first meeting, but Tristan thought he had found a new friend in the other dog and kept running over to try and play. I would whistle and he would run back. After about the fourth time, I thought it was time to head back home. We had about a two kilometer walk back and Tristan had already just about worn himself out.
Shadow camouflage? a "snack-sized" terrier passed this way not long ago.
Although I love owning and training a "Coydog", it is not a suitable pet for most people: you have to be "family leader" -- coyotes gather in small family groups -- not a pack. With an ordinary dog, you are told to let it sniff your hand at the first meeting. Tristan sees this behavior as submissive or fearful. He will usually give two short warning barks and then try to drive the person off if they do not become more assertive (it usually works). If he meets a friendly person that just just says hello to him and strokes him then he will try to greet them like another coyote -- by trying to lick their face. He views people as "potential family" unless they start to act hostile (as he sees it) by approaching him too purposefully or fast, or by staring him in the eyes. You also have to spend most of your time in his company. Not a pet for people who go to work each day -- the same is true for any active, working dog. You also have to understand that apart from the characteristics of the coyote and the dog variety it is crossed with, coydogs (and coyotes) each have their own personalities.
Coyotes are much maligned and people's attitude toward them can affect their behavior. If the circumstances are right, I usually do not tell a person that Tristan is a coyote hybrid right away. I let them become friends first. Training a coyote hybrid is very different from training a dog. It is best not to use rewards -- coyotes are the most intelligent of the world's canines, once they see you only as a dispenser of treats as rewards, that is how they will treat you ever after. You actually should try to make them "family" and give them treats for no reason. You really want to avoid any battle of the wits, they will see this as an adversity situation. What is best is to reach a mutual agreement about things. As part of their "family" they will, like any dog, try to please you. If you let them know that they are doing good when their behavior is not perfect, then that same behavior will then improve -- they know that they were not doing their best and will then try to rectify the situation,. This is completely different from most dog behavior. Amazingly, they seem to understand sarcasm, and I have found that a most useful training tool.
There is still a long way to go, but Tristan's progress is very rapid. The terrier problem will likely be the most difficult hurdle -- perhaps he sees them as competition -- terriers and coyotes both specialize in hunting rodents. For now, though, any meetings will have a fence in the way!
New!All of the posts showing or referring to Tristan. Do you know that this post is more than three times more popular than the second most popular post (on the seal of Alexander the Great)? I think that this is as it should be: although Alexander the Great is important to some, far more people (quite correctly) have greater love and concerns about their dogs. Yesterday, Moonfire75 (September 20, 2015 comment) wished to show a photo of Bandit (nickname: Coyote). Why not? Let's make this a community! I noticed the sig on the email:
Full Circle Wellness www.fullcirclewell.com
Massage, Reiki Master, Certified Equine Bodywork.
After writing for forty hours over three days, recently, and having written the equivalent of seven mystery novels in word-length on this blog in the course of just over two years (I am a very fast writer) I could use something like that. I often feel like an ache with a thin veneer of skin.
So if anyone would like to do this, too, and will agree to make such photos freely available for non profit use, I have created a Coydog community page and you can send up to four photos each year to john(at)writer2001.com (you know the symbol for (at)!) and I will post them there together with a link to your business or website (must be "family friendly", of course)
Make my life simpler! Maximum 1000 pixels, PNG format and name as in the first entry with coydog name with the number at the end: Bandit1 and so on. Soon, I will change the format having thumbnails in a table that can be enlarged with a click. The link to the community will be a footer on each new blog post (and this one). That should promote interest and traffic to your own pages
I bought this lower linchpin terminal many years ago. It is part of a suite of chariot and horse mounts, but only one one other component is known and that is the horse mount from the Studeley Castle collection, currently in the Cheltenham Museum. I had wanted to include a photo of the Cheltenham Museum example, but there are no images of it on the web. You could buy an image from the Cheltenham Museum, but it is illustrated in two major works that are really essential for any library on early Celtic art -- so those would be a wiser purchase. The earliest book is Sir Cyril Fox, Pattern and purpose;: A survey of early Celtic art in Britain, The National Museum of Wales, 1958. Despite its age, this is still a very useful book and was the first survey of British early Celtic art. Essential for any library on the subject it is also very reasonably priced! The other book that illustrates the horse-fitting is E. M. Jope, Early Celtic Art in the British Isles: 2-Volume Set, Oxford, 2000, which is the second survey of British early Celtic art. Absolutely essential for any serious scholar, it is much more expensive than Fox -- even for used copies.
