History Between Social Science's Methodologies of Analyzing Structures of Consensus and Humanities' Methods of Studying the Substance of Inquiry

 

The Wanderer Above the Sea of Clouds 1818

Historians and Social Scientists are by nature always at odds with each other in the way they choose to delve into the questions that lie before them. For in the case of social scientists engaging their methods of analysis, there is a tendency for them to become reductionist thinkers whose methodologies oversimplify the past to the point where it is a removal of the human element that is what make history as a method of inquiry so captivating in the first place.

In their path toward reducing human aspects of the past into a series of interdependent variables, social scientists have been diverted away from being able to use the approaches so well established by the natural sciences which they profess to have modeled their investigative means. The escape hatch that allows all too many social scientist to clamber through on their way toward assembling an 'unbiased' explanation of the past is constructed from a great, singular 'generalization' that all at once answers away all of the the minutia of a past long gone by and fills in the many cracks and fractures that it leaves in its wake with the belief that their methodology was creating a knowable future from a dimly lit past.

The result of the quantifiable approach driven by the social scientists is a constant shifting between the uncovering of painstaking dedication to exacting detail where ever possible only to be supplanted by over zealously made connections made to pull together those portions of the past that did not leave behind ample evidence for 'thick descriptions' and instead were held together by a thin and under nourishing gruel that left behind plenty of questionable 'answers.'

The way out from under this mounting threat against the establishment of a scientifically designed mode of generalization was introduced into the methodological toolbox of the quantifiers with the mathematical conclusion that dynamic systems, as represented by the past, did not in point of fact demonstrate any discernible relationship between dependent and independent variables, but instead, uncovered the great equalizer of 'chaos.' which portrayed the complexity of existence as something underwritten by a repeating and ever lasting simplicity upon complexity upon simplicity upon complexity ad infinitum that went on beyond the finite borders of any 'generalization' of the past had been created to prove.

The social scientists were confronted by the real existence of both predictability and unpredictability existing side by side. The result is that linearity emerges from the existence of an infinite cohort of interdependent variables effectively making none of which the cause of the occurrence being observed.

Input and output just as stimulus and response which also became predictable. The response to this bewildering discovery to the late 20th century mind was the creation and reliance on particular generalization which allows social scientists to escape a need to absolutely replicate the past and instead allow selectivity of variables to re-enter the process of quantification. While mathematics had uncovered the science that allows the predictable and the unpredictable to exist in tandem; social scientists attempting to engage in the work of historians had become totally baffled; but in their befuddlement had actually become more, rather than less like historians by being forced to deal with the interdependency of variables.

Thus the simplicity of the co-existence of chaos and complexity had melted away the veneer that social scientists had painted over the surface of exploring the past. Along with this shifting of perspective came the morphing of the acceptance of the predictable, machine like qualities of the universe created by Newtonian physics which was replaced by a chaotic, evolving and increasingly accepted historically based understanding of the cosmos.

Soon the explanations put forth by Einstein and Heisenberg brought even greater distortions to the Newtonian finely crafted universe analogous to the predictability of a timepiece, forever ticking away with such stable precision. With time and space being held to each other in relative terms and if the observer could not escape becoming a part of the observation what fate was certainty to suffer? The once bedrock assumptions of Newtonian physics had given way to the uncertainty of the quantum universe in which the past was no longer to hold an element of knowability; thus making the predictability of the future meaningless and forever destined to float along on a sea formed from an unpredictable past. The new reality meant that regularities co-existed with randomness.

The craft of historians gained at the expense of the Social scientists tendency to being absolute quantifiers. With there newly found relevance in tow historians could now deal with questions involving the interplay of patterns between predictability and non-predictability. The element of spontaneity correspondingly gained credence as linear and non-linear occurrences demonstrated how order and dis-order can interact.

So for historians who held fast to their humanities inspired methods while the social scientists endeavored to meld their methodologies and practices to those of the natural sciences it seems that the historians' persistence has brought the recently discovered sciences that incorporate chaos and complexity into the practice of history. In essence, science and history have developed sophisticated connections that incorporate inquiry through the practice of narrative.In addition, for some time, historians have been been stretching the boundaries of the discipline into such diverse areas as human behavior to the study of the environment and beyond.

This Posting was inspired by Chapter 5 "Chaos and Complexity" in The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past by John Lewis Gaddis

Research into the Role of Prokaryotes and the Evolution of Life on Earth are Discussed in Recent Findings by UCLA Molecular Biologist James A. Lake

Scanning electron micrograph of a species of actinobacteria: Actinomyces israelii. (Credit: Courtesy of Wikipedia) 

UCLA molecular biologist James A. Lake has written an article in the August 20th edition of Nature that investigates the "fusing of  two" prokaryotes - "evolutionarily ancient ... cells" that were the first organisms that predated all other lifeforms "for billions of years" don't "contain a nucleus or any other membrane-bound organelles."

