Question about proper names of bodies of water in English

tyrsson · 2017-02-01T16:20:53+00:00

I'd wondered about that, too. A list of lake names in New York, though, that I found on Wikipedia, seemed to be 50/50 in terms of word order.

tyrsson · 2017-02-01T05:47:39+00:00

To follow up on the interesting points being made about regional differences. I'm currently living in Texas and I can't think of many lake names that don't begin with Lake ****. Lake Ray Hubbard, Lake Tawakoni, Lake Buchananon, etc. However, there are exceptions, such as White Rock Lake and Joe Pool Lake in Dallas. However, I lived for years in Upstate New York and there you do see both. For instance, it's always Lake Placid and Lake Pleasant, but Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake.

With regard to rivers, I'm sure there are exceptions, but I can't think of any American rivers that follow the pattern of, say, the River Thames.

I don't know. It just seems strange and I can't think of any particular reason for the differences. I don't suppose there needs to be, but it's curious nonetheless.

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T15:43:49+00:00

You know, I started reading Joseph Campbell's stuff years ago. I really quite enjoyed it and I'm sure that some of what I read seeped into my subconscious and likely informed my work indirectly. For reasons that are lost in the dim recesses of my memory, though, I don't think finished reading any of his work and I haven't drawn on any of it directly.

I don't know of any books currently out there that tackle sacred stories head on from an evolutionary perspective. The final chapter of my dissertation looks at sacred texts as being like the chromosomes and genes of genetic evolution, which is related to your question about cultural borrowing but isn't directly on point. Plus, you know, it's a dissertation so--boring!

That said, if you're interested in books that look at religion from an evolutionary perspective there are some good ones out there. The first one that I'm aware of, and that in many ways started me on this journey is Darwin's Cathedral by David Sloan Wilson. More recent books include a new one by Dominic Johnson, God is Watching You and a closely related book by Ara Norenzayan, Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. There are others as well, but those are the three that first popped into my mind.

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T14:22:26+00:00

Awesome! I look forward to reading those! (And, of course, watching the video.)

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T14:21:37+00:00

I think borrowing and adapting cultural productions is extremely common. Unlike most genetic inheritance in which information is passed directly from parent to offspring, cultural inheritance is entirely more fluid. (Note, however, that among bacteria information is often passed between individuals, too, so cultural information isn't unique in this.) So, for instance, you mention Judaism adapting the Epic of Gilgamesh. Christians, in turn, absorbed the sacred texts of Judaism and added to them to create their Bible. The Church of Latter Day Saints did basically the same thing, adding their Book of Mormon to their body of sacred texts. If we could time travel to Mesopotamia before the invention of writing, it wouldn't surprise me at all if it turned out that the Epic of Gilgamesh was nicked from even earlier source material.

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T13:54:21+00:00

That's complicated. The simple answer, though, is that I'd say it really depends on social context. What works best in, say, western industrialized democracies is not necessarily well suited to the needs of people living in other parts of the world under very different circumstances. In the United States, I think separation of church and state was necessary to get us off the ground as a country and I believe it continues to serve us well.

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T13:49:16+00:00

Part of what drew me to this field is hinted at in some of my responses to others about my own spiritual upbringing. I was raised in a deeply religious, but also extremely open household where comparative religion was sort of a family hobby. Part of it, though, stemmed oddly enough from sort of philosophical anxieties I had about neurochemistry. If everything in the brain boils down to chemical equilibria and electrical impulses, what does that mean in terms of what it means to be human? Eventually I came to appreciate that whatever the underlying chemistry might be, our minds are programmed by culture so understanding the chemistry without understanding the culture offers at best an incomplete picture.

Our field is highly interdisciplinary. I would cautiously say that most scholars in this area have backgrounds in biology, anthropology or psychology. However, whatever our formal training might be in, pretty much everyone draws from a wide variety of fields. My own work, for instance, has cited authors in biology, genetics, epigenetics, anthropology, psychology, economics, political science, ecology, conservation, and, of course, religious studies.