Fox says of it (p. 127):
"It shows the dynamic structure which may be associated with formal ornament in this closing phase of our art. ... Nothing could be less exciting than the two three-way figures on the circular panels, identical, typically Belgic, and "moving" in the same direction; but how unexpected is the lateral compression of each of their frames, and of the unit carrying the leathers which the mind cannot but envision as being under intense pressure! There are other (non-Belgic) decorative elements -- the patterning here and there on the smooth bronze surfaces, and the boldly ornamented rims of the triquetras -- to lessen the dominance of the main concept. The creative originality and distinction of mind and spirit which the Celt possessed is here fully brought out."
Jope is no less eloquent in singing its praises (p.300 f.):
"Harness-junction of solid bronze; the figure-of-eight strap-junction is as if pressed hard together at the waist by the two rings with eccentric swelling; these have a solid centre with compact threefold whirl, against stippled ground, and enamel spots at centre and in the three bud-like heads; enamel spots also in the swellings and strap-junction, all set off with stipple-textured swags. The enamel spots where damaged are seen to have been set in drilled sockets with centre holes. ... The underside shows scored compass circles, apparently for setting out the openwork. This is a masterpiece of simple design, the apotheosis of pressure tectonics."
These two examples of chariot/pony trappings were not mass-produced products, they were undoubtedly made for the same rig. Perhaps the larger upper linchpin terminal was of similar design to the strap-junction - perhaps everything showed variations on the theme. While the other image might be held for ransom, anyone (even the Cheltenham Museum) can freely use my own image, as always, for any purpose. (click on image for enlargement).
In the last series, I mentioned a couple of masterpieces by Coriosolite die engravers. In Coin 16 of Series X, the novelties are restricted to the front of the face, while in Coin 67 of Series Y, the novelties are throughout the composition. Although both coins date to the middle of the first century BC, the decoration to the two heads would not be out of place in the early Celtic art of Waldalgesheim (with a Belgic contribution).
Coin 67 of Series Y
A number of tribes migrated to Armorica from near the Rhine, bringing their artistic styles with them. Because of little subsequent artistic borrowing in the area, these designs persisted there much longer than in their homeland.
Before anything else, it has to be said that cladistics is a classification system and not a type of diagram showing provable genetic inheritance. The selection of characteristics presented, and the order in which they are placed are the creation of a person or persons and are intended to show the pattern of inheritance of such characteristics. As such, cladistics becomes a circular argument. This does not mean that it is wrong or right, it just means that it is a classification system based on observances of what seems to be structural changes over time that are caused by genetic inheritance.
The selection of a characteristic to be included is where problems can first emerge, but we usually have no way to prove that a particular characteristic descends genetically from the previous characteristic in the chart. It thus becomes a matter of faith -- something that Wolfgang Pauli would have severely criticized. So let us envision some sort of cladistic chart that follows the methods used in real examples and then break it. If we pick something from conchology -- the study of sea shells, the task becomes very easy. The classification of sea shells is much like any other sort of biological classification, in that it follows the Linnaean class, order, genus, species, and variety. The determination is made on the characteristics of the shell. Conchology studies shells and the creatures who live inside those shells are sorted by similarities and differences in the shell structure and appearance. However, there is another subject that studies these same animals, and that is malacology. You can take two examples of shells that are classified either as varieties of each other, or closely related species because of their shell features (conchology) and then study the mollusk inside (malacology). Remember, these species are biologically classified by their shell features. I once spoke to a malacologist who was looking at two "closely related" examples of the family: Cypraeidae (cowries). Upon inspecting the mollusks living inside these shells, he found that the soft tissue differences between the two were so considerable that no one would have called them "closely related' had they ignored the shell completely. Nature can produce two virtually identical structures that have no immediate genetic connections whatsoever.
If we place enough time between two of these features then the problem becomes obvious: a whale, for example, genetically descends from mammals that once walked on the land, yet all mammals descended, genetically, from sea life much earlier than that. As so much time has passed between the whale ancestors first leaving the sea and then returning to it, we cannot say that a specific feature of some sea life is always passed to future generations through a genetic process. Let's take some sort of streamlining -- something that can make a fish -- or a whale, move quicker through the water. As creatures develop such characteristics it gives them a greater chance of survival in that arena, than their relatives who do not develop such characteristics. Another creature might depend more on ferocity, poison or camouflage for survival against predators. We cannot take the fish-like streamlining of the whale and say that it descended, genetically, from a fish we are looking at, yet both whales and blue fin tuna have such evolved features.
