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.
You are 100% correct. Part of the problem with all the woke nonsense is that the younger people promoting it (young professors, young students, interns writing for various news outlets) don't understand that all of these issues have been debated for decades if not for centuries. And, in many cases, the issues have been settled. I've written about this (as have others) regarding trans-athletes. That debate is half a century old. However, each generation brings these things up as if they are brand-new exciting topics with which to bludgeon people. They'd be better off getting a thorough education and understanding what's actually happened prior to their emergence on the scene. In short, much of the woke agenda is driven by ignorance of history and the history of science. My best, Frederick
Then, show that every single person in the planet should be suing Pfizer for deliberately injecting an undisclosed carcinogenic monkey virus (SV40) into the cell nucleus of the clueless biohacked, as officially recognized by Health Canada !!!
If he doesn’t like the topic, I’d show this video (all you need is 10 secs in the middle, who doesn’t have 10 seconds for you):
(caveat about the beginning: pot destroys your brain + “Raises Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke”)
9/11: two "planes", yet the third tower (WTC7) imploded, free falling on its footprint like in a controlled demolition. It was out of reach, and all 7 World Trade Center towers needed to be rebuilt, not the closer towers not belonging to World Trade Center... and the “owner” took an insurance policy for the WTC against terrorism, just months before, when no one was taking them … he didn’t show up for work precisely on 9/11 … just as his 2 grown up siblings (they never skipped work before). The inside information about the FUTURE 9/11 event helped masons make trillions by shorting the stock exchange: the records were deleted by the SEC so they wouldn't be prosecuted !!!
Please watch all of this! Your life depends on it, because there's a plan to murder 95% of the global population by 2050… written on the masonic Georgia guide-stones: “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 … ”:
- J6: The false flag operation of the fake riot was planned, incited and guided by FBI agents, who broke into the Capitol !!! The same mason-plot was copy-pasted to disband the insurrection against the stolen elections in Brazil! All intel agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA) were founded by masons and are run by them for their own nefarious goals.
- At least since the 90s, vaccines are weaponized to reduce the population, for example:
1. Adding hCG to infertilize women: lab detected in 30 countries
2. Overpassing the FDA 10 ng limit to human DNA “contamination” by 2000%, thus causing neuro-damage (autism, asperger, tics, dyslexia in 29% of kids, etc.) and childhood cancer epidemic (n.b. leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas)
- Their main source of power apart from sin-empowered demons? NOT a coincidence that the USA left dollar convertibility to gold in 1971, precisely triggering the exponential government deficit coupled with the trade deficit and inflation.
This is the Achilles’ heel of all nations: masonic and satanic secret societies counterfeit paper money and launder trillions with which they buy Banks, seats in the Federal Reserve (the only private run Central Bank in the world), political careers and parties, puppeticians, listed corporations, media, healthcare corporations and organizations, universities, foundations, judges, etc.:
1. Create an easy system for real money: private currencies/warrants based on real assets, goods, services, etc. (gold, corn, oil, distance/volume/weight transportation, labor human hour/minute, etc.)
2. Ban legal tender. Let the free markets decide which real-currencies/valuables/warrants they prefer to trade with
3. Ban paper-backed currencies (unlike real-backed ones of point 1.)
4. Enforce a Legal Banking Reserve of 100% of deposits (so banks don't create money based on air) and therefore there's no excuse for a Central Bank, because there would be no risk of bank-runs since all their loans are fully backed with deposits
Plllllease, on my knees, don’t believe me, just do your own homework by searching the following in yandex.com, mojeek.com (includes crawl date filter and substack search), gigablast.com, startpage.com, duckduckgo.com (not Google, Bing, Yahoo censors). The key terms to test them? Child Satanic Ritual Abuse, Child Satanic Ritual Murder.
President John Quincy Adams: “Masonry ought forever to be abolished. It is wrong - essentially wrong - a seed of evil, which can never produce any good.”
