<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: Gould</title></head><body> <div>At 10:09 PM -0700 24/6/02, Chuck Grimes wrote:</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Finally got started on Gould's `The Structure of Evolutionary<br> Theory'. Below is a long excerpt that I think probably summarizes the<br> entire thrust of the book. Pretty awesome stuff. On the other hand, I<br> have no idea how this will strike biologists. Any other there want to</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>comment?</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>It reminded me of George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" http://www.gutenberg.net.au/0200151.txt. Here's an excerpt:</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote>[...]</blockquote> <blockquote><br></blockquote> <blockquote>Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me</blockquote> <blockquote>give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time</blockquote> <blockquote>it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a</blockquote> <blockquote>passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a</blockquote> <blockquote>well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:</blockquote> <blockquote><br></blockquote> <blockquote>I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor</blockquote> <blockquote>the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches</blockquote> <blockquote>to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and</blockquote> <blockquote>chance happeneth</blockquote> <blockquote><br></blockquote> <blockquote>Here it is in modern English:</blockquote> <blockquote><br></blockquote> <blockquote>Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion</blockquote> <blockquote>that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to</blockquote> <blockquote>be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of</blockquote> <blockquote>the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.</blockquote> <blockquote><br></blockquote> <blockquote>This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3), above, for</blockquote> <blockquote>instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will</blockquote> <blockquote>be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending</blockquote> <blockquote>of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the</blockquote> <blockquote>middle the concrete illustrations--race, battle, bread--dissolve into the</blockquote> <blockquote>vague phrase "success or failure in competitive activities." This had to</blockquote> <blockquote>be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing--no one</blockquote> <blockquote>capable of using phrases like "objective consideration of contemporary</blockquote> <blockquote>phenomena"--would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed</blockquote> <blockquote>way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now</blockquote> <blockquote>analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains 49</blockquote> <blockquote>words but only 60 syllables, and all its words are those of everyday</blockquote> <blockquote>life. The second contains 38 words of 90 syllables: 18 of its words are</blockquote> <blockquote>from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six</blockquote> <blockquote>vivid images, and only one phrase ("time and chance") that could be</blockquote> <blockquote>called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase,</blockquote> <blockquote>and in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the</blockquote> <blockquote>meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind</blockquote> <blockquote>of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to</blockquote> <blockquote>exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of</blockquote> <blockquote>simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if</blockquote> <blockquote>you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human</blockquote> <blockquote>fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence</blockquote> <blockquote>than to the one from Ecclesiastes.</blockquote> <blockquote><br></blockquote> <blockquote>As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in</blockquote> <blockquote>picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in</blockquote> <blockquote>order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long</blockquote> <blockquote>strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and</blockquote> <blockquote>making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this</blockquote> <blockquote>way of writing, is that it is easy. It is easier--even quicker, once you</blockquote> <blockquote>have the habit--to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption</blockquote> <blockquote>that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only</blockquote> <blockquote>don't have to hunt about for words; you also don't have to bother with</blockquote> <blockquote>the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so</blockquote> <blockquote>arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a</blockquote> <blockquote>hurry--when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making</blockquote> <blockquote>a public speech--it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized</blockquote> <blockquote>style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind</blockquote> <blockquote>or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a</blockquote> <blockquote>sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes</blockquote> <blockquote>and idioms, you save much mental effort at the cost of leaving your</blockquote> <blockquote>meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the</blockquote> <blockquote>significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up</blockquote> <blockquote>a visual image. When these images clash--as in The Fascist octopus has</blockquote> <blockquote>sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot--it can</blockquote> <blockquote>be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the</blockquote> <blockquote>objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking.</blockquote> </body> </html>