I have mentioned nature's habit of using shortcuts, and an expert system both uses shortcuts and has a cladistic structure. The difference is mainly that we invent the expert system, but the evolutionary cladistic chart is drawn through the observation of characteristics that are assumed to be hereditary. So let us start by right-clicking on this link and selecting "open link in new window". This will open the paper version of my expert system and then I can walk you through its creation and also link to the on line version that hides its inner structure so that the experience of using it is similar to that of using a cladistic evolutionary chart -- where, of course, the inner workings are unknown. Remember, I did not build this expert system to determine the order of the coin dies. I already knew that -- with the exception of a few instances where there were no evolutionary features in adjacent dies which I included by placing their variable sequence within a parenthesis thus: 1, 2, 3, (4, 5, 6) 7, 8, 9. -- the order given of 4, 5 and 6 is necessarily arbitrary -- it could be any other combination like, (6, 4, 5) but any one of them comes after 3 and before 7 because all of the numbers not contained within parentheses are in exact chronological order as determined by overlapping evolutionary features.
At the top of the chart, I ask the question "Are there reins between the pony's head and chest" and show a diagram.
Normally, you would try to divide the data into two equal parts at this stage. I could better have done that by picking the next question on the right: "Is driver's head like this?" which selects out my series Z which is a "special case", but in both of the possible second questions I selected out "the strange ones" -- "Class VI, Group A" is the rarest of all types and hardly ever seen. Series Z is represented by approximately half of the specimens in the large hoard that I used in my study (54.4% of 9,254 coins), but it only mimics an evolutionary process. I wanted to direct the main flow of the chart toward areas that were closely linked in the previously discovered "genome". I also embedded the earlier classification system which refers to classes even though it is confusing by having the chronological order: VI, V, IV, I, III, II (Colbert de Beaulieu).
To find the "fatal flaw" in using cladistics to determine evolutionary patterns follow through the next links to the on line expert system while comparing each step with the paper chart:
The final link asks if there is a small head above the pony. If you say "yes" the coin belongs to Group L. However, if you happened to have a Coriosolite coin in your hand, and it has a small head above the pony, and then you glance at the paper chart and see the question, you would answer "yes" without going through the system steps -- this actually happened once with someone. Sadly, though, Groups H through L all have this small head above the pony. It is just that all but Group L were eliminated because of other features earlier in the expert system.
What this demonstrates is that the structure of the expert system cannot be favorably compared to a genome. Instead, it utilizes the short cuts that are prevalent in evolution. The expert system seeks only to find the shortest navigation to the solution just as nature allows a series of consecutive thoughts to be combined in an immediate reaction to a stimulus -- the animal avoids being eaten by the predator and lives to pass those genes to its progeny.
Wolfgang Pauli was able to detect a, then unknown, feature of epigenetics which delivers to an organism in stress, a bundle of pro survival features which might avert the problems. The numbers had told him that random genetic mutations could not explain the time line assigned to them and that some sort of pro-survival evolutionary mechanism thus had to exist.
When you look at a cladistic chart depicting evolution, there is no possible way to detect the existence of such short cuts that might "pose" as being genetic links. Yet an expert system has exactly the same structure but will always include such short cuts by its very nature. Biology, too, uses short cuts in a myriad of ways, some of them very similar to those used in expert systems, or perhaps even in Java programming language -- we can pick any subject that has been invented by us to find parallels in subjects where the details of authorship are absent, but otherwise, the known structures are the same. Each enters the transdisciplinarity state at the T expression: T1, T2, T3, and so on.
This ends the series. I'm sure I will come up with something new tomorrow!
In transdisciplinarity, the point at which two realities connect is the T state -- the included middle which replaces the excluded middle of classical logic. There is no violation of classical logic here -- classical logic concerns itself only with a single reality. It epitomizes the monodisciplinary. Classical logic also has no problems with the interdisciplinary -- those subsidiary subjects make no claims to be alternative realities, they are simply a set of tools used to aid in the resolution of the stated problems of the topic of study.
