always, alas, the outcome) is to cut through the verbiage, reach a stable and practical decision, and move on to the world of things.
Which leads—did you think that I had forgotten my opening paragraph?—back to philately. The United States government, jumping on the greatest bandwagon since the hula hoop, recently issued four striking stamps bearing pictures of dinosaurs—and labeled Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, Pteranodon , and Brontosaurus .
Thrusting itself, with all the zeal of a convert, into the heart of commercial hype, the U.S. Post Office seems committed to shedding its image for stodginess in one fell, crass swoop. Its small brochure, announcing October as “national stamp collecting month,” manages to sponsor a contest, establish a tie-in both with T-shirts and a videocassette for The Land Before Time , and offer a dinosaur “discovery kit” (a $9.95 value for just $3.95; “Valid while supplies last. Better hurry!”). You will, in this context, probably not be surprised to learn that the stamps were officially launched on October 1, 1989, in Orlando, Florida, at Disney World.
Amidst this maelstrom of marketing, the Post Office also engendered quite a brouhaha about the supposed subject of one stamp—a debate given such prominence in the press that much of the public (at least judging from my voluminous mail) now thinks that an issue of great scientific importance has been raised to the detriment and shame of an institution otherwise making a worthy step to modernity. (We must leave this question for another time, but I confess great uneasiness about such approbation. I appreciate the argument that T-shirts and videos heighten awareness and expose aspects of science to millions of kids otherwise unreached. I understand why many will accept the forceful spigot of hype, accompanied by the watering-down of content—all in the interest of extending contact. But the argument works only if, having made contact, we can then woo these kids to a deeper intellectual interest and commitment. Unfortunately, we are often all too ready to compromise. We hear the blandishments: Dumb it down; hype it up. But go too far and you cannot turn back; you lose your own soul by dripping degrees. The space for wooing disappears down the maw of commercialism. Too many wise people, from Shakespeare to my grandmother, have said that dignity is the only bit of our being that cannot be put up for sale.)
This growing controversy even reached the august editorial pages of the New York Times (October 11, 1989), and their description serves as a fine epitome of the supposed mess:
The Postal Service has taken heavy flak for mislabeling its new 25-cent dinosaur stamp, a drawing of a pair of dinosaurs captioned “ Brontosaurus .” Furious purists point out that the “brontosaurus” is now properly called “apatosaurus.” They accuse the stamp’s authors of fostering scientific illiteracy, and want the stamps recalled.
Brontosaurus versus Apatosaurus . Which is right? How important is this issue? How does it rank amidst a host of other controversies surrounding this and other dinosaurs: What head belongs on this dinosaur (whether it be called Brontosaurus or Apatosaurus ); were these large dinosaurs warm-blooded; why did they become extinct? The press often does a good job of reporting basic facts of a dispute, but fails miserably in supplying the context that would allow a judgment about importance. I have tried, in the first part of this essay, to supply the necessary context for grasping Brontosaurus versus Apatosaurus . I regret to report, and shall now document, that the issue could hardly be more trivial—for the dispute is only about names, not about things. The empirical question was settled to everyone’s satisfaction in 1903. To understand the argument about names, we must know the rules of taxonomy and something about the history of debate on the principle of priority. But the exposure of context for Brontosaurus
Which leads—did you think that I had forgotten my opening paragraph?—back to philately. The United States government, jumping on the greatest bandwagon since the hula hoop, recently issued four striking stamps bearing pictures of dinosaurs—and labeled Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, Pteranodon , and Brontosaurus .
Thrusting itself, with all the zeal of a convert, into the heart of commercial hype, the U.S. Post Office seems committed to shedding its image for stodginess in one fell, crass swoop. Its small brochure, announcing October as “national stamp collecting month,” manages to sponsor a contest, establish a tie-in both with T-shirts and a videocassette for The Land Before Time , and offer a dinosaur “discovery kit” (a $9.95 value for just $3.95; “Valid while supplies last. Better hurry!”). You will, in this context, probably not be surprised to learn that the stamps were officially launched on October 1, 1989, in Orlando, Florida, at Disney World.
Amidst this maelstrom of marketing, the Post Office also engendered quite a brouhaha about the supposed subject of one stamp—a debate given such prominence in the press that much of the public (at least judging from my voluminous mail) now thinks that an issue of great scientific importance has been raised to the detriment and shame of an institution otherwise making a worthy step to modernity. (We must leave this question for another time, but I confess great uneasiness about such approbation. I appreciate the argument that T-shirts and videos heighten awareness and expose aspects of science to millions of kids otherwise unreached. I understand why many will accept the forceful spigot of hype, accompanied by the watering-down of content—all in the interest of extending contact. But the argument works only if, having made contact, we can then woo these kids to a deeper intellectual interest and commitment. Unfortunately, we are often all too ready to compromise. We hear the blandishments: Dumb it down; hype it up. But go too far and you cannot turn back; you lose your own soul by dripping degrees. The space for wooing disappears down the maw of commercialism. Too many wise people, from Shakespeare to my grandmother, have said that dignity is the only bit of our being that cannot be put up for sale.)
This growing controversy even reached the august editorial pages of the New York Times (October 11, 1989), and their description serves as a fine epitome of the supposed mess:
The Postal Service has taken heavy flak for mislabeling its new 25-cent dinosaur stamp, a drawing of a pair of dinosaurs captioned “ Brontosaurus .” Furious purists point out that the “brontosaurus” is now properly called “apatosaurus.” They accuse the stamp’s authors of fostering scientific illiteracy, and want the stamps recalled.
Brontosaurus versus Apatosaurus . Which is right? How important is this issue? How does it rank amidst a host of other controversies surrounding this and other dinosaurs: What head belongs on this dinosaur (whether it be called Brontosaurus or Apatosaurus ); were these large dinosaurs warm-blooded; why did they become extinct? The press often does a good job of reporting basic facts of a dispute, but fails miserably in supplying the context that would allow a judgment about importance. I have tried, in the first part of this essay, to supply the necessary context for grasping Brontosaurus versus Apatosaurus . I regret to report, and shall now document, that the issue could hardly be more trivial—for the dispute is only about names, not about things. The empirical question was settled to everyone’s satisfaction in 1903. To understand the argument about names, we must know the rules of taxonomy and something about the history of debate on the principle of priority. But the exposure of context for Brontosaurus
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