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A typographical fable - 7/7/2008 5:15:34 PM
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essentialsaltes
Posts: 1025
Joined: 10/14/2007
From: Inglewood, CA
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This is a fable. It is to be read metaphorically or allegorically or figuratively or non-literally. Analogies may not be exact. Your mileage may vary.
In the land of Tebafla, the printing press is unknown. All writing is handwritten, much of it laboriously copied by scribes. Typologists in Tebafla have made long study of the characters and letters and have discovered some interesting things.
Although the scribes are quite accurate at what they do, they are not perfect. If one measures the length of ascender in the letter 'b' (i.e. the part of the straightline above the round part) in a current text, it is found that they range from 6.0 to 6.4 mm. Interestingly, when old texts are dug out from the archives, the length of the b's ascender ranges from 5.5 to 5.9 mm.
Typologists looking at the old archives also uncover another interesting fact. In the oldest records, the b's have a small, but quite measurable descender, from 0.2 to 0.4 mm. Nowadays, b's have just a vestigial descender, maybe 0.1 to 0.2 mm.
Vice versa, the situation for the letter p is reversed. Currently, they have a vestigial ascender and a prominent descender. In the archives, the ascender was larger and the descender was smaller.
A typologist, Darwingdings, entertains the hypothesis that b's and p's share a common ancestral form, related through copying errors over a long period of time.
A rival typologist, Raciro, disagrees. Certainly, some microevolution is possible, as has been demonstrated empirically by the archives, but common ancestry is absurd. A b never gets copied into a p! A bear never gives birth to a pear!
Besides, the archive contains the oldest writings in Tebafla. They are only 6000 years old, and the measured rates of microevolution would not allow a b to breed a p! Furthermore, do not the priests tell of how the Goddess of Wisdom gave to our ancestors the alphabet? Darwingdingian evolution throws the divine plan into confusion!
As the controversy rages, a new discovery is made in the frontier city of Fontia. Another small archive, and one which the isophysicists date to 18,000 years ago. But the writing on these pages is not recognizably Tebaflan! And many of the letters are very strange. One looks sort of like a b, only the ascender is only 3.5 to 4.0 mm long, while the descender is 1.0 to 1.4 mm long. And there's a sort of 'p' with reversed dimensions.
Darwingdings says that these are b's and p's, and they clearly confirm his hypothesis. These b's and p's look much more similar than the b's and p's of today, showing more clearly their common ancestry.
More moderate typologists are impressed, but they don't accept these as b's and p's... As we all learned in introductory typology, a b has an ascender which is at least 10 times the size of its descender, while p's are defined by the opposite ratio. What we have here, they say, are two extinct letterforms, which we have assigned the scientific typological names bloob and ploop. Darwingdings is quite possibly right that bloobs gave rise to b's and ploops gave rise to p's through repeated copying transmission; but there is a clear difference between letters with ascender/descender ratios of more than 10, and letterforms with ratios between 2 and 4.
Raciro remains staunchly conservative. Are you nuts? b's only make b's, bloobs only breed bloobs. No one has ever copied a ploop and gotten a p! The definitions of bloob and b are totally distinct; greater than 10 is not the same as between 2 and 4! And, by the way, the isophysicists who dated the new archive are wrong, for we know the Goddess of Wisdom created the letters just 6000 years ago, as stated in our earliest genuine writings. I don't know very much about isophysics, but I know they've made an error somewhere.
Then, a farmer tilling his new field in Outer Tebafla runs his plow across a great stone. And on the stone is carved a long inscription in an unknown language. The isophysicists determine that it is 30,000 years old. Further search turns up several dozen of these stones. And when the typologists examine these letters in stone, they find no b's and p's, no bloobs or ploops, but many occurences of a letter that looks like this.
Darwingdings is triumphant. Here is the lost common ancestor of the b's and p's! It is just as I predicted, with intermediate features between the b's and p's. It has an ascender/descender ratio of about 1, fitting right between the so-called 'bloobs' and 'ploops', which are really just b's and p's of course. 'Bloobs' and 'ploops' are just arbitrary divisions.
The moderates are quite excited. Yes, it seems almost certain that Darwingdings is correct. But please, Darwingdings, our letter definitions are not arbitrary. All examples of bloobs in our collections have a ratio between 2 and 4. We infer that there were some missing links, but we don't have any to examine. It's best to clump together the modern b's that we know and love, but keep them separate from the bloob's of ancient Fontia. This new letter is neither a bloob nor a ploop. We give it the scientific typographic name of boopsie. We hope to find further stones of different ages to help fill in the transition from boopsie to bloob and boopsie to ploop, but we share your certainty, Dr. Darwingdings, that this evolution has occurred.