The interdisciplinary does, however, give us a glimpse of the interconnectedness of systems. Within our own bodies are a large number of systems that, together, define us as living and viable examples of our species. Much has been made of the 4% difference between chimpanzee and human genes, perhaps because people believe that such an evolved species such as ourselves should have great genetic variability, and surely, only a 4% difference does not express this idea. In actual fact, evolution seeks ever simpler systems; it looks for, and finds, shortcuts to just about everything because such shortcuts are survival oriented. There are many "lower" forms of life which have a far greater number of genes than we would expect, the water flea, Daphnia pulex has an estimated 31,000 genes which is compared to the 23,000 recorded in the human genome project. Of course, the comparison is between an estimate and what has been recorded -- humans have an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 genes. Even accounting for the differences between the estimates, it is possible, although unlikely, that the water flea could have up to 1,000 more genes than the human.
By connecting closely related systems in ever more simpler ways, the "working models" of these systems, i.e. the species share a large number of resources. We do not find vast genetic differences between any mammals, human and mouse, for example. Quicker reaction times are a boon to survival, and any organism that happened to have built a few shortcuts would be more likely to pass this trait to its offspring. People can confuse genes with DNA: although we share a limited number of genes, the DNA of every human being is different. In the last episode, I linked to news of the discoveries of switches in the, formerly, "junk" DNA that turns genes, or sets of genes, on and off. A gene that is switched on or off can be inherited in that same state, by the organism's offspring. The genes that seem mostly to be inherited are the survival-oriented characteristics that define the "working models" of the systems. In other words, species have a tendency to remain, definably, the same species. Dramatic gene switching which results in a new species have occurrences strung out over a very long period of time. Happenstance has one of these events: the emergence of Homo sapiens, occurring relatively recently, but most new species in hominid evolution have emerged over millions of years. Minor gene switching takes place all the time, the body constantly compensating for changes in its systems or changes in the environment of the organism. Of course, not all compensations work properly and then medicine comes into play.
Beyond the interconnectedness of systems operating on the same level of reality, even with their complexities, is the transdisciplinary world of adjacent realities. In this example, I am connecting, at the T state, biological evolution and genetics with the structures of expert systems and the evolutionary methods of artists developing a product, where both of the latter are focused on three series of coins issued in the middle of the first century BC in northwest Gaul. Consider the chronological chart for Series Y, This is like an evolutionary genome -- each new variation being the offspring of the previous one. You can see the equivalent of a gene being switched off, and then on again in the sequence: 3.1; 3.2; 3.1. When he starts to evolve the designs in this series, the die engraver starts by representing the head on the obverse with an ornament that descends from its mouth (3.1). After 13 "generations", the 3.1 "gene" is switched off and this state continues for another 16 generations when it is turned on again, and it remains switched on until the series (species) goes extinct 21 generations later. In looking at the different patterns of their respective "genomes", the creators of the first two series were not working to a pre-defined end, they were evolving their designs through experimentation and adjustment. They could also create, abandon, and then repeat certain elements. In these two series, once a long series of adjustments had been made, instead of just copying the perfected design, the die engravers then created a "masterpiece" that was an entire novelty and did not influence later work -- on their subsequent design changes they continued with their painstaking adjustments to a new design and direction. This reveals something about the tenets of their art: mindless repetition was taboo, things had to be both unique and developing to an unknown state of perfection. We cannot know if producing the masterpiece was a formulated stage of the process, or just an example of "letting their hair down". The third series (Z) is telling because it evolves nothing at all. It mixes previously used elements from the other two series in an arbitrary manner that gives a casual observer the impression that there is some thought behind the changes. Series Z is all image and no substance, it was paid out to "thiefs and brigands" as Caesar called them -- the rag-tag army of Viridovix of the Unelli.
The time scale of the coin series "genomes" is very short because changes are self-determined by the die engraver. To translate that into the scale of biological evolution, we replace the "self determinism module" with a series of genetic changes over a large number of generations whereby those with survival benefits are thus enabled to be more successful at breeding and passing down those traits.
The second T state connects with the expert system which is built using the cladistic structure. It is nothing like a genome as it shows the effects of the genome and not the process that manifested those effects. The method of building an expert system is to find ways in which the shortest numbers of steps from the initial question to the final answer can be created. Evolution does exactly the same thing by building survival granting short cuts -- but we would expect all of this to be so: our ability to even conceive of an expert system is due to the familiarity we have with nature's processes -- we act in an automatic way because this is what nature does. We do not have to keep thinking about how to do such things, they come naturally -- our survival had depended on it. The only way to stop such a natural process would be to insist on a series of arbitrary steps to each task. In the brain, this would result in the creation of neural pathways which would direct energy along those pathways in the fastest way possible. The down side of this is that to the degree that the neural pathways become "deeper", other potential shortcuts become less visible -- the process becomes habit. Clearly not a good evolutionary choice!