The fusing process is referred to as "Endosymbiosis," an occurrence in which a cell lives within another cell. Furthermore: "If the cells live together long enough, they will exchange genes; they merge but often keep their own cell membranes and sometimes their own genomes."

Lake's discovery is significant in that he postulates: "This relationship resulted in a totally different type of life on Earth," said Lake, a UCLA distinguished professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology and of human genetics. "We thought eukaryotes always needed to be present to do it, but we were wrong."

Lake's Nature article conjectures "that two groups of prokaryotes — actinobacteria and clostridia — came together and produced "double-membrane" prokaryotes, " ScienceDaily reported.

"Higher life would not have happened without this event," Lake said. "These are very important organisms. At the time these two early prokaryotes were evolving, there was no oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Humans could not live. No oxygen-breathing organisms could live."

ScienceDaily has reported that Lake found: "The oxygen on the Earth is the result of a subgroup of these double-membrane prokaryotes. This subgroup, the cyanobacteria, used the sun's energy to produce oxygen through photosynthesis. They have been tremendously productive, pumping oxygen into the atmosphere; we could not breathe without them. In addition, the double-membrane prokaryotic fusion supplied the mitochondria that are present in every human cell," according to Lake.

"This work is a major advance in our understanding of how a group of organisms came to be that learned to harness the sun and then effected the greatest environmental change the Earth has ever seen, in this case with beneficial results," said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, headquartered at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., which ScienceDaily explained had "co-funded the study with the National Science Foundation."

"Along came these organisms — the double-membrane prokaryotes — that could use sunlight," Lake said. "They captured this vast energy resource. They were so successful that they have more genetic diversity in them than all other prokaryotes.

"We have a flow of genes from two different organisms, clostridia and actinobacteria, together," he said. "Because the group into which they are flowing has two membranes, we hypothesize that that was an endosymbiosis that resulted in a double membrane. It looks as if a single-membrane organism has engulfed another. The genomes are telling us that the double-membrane prokaryotes combine sets of genes from the two different organisms."

Lake's research has helped him to understand "how every organism is related." as his studies have reached back 2.5 billion years to analyze "the genomics of ... five groups of prokaryotes. "Reiterating the focus of his interest, Lake explained that: "We all are interested in our ancestors." Lake further added: "In our field, we have enormous amounts of data but cannot make sense of it all. Endosymbiosis allows us to start to understanding things; it tells us that many genes are exchanged. "We have been overlooking how important cooperation is," Lake explained. "If two prokaryotes get together, they can change the world. They restructured the atmosphere of the Earth. It's a message that evolution is giving us: Cooperation is a way to get ahead."

Cell structure of a bacterium, one of the two groups of prokaryotic life. From Wikipedia

Sea Levels Unexpectedly Rise Nearly as Much as 2 Feet Over This Past Summer Leaving Scientists Baffled

 Aside from such short-term events as storms, anomalous wind and ocean patterns caused a sustained and unexpected rise in sea levels on the U.S. East Coast through much of summer 2009, according to a September 2009 report.

Photograph by Mari Darr-Welch/AP

In an article written by Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News; Handwerk reports: "Sea levels rose as much as 2 feet (60 centimeters) higher than predicted this summer along the U.S. East Coast, surprising scientists who forecast such periodic fluctuations. In a related article written for the National Geographic News by Christine Dell'Amore; she reports that: "By 2100 visitors to Boston could be parking their boats, not their cars, in Harvard Yard.

"Major cities in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada "are directly in the path of the greatest rise" in sea level if Greenland continues to melt due to global warming, a new study says.

"Scientists believe that the influx of fresh water from the disintegrating ice sheets will disrupt a circulation pattern in the Atlantic Ocean, causing seas to expand.

"The new projections call for an extra 4 to 12 inches (10.2 to 30.5 centimeters) on top of the rise of 8 inches (20.3 centimeters) previously estimated in the journal Nature Geoscience in March.

"That previous study found that, if global warming continues, sea levels around New York City would rise by twice as much as in other parts of the United States within this century.

"In the new study, researchers considered three scenarios: that Greenland's present melt rate of 7 percent would continue, or a drop to either one or 3 percent a year—viewed by many as more likely, as the rate is actually expected to slow in coming decades.

 

Above, an iceberg melts off Ammassalik Island in eastern Greenland on July 19, 2007.

"We hope the high end wouldn't happen," said study lead author Aixue Hu of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

"But "we should be aware that there's a potential the melt of the Greenland ice sheet could be faster than we expected."