Raciro remains unconvinced. Boopsies breed boopsie, bloobs breed bloobs! Just because an ascender can get a little shorter in one copying doesn't imply that it can get a lot shorter in many copyings! And the isophysicists are still out to lunch; I believe all of these so-called ancient letters were all created in a single catatypostrophic event 6000 years ago.
And then they find an archive with bloobies and ploopies with ratios from 5 to 6. And an archive with blooboids and ploopoids with ratios from 7 to 9. But the arguments don't change very much; the moderates just become more and more certain that Darwingdingian evolution is the best explanation for the evidence, while Raciro continues to ridicule the idea that a bear can give birth to a pear.
THE END
_____________________________
"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."
-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34
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RE: A typographical fable - 7/7/2008 5:26:10 PM
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Jhud
Posts: 7508
Joined: 4/11/2005
From: Lake Wobegon
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And of course, in a small village nearby live the wise IDologians, who point out the problem with Darwindings isn't that they believe certain symbols can change over time through incidental modification, but that the loudest and most vociferous among them argue that alphabets and writings can arise completely apart from the activity of a scribe, and that the existence of ancient writings are not evidence of the work of ancient scribes, but are the product of incidental natural forces.
For the reason, the vast majority of Tebaflans don't take them seriously, despite their great learning.
_____________________________
Jack
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth”
William F. Buckley Jr. 1925-2008
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RE: A typographical fable - 7/7/2008 5:36:21 PM
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essentialsaltes
Posts: 1025
Joined: 10/14/2007
From: Inglewood, CA
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
And of course, in a small village nearby live the wise IDologians, who point out the problem with Darwindings isn't that they believe certain symbols can change over time through incidental modification, but that the loudest and most vociferous among them argue that alphabets and writings can arise completely apart from the activity of a scribe, and that the existence of ancient writings are not evidence of the work of ancient scribes, but are the product of incidental natural forces.
For the reason, the vast majority of Tebaflans don't take them seriously, despite their great learning.
Darwingdingian evolution requires the action of scribes who (not quite perfectly) replicate the texts.
_____________________________
"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."
-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34
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RE: A typographical fable - 7/7/2008 5:47:13 PM
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Jhud
Posts: 7508
Joined: 4/11/2005
From: Lake Wobegon
Status: offline
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quote:
Darwingdingian evolution requires the action of scribes who (not quite perfectly) replicate the texts. quote:
Darwingdingian evolution requires the action of scribes who (not quite perfectly) replicate the texts.
No according to the great Dawkindingian.
_____________________________
Jack
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth”
William F. Buckley Jr. 1925-2008
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RE: A typographical fable - 7/7/2008 5:57:12 PM
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essentialsaltes
Posts: 1025
Joined: 10/14/2007
From: Inglewood, CA
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
quote:
Darwingdingian evolution requires the action of scribes who (not quite perfectly) replicate the texts. quote:
Darwingdingian evolution requires the action of scribes who (not quite perfectly) replicate the texts.
No according to the great Dawkindingian.
Dawkindingian only rejects that the ur-alphabet was carved in stone and given to the First Scribe by the Goddess of Wisdom. He believes that the natural world provided simple shapes that attracted the eye of the earliest scribes, who copied them.
Thea-istic Darwingdingians also reject the literal existence of the ur-stone, believing rather that the Goddess of Wisdom was responsible for setting up those natural shapes and ensuring that they caught the eyes of the scribes.
_____________________________
"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."
-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34
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RE: A typographical fable - 7/7/2008 6:06:40 PM
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Jhud
Posts: 7508
Joined: 4/11/2005
From: Lake Wobegon
Status: offline
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quote:
Dawkindingian only rejects that the ur-alphabet was carved in stone and given to the First Scribe by the Goddess of Wisdom. He believes that the natural world provided simple shapes that attracted the eye of the earliest scribes, who copied them.
Thea-istic Darwingdingians also reject the literal existence of the ur-stone, believing rather that the Goddess of Wisdom was responsible for setting up those natural shapes and ensuring that they caught the eyes of the scribes.
Well, I think by their very nature scribes have a will, so that even if early alphabets were the product of imitation, it still requires that the scribe considered those shapes and imbued them with meaning - as well as arranged them so they might communicate meaning to others.
_____________________________
Jack
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth”
William F. Buckley Jr. 1925-2008
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Certainly, some microevolution is possible 
, as has been demonstrated empirically by the archives, but common ancestry is absurd 
A bear never gives birth to a pear! 