J. Cultural Process: a Debate in American Archaeology

BOOKS

Culture histolY (J.cultural process: a debate in American archaeology

coffee table of the archaeological fra ology: the question of whether archaeol ternity, at least until an inexpensive pa ogy should be the study of culture his by Kent V. Flannery perback edition can be produced. tory or the study of cultural process. In Willey's archaeological career is re view of this debate it is interesting to flected in monographs and articles on note that in practically the same para AN INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN AR every major land mass of the New graph Willey can brand his book "cul CHAEOLOGY, VOLUME I: NORTH AND World, from the region of the Woodland ture history" and yet argue that he is MIDDLE AMERICA, by Gordon R. Wil culture in the U.S. Northeast to the "not championing any one point of ley. Prentice-Hall, Inc. ($16.95). Maya area, the shell mounds of Panama view." and the coastal border of the Andean Perhaps 60 percent of all currently dominant characteristic of Ameri- civilization. He is a perennial favorite ambulatory American archaeologists are A can archaeology has been its long who for a variety of reasons has never concerned primarily with culture history; history of reaction to American . come under attack. One reason is his this includes most of the establishment ethnology. When ethnology was little avoidance of any one polarized theoreti and not a few of the younger generation. more than the collecting of spears, bas cal position; the other is his adaptability Another 10 percent, both young and old, kets and headdresses from the Indians, in the face of continual change. While belong to what might be called the archaelogy was little more than recovery other members of the establishment have "process schoo!." Between these two ex of artifacts. 'When ethnology increased clenched their fists and gritted their tremes lies a substantial group of archae its attention to community structure, ar teeth when their formerly useful theories ologists who aim their fire freely at both chaeology responded with studies of set dropped from favor, Willey has shown history and process. And although Wil tlement pattern-an approach in which no such hostility; younger archaeologists ley himself belongs to this group, his 1n Gordon Willey was an innovator. Publi sense he would rather join them than lick tmduction to American Archaeology also cation of works by Julian H. Steward and them. And he is always free to join them consWutes a massive restatement of the others on "cultural ecology" was an as long as he maintains no vested interest accomplishments of the culture-history swered by great archaeological emphasis in any comprehensive theory that needs schoo!. on "the ecological approach." When the defending. Most culture historians use a theOl'eti concept of cultural evolution emerged This book, well organized from the cal framework that has been described triumphant after years of suppression, primary literature and from constant as "normative" (the term was coined by archaeology showed great interest in conversations with Willey's colleagues, an ethnologist and recently restressed by evolutionary sequences and in the classi is no exception. It is unlikely to stir up an archaeologist). That is, they treat cul fication of "stages" in the human career. controversy except where vVilley com ture as a body of shared ideas, values The interaction of these two disciplines mits himself to one of a series of possible and beliefs-the "norms" of a human has been increased by the fact that in the theories proposed by others-for ex group. Members of a given culture are U.S. both are housed in departments of ample, siding with Emil W. Haury rath committed to these norms in different de anthropology; as Willey remarked some er than Charles C. Di Peso on the inter grees-the norm is really at the middle 10 years ago, "American archaeology is pretation of the U.S. Southwest, or with of a bell-shaped curve of opinions on anthropology or it is nothing." Henry B. Collins rather than Richard S. how to behave. Prehistoric artifacts are And now, in 1967, Willey-Bowditch MacNeish on the American Arctic. It is viewed as products of these shared ideas, Professor of Mexican and Central Amer not Willey's aim to intrude his own the and they too have a "range of variation" ican Archaeology and Ethnology at ories into the synthesis. Indeed, he tells that takes the form of a bell-shaped Harvard University-has written a monu us that he is "not demonstrating or cham curve. mental synthesis of New World prehis pioning any one process, theory or kind In the normative framework cultures tory. There is nothing like it. Recently of explanation as a key to a comprehen change as the shared ideas, values and we have had several edited volumes on sive understanding of what went on beliefs change. Change may be temporal the New World with contributions by re in prehistoric America." Clearly Willey (as the ideas alter with time) or geo gional specialists, but this book is written feels that it would be misleading to do graphic (as one moves away from the cover to cover by one man. Thus the in more than present the student with the center of a particular culture area, com evitable lack of firsthand familiarity with facts as most of his colleagues agree on mitment to certain norms lessens and certain areas is partially offset by the them in 1967. Hence "the intent of this commitment to others increases). Hence advantage of having one consistent ap book is history-an introductory culture culture historians have always been con proach and writing style throughout. Al history of pre-Columbian America." cerned with constructing "time-space though aimed at the student, the book's This statement by Willey makes it ap grids"-great charts whose columns show costly format almost prices it out of the propriate to consider one of the current variation through the centuries. Some student range. It is a centerpiece for the theoretical debates in American archae- have focused an incredible amount of