Vulnerable

"Of the three scenarios, the two lower melt rates are more realistic, according to computer models of future ice sheet melting, Hu said.

"A 3 percent melt rate would mean an extra 12 inches (30.5 centimeters) on top of the predicted global sea level rise of 21 inches (54 centimeters), and a one percent rate would mean an extra 8 inches (20.3 centimeters) for the region.

(Explore an interactive map of global warming's effects.)

"But if the current 7 percent rate were to persist, up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) of extra water would inundate cities such as New York and Halifax, Nova Scotia.

"Still, Waleed Abdalati, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said that the 7 percent scenario is really a worst case, particularly because "melt rate" is sometimes a misnomer, he said.

"When glaciers break off into the ocean, they don't immediately melt, so scientists can't really say that all of Greenland's ice loss is due to melting, he explained.

"But the finding is still important, he added, because "a few inches [of sea-level rise], depending on the time frame on which this occurs, makes a significant amount of difference," especially when it impacts heavily populated coastal areas.

"What's more, previous studies had not taken into account how Greenland's melt might interact with an oceanic "conveyor belt" in the Atlantic Ocean, which transports water north from the tropics.

"Normally in the belt tropical water gets cooler and becomes a deep layer of dense, cold water in the North Atlantic.

"But the freshwater flow from Greenland slows down this conveyor belt and prevents the deep, dense water from accumulating. This would make deep water warmer and less dense, causing surface waters to expand throughout the North Atlantic.

"It's for this reason that the northeast coast of North America is particularly vulnerable to rising seas, said Hu, whose research will appear May 29 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Uncertainties

"Such predictions, and the study of ice sheets in general, is often plagued with uncertainties.

"For instance, scientists still don't understand ice sheet dynamics, such as how fast an unstable ice sheet will melt.

"And data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—which many researchers depend on as the gold standard in climate change predictions—can become easily outdated.

"The 2007 IPCC assessment, for example, projected a sea-level rise of up to 23 inches (59 centimeters) this century. But the rapid decline of the world's ice sheets has led many researchers to believe the rise will be even greater.

"The more we know," said the University of Colorado's Abdalati, "the more we're finding things are more severe than we thought.

"The immediate cause of the unexpected rise has now been solved, U.S. officials say in a new report (hint: it wasn't global warming). But the underlying reason remains a mystery.

"Usually, predicting seasonal tides and sea levels is a pretty cut-and-dried process, governed by the known movements and gravitational influences of astronomical bodies like the moon, said Rich Edwing, deputy director for the Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"But NOAA's phones began ringing this summer when East Coast residents reported higher than predicted water levels, much like those associated with short-term weather events like tropical storms. But these high seas persisted for weeks, throughout June and July.

"The startling rise caused only minor coastal flooding—but major head scratching among scientists.

Gulf Stream Mysteriously Slowed

"Now a new report has identified the two major factors behind the high sea levels—a weakened Gulf Stream and steady winds from the northeastern Atlantic.

"The Gulf Stream is a northward-flowing superhighway of ocean water off the U.S. East Coast. Running at full steam, the powerful current pulls water into its "orbit" and away from the East Coast.

"But this summer, for reasons unknown, "the Gulf Stream slowed down," Edwing said, sending water toward the coasts—and sea levels shooting upward.

"Adding to the sustained surge, autumn winds from the northeastern Atlantic arrived a few months early, pushing even more water coastward.

Beaches "Eaten Up"

"The higher waters caused inconveniences for some anglers and boaters and rearranged a bit of shoreline.

"A couple of sand beaches we'd normally fish from were eaten up. And the volume of water was higher than it normally would be," said Paulie Apostolides, owner of Paulie's Tackle in Montauk (map) on New York State's Long Island.

"Even before the new report, released by NOAA on September 2, Apostolides said many local fishers had already attributed the sea level rise to the "ferocious" winds from the northeast.

"But the underlying puzzle remains.

"Why did the Gulf Stream slow down? Why did the fall wind pattern appear earlier?" NOAA's Edwing said. "We don't have those answers."

SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES

    * NOAA Tides and Currents
    * Paulie's Tackle of Montauk
    * National Center for Atmospheric Research: Aixue Hu
    * Geophysical Research Letters
    * University of Colorado: Waleed Abdalati

Articles Originally appeared in the September 10, 2009 and May 28, 2009 issues of National Geographic News

New Hypothesis on the Origin of Life Proposed By Research Scientists Armen Mulkidjanian of the University of Osnabrueck, Germany and Michael Galperin of the U.S. National Institutes of Health

 

The new hypothesis suggests that life on Earth originated at photosynthetically-active porous structures made of zinc sulfide similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Credit: The Institute for Exploration, the University of Rhode Island (URI) Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO), and the URI Institute for Archaeological Oceanography.