If you are a mason or know a mason, ask him to ask his 33° master to put in writing and sign it, who is "the great architect" and that he is not Lucifer. If he refuses, then he’ll know who he is really serving, Satan: tell him to get out of masonry NOW. Sooner or later he’ll be required to trample on a cross to get to a higher degree.
Confessions of a former mason (Serge Abad-Gallardo):
I'm trying to decide if this is good news or bad news. Good I suppose in that we can take comfort from the fact that wokeism is not some new pathogen uniquely likely to sink civilization, no, it's just another mind virus and we've survived many such before. But bad news in that we can be sure that it's just a matter of time until the next virus strikes even if we do survive this one.
Perhaps we should view wokeism as the Black Death of our time -- a Black Death of rationality even if there aren't piles of bodies in the streets physically speaking. But how long would/will it take to repair the damage even if we started today? And the disease has not yet even crested. God damn.
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?
"What else has science missed through misogyny and lack of imagination?"
Quite often it seems to have its thumbs, to the elbows, on the scales. ICYMI:
"The Egg And The Sperm: How Science Has Constructed A Romance Based On Stereotypical Male-Female Roles
As an anthropologist, I am intrigued by the possibility that culture shapes how biological scientists describe what they discover about the natural world. If this were so, we would be learning about more than the natural world in high school biology class; we would be learning about cultural beliefs and practices as if they were part of nature. In the course of my research I realized that the picture of egg and sperm drawn in popular as well as scientific accounts of reproductive biology relies on stereotypes central to our cultural definitions of male and female."
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.
Well, I agree with you. I certainly don't have the answer, and I'm not quite sure if it's possible to change a set of cognitive structures once they are deeply embedded in one's thinking. But, that doesn't mean we should stop trying! Thanks for your comment, Frederick
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.
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!
It's so true about wanting to! I agree with you, books are a joy. Interestingly, now you can get facsimiles of these very old books on Amazon. I hope the world never loses its love of a real book! Thanks so much for the comment.
You are correct. History can put things into perspective. Each generation thinks they have thought up something brand-new and act with the assuredness of discovery. History makes you humble, I think. Thank you so much for comment.
As I've grown older my experience of time has changed and it has thrown 'history' into a totally different perspective. I can still remember the moment when I suddenly realised how very near (in terms of generations) I was to my ancestors. It was a vivid moment which made me see human behaviour in a totally different way.
A very astute comment, and important realization. You made me think about the fact that my grandmother was born about seven years before Charles Darwin died, yet my youngest son is 22 years old. That's a perspective you only get from age and quiet thoughtfulness. Unfortunately, our stories, perspectives, and knowledge are seldom passed down to, nor appreciated by most 'younger' people (however you define that). Do I sound like I'm yearning for the days in which we all sat around the campfire at night and spun tall tales… or, at least, families sat around the dinner table and had conversations about life? I guess I am... I do, however, feel blessed that my son Ben and I spend our dinner hours in thoughtful conversation... I think that he is gaining the perspective to which you referred your comment... Thanks for writing.
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.
Thank you, I appreciate it. I don't know anything about your field but it must be fascinating, too. Perhaps you can suggest something in your field for me to read. Thank you very much for the comment!
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!
Thanks for the comment! That's another very good story. I don't know much about the old primate literature except in the field of learning behavior. I suppose, however, that it suggests we should be eating more bananas… and having more midnight rendezvous! Thanks again.
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!
Thanks.... I am glad you liked the story!
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.
You are 100% correct. Part of the problem with all the woke nonsense is that the younger people promoting it (young professors, young students, interns writing for various news outlets) don't understand that all of these issues have been debated for decades if not for centuries. And, in many cases, the issues have been settled. I've written about this (as have others) regarding trans-athletes. That debate is half a century old. However, each generation brings these things up as if they are brand-new exciting topics with which to bludgeon people. They'd be better off getting a thorough education and understanding what's actually happened prior to their emergence on the scene. In short, much of the woke agenda is driven by ignorance of history and the history of science. My best, Frederick
Wokeism is not just contagious stupidity but just money propelled by a global government in the shadows.