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© 1967 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC attention on refining and detailing these fact populations cannot go beyond what ponents does the system have, what en grids; others have been concerned with Binford calls "paleopsychology"-they ergy source keeps it going, what mech discovering "the Indian behind the arti cannot cope with systemic change. And anisms regulate it and so on? Often the fact"-reconstructing the "shared idea" where Willey says that "archaeology fre first step is an attempt to discover the or "mental template" that served as a quently treats more effectively of man role of the trait or implement by de model for the maker of the tool. in his relationships to his natural en termining what it is functionally asso While recognizing the usefulness of vironment than of other aspects of cul ciated with; some process theorists have this framework for classification, the ture," Binford would protest that most run extensive linear-regression analyses process school argues that it is unsuit culture historians have dealt poorly with or multivariant factor analyses in order able for explaining culture-change situ these very relationships; their model of to pick up clusters of elements that vary ations. Members of the process school "norms," which are "inside" culture, and with each other in "nonrandom" ways. view human behavior as a point of over environment, which is "outside," makes When such clusterings occur, the analyst lap (or "articulation") between a vast it impossible to deal with the countless postulates a system-tools X, Y and Z are number of systems, each of which en systems in which man participates, none variables dependent on one another, con compasses both cultural and noncultural of which actually reflect a dichotomy be stituting a functional tool kit that varies phenomena-often much more of the lat tween culture and nature. The concept nonrandomly with some aspect of the ter. An Indian group, for example, may of culture as a "superorganic" phenom environment, such as fish, wild cereal participate in a system in which maize is enon, helpful for some analytical pur grains, white-tailed deer and so on. By grown on a river floodplain that is slowly poses, is of little utility to the process definition change in one part of a system being eroded, causing the zone of the school. produces change in other parts; hence best farmland to move upstream. Simul As a convenient example of the dif the process theorists cannot view arti taneously it may participate in a system ference in the two approaches, let us ex facts X, Y and Z as products of cultural involving a wild rabbit population whose amine three different ways in which norms, to be accepted or rejected freely density fluctuates in a 10-year cycle be American archaeologists have treated at way stations along diffusion routes. cause of predators or disease. It may also what they call "diffusion"-the geograph When such elements spread, it is because participate in a system of exchange with ic spread of cultural elements. It was the systems of which they are a part have an Indian group occupying a different once common to interpret the spread of spread-often at the expense of other kind of area, from which it receives sub such elements by actual migrations of systems. sistence products at certain predeter prehistoric peoples (a view, still common Thus the archaeologist James Deetz mined times of the year; and so on. All in Near Eastern archaeology, that might recently presented evidence that the these systems compete for the time and be called the "Old Testament effect"). spread of a series of pottery designs on energy of the individual Indian; the The culture historians attacked this posi the Great Plains reflectednot the "ac maintenance of his way of life depends tion with arguments that it was not nec ceptance" of new designs by neighbor on an equilibrium among systems. Cul essary for actual people to travel-just ing groups but a breakdown of the ma ture change comes about through minor "ideas." In other words, the norms of trilocal residence pattern of a society variations in one or more systems, which one culture might be transmitted to an where the women were potters. Designs grow, displace or reinforce others and other culture over long distances, caus subconsciously selected by the women reach equilibrium on a different plane. ing a change in artifact styles, house (and passed on to their daughters) ceased The strategy of the process school types and so on. A whole terminology to be restricted to a given village when is therefore to