Having both the "genome" model and the cladistic model directed at the same objects (the coin series) is a distinct advantage. By replacing thought modules with corresponding biological modules, entire systems can be seen to work along the same lines. This is a valid approach because of interconnectedness. Because we have the advantage of authorship with expert systems, we can not only create short cuts, but we know how such short cuts are created.
In the next episode, "good housekeeping" in building an expert system reveals a serious flaw in the use of cladistics to plot evolutionary changes.
The double-slit experiment showed that when single photons were fired through either slit, an interference pattern accumulated on the back screen consistent with wave activity. Wikimedia Commons image
Transdisciplinarity makes the claim that multiple realities exist. One of the demonstrations of this is the double slit experiment where light can be seen both as a wave and as individual particles. This appears to violate the law of logic which states that A cannot be both A and not A at the same time and in the same sense. In other words, light is, and is not, a wave. also, light is and is not a particle.
"The logic of the included middle is capable of describing the coherence among these levels of Reality by an iterative process defined by the following stages: (1) A pair of contradictories (A, non-A) situated at a certain level of Reality is unified by a T-state situated at a contiguous level of Reality; (2) in turn, this T-state is linked to a couple of contradictories (A¹, Non-A¹), situated at its own level; (3) the pair of contradictories (A¹, non A¹) is, in its turn, unified by a T' state situated at a third level of Reality, immediately contiguous to that where the ternary (A¹, non-A¹, T) is found. The iterative process continues idefinately until all the levels of Reality, known or conceivable, are exhausted."
As I have given you rather a lot to digest here, you will have the weekend to assimilate all of this and on Monday I will connect the reality of genetic switches with the reality of my expert system structure and its genetic and evolutionary equivalents.
staters (coins) that I drew in 1989. It is a paper expert system. (Click on image to enlarge)
When I drew my "quick identification chart" in 1989 for the Coriosolite coins I was studying, I had no idea that I had built an expert system. Its true identity was later pointed out to me by Robert Van Arsdell when he read the manuscript for my book. I got the idea to do such a thing after using the identification tips for Egyptian scarabs that Sir William Flinders Petrie had revealed in: Scarabs and Cylinders with Names. After discovering that I had made an expert system, I labelled it as such and built an html version for my web site in 1995.
One of the advantages of "reinventing the wheel" is that you will possibly do it differently and that might even be better. After reclassifying Coriosolite (Celtic, from Brittany) coins, I found that instead of one series of coins, I now had three. Each series was the product of a different mint (one of them was not even Coriosolite, but was from the Unelli tribe in Normandy).
My thesis was that Coriosolite coin dies were created using an evolutionary process that introduced, modified and replaced design elements, and also corrected ongoing compositional problems that were caused by such changes. This avenue of investigation turned out to be far more fruitful than I had imagined. The original purpose was to create a chronology of these coin dies that was accurate right down to each variety, instead of trying to be accurate down to groups containing varieties. The latter system is the standard method in numismatics for establishing classes. Its flaw is that it is a system that is imposed on the data, and thus contains much subjectivity.
A better method is to allow the data to present its own structures and then classify that data through these. When I applied my method to the data, I differed from the standard method by including all design elements to build a chronology. Through a network of overlapping changes to discrete parts of the design, the chronologies revealed themselves (I had started looking for a single chronology). I also saw that many design elements were not part of the evolutionary process -- the numbers of hairs on the head depicted on the obverse, while fewer in the most early coins, later were adjusted for compositional reasons such as a lack of space and so on; the earliest had fewer because the artist was still new to the composition and had not evolved a tidier design. I culled these non-evolutionary features, and built the chronologies based only on evolutionary changes and introduced novelties that had neither evolutionary nor compositional qualities. Counting hairs on the head was a subjective action -- the artist might never have done so. He might have just drawn hairs within a pre-defined space until he used up that space. His considerations on the matter might have been formed on matters of "tightness" and "looseness". The numbers of hairs plotted in the chronology revealed nothing consistent, so I removed them. What I was left with was, in essence, a genome of the evolutionary process of each series. Below, is an example (for my "Series Y"):
Series Y "genome"
Clear evolutionary jumps can be seen on features 1, 2, and 8 which are the eyes and nose on the obverse, and the pony on the reverse. These obvious features had already been selected to define the classes in the old classification system. The other features are more defining, but we will cover these in a later part. What makes this a discrete series is that the majority of features cannot be tracked before or after the sequence. In the old system, all of the subsequent three series had been considered to be only one. The small numbers at the top and bottom are the specimen numbers. and the letters H to M are my "groups". I introduced these as easy guides to the chronology. They are essentially the same as the previous "classes" -- albeit far more numerous, but I make it very clear that these are subjective groupings and cannot thus be used in any statistical analysis of the primary data.