What’s your best way to wake-up those who don’t want to open their eyes?
Please share your most effective wake-up strategies.
The more the awakened, the sooner this nightmare will be over!
If the person doesn’t want to discuss injections, then food is a good start:
Why is food poisoning legal?
How Rumsfeld forced the approval of Aspartame.
Artificial sweeteners, MSG, PFAS, Glyphosate ... go organic!
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/why-is-food-poisoning-legal
Then I’d follow with "Are you opened to see if the actual data matches your opinion?"
Then I start showing some of the shortcomings of the Pharma industry:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/system-failure-ai-exposes-zero-government
Then, show that every single person in the planet should be suing Pfizer for deliberately injecting an undisclosed carcinogenic monkey virus (SV40) into the cell nucleus of the clueless biohacked, as officially recognized by Health Canada !!!
If he doesn’t like the topic, I’d show this video (all you need is 10 secs in the middle, who doesn’t have 10 seconds for you):
https://odysee.com/@ImpossiblyWackedOutWorld:f/WTC-7-Free-Falling:8
(caveat about the beginning: pot destroys your brain + “Raises Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke”)
9/11: two "planes", yet the third tower (WTC7) imploded, free falling on its footprint like in a controlled demolition. It was out of reach, and all 7 World Trade Center towers needed to be rebuilt, not the closer towers not belonging to World Trade Center... and the “owner” took an insurance policy for the WTC against terrorism, just months before, when no one was taking them … he didn’t show up for work precisely on 9/11 … just as his 2 grown up siblings (they never skipped work before). The inside information about the FUTURE 9/11 event helped masons make trillions by shorting the stock exchange: the records were deleted by the SEC so they wouldn't be prosecuted !!!
Watch amazing short and more evidence here:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/911-2-planes-3-towers
Please watch all of this! Your life depends on it, because there's a plan to murder 95% of the global population by 2050… written on the masonic Georgia guide-stones: “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 … ”:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/depopulation-or-extermination
- J6: The false flag operation of the fake riot was planned, incited and guided by FBI agents, who broke into the Capitol !!! The same mason-plot was copy-pasted to disband the insurrection against the stolen elections in Brazil! All intel agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA) were founded by masons and are run by them for their own nefarious goals.
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/j6-what-you-need-to-know
It's such a mason manual that they organized the same J6 play in Brazil when it was proven that the voting machines owned by mason Soros, were rigged:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-2020-american-coup
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/dominion-over-us
- At least since the 90s, vaccines are weaponized to reduce the population, for example:
1. Adding hCG to infertilize women: lab detected in 30 countries
2. Overpassing the FDA 10 ng limit to human DNA “contamination” by 2000%, thus causing neuro-damage (autism, asperger, tics, dyslexia in 29% of kids, etc.) and childhood cancer epidemic (n.b. leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas)
Check soundchoice.org or videos at bottom after this page:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/wake-up-videos
- COVID was designed as a primer for even more lethal COVID haccines:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-real-covid-timeline
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/not-vaccine-not-gene-therapy-just
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/what-do-bioweapons-have-to-do-with
- Wake up videos:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/wake-up-videos
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/2050-youll-go-nowhere-and-youll-be
- It's genocide for depopulation:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/depop-vaccines-no-myth
- Their main source of power apart from sin-empowered demons? NOT a coincidence that the USA left dollar convertibility to gold in 1971, precisely triggering the exponential government deficit coupled with the trade deficit and inflation.
