L.L.Bean 
Outdoor Sporting Specialties 
Durable 
Chino 
Comfort 
$14.00 
\ 
You’ll get more wearing 
pleasure from these pants 
than any others you own 
Made of high grade combed 
cotton/polyester twill Per- 
manent crease, washable 
No ironing required Neat looking for sports or work 
Color, Light Tan Men's waist sizes 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 
29 Inseams 30" and 32" Even waist sizes 30 to 44 
plus 31 and 33, Inseams 29". 30", 31", 32" 33" 
and 34" 
Please Ship Postpaid 
#1822W Wm's and Mn's Chinos @ $14 00 
Size Inseam 
□ Check Enclosed 
□ VISA 
□ Master Card 
□ American Express 
Card Number 
□ SEND FREE CATALOG Exp Date 
Name 
Address 
City ... .. 
State Zip 
L. L. Bean, Inc. 
^^72^Ca*c^t^reeport^1^04033 
y 
in Canada’s 
Fundy Isles 
Nature expeditions in search 
of whales, porpoise, seals and 
pelagic birds. The package 
includes transportation from 
Saint John, New Brunswick, 
accommodation, meals, films 
and lectures. 
Far information write 
MARATHON 
INN 
Grand Manan Island 
New Brunswick. Canada 
or contact your 
Air Canada or 
\ ia Rail agent 
down and fell out. The numbers of 
glossipetrae from Malta no longer 
foreclosed an origin in sharks’ mouths, 
even under the Mosaic chronology 
(which Steno did not question). Ac- 
cording to the common legend that 
great scientists are unprejudiced ob- 
servers who can shuck constraints of 
culture and see nature directly, Steno 
came to his correct conclusion — that 
glossipetrae are fossil sharks’ teeth — 
because he made better observations. 
Steno was a fine observer, but he was 
also an adherent to the new mechani- 
cal philosophy that insisted on phys- 
ical causes for phenomena and viewed 
detailed internal similarity as a sure 
sign of common manufacture in the 
mechanical sense. Steno did not see 
better; rather, he possessed the con- 
ceptual tools to interpret his excellent 
observations in a necessary way that 
we continue to regard as true. 
But Steno then abstracted the prob- 
lem of glossipetrae in a remarkably 
original manner — and established 
with this great insight his legitimate 
role as the founder of modern geology. 
The tongue stones found within rocks, 
Steno reasoned, were problematic be- 
cause they were solids enclosed within 
a solid body. How did they get in 
there? Steno then recognized that all 
the troubling objects of geology were 
solids within solids — fossils in strata, 
crystals in rocks, even strata them- 
selves in basins of deposition. A gen- 
eral theory for the origin of solids 
within solids could provide a guide 
for understanding the earth’s history. 
Taxonomy is often regarded as the 
dullest of subjects, fit only for mind- 
less ordering and sometimes deni- 
grated within science as mere “stamp 
collecting” (a designation that this 
former philatelist deeply resents). If 
systems of classification were neutral 
hatracks for hanging the facts of the 
world, this disdain might be justified. 
But classifications both reflect and di- 
rect our thinking. The way we order 
represents the way we think. Histori- 
cal changes in classification are the 
fossilized indicators of conceptual rev- 
olutions. 
The French scholar Michel Fou- 
cault uses this principle as his key 
for understanding the history of 
thought. In Madness and Civilization, 
for example, he notes that a new 
method of dealing with the insane 
arose in the mid-seventeenth century 
and spread rapidly throughout Eu- 
rope. Previously, madmen had been 
exiled or tolerated and allowed to wan- 
der about. In the mid-seventeenth cen- 
tury, they were confined in institutions 
along with the indigent and unem- 
ployed, a motley assemblage by mod- 
ern standards. We might regard this 
classification as senseless or cruel, but 
as Foucault argues, such a judgment 
will not help us to understand the sev- 
enteenth century. 
Why classify together the poor, the 
unemployed, and the insane; what 
common theme could inspire such an 
ordering? Foucault argues that the 
birth of modern commercial society 
led to a new designation of the cardinal 
sin, the one that had to be made in- 
visible by confining all those who, for 
whatever reason, wallowed in it. That 
sin was idleness, and Foucault shows 
that sloth replaced the old medieval 
curse of pride as the most fundamental 
of the seven deadly sins in seventeenth- 
century texts. It mattered little that 
the insane did not work for biological 
or psychological reasons, and the un- 
employed for want of opportunity. 
Steno also reordered the world in 
a way that must have seemed as cur- 
ious to his contemporaries as the amal- 
gamation of madness and poverty 
seems to us. As his contemporaries 
gathered the idle, Steno identified 
solids within solids as a fundamental 
class of objects, divided them from 
everything else, and developed a set 
of criteria to sort his solids into sub- 
divisions representing the different 
causes that fashioned them. The great 
Prodromus is, fundamentally, a trea- 
tise on a new system of classification 
for solids within solids — a classifica- 
tion by common genesis, rather than 
superficial similarity of outward ap- 
pearance. Steno’s revolution in 
thought arises from his altered classi- 
fication — and his curious title, so un- 
derstood, could not be more devas- 
tatingly appropriate. I have read the 
Prodromus many times, but when I 
finally understood its message, just 
last month, that bizarre title sent a 
shiver up my spine. 
The Prodromus has usually been 
misinterpreted by geologists who at- 
tribute Steno’s success to his use of 
modern observational methods. (In 
fact, although the Prodromus is sprin- 
kled with astute observations, its long- 
est section is a speculative discussion 
on the origin of solid bodies, based 
on the incorrect premise that all solids 
must be generated from liquids, and 
that the form of a solid indicates the 
motions of the liquids that produced 
it.) His translator writes, for example: 
22 