isolate each system and was worked out for this situation by the the matrilocal pattern collapsed and mar study it as a separate variable. The ulti culture historians: they described cul ried daughters were no longer bound to mate goal, of course, is reconstruction of tural "traits" that had a "center of ori reside in their mothers' villages. In this the entire pattern of articulation, along gin" from which they spread outward case, although each potter obviously did with all related systems, but such com along "diffusion routes." Along the way have a "mental template" in her mind plex analysis has so far proved beyond they passed through "cultural filters" when she made the pot, this did not "ex the powers of the process theorists. Thus that screened out certain traits and let plain" the change. That spread of design far their efforts have not produced grand others pass through; the mechanics of could only be understood in terms of a syntheses such as Willey's but only small this process were seen as the "accept system in which designs, containers and scale descriptions of the detailed work ance" or "rejection" of new traits on the certain female descent groups were non ings of a single system. By these meth part of the group through whose filter randomly related components. The mem ods, however, they hope to explain, they were diffusing. At great distances bers of the process school maintain that rather than merely describe, variations from the center of origin the traits were this is a more useful explanatory frame in prehistoric human behavior. present only in attenuated form, having work, but even they realize that it is only So far the most influential (and con been squeezed through so many filters a temporary approach. They are becom troversial) member of the process school that they were almost limp. ing increasingly aware that today's hu has been Lewis R. Binford of the Uni Since process theorists do not treat man geographers have ways of studying versity of California at Los Angeles, and a given tool (or "trait") as the end prod diffusion that are far more sophisticated it is interesting to note that Binford's uct of a given group's "ideas" about what and quantitative than anything used by name is confined to a single footnote on a tool should look like but rather as one contemporary archaeologists. the last page of Willey's text. It is Bin component of a system that also includes One other example of the difference ford's contention that culture historians many noncultural components, they treat in approach between the culture his are at times stopped short of "an explan diffusion in different ways. The process torian and the process theorist is the way atory level of analysis" by the normative theorist is not ultimately concerned with each treats the use of "ethnographic framework . in which they construct "the Indian behind the artifact" but analogy" in archaeological interpreta their classifications. Efforts to recon rather with the system behind both the tion. The culture historian proposes to struct the "shared ideas" behind arti- Indian and the artifact: what other com- analyze and describe a prehistoric be-

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© 1967 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC havior pattern, then search the ethno terminism that the culture historians themselves. They spoke in awe of the graphic literature for what seems to be began. incompleteness of the archaeological rec analogous behavior in a known ethnic It was once common to hear human ord and of the irresponsibility of specu group. If the analogy seems close history explained in terms of "turning lating on scanty data. Somehow they enough, he may propose that the prehis points," of crucial decisions made by seemed to feel that if they could get to toric behavior served the same purpose "great men." This view proved unac gether a few more potsherds, a few more as its analogue and then use ethnograph ceptable to the culture historians, with projectile points or a few more architec ic data to "put flesh on the archaeological their normative framework of shared tural details, their conclusions would be skeleton." ideas, values and beliefs. They argued unshakable. There has not been, how The process theorist proposes a dif convincingly that this body of shared ever, any convincing correlation between ferent procedure. Using the analogous norms determined the course of history the quantities of data they amassed and ethnic group, he constructs a behavioral -not the individual, who was simply a the accuracy of their conclusions. model to "predict" the pattern of archae product of his culture. Possibly the most The process theorists assume that ological debris left by such a group. This devastating critique of the individual as "h'uth" is just the best current hypothe model is then tested against the actual decision-maker was due to Leslie A. sis, and that whatever they believe now archaeological traces of the prehistoric White, who in one brilliant polemic con will ultimately be proved wrong, either culture, with the result that a third body cluded that the course of Egyptian his within their lifetime or afterward. Their of data emerges, namely the differences tory and monotheism would have been "theories" are not like children to them, between the observed and the expected the sam� "even