I know I'm late to the party but....isn't this just the most fascinating thing I've read in a long time. Thank you very much for this cool look at biology and history. I learned so much!
What a delightful read, I found it elsewhere and tracked back to here. The old treatises were pure gold! Many of their ideas of bee society are quite amusing, but - honestly - they found patterns beyond their ken and tried as hard as they could to assimilate this knowledge to pre-existing schemata. (as Piaget would say).
The noble patience of the young squires (drones), the regal carriage of the king (queen) these are earnest efforts to make sense of a social species unlike the mammals, fish, and birds that we already knew quite a bit about. It wasn't until much later - the 1970's - that Trivers and then Wilson grasped the logic of haplodiploid reproduction and parental investment.
So I think that silly stuff was pretty good. It took a hundred years to assess the nature of the hive, discuss the organization, the populations of sub-types, each with different roles. But until the genetic iteration, all the discussions were fanciful metaphors and anthropomorphisms unhindered by theory.
What if we reverse the process and define a human culture based on the reality of the Hive, rather than rewriting the Hive to fit patriarchal preconceptions? As I understand it, the female workers choose a Queen by feeding a larva a special diet. If the Queen becomes unsatisfactory, the workers create another by selective feeding and the two Queens fight until only one survives. This would be a matriarchy in which the females choose a leader from amongst themselves. Males essential role is to participate in reproduction, but they are tangential to the daily maintenance of the hive and become expendable when resources become scarce. That's a common structure in many animals species, and it's similar to matriarchal societies postulated to have existed before 6,000 years ago. Many indigenous cultures were matrifocal and matrilineal until they were forced to deal with colonial invaders. Maybe bees do have the ideal societal structure for human communities if we look at the reality of the Hive without distorting it to suit our indoctrination to primogeniture and male supremacy? I doubt there were many biologists looking for matriarchal groups in the 18th & 19th centuries. For the longest time, it was believed that all songbirds were male. Now that there are women also watching the birds, we know there are songbirds of both sexes. What else has science missed through misogyny and lack of imagination?
I don't really know what to say, other than that I am always shocked by the reminder of just how far ideologues will distort reality to suit their cause. We need the Hitchhiker's Point of View gun, or a button that disables the frothing, subhuman state of thoughtlessness that happens when people become enthralled to a political agenda... or something, anyway.
I found this fascinating but also noticed the time frame for how long these things stayed around about the bees etc. I keep trying to find something that will give me some idea for how long this nonsensical idea we seem to have now will last. The bee thing looked like it lasted centuries? Yikes. If that’s what we’re in for then I can relax because it’s not going to change in my lifetime and somehow that is comforting because I can stop being so impatient.
I am not modest about my own research, so I am going to suggest something I published about Adam Smith. Natural Law theory, particularly in the form of 18th providentialism, dictated the terms in which intellectuals thought and wrote about scientific matters of all kinds, not just economics, and Adam Smith is one of its best representatives. I should stress that my take on Smith is a minority view, and the paper will, to say the least, not be to everyone's taste.
Jun 29, 2023·edited Jun 29, 2023Liked by Frederick R Prete
I had no idea about the “morality” dispensed in early books about bees/beekeeping. It is interesting how that happens, “morality”, or in the modern sense, social justice gets injected into popular topics of the time. “Have we become more intellectually sophisticated over the last three centuries?” No.
Can females rule the hive? Do they want to? The smart ones don’t want to, maybe they are the ones who have become more intellectually sophisticated over the last three centuries.
P.S. I love getting to handle original books! Got to experience that many times homeschooling. So important to pass that thrill on to kiddo!
I read your paper on the history of writing about bees a few days ago. An excellent paper, and particularly fascinating to me, as my research is in the history and philosophy of economics, and there are many points of contact between writing about political economy and on other subjects. So your paper was very illuminating.
I'm reminded of the conventional "wisdom" about primate behavior that was taught in school back in the 60s and 70s. Since some primates have groups of one male with many females, the assumption was one male was mating with many females to spread his DNA, and this was used to explain why it was natural for human males to not stay monogamous, but it was natural and in the interest of females to stay monogamous. Then came the eventual genetic studies of primate populations where it was discovered the offspring of a group were not necessarily the progeny of the male head. Midnight rendezvous? Good thing we're not primates or honeybees!
I know I'm late to the party but....isn't this just the most fascinating thing I've read in a long time. Thank you very much for this cool look at biology and history. I learned so much!