In the Wikipedia entry for expert system, I find that I have issues with the very first sentence: "In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert." For a start, I found a paper in an AI journal saying that expert systems had been removed from the subject of artificial intelligence because they worked, while AI did not. The same paper praised the absolute yes/no method (which I had used) and had criticized the sort that used fuzzy logicbecause of the subjective nature of its "weighting" -- for example, "cold" and "very cold" definitions vary person to person and are also dependent on any current situation. Of course, expert systems are not restricted to computers -- there are many paper systems being used -- a "choose your own adventure" being a well-known example. What raised my hackles was, "that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert.". I suppose I could have tried to build such a thing -- virtually all subjective and modified by various parts of my life across a myriad of subjects -- it never occurred to me at the time to attempt such a silly thing. Nor did I base my expert system on the structure of the chronology --as on the Series Y chart although I, later, saw a few expert systems that had been so designed.
My method was to keep dividing the data into halves (or once thirds) and to find the fastest route from the first question to the answer that would have delivered by the expert using his own method. That is the method shown in the first illustration. I first split up the data between broad stylistic differences which largely marked the three different series in the coinage. This was done because the large number of variations could only be understood in each local part of the "genome". The structure I drew is also a cladistic "tree" and was the first application of cladistics to archaeology, being fourteen years before Cladistics & Archaeology recommended applying cladistics to archaeology.
The process of designing the expert system also allowed me to see a potential problem in evolutionary cladistics, but that will have to wait until later. In the next episode I will make the necessary introduction to this transdisciplinary comparison.
The source I am using for Pauli's misgivings about the scientific basis for random mutations in evolution is: Pauli’s ideas on mind and matter in the context of contemporary science, by: Harald Atmanspacher, Institut fur Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene, Freiburg Parmenides Center, Capoliveri, Italy, and Hans Primas ETH-Zentrum, Zurich. We will return to this paper for other topics in this series.
Pauli probably knew very little about DNA, and he could have known nothing of the workings of epigenetics. He did understand, though, that the proponents of random mutations as being the only driving force in evolutionary changes were promoting something which was highly unlikely and, more importantly, no attempt to calculate the chances had ever been made. He summed it all up nicely (Atmanspacher and Primus op. cit. p. 27-8):
“In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of ‘natural selection’ in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely ‘scientific. and ‘rational’, they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word ‘chance’, not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle’.”
We can only imagine what he might have said about Intelligent Design had he lived in our day. He knew that if you wanted to claim something as fact, and if any numbers were involved in this fact, then science required that they be properly addressed. Failing that, you would have only an account of a belief. Today, he would put random mutations in the same box as intelligent design.
As the paper shows, Pauli knew that the position, with regard to mathematical probability theory, had not been scientifically supported. But he also knew that the numbers were indicating that some form of "purposiveness" had to exist. While he could not define this scientifically, he could scientifically refute randomness and there appeared to be no third alternative at all. This last sentence foreshadows what I will later have to say about transdisciplinarity, but we have a number of other topics to discuss first.
Pauli was known to his peers as the "conscience of physics" and the quotes from him in that link section give a very clear picture of what he demanded from scientific research. If he had lived to hear about the recent advances in epigenetics, he might have said the same as he did for the eventual telegram confirmation of his ideas about the existence of the particle later called the neutrino: "'Thanks for message. Everything comes to him who knows how to wait.' Pauli.". The Wikipedia article does not mention what he said when he first reasoned its existence: "I have done a terrible thing, I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected".
Tomorrow's episode will be about the sorry state of modern expert system technology, and then we will connect expert systems with epigenetics through transdisciplinarity which will reveal a serious flaw in evolutionary cladistics.
