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


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