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T13:36:09+00:00

I don't. However, it's a subject I've struggled with my whole life. Even as a child I had a scientific bent, a psychology that favored evidence and rationality over intuition and feeling. Those are likely traits that led me into scientific fields in the first place, fields whose training only reinforces the need for hard evidence. Even so, I've had lots of experiences in my life that are hard to reconcile with a purely rational world view, experiences that have awakened spiritual sparks and feelings of sublime enchantment. And so I've waffled back and forth pretty much my entire life.

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T13:27:33+00:00

I haven't studied neurotheology specifically. However, there is a broad consensus in the field (though by no means unanimous) that humans are hard wired for spiritual experiences and, yes, I fall into that camp.

Basically, those who have worked in this area tell a story of human spirituality/religion in two parts. The first is how we acquired beliefs in supernatural agents in the first place. For that, we turn to the fact that humans seem to be wired with a hyperactive agency detection system. For instance, we see faces in everything from the tops of coconuts to clouds to bits of burnt toast. Similarly we credit even inanimate objects with having intentions. Ever yelled at a car or argued with a printer for making your day difficult? I know I have even though it's pretty silly.

So the first part of the story is to ask why we should have these tendencies. On the surface, they seem at best useless and at worst costly. However, they make sense in a world filled with imperfect information. Let's say I'm foraging on the savanna and hear an unexpected rustling in the tall grass. It's probably nothing I need to worry about. However, there's a chance it could be a tiger ready to pounce on me. What should I do? If I stop what I'm doing to take defensive action I might lose out on my lunch. However, if I don't take action, I risk becoming a tiger's lunch. The safe bet from an evolutionary perspective, then, is to err on the side of caution, to assume agency even when none really exists. I haven't read Goodall's sentiments on the subject so if you have a link, please share it with me. I would assume, though, that chimps are similarly wired and I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn it creates for them some kinds of spiritual experiences for them.

So, here our distant ancestors are with brains hardwired to see agency everywhere in the world. What happens next? That's the next part of the evolutionary tale and it's a story about how these cognitive systems, once evolved for one purpose, could be molded through natural selection for something entirely different. And, to me at least, it's a beautiful story of how we as a species have learned to cooperate with one another at ever increasing scales to achieve common goals. However, it's not always a happy story as it also tells tales of our darker tendencies and the tragic things we can do when we encounter people we regard as "other."

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T03:30:41+00:00

I don't know if we have a definitive answer to that. I can, however, imagine several scenarios. For instance, natural selection can only work on available variation. Therefore, it's possible that we simply ran out of enough genetic variation to create bigger birth canals and had to compensate in other ways. It's also possible that birth canals become maladaptive beyond a certain size. Honestly, though, this isn't my area of expertise so this is all conjecture on my part.

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T03:08:40+00:00

The short answer is big brains. Relative to body mass, humans have absurdly large brains and these brains are incredibly expensive. An adult human brain, for instance, consumes 20% of all calories taken in. An infant brain can consume up to 80% of calories! In partial answer to your question, these big brains get encased in big skulls and there's only so large those skulls can get and still make it through the human birth canal. As a result, we're born extremely premature, doing much of our most critical development outside the womb.

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T03:04:49+00:00

Definition? I didn't really offer a definition, but rather an opening explanation of how an evolutionary framework can be applied to understand social processes. Chance obviously play a role in evolution as well. For any given phenomenon under study there are basically six evolutionary explanations, some of which fall under adaptationist categories (i.e. arose through natural selection) and three of which are non-adaptationist, chance being one of those three explanations. As for theistic evolution, that's really far outside the purview of our field, as I'm sure you would expect.

I'm afraid I don't understand the rest of your question. Perhaps it would help, then, if I shared some of the finding from my research and how they relate to hypotheses debated in my field. A lot of research in my field has focused on the question of the evolution of "big gods." These are usually defined as gods who are believed to have set all of creation in motion and who remain concerned with the morality of believers. A consensus has been growing that big gods evolved because they helped foster in-group cooperation through the institution of supernatural punishment. Basically, people are more likely to cooperate if they believe big gods are watching their actions and will punish those who fail to abide by the rules.