This is the Achilles’ heel of all nations: masonic and satanic secret societies counterfeit paper money and launder trillions with which they buy Banks, seats in the Federal Reserve (the only private run Central Bank in the world), political careers and parties, puppeticians, listed corporations, media, healthcare corporations and organizations, universities, foundations, judges, etc.:
Confessions of illuminati, David Rockefeller:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/david-rockefeller-illuminati
Confessions of ex-illuminati Ronald Bernard (all lodges obey the same master, Satan):
https://odysee.com/@QuantumRhino:9/Revelations-by-an-Insider--The-Ronald-Bernard-Interviews--Part-1-5:5
The way out of this mess:
1. Create an easy system for real money: private currencies/warrants based on real assets, goods, services, etc. (gold, corn, oil, distance/volume/weight transportation, labor human hour/minute, etc.)
2. Ban legal tender. Let the free markets decide which real-currencies/valuables/warrants they prefer to trade with
3. Ban paper-backed currencies (unlike real-backed ones of point 1.)
4. Enforce a Legal Banking Reserve of 100% of deposits (so banks don't create money based on air) and therefore there's no excuse for a Central Bank, because there would be no risk of bank-runs since all their loans are fully backed with deposits
Anything else you might think of?
Now, are you really ready for this?:
The full PLAN exposed:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-plan-revealed
16 laws we need to exit Prison Planet
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/laws-to-exit-planet-prison
Plllllease, on my knees, don’t believe me, just do your own homework by searching the following in yandex.com, mojeek.com (includes crawl date filter and substack search), gigablast.com, startpage.com, duckduckgo.com (not Google, Bing, Yahoo censors). The key terms to test them? Child Satanic Ritual Abuse, Child Satanic Ritual Murder.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/rpn5aj/i_have_found_the_perfect_uncensored_search_engines/
https://www.deepwebsiteslinks.com/uncensored-search-engines-for-anonymous-searching/
President John Quincy Adams: “Masonry ought forever to be abolished. It is wrong - essentially wrong - a seed of evil, which can never produce any good.”
If you are a mason or know a mason, ask him to ask his 33° master to put in writing and sign it, who is "the great architect" and that he is not Lucifer. If he refuses, then he’ll know who he is really serving, Satan: tell him to get out of masonry NOW. Sooner or later he’ll be required to trample on a cross to get to a higher degree.
Confessions of a former mason (Serge Abad-Gallardo):
https://www.ncregister.com/interview/confessions-of-a-former-freemason-officer-converted-to-catholicism
Confession of 33rd degree master mason - Masons worship deities/demons
https://rumble.com/v294ksc-words-from-33rd-degree-master-mason-rare-video-masons-worship-all-sorts-of-.html
Masonry's Satanic Connection
https://odysee.com/@HiddenTruths:c/Masonry's-Satanic-Connection:4
Masonry's Satanic Doctrine | From Their Own Books
https://rumble.com/v2wg24a-masonrys-satanic-doctrine-from-their-own-books.html
Do Freemasons Worship Lucifer？ Evidence They Don't Want You To See
https://odysee.com/@John_4-14:a/Do-Freemasons-Worship-Lucifer%EF%BC%9F-Evidence-They-Don't-Want-You-To-See-%EF%BD%9C-Hidden-Agendas---Walter-Veith:0
Satanic Ritual Abuse and Secret Societies [1995] [VHS]
https://odysee.com/@thisworldworks:1/satanic-ritual-abuse-and-secret-societies-1995:3
Satanic Pedophilia Torture and Blood - Dark Satanic Secrets Revealed
https://odysee.com/@Gmail.com:52/822821884_Satanic-Pedophilia-Torture-and-Blood---Dark-Satanic-Secrets-Revealed:4
UNITED NATIONS LUCIFER AND THE LUCIFER TRUST
https://odysee.com/@dynosarus:c/UNITED-NATIONS-LUCIFER-AND-THE-LUCIFER-TRUST:4
WARNING! Weaponization of vaccines:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/vaxxed-v-unvaxxed/
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/depopulation-or-extermination
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/depop-vaccines-no-myth
I'm trying to decide if this is good news or bad news. Good I suppose in that we can take comfort from the fact that wokeism is not some new pathogen uniquely likely to sink civilization, no, it's just another mind virus and we've survived many such before. But bad news in that we can be sure that it's just a matter of time until the next virus strikes even if we do survive this one.