had Ikhnaton been a bag and they sufferless trauma when the archaeological pattern. These differences of sand. , theories prove "wrong." Their concern are in some ways analogous to the "re Now the process school would like to is with presenting developmental models siduals" left when the principal factors move crucial decisions still farther from to be tested in the field, and they have in a factor analysis have been run, and the individual by arguing that systems, noted no consistent relationship between they may constitute unexpectedly criti once set in motion, are self-regulating to the usefulness of a given model and the cal data. When the archaeologist sets the point where they do not even neces absolute quantity of data on which it is himself the task of explaining the differ sarily allow rejection or acceptance of based. To be useful a model need only ences between the observed archaeologi new traits by a culture. Once a system organize a body of disorganized data in cal pattern and the pattern predicted by has moved in a certain direction, it auto such a way that hypotheses can conve the ethnographic model, he may come matically sets up the limited range of niently be tested, accepted, modifiedor up with process data not obtained possible moves it can make at the next rejected. Thus the process school will through the use of analogy alone. critical turning point. This view is not continue to present model after model Willey is certainly alert to the current original with process-school archaeolo on the basis of returns from the first few debate, and although he summarizes the gists-it is borrowed from Ludwig von precincts, and at least some of the cul New World in a predominantly culture Bertalanffy's framework for the develop ture historians will continue to accuse history framework, he concludes Volume ing embryo, where systems trigger be them of being "hasty," "premature" and I with a discussion of the hopes and havior at critical junctures and, once "irresponsible." And the issue will be set promises of the process school. These he they have done so, cannot return to their tled years from now by another genera leaves for the future: "I shall be less original pattern. The process school ar tion that will probably not belong to concerned with process or a search for gues that there are systems so basic in either school. cultural 'laws,''' he says, "than with at nature that they can be seen operating Willey's synthesis sums up nearly 100 times attempting to explain why certain in virtually every field-prehistory not years of American archaeology, and it cultural traditions developed, or failed excepted. Culture is about as powerless comes at the start of one of the most ex to develop." Certainly the process school to divert these systems as the individual citing archaeological eras yet begun. My would argue that he cannot explain, is to change his culture. prediction for the next decade is that within a culture-history framework, why Obviously individuals do make deci we shall see general systems theory, such traditions developed or failed to sions, but evidence of these individual game theory and locational analysis all develop; yet, as he explicitly states, ex decisions cannot be recovered by archae applied successfully to American archae planation is not the purpose of this vol ologists. Accordingly it is more useful for ology in spite of the loudest mutterings ume but rather history. the archaeologist to study and under of the establishment. I also predict that, Let us hope, as Willey seems to, that stand the system, whose behavior is de in spite of his decision to concentrate his there is a place in American archaeology tectable over and over again. Obviously own efforts on producing reliable cul for both approaches. Certainly we can this approach is too deterministic for ture history, we shall hear all these use both the historical synthesis and the some purposes, but for others it is of subversive approaches applauded by detailed analysis of single processes. By great theoretical value. Gordon Willey. no stretch of the imagination do all proc But then if both historical and pro ess theorists propose to reject history, be cessual approaches are useful, why Short Reviews cause it is only in the unfolding of long should there be a debate at all? I believe sequences that some processes become the debate exists because of two basical HE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY. visible. ly different attitudes toward science. TPaul Edwards, editor in chief. The In fact, what does the difference be The previous generation of archaeolo Macmillan Company and The Free Press tween the two schools really amount to? gists, who did mostly culture history but ($219.50). When the philosophe s of In terms of the philosophy of science, I also laid the foundations for the process France assembled their great Encyclo believe the process approach results in school, were often deathly afraid of be pedie, it undertook to encompass at moving "decisions" about cultural be ing wrong. Many of them felt (and many least the beginnings of all knowledge. havior even farther away from the indi still feel) that if we will only wait until Accordingly its marvelous prints display vidual. It is part of a trend toward de- all the facts are in they will speak for all the engines and artifacts of the age.

