Ok,
I can explain/justify why I ignore or question the view and opinion of Ernst Mayr.
In the mid 70s as I began to read biology in most of my free moments ( I was born in 1964)I ranged widely over the entire shelf of relevant books in the Hunterdon Country Public Library, NJ. I would often take my MOPED to collect salamanders and then stop off to do some reading after tramping around outside. So I was reading a lot of biology for a teenager. Well, at some point I read something by Mayr. I do not recall anymore what it was.I kind of remember I was either reading about how the kideny works or Mayr had written something about kidneys. But I do recall it was Dr. E. Mayr. At this point I realized that if I had had to agree with Mayr I would have had to disagree with myself about what I understood so many other authors understood. This I could not do, because most of the things I was reading were simply factual. The heart is to connect to the artery etc. What I took away from this first encounter with reading this "expert" was, that if I had a hand and a foot, and if any two biologists were writing about hands and feet in general, then I must not presume that I have some other hands and feet than I acutally have. In other words the I did not imagine the hands and feet of people next to me if it was possible for me to think of my own. I respected Mayr as an author and person and 'expert' but I could not agree that all biological conotations that clearly denote the same object actually do. Experts are expert at/on different things. At this point I had to be doubly critical of biological texts, both as to content and context. That day was a sad day for my reading-biology-program because all of sudden reading biology got a lot harder. But hay, I was only behind an 8th grade education so who was I to complain.
I continued to read more biology...I found other authors like Mayr who seemed to be using language as well facts to structure their presentations. I tried to stay away from that as long as possible, but slowly I started to get a sense of the individual "agendas" of writers, all the while I kept to the same standard of "objectivity" that my kidney is your kidney and vice versa. I was reading a Harvard Philosopher Nozik one summer and thinking about comparing the educational environment of what little of Harvard I had seen and Mayr's wiritings as he was about to be at Cornell. In resolving some point of Nozik's in my mind (which was in philosophy NOT BIOLOGY) it all came clear to me that this innocent "kidney" could be resolved without maintainingg the literate distance I had sustained more or less the best biologist in the world!! I could not believe it. I had found a way to ask Mayr a genuine question that removed my own reticence I had established in myself.
Mayr came to Cornell. I sat through his lecture. I understood it. When it was time for questions and answers, I asked it. It turns out Mayr had developed an even more reticent attitude than I ever had. Not only did he NEVER even tangentially address my question he stated he UNDERSTOOD what I had said and CATEOGRIZED what I asked ON THE SPOT, like he would know that behind my description of math in biology in the question he KNEW it was a KIDNEY and not a CIRCLE, exactly the likes I was referring to! There is NO WAY he could know that. Besides, I was not talking about kidneys anymore. Later more than one Cornell Biologists apologized for Mayr's behavior telling me he treats everyone that way. Well, now I knew whether it was kidneys or just the shape of letters in biology books not even the "experts" could be trusted.
This is an extreme example, but I could provide others without the drama retained.
This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 11-16-2005 08:23 AM
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