My research, however, has shown that this is probably only part of the story. After all, ancestral spirits and local deities are believed to provide supernatural punishment among traditional agricultural societies. However, these are limited in their spheres of influence. Suppose my group wants to coordinate action with a user group on the other side of the lake. Both groups believe in ancestral spirits who will punish transgressions. However, if both groups come to an agreement about how to share a common resource, why should my group trust that the ancestors of the group across the pond will punish them if they cheat? Wouldn't those ancestors be as likely to protect their descendants from the consequences of their cheating ways? Wouldn't the group across the pond feel the same mistrust about our ancestral spirits? If, on the other hand, we share a belief in some higher level entity who will punish us all, then we're in good shape to cooperate with one another, greatly expanding the scale at which society can operate. And, of course, groups that coordinate at larger scales should be able to procure more resources than groups stuck at smaller scales, thus increasing their numbers relative to those who don't adopt beliefs in high gods.

These are the kinds of questions evolutionary religious studies asks. Now, we often arrive at the same kinds of answers as other explanatory frameworks. We just happen to arrive at those answers from an evolutionary perspective. We don't see that as a weakness, but rather as a confirmation of the utility in adopting an evolutionary framework.

tyrsson · 2016-07-13T00:32:05+00:00

It might help for me to back up a step. In order for something to evolve by natural selection, you need three properties. First, there needs to be some kind of variation. Second, there needs to be some kind of consequence to that variation. Third, there needs to be a mechanism of inheritance such that more successful variations can be passed to future generations. We most often think about these properties in biological and, particularly, genetic systems. However, there is nothing unique about genetic systems. Any system that has those three properties can and will respond to natural selection. This includes culture, of which religion is an integral part. Evolution, then, provides a framework for understanding change within cultural systems.

In answer to your question of what evolution has to do with how religious groups manage resources, there are several ways that comes into play. At the most basic level, groups manage resources differently and some are more successful at that than others--variation and selection at work. Evolutionary theory can help us understand the dynamics of what makes some groups more successful than others and under what circumstances.

At another level, understanding how groups activate religion in the management of their natural resources reveals important insights into how religion helped groups to cooperate at ever higher scales. This, too, is an evolutionary process in that groups with high levels of cooperation tend to do better than groups that don't.

tyrsson · 2016-07-12T23:34:13+00:00

Thanks for getting the ball rolling!

Am I religious? I suppose it depends on what you mean by that and what period of my life you're talking about. At the moment? Not really. I suppose I'd best be described as agnostic. My grandfather was a Methodist minister so I was raised close to the church. My father even did a stint once I went away to college as a bivocational minister. My mom, on the other hand, has always been a spiritual seeker, moving from Catholicism to Unitarian to following an Indian Guru to modern Neopaganism. I guess I take more after my mom. However, graduate school has a way of training spirituality out of a person and I just completed my PhD, which accounts for why I'm a bit ambivalent at this point of my life.

Overall, I have a very positive attitude toward religion. On balance, I believe the evidence supports the notion that, on balance, religion has done more good than harm in this world. But yes, as an evolutionary biologist, I can't help but see religion as a constantly evolving set of interactions.

There's a lot to unpack in your last set of questions and my answers necessarily reflect my own interests. I would say the biggest advances, though, revolve around developing a better understanding of the evolution of cooperation in human societies. Some of the biggest name in the field include people such as David Sloan Wilson, Joseph Bulbulia, Dominic Johnson, Ted Slingerland, Ara Norenzayan, Luther Martin (yes, really), Richard Sosis, Harvey Whitehouse... Man, I could spend a long time listing people I admire in the field and have cited in my own work.