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© 1967 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC The Encyclopedia of Philosophy is the dwindled and specialized work of our modern philosophers, some 500 of them, mainly American, with a company of British allies and a sprinkling from the corners of the earth. Most of the authors are professors of philosophy by vocation, but a few are distinguished amateurs such as Arthur Koestler and Martin Gardner. All the great universities house contributors, IBM claims one on the pay roll, but what the expert on Arabic Aris totelianism does to earn his pay from the Pentagon is not made clear. There are some 1,500 articles in the 4,000 large pages of these eight volumes. About 900 of the articles are listed by the names of individual thinkers from the history of philosophy up to the present day. Indeed, several of the contributors are the subjects of articles. The affinities of the contemporary profession are clear from the apportionment of space. Rous seau and Socrates get about five pages each, Whitehead 10, Hobbes and Hume 15 each. To dispose of the protean thought of Lord Russell takes 20 pages and three authors, who divide their task by topics. The central nonbiographical burden of the work is the analysis of language. Witty and acute, if somehow picayune, article after article discusses just what one might mean under headings such "A TELESCOPE SUITABLE FOR ROCKET-BORNE INSTRUMENTATION" as "Any and All," "If" and "Why." There are many excellent pieces on the founda The descriptive quotation above is the title of a paper pub tions of mathematics and of logic, with a lished by Patrick H. Verdone of Goddard Space Flight Center, simple and clearheaded article on infin regarding a special all-quartz Questar used in two rocket flights to ity and a deep one on Zeno and his para photograph the sun in the near ultraviolet. Mr. Verdone's report doxes particularly catching the eye. an the equipment and its performance appears in the March 1967 j\Iore technical matters are also handled issue of Applied Optics. The entire project is covered in 0 paper carefully, such as Craig's theorem on the called "Rocket Spectroheliograph for the Mg II Line at 2802.7 completeness of axioms. Another large A" by Kerstin Fredga. theme is theology, treated with a catholic In the past we have pOinted with pride to the many things interest in all eras and climes. There is, Questar can do for you, the hobbyist, by bringing you superb for example, an entry "Popular Argu resolution for astronomical and terrestrial observing and photog ments for the Existence of God," and a raphy, in a fully mounted yet portable instrument. Imagine how quite earnest piece on reincarnation. gratifying it is that this versatility also can serve so many fields The word is the beginning and the end in industry and scientific research. The closed-circuit televising of of this work; there are amazingly few nearby objects, photography of earth and sky from the Gemini pictures, maps, diagrams or even formu capsules, laser sending and receiving, and now the racket-borne las. Two articles on logic display a ma investigation of the sun, are but a few of the uses so radically jor fraction of the diagrams in the vol different as to oppearto be beyond the capacity of a single instru umes. All this verbal argument lends ment. Yet all are in the day's work for Questar. It strikes us that a curiously vicarious quality to these when you moke the world's finest optical system, the world finds books. The article on aesthetics is 50 ways to use it. pages mostly about visual impressions of beauty and has zero illustrations. There Questa,., the world's finest, most versatile small telescope, priced from 5795, is described in 40-page booklet. Send $1 for mailing is evidence that this second-handedness an,'where in Nort/] America. By air to rest of lVeste,." Hemisphere, leads to credulousness; extrasensory per Europe and northern Africa, $2.50; AIIStralia and elsewhere, $3.50. ception is regarded as a fact as plain as evolution, and even the ruined mind of Wilhelm Reich, the promoter of orgone� is not entirely dismissed. There are good pieces on scientific issues such as action at a distance, although they are only be- BOX 20 NEW HOPE, PENNSYLVANIA 18938

