Talk:Darwin's Dangerous Idea
I can't wait to see the novel use he puts 'spandrel' to, since there are four or five accepted and cognate meanings in architectural and art history, all relating to the space between a curved figure and a rectangular boundary - such as the space between the curve of an arch and a rectilinear bounding moulding, or the wallspace bounded by adjacent arches in an arcade and the stringcourse or moulding above them, or the space between the central medallion of a carpet and its rectangular corners... --MichaelTinkler
- Spandrel was coined by Stephen Jay Gould (not Dennett) in the papper "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme". In a evolution, is a metaphor for caractheristics side effects and not true addaptions to the environment. See: http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/gould/commentary/thurtle.html Joao
Uh, he didn't 'coin' spandrels, and from what you're quoting, Gould actually used it in reference to what I'm talking about - architecture. A quick check of the OED online gives the earliest usage in English in 1477. For a depiction, see http://www.pitt.edu/~medart/menuglossary/lists.htm#letterS and scroll down for 'spandrel' --MichaelTinkler
Thanks for pointing out it was Gould not Dennett - I'm not saying Gould invented the word - he quite clearly refers to the architectural meanings. I'm claiming he invented the metaphorical usage of 'spandrel' to mean 'feature that is the unintended consequence of other features' with particular relevance to design by evolution. This metaphorical meaning works no matter which kind of architectural spandrel is referred to: the spandrel is the un-designed gap between other features, which is then often exploited for a use of its own. -- The Anome
Actually, the indented part wasn't me. I was trying to point out without bothering to edit in the cognitive and evolutionary fields (about which I know little and care less) a dangerous tendency - to assume that the earliest mention of a word that one knows is a coinage. And by the way, Gould is interesting, but he's no art historian; it's a very loose metaphor. Since spandrels are the WALLS or the elaborated surface of a carpet, they're neither unintentional nor undesigned. Their elaboration and decoration may not be structural, which is what he's getting at, but, pace functionalists, structural support systems (arches) are not all there is to architecture. :) --MichaelTinkler
Wait a second - Gould doesn't believe in intelligent design, does he? He may believe in interstices between evolutionary events, but he should leave architecture at San Marco alone, even as a metaphor, because both the arch and the area between the arches were designed by conscious designer. 19th century architectural historians loved to make diagrams of the 'evolution of the pointed arch' and other elements of architecture, but they were metaphorizing, and they knew it. --MichaelTinkler