Carolyn: I’ve been working on Aristotle’s History of Animals as part of a course I am sitting in on, Benoit Dayrat’s “History of Biology”. From the course I’ve learned a lot of background on how Aristotle viewed the world, which is invaluable for interpreting his works. Aristotle was interested in the workings of the universe, which he divided into the supralunary world (celestial bodies; his wording basically translates as “up there”) and the sublunary world (“down here”). He was obsessed with perfection, and thought that celestial bodies such as stars were perfect in that they were eternal and constantly moved in an endless circle around the Earth. He thought the sublunary world was not perfect, but instead imitated the perfection of the supralunary world. He thought that all plants and animals had a soul, but he didn’t define a soul as a spirit. Instead, the soul was defined as form, and he thought that different types of souls imposed their forms on matter to make different kinds of living beings. The soul is not eternal, but imitates eternity through generation or reproduction, where the soul or form is transmitted from parent to offspring. Though these ideas sound very strange, this was the foundation of scientific thinking up until the 1800s.
While Aristotle’s History of Animals is traditionally thought of as a natural history text, a large portion of the text is actually concerned with moriology, the study of parts. The History of Animals includes descriptions of different parts of animals, specifically whether they are dry or moist, hot or cold, and which elements their organs are composed of. This is because Aristotle thought that all matter in the sublunary world was formed from the four elements (fire, water earth and air) and that one element could be transformed into another through the addition or subtraction of heat or moisture. Fire was hot and dry, earth was cold and dry, water was cold and moist, and air was hot and moist.
Emily: After encountering some undetermined Gomphoides Selys, 1854 species in our collection, I decided to look deeper into the genus. I found that Gomphoides appear to have a very narrow range and not much known about their habitats/life history In this paper, Belle attempts to separate South American Gomphidae into 6 subfamilies and their tribes, of which Gomphoides is in the Gomphoidini tribe. His classification is not based on wing venation, as do other keys for this family. He highlights the importance of colored areas in distinguishing subfamilies,specifically yellow and brown patches on their wings. Beyond wing characters, larval characters and head characters, such as occipital plates are also utilized. Gomphoides can be separated from other genera by its stout 10th abdominal segment. I look forward to reading more recent literature about the phylogeny of gomphids and how the genera are split up now.
I’ve also been reading about bioindicators/water quality studies/telos of science, but more on that later!
Andy: This time of year my reading list is dominated by articles that are relevant to what I am teaching in Insect Biodiversity and Evolution. In preparing for a lecture about fossils I read about concretions, old amber, Canadian amber, Burmese amber, and a million other fossil articles. Every year I debate how much fossil knowledge I should include in my course. It’s incredibly important, laying a foundation for our understanding of insect evolution, but we don’t have a big collection. <whispering>And I’m not exactly an expert on the geology of fossils.</whispering> We did add a taphonomy exercise/demonstration to our fossil lab! I’ll let you know how it went.
Other readings have to do with how to write effective research and teaching statements. I’m trying to put together my promotion packet, and it is certainly an intensive process! It seems that the majority of guidance focuses on statements for job applications and tenure. What about for promotions? Should it emphasize a different set of values and experiences?
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