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© 1967 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC ginnings, and an outstanding one on rocco; everywhere else in the Old World of Germany and Hugo de Vries of the quantum mechanics. A monument to its he has been introduced. Rabbits came to Netherlands independently found his re author, the late Norwood Russell Han England in the 12th century. There they sults and his paper, and modern genetics son, it brings to the reader something of paradoxically became a thoroughgoing began its triumphs. (The paper was by the power that physicists know resides pest once they were subjected to the no means unknown in its time but was in that subtle and surprising theory. steel trap; the trap all too frequently simply misunderstood and neglected by Students of philosophy, in both the caught their predators, and the fast those who were aware of it.) broad and the narrow sense, will find the breeding rabbits gained thereby. The The first of these books is a reprint book valuable, although perhaps not for control of rabbits by myxomatosis was a volume, bringing together the papers of a long time to come. It will nonetheless special case; the Australian rabbits are Mendel, his letters to a contemporary remain an honest and able report of a gaining an immunity even to the new scientist, the excerpt from the contem time of fashionable modesty. And it is strains of the pathogen. Airplane-sown porary treatise that misunderstood his impossible not to admire one volume poison bait and good fencing has con work, the papers of the rediscoverers whose spine displays these alphabetized trolled Tasmanian rabbits even though and a wonderful controversy. The argu contents: Cabala to Entropy. they have never been attacked with ment was raised by the statistician R. A. myxomatosis. Forty million wild rabbits Fisher, who demonstrated that Mendel's OUR-LEGGED A USTRALIANS, by Bem- are killed for skin and meat in Australia data showed improbably small fluc Fhard Grzimek. Hill and Wang ($7.95). each year; there are plenty more on the tuations and strongly suggested that This great conservationist and zooman, range. he altered them to make his logical point. defender of Africa's Serengeti Plains, Grzimek comes away enthralled, sad It would be a great joke on the world if travels to Australia to report on what the dened and hopeful: there are two-legged that were true; however, Sewall Wright two-legged inhabitants have preserved Australians who begin to care and scien makes it pretty clear that what hap of their unique fauna. Market-hunting tists who are finding out how to make pened, and still happens in most genetic for kangaroo meat is a busy trade, but their concem count. If they, and not the papers, was a slight unconscious selec it does not in fact appear to threaten any heedless developers, succeed, the year tion in the course of the many subtle de species of kangaroo with the final solu 2000 will find Australian animals still cisions one must make, in classifying and tion; rather it is the loss of specialized visible outside of the postage stamps counting living materials, that tends to habitat to road, ranch and suburb that where today the Tasmanian wolf is me eliminate extreme cases. brings extinction to many species. There morialized. One hopes Grzimek is right; The second work is a first-rate sym are three genera of marsupials that have his book will help. posium celebrating genetics. The main leamed to behave like "animated kites": sections, each including papers at a gen the pygmy glider, the sugar glider and HE O RIGIN OF G ENETICS: A M ENDEL eral level by four or five leading geneti T OURCE OO cists, center on the gene concept, the the greater glider. They represent sepa . S B K, edited by Curt Stem rate inventions, that is, each resembles and Eva R. Sherwood. W. H. Freeman molecular basis of heredity, the action of the others less than it does some nonfly and Company ($2.25). HERITAGE FROM the gene in the cell, the genetics of popu ing marsupial. The photographs of them MENDEL, edited by R. Alexander Brink lations; finally; there is a fascinating set shown here are endearing. There is also with the assistance of E. Derek Styles. of papers on applied genetics and its his a shot-perhaps unique-of a wild dingo The University of Wisconsin Press tory, plus papers by the always original running free. His marsupial analogue, ($2.95). G. MENDEL M EMORIAL S YMPO Tracy M. Sonneborn and H. J. Muller. the Tasmanian wolf, "has reached the SIUM 1865-1965, edited by Milan Sosna Indeed, the last word is had by the ir- point of no return and the best of inten and B. Sekla. Verlag Wemer Flach (31 .repressible and even eccentric Muller, tions will not save it now." Here Grzimek West German marks). Gregor Mendel who seeks to define life itself as a ma becomes angry. If this largest carnivo planted peas in the experimental garden terial with the potential for evolution by rous marsupial dwelt somewhere nearer of the Augustinian monastery at Brno in inherited variation and natural selection. the centers of culture, he feels, "there eight cycles; his biggest plot was about This is perhaps Muller's last piece of would be a tremendous to-do"; in Tas seven meters by 35. He chose peas be writing (he died earlier this year), and it mania it was attacked by trap and gun cause he was studying traits of hybrids is well worth reading. as a sheep-killer. Roads and people under