The following text was read during the presentation of the book form versus function, and Carlos Ochoa Olmos Ana Barahona on December 2, 2009 in granting me.
Fray Junipero Serra, a Catalan from Mallorca got a mission on land in chichimecas the second half of the eighteenth century, was the conviction of wanting teach Pames fierce warriors, Yaquis, Apaches, plowing the field and their wives to bake in the afternoon nougat California and Sonora as a way to bring peace to the troubled region as Christianity. However, the results seen today are far from the missionary intentions. The round-trip massacres in the chain of missions established from Queretaro to California realize it, not to mention the most despicable and degrading views in the region over the past hundred years, such as the foundation of Disneyland on the outskirts of angels and the outrageous lack of justice in the fire of ABC Childcare Hermosillo.
In any case, perhaps his enthusiastic optimism was based on the fervent prayer of Psalm 22, who was then in verses 20 to 21 says:
20 But thou, O Lord, do not stay away, you who are my strength, come quickly to my rescue. Pound my neck of the sword and my life from the claws of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion's mouth, save this poor wild bulls.
interesting thing is that in the Vulgate version, written in Latin in 1200 and probably in that study Serra says:
20 Tu autem, Domine, ne elongaveris; Fortitudo mea, ad adiuvandum me festina. ESRD to spear animam meam et de manu canis Unicam meam. 21 Salva me ex ore leonis et a cornibus unicornium humilitaten meam.
words, the wild bull evoked by Solomon himself in the original, had about eight hundred years become unicorn.
The big confusion is often due to typos amendable only with the touch of an eraser. The problem is that the rubber-based resin was one of the occurrences that had Joseph Priestley in 1770, the year that Father Junipero founded Monterrey in California, two years before the birth of Geoffrey Saint Hilaire and fair dates crazy people around Stuttgart to spread rumors have surfaced a graveyard of unicorns. Too late then, for the eraser. And is that on 4 April of that same year, 1770 in Stuttgart, a soldier under the command of Duke Eberhard Ludwig happen by chance with a deposit of what we know remains of mammoths, and local scientists at the time identified as part elephant, possibly killed by the Romans when they tried to conquer Germania under the leadership of Russell Crowe. Low served as judicious determinations of native scholars as most of the bones ended powder made in pharmacies as a remedy against all evil, and even the Duke Eberhard sent as a gift to the city of Zurich a real unicorn fossil.
But elephants and mammoths have been the only donors of organs from unicorns. Multitude of deer, goats, rhinos narwhals and of course, were regular suppliers to drugstores and Zapotec from India and the Middle East to the Baltic and Scandinavian countries. It is curious that the rhino horn formed by hair and therefore of dermal origin were considered the same anatomical structure of the narwhal's horn (actually a hypertrophied teeth) or bone spurs that some prehistoric mammals as Brontotherio. However, for Cuvier would not be so strange a thought such as he considered how animal structures were explained by the role they play. Conversely, for Geoffroy form did not arise as a result of a function, on the contrary, it was given as a kind of use of organizational structures. But the differences go beyond. Although Geoffroy not thinking of common ancestry to speak of unity of composition, undoubtedly raised the possibility of transformation of species, something that just excited to Cuvier. On a trip to Normandy Geoffroy was thrilled with the discovery that a local physician and naturalist named Eudes-Deslongchamps made in a quarry in the region. It was the remains of reptiles that already had been identified as Geoffroy 1825 varieties of extinct crocodiles that could be ancestors of crocodiles.
" is not contrary to reason (...) the fact that crocodiles of today may be descendants in direct line uninterrupted, of species antediluvian that are today in a fossil "
Geoffroy was not content with proposing new genera and tired elucubrar creative reconstructions telosaurios he described as beings with full lips trunk, leg fitted with a large middle finger phalanges surrounded rudimentary and a diet of algae, and in fact went much further by proposing the existence of links between reptiles and mammals. This was just a slip in the middle of anatomical debauchery that represented the ideas of Cuvier Geoffroy.
In late 1829 a couple of wards of Geoffroy wrote a report to the Academy of Sciences where he described the similarities found between molluscs and vertebrates. Was only a matter of turning the sock inside out as the poor mollusk to resemble slightly to a vertebrate. Geoffroy was excited because this was a support for his idea of \u200b\u200bunity of type which considered the possible existence of a single structural pattern among animals, from polyps to humans. Nothing more needed to adequately accommodate the specimens to find universal similarities between structures. He already had made, among different vertebrate taxa and between vertebrates and arthropods. For this represented Cuvier nonsense. He shows four different structural patterns, unique and unrelated to each other. Vertebrates, articulate, radiated and molluscs could not keep a unit type, much less a family relationship. It was clear that pangolins, copepods, jellyfish and snails that are sure to breakfast while reading Geoffroy proposals could not be different forms of the same structures. The inevitable showdown came in 1830 by more than two months that would have to see Manny Pacquiao and Edgar Sosa as practicing yoga or nurseries Condesa Coyoacan. At the end, Cuvier claimed a split decision victory on points, which are based on its thoroughness and an elegant style supported by massive amounts of data. But all this does not discredit the work of Geoffroy who brings a new vision, daring, resonance and current research in disciplines and in life still allowed some revenge, and not to Cuvier who died in 1837 but with other challengers as Blainville anatomist.
This is why Geoffroy and Cuvier embodied the controversy that existed between formal and functional biology. In this sense the book form versus function realizes the long road in this debate have continued formal and functional throughout history. The account that raises the book not only exposes the arguments that have been raised at various times, evidence that support and implications for biological thought. On the contrary explores the historical foundations oldest philosophical analysis links backstage debate with Kant and Aristotle and shows disagreement with the classical anecdote surrounding Geoffroy and Cuvier or Darwin and Owen extension. It is about a job that allows historical analysis of the natural sciences with a fresh perspective that sheds light not only doomed to historiography paleontology and comparative anatomy, but provides the basis for the scrutiny of contemporary debates about evodebo , genetic engineering, systematic, comparative genomics, genomic medicine and even the use of stem cells or the law on abortion, making us see differently from such authors as Richard Dawkins, Edward Wilson, Stephen Rose and William Wimsatt.
Thus the work function versus form Carlos Ochoa Olmos and Ana Barahona, represents perhaps the eraser which will edit, rewrite and to fully understand much of the history of biology, leaving the unicorns in the imagination to face the bull by the horns, whether they are homologous or analogous.