Perhaps we should view wokeism as the Black Death of our time -- a Black Death of rationality even if there aren't piles of bodies in the streets physically speaking. But how long would/will it take to repair the damage even if we started today? And the disease has not yet even crested. God damn.
Excellent points all. I wish I knew the answer.
I look forward to your further writing Frederick.
Not "Historie naturelles des abeilles" but "Histoire naturelle..."
Thanks…
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?
"What else has science missed through misogyny and lack of imagination?"
Quite often it seems to have its thumbs, to the elbows, on the scales. ICYMI:
"The Egg And The Sperm: How Science Has Constructed A Romance Based On Stereotypical Male-Female Roles
As an anthropologist, I am intrigued by the possibility that culture shapes how biological scientists describe what they discover about the natural world. If this were so, we would be learning about more than the natural world in high school biology class; we would be learning about cultural beliefs and practices as if they were part of nature. In the course of my research I realized that the picture of egg and sperm drawn in popular as well as scientific accounts of reproductive biology relies on stereotypes central to our cultural definitions of male and female."
https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/Martin1991.pdf
What a wonderful analysis! I think it’s spot on. Thank you for your thought-provoking, and fresh perspective!
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.
Well, I agree with you. I certainly don't have the answer, and I'm not quite sure if it's possible to change a set of cognitive structures once they are deeply embedded in one's thinking. But, that doesn't mean we should stop trying! Thanks for your comment, Frederick
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.
That’s a very good point, indeed. I wish I had some clue as to the answer. Hopefully, it will not be centuries but, perhaps, years.
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
Thanks... I'll read it this weekend!
Entertaining and informative piece. Kudos!
Thank you very much!
Well done piece. I had trouble finding the name of the author until I found the link to the original article. Prete?
Yes, that's me.
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!
It's so true about wanting to! I agree with you, books are a joy. Interestingly, now you can get facsimiles of these very old books on Amazon. I hope the world never loses its love of a real book! Thanks so much for the comment.
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.
You are correct. History can put things into perspective. Each generation thinks they have thought up something brand-new and act with the assuredness of discovery. History makes you humble, I think. Thank you so much for comment.
As I've grown older my experience of time has changed and it has thrown 'history' into a totally different perspective. I can still remember the moment when I suddenly realised how very near (in terms of generations) I was to my ancestors. It was a vivid moment which made me see human behaviour in a totally different way.
A very astute comment, and important realization. You made me think about the fact that my grandmother was born about seven years before Charles Darwin died, yet my youngest son is 22 years old. That's a perspective you only get from age and quiet thoughtfulness. Unfortunately, our stories, perspectives, and knowledge are seldom passed down to, nor appreciated by most 'younger' people (however you define that). Do I sound like I'm yearning for the days in which we all sat around the campfire at night and spun tall tales… or, at least, families sat around the dinner table and had conversations about life? I guess I am... I do, however, feel blessed that my son Ben and I spend our dinner hours in thoughtful conversation... I think that he is gaining the perspective to which you referred your comment... Thanks for writing.
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.
Thank you, I appreciate it. I don't know anything about your field but it must be fascinating, too. Perhaps you can suggest something in your field for me to read. Thank you very much for the comment!
“anthropo-narcissism” -- chef’s kiss
yeah, I just coined that word… Just popped into my head, and I thought it applied!
I’d love to steal it ❤️
please do... it'd be a privilege!
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!
Thanks for the comment! That's another very good story. I don't know much about the old primate literature except in the field of learning behavior. I suppose, however, that it suggests we should be eating more bananas… and having more midnight rendezvous! Thanks again.
But we ARE primates
I should have said "We're not monkeys!"
I thought the point of monogamy was to offer paternal certainty to the male, thereby winning/justifying his further protection and support.
LoL. Reminds me of a quip from my father -- gawd rest his soul: "motherhood is a matter of certainty, fatherhood a matter of conjecture."
Catchy phrase!