What a delightful read, I found it elsewhere and tracked back to here. The old treatises were pure gold! Many of their ideas of bee society are quite amusing, but - honestly - they found patterns beyond their ken and tried as hard as they could to assimilate this knowledge to pre-existing schemata. (as Piaget would say).
The noble patience of the young squires (drones), the regal carriage of the king (queen) these are earnest efforts to make sense of a social species unlike the mammals, fish, and birds that we already knew quite a bit about. It wasn't until much later - the 1970's - that Trivers and then Wilson grasped the logic of haplodiploid reproduction and parental investment.
So I think that silly stuff was pretty good. It took a hundred years to assess the nature of the hive, discuss the organization, the populations of sub-types, each with different roles. But until the genetic iteration, all the discussions were fanciful metaphors and anthropomorphisms unhindered by theory.
That was fascinating. I had no idea so much was known so long ago, notwithstanding the anthropomorphism.
Not "Historie naturelles des abeilles" but "Histoire naturelle..."
What if we reverse the process and define a human culture based on the reality of the Hive, rather than rewriting the Hive to fit patriarchal preconceptions? As I understand it, the female workers choose a Queen by feeding a larva a special diet. If the Queen becomes unsatisfactory, the workers create another by selective feeding and the two Queens fight until only one survives. This would be a matriarchy in which the females choose a leader from amongst themselves. Males essential role is to participate in reproduction, but they are tangential to the daily maintenance of the hive and become expendable when resources become scarce. That's a common structure in many animals species, and it's similar to matriarchal societies postulated to have existed before 6,000 years ago. Many indigenous cultures were matrifocal and matrilineal until they were forced to deal with colonial invaders. Maybe bees do have the ideal societal structure for human communities if we look at the reality of the Hive without distorting it to suit our indoctrination to primogeniture and male supremacy? I doubt there were many biologists looking for matriarchal groups in the 18th & 19th centuries. For the longest time, it was believed that all songbirds were male. Now that there are women also watching the birds, we know there are songbirds of both sexes. What else has science missed through misogyny and lack of imagination?
I don't really know what to say, other than that I am always shocked by the reminder of just how far ideologues will distort reality to suit their cause. We need the Hitchhiker's Point of View gun, or a button that disables the frothing, subhuman state of thoughtlessness that happens when people become enthralled to a political agenda... or something, anyway.
I found this fascinating but also noticed the time frame for how long these things stayed around about the bees etc. I keep trying to find something that will give me some idea for how long this nonsensical idea we seem to have now will last. The bee thing looked like it lasted centuries? Yikes. If that’s what we’re in for then I can relax because it’s not going to change in my lifetime and somehow that is comforting because I can stop being so impatient.
I am not modest about my own research, so I am going to suggest something I published about Adam Smith. Natural Law theory, particularly in the form of 18th providentialism, dictated the terms in which intellectuals thought and wrote about scientific matters of all kinds, not just economics, and Adam Smith is one of its best representatives. I should stress that my take on Smith is a minority view, and the paper will, to say the least, not be to everyone's taste.
https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/18415/1/denis%20smith%20RHETM.pdf
Entertaining and informative piece. Kudos!
Well done piece. I had trouble finding the name of the author until I found the link to the original article. Prete?
I had no idea about the “morality” dispensed in early books about bees/beekeeping. It is interesting how that happens, “morality”, or in the modern sense, social justice gets injected into popular topics of the time. “Have we become more intellectually sophisticated over the last three centuries?” No.
Can females rule the hive? Do they want to? The smart ones don’t want to, maybe they are the ones who have become more intellectually sophisticated over the last three centuries.
P.S. I love getting to handle original books! Got to experience that many times homeschooling. So important to pass that thrill on to kiddo!
Thank you. I really enjoyed that!
Fascinating social history re the approved role of women and so pertinent to today's hysterical efforts to justify gender ideology.
I read your paper on the history of writing about bees a few days ago. An excellent paper, and particularly fascinating to me, as my research is in the history and philosophy of economics, and there are many points of contact between writing about political economy and on other subjects. So your paper was very illuminating.
“anthropo-narcissism” -- chef’s kiss
I'm reminded of the conventional "wisdom" about primate behavior that was taught in school back in the 60s and 70s. Since some primates have groups of one male with many females, the assumption was one male was mating with many females to spread his DNA, and this was used to explain why it was natural for human males to not stay monogamous, but it was natural and in the interest of females to stay monogamous. Then came the eventual genetic studies of primate populations where it was discovered the offspring of a group were not necessarily the progeny of the male head. Midnight rendezvous? Good thing we're not primates or honeybees!