conditions that allowed artificial The third book contains the proceed spoiled its natural cover, just as they did crossing. He taught experimental physics ings, both historical and biological, of a the cover of the wolf in England and and natural history at the Brno second fine symposium held at Brno itself on Scotland. No Tasmanian wolf has been ary school, for which he had a good uni the Mendel centennial. It is particularly captured since 1933, although as recent versity training in mathematics and in valuable as a record of the present-day ly as 196 1 a couple of fishermen seem to physical experiment. He published his Russian estimate of Mendel and his have encountered one. There are prob work-for which he had found a remark work-an estimate much like the non ably a few on the wild western shore of able explanation, particulate heredity Russian one. the island, but they are doomed unless a and chance segregation-in a single pa range is set aside for them and stocked per in the journal of the Brunn Research ADIO A STRONOMY, by John D. Kraus, with game. Society. He published a second paper R with a chapter by Martti E. Tiuri. The case of the rabbit (and the less four years later, the year after he had McGraw-Hill Book Company ($13.75). familiar and less dramatic case of the been elected abbot. Then the choice of Thirty years ago the author, then a camel) present man-caused increases in materials was not so happy; the flower he young radio engineer working with as the Australian fauna. There is a fine used is often parthenogenetic, and shows tronomers at the University of Michigan, chapter on the rabbit, complete with the no response to an apparent cross. His tried without success to detect radiation story of the artificial rabbit plague and work was repeated unknowingly by two from the sun at a wavelength of one the rabbit flea. It is a striking fact that other experimenters in the years before centimeter. For 20 years he worked in the rabbit was a native of Spain and Mo- 1900, and in that year Carl Con'ens the fundamentals of radio, becoming an

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© 1967 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC outstanding designer of antennas and famous problem enter the ken of proof; more difficult task of using characteristic inventor of the helical microwave an there seems to be no sure evidence con functions for the most general result is tenna. For a dozen years now he has cerning any earlier practical understand simply alluded to. This expresses very been caught by radio astronomy; he is ing, or concerning Leonhard Euler's re well the interests of most readers of such the designer of the Ohio State U niver puted prescience in the matter. This a text, who are sure to prize meaning sity radio telescope, a structure with a monograph is a full and modern review, above detailed technique, even above fixed vertical parabola looking at a tilt with all the methods, in their interrela the maximizing of generality. Distribu ing plane mirror across three acres of a tion, that a century of effort has built for tions that are not normal come in for ground plane defined by wires, and he the solution of the still-refractory prob genuine attention (although not enough directs its work. This is his text, aimed at lem. The problem is part of the theory time is spent on the lognormal case), and seniors or early graduate students, and of plane graphs: figures consisting of a tests of significance and regression meth it is patently a useful, up-to-date, clear set of points in a plane and reasonable ods are given brief but quite usable and pedagogically often brilliant intro curves joining them. The earliest meth explanations. One helpful chapter, in duction to the subject. It is plainly the ods of this theory do go back to Euler; formal and critical, is spent on infer book of an understanding engineer; his famous formula using the number of ence, comparing the classical use of about two-thirds of the text is devoted faces, edges, vertexes and so on is a pil confidence intervals with more dubious to fundamentals such as the elements lar of the work. Duality plays a role, as methods and the modern decision meth of radiative transfer, polarization by between cube graph and octahedron, ods out of games theory. This chapter is Stokes parameters and matrixes, the the and most of the work revolves around a convincing and commonsense account, ory of propagation in an ionized medium, ingenious means of relating graphs one kept at a surprisingly simple mathemati the response of antennas and the many to the other, by various operations such cal level (and rather skeptical in its con ingenious designs for squeezing signal as contracting and decomposing. The re clusions). Some calculus alone will carry and resolution out of noise and small sults are tantalizing. It is known that five any