A recently developed hypothesis suggested by two research scientists; Armen Mulkidjanian of the University of Osnabrueck, Germany and Michael Galperin of the U.S. National Institutes of Health postulates that the origin of life on Earth may have developed "at photosynthetically-active porous structures made of zinc sulfide similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents."

The widely accepted, definitive example of the classically regarded experiment on the origin of life conducted by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953 established that the inorganic substances, "a mixture of methane, hydrogen, ammonia and water vapor" along with electrical discharges to simulate lightning that were present in the primordial Earth atmosphere, they believed, was capable of producing amino acids, the building blocks of life.

The significance of the Mulkidjanian/Galperin hypothesis that has been published and is available for discussion at the Biology Direct site on the internet is that it expands upon and broadens our understanding of the processes that combined to bring about life on Earth.

The current-day researchers' theory posits that life originated on Earth in the vicinity of "photosynthetically-active porous structures, similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents, made of zinc sulfide (more commonly known as phosphor). They argue that under the high pressure of a carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere, zinc sulfide structures could form on the surface of the first continents, where they had access to sunlight. Unlike many existing theories that suggest UV radiation was a hindrance to the development of life, Mulkidjanian and Galperin think it actually helped.

“The problem of the origin of life is such that you have to answer a set of different questions to explain how life has originated,” says lead author Mulkidjanian. “We just provide answers to the problem of energetics of the origin of life.”

The Miller and Urey experiment "assumed that the early Earth had a reducing atmosphere, which meant it had large amounts of hydrogen and almost no oxygen."As the Miller/Urey experiment was studied over time "According to Mulkidjanian, the debate about whether life could arise from chemical reactions began to change when scientists started to question the atmospheric conditions used by Miller and Urey."

 

 Miller-Urey experiment (1953). Image: YassineMrabet, via Wikipedia.

The belief that the primordial Earth had a reducing atmosphere has now been replaced by the idea that: "Earth had a neutral atmosphere, composed primarily of carbon dioxide, with smaller amounts of nitrogen and hydrogen, similar to the modern atmospheres of Mars and Venus. Researchers who have repeated the Miller-Urey experiment under the new atmospheric assumptions, including Miller, have shown that this new mixture does not produce amino acids."

Mulkidjanian explains: “After it became clear that the origin of the atmosphere was made of carbon dioxide,... there was no physically or chemically plausible hypothesis of the origin of life.” In other words, organic life is dependent on some form of energy that emanates chemical reactions or solar energy.

“If you have an atmosphere of carbon dioxide, you need, in addition, a source of electrons to reduce carbon dioxide if you want to make complex compounds,” Mulkidjanian explains.

The Mulkidjanian “Zn world hypothesis presents a different version of the prebiotic Earth atmosphere—one in which zinc sulfide plays a major role in the development of life. In nature, zinc sulfide particles precipitate only at deep-sea hydrothermal vents." It is important to remember that zinc sulfide particles have a unique ability to store light energy and it is this "ability to store light makes zinc sulfide an important factor in the discussion on life’s origin." Mulkidjanian explains: once illuminated by UV light, zinc sulfide can efficiently reduce carbon dioxide, just as plants do." And lending credence to their "hypothesis, Mulkidjanian and Galperin analyzed the metal content of modern cells and found “surprisingly high levels of zinc,” particularly in the complexes of proteins with DNA and RNA molecules."

“We have found that proteins that are considered ‘evolutionarily old’ and particularly those related to handling of RNA specifically contain large amounts of zinc,” Mulkidjanian says.

So there is a high likelihood that the original forms of life on Earth "evolved in a zinc-rich environment."
“We cannot explain fully the properties of modern organisms unless we understand how life has originated,” says Mulkidjanian.

The Mulkidjanian/Galperin hypothesis holds significant importance to theorists and researchers in astrobiology engaged in the study of the origins of life.

“If this hypothesis is adopted in the origins of life community, it would represent a real conceptual shift, and so it would be significant,” says NASA astrobiologist Max Bernstein. “Whether it will be adopted or not eventually I cannot say, but I expect that many will want to see experimental evidence of the viability of reactions consistent with the hypothesized scheme under prebiotic conditions.”

Source: Astrobio.net, by Anuradha K. Herath

09/12/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

read the transcript
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12TH, 2009 AT 2:00 AM
Weekly Address: Losing Insurance Can Happen to Anybody
Posted by Jesse Lee
"The President discusses a staggering new report from the Treasury Department indicating that under the status quo, around half of all Americans under 65 will lose their health coverage at some point over the next ten years. He pledges not to allow this future to unfold: "In the United States of America, no one should have to worry that they'll go without health care – not for one year, not for one month, not for one day. And once I sign my health reform plan into law – they won't."