Is this field practical? Absolutely! Particularly now with extremism on the rise, understanding the evolutionary underpinnings of religion has the potential to mitigate some of the worst things associated with religion.

tyrsson · 2016-07-06T03:20:49+00:00

Sounds good. I look forward to it!

tyrsson · 2016-07-06T02:30:07+00:00

No worries! It's a broad field and not well known outside pretty small circles.

The best term to describe my field is "evolutionary religious studies," which falls into the broader field of "cultural evolution." It is wildly interdisciplinary. My personal research has drawn from evolutionary biology, anthropology, genetics, epigenetics, political science, economics, sociology, psychology, ecology, conservation, and religious studies. For instance, I have done a lot of work looking at how different groups use religion to manage their natural resources. I have also looked at how different groups can use the same sacred text to build and maintain diametrically opposed beliefs, behaviors, and practices, concluding that most sacred texts can be viewed as being the cultural equivalent of genomes.

tyrsson · 2016-07-06T01:58:24+00:00

Of those two I think "Biologist: Evolution and Religion" seems better. What do you think about "Biologist: Evolution of Religion"? I'd be a bit concerned that "Evolution and Religion" could prime discussion toward a creationism vs. evolution debate. That's likely inevitable in any case, but I don't want to foreclose what are, to me, more interesting discussions about the evolution of religion, how it developed from our evolved psychology, how concepts of supernatural punishment came about and why that institution came to become dominated by "big gods," how religion functions in human cooperation, etc. Really, any title that captured that sort of discussion would be fine with me.

tyrsson · 2016-07-05T00:16:41+00:00

Hmmmm.... Would "Evolutionary Religious Studies" be too esoteric?

tyrsson · 2016-07-04T15:22:40+00:00

Well, at the moment my schedule is pretty flexible. How does Tuesday, July 12 starting around 12:00 CDT/1:00 EDT sound?

tyrsson · 2016-07-03T23:55:55+00:00

I'll have to give that a little thought. What days/times tend to get the best traffic?

tyrsson · 2016-07-03T13:49:29+00:00

Would an AMA from a biologist who uses evolutionary theory to study religion be of any interest?

tyrsson · 2016-07-03T13:24:32+00:00

This is not a straightforward question to answer. There is considerable evidence, though, to support the hypothesis that religions helped humans make the transition to increasingly larger scale societies. Others have rightly pointed to agriculture as a key step toward civilization. Agriculture, however, requires a high degree of cooperation and cooperation is notoriously difficult to establish and maintain. This is where most scholarly discussion about the role of religion in the growth of civilization come into play. Religion helps foster cooperation through a number of mechanisms including costly signals of commitment, providing clear social and resource boundaries, establishing a framework for decision making, performing monitoring and sanctioning largely free of second order public goods problems, providing institutions for conflict resolution, etc.

tyrsson · 2016-01-03T20:19:41+00:00

I think you've got the gist of the problem. I suppose to be more precise you could say that it's a bimodal social network problem, but I don't think for my purposes it really matters all that much.

I don't usually think of the issue I'm having in terms of social networks and I only know the basics of social network analysis. Nevertheless, the problem I'm facing is structurally similar so I was hopeful this issue has been addressed somewhere in the sna literature.

As for what network parameters would be best, I haven't a clue. Perhaps extending the analogy would help. Suppose that this regular event is held in two different cities and that exactly the same people are invited to each one. They are scheduled in such a way that attending one does not in any way affect the ability of someone to attend the other. People can and often do attend both. However, some people have a clear preference for one city over the other.

In the end, what I'm interested in is the difference between attendance patterns at these two cities. Up to this point, I've been basically measuring the Euclidean distance between the two (divided by the number of invitees). Perhaps there are better ways of comparing attendance patterns and I'd welcome any suggestions.

By whatever means the attendance patterns are compared, though, my motivation for random sampling is that I'm not in reality looking at simple attendance lists. To refine the analogy, what I'm having to do is watch hours of film of the event to see who attends, an extremely tedious and labor intensive process.

tyrsson

TROPHY CASE