thoughtful reader through this small, scale. A chapter on receivers is done by a colors will suffice for any graph; there is clear book, leaving him with both under guest expert (Tiuri) at the level of block a certain conjecture which in a particu standing and skill. diagrams and noise-figure analysis. A lar case would imply the truth of the good general chapter on coordinates and four-color theorem that has been proved ON A PIECE OF CHALK, by Thomas the usages of astronomy begins the work, for a wide variety of cases but not for Henry Huxley. Edited and with an and a lively overview of the appearance, the correct one; finally, the best result to introduction and notes by Loren Eiseley. nature and mechanisms of radio sources date, due to C. E. Winn 30 years ago, Drawings by Rudolf Freund. Charles from the sun to quasars ends it-almost. demonstrates that any graph that can Scribner's Sons ($4.95). Next year will The fact that it is a working text is made not be managed with only four colors mark the centennial of this luminous lec visible by the appendixes: the famous 3C must have at least 36 vertexes. The proof ture delivered to the workingmen of list of radio sources is here, with three or appears here, and it requires a rather Norwich during a meeting of the British four other useful tabulations; there is a tedious and inelegant enumeration of Association for the Advancement of Sci graph for easy conversion between ga cases. Professor Ore clearly hopes his re ence. Good-humored and yet grave, lactic and equatorial coordinates, and view will set a "younger generation" to deep and yet simple, this noble account another one for correcting catalogued work. The problem does not seem to be of the span of geologic time and of the positions for the precession of the equi accessible to amateurs; this text is, how flux of life remains as eloquent as when noxes. This is a book that will sit on the ever, much more self-contained than it was new. In these pages one sees the desk of just about every American stu most modern monographs of mathe Foraminifera of the chalk, flint tools dent of radio astronomy, and the pirating matics. from the boulder clay, the Great Eastern, of that splendid page which presents the and the sea bottom from Ireland to New outlines of 10 extragalactic radio sources RINCIPLES OF STATISTICS, by M. G. foundland (not, alas, as level as the "pro on a common linear scale will be epidem PBulmer. The M.I.T. Press ($7.50). A digious plain" evoked by Huxley but ic among popular and technical lecturers good college library is likely to give over broken by the massif of the Mid-Atlantic alike. Only for the theory of the sources 10 or 15 feet of shelving to elementary Ridge). These are among the dozens of and for a deeper astronomy is the text texts on statistics and applied probabil subjects drawn with devotion to the insufficient; there we still have nothing ity. Here is a fresh text that stands out truth and a quiet beauty by Rudolf better than the Russian astronomer I. S. from that host. It achieves its graceful Freund, in a way that would have Shklovski's now somewhat dated book eminence by the breadth and interest of pleased Huxley. Professor Eiseley writes and the journals. its prose and by the balance of its intel a sensitive and elegiac appraisal of the lectual design. It never offends by the man that would not have pleased him at HE FOUR-COLOR PROBLEM, by Oy- cookbook presentation of tables, of re all, shadowed as it is with pessimism and Tstein Ore. Academic Press, Inc. ($12). sults and of complicated procedures that underlain by the very hunger Huxley Francis Guthrie was a mathematics stu the reader is supposed to learn to use thought. he had helped men to assuage. dent of Augustus de Morgan at Univer without much understanding, nor does A handsome reissue of a piece of prose sity College London in 1852; he dropped it inhibit by the detailed and rigorous that has fully earned the epithet "clas out, but first he showed his brother pursuit of mathematical results into sic." Frederick that "the greatest necessary depths where a user will rarely expect to number of colors to be used in coloring dive. For instance, it derives the central RINCIPALS AND PRACTICES OF HEAVY a map so as to avoid identity of color limit theorem via moment-generating PCONSTRUCTION, by Ronald C. Smith. in lineally contiguous districts is four." functions with a few clear pages of text Prentice-Hall, Inc. ($16). There are many Frederick Guthrie asked de Morgan to on the implications of the result. The city folk who find themselves watching explain the result, and de Morgan wrote troubles with those distributions whose the performance of builders with the at William Rowan Hamilton. Thus did this moments diverge are mentioned, and the tentiveness and pleasure of the concert-

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