X-Message-Number: 7193 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 22:05:54 -0500 (EST) From: Robin Helweg-Larsen <> Subject: Scientific measures of "non-scientific" activities Colin McEvedy, in his wonderful "Penguin Historical Atlas of the Ancient World", has the challenging sentence in its introduction: "History being a branch of the biological sciences, its ultimate expression must be mathematical." He then goes on to show the correlation between the amount of indentation on a coast-line, the way to highlight it on a grid, and whether the local culture is maritime or land-lubbing. My point is that, with enough wit and insight, scientific measures can indeed be created for even highly unlikely aspects of human activity. And eventually they will be! Always optimistically, Robin HL Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7193