Thylacine Dingo Comparison
Carl Buell
In Slate, Matt Gaffney explains how the constraints of a given system - in this case crossword puzzles - may lead to suspiciously similar yet independent solutions. Gaffney wrote a Poe-themed crossword with the elements BRAVE NEW WORLD, INTRAVENOUS DRIP, CONTRAVENE, COBRA VENOM, and VENTNOR AVENUE (all of which have "raven" embedded in them). He was very proud of his puzzle, but. . .
I soon learned that I wasn't as clever as I thought. Over the next couple of days, I started getting e-mails from solvers telling me that my theme had been done before. In July of this year, at the National Puzzlers' League convention in Baltimore (which I didn't attend), crossword legend Mike Shenk had written--in honor of the host city--a puzzle with the same theme. His five theme entries: BRAVE NEW WORLD (!), INTRAVENOUS DRIP (!!), CONTRAVENE (!!!), COBRA VENOM (!!!!), and ST. CLAIR AVENUE (a major Toronto thoroughfare).
Ouch! Sounds like plagiarism, right? But Gaffney's essay explains how this could happen - he even gets a third crossword maker to draft another puzzle using the same starting conditions, and that one ends up very similar too!
This is an interesting analogy to convergent evolution - the biological process by which unrelated lineages converge on similar solutions to the challenges of a given environment. The results can seem unlikely, but when you look at the constraints, it makes a lot more sense: you're starting with the same basic toolkit - genes/proteins or English words - and trying to solve for the same conditions. That's how you get the strikingly similar thylacine and dingo (portrayed beautifully above by Carl Buell), the American cacti/African euphorbia, or the wings of bats and the wings of birds, or even the systems used by various aquatic species to generate electrical fields - convergent evolution on the molecular, physiological, and organismal levels. While (unlike crossword design) evolution is not purposeful, certain solutions are simply so adaptive - and biologically available - that they recur independently through chance.
Life Science
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
Nice example, Jessica. And I think you hit on a key word in the beginning; "constraint."
Yes, a thylacine and a dingo possess similar adaptations for hunting, but they both mammals (even if the former was a marsupial and the latter a placental) that did not require all that much change to be adapted to superficially similar forms. Similar forms were derived from similar "starting points", just as with the crossword, so we should not really be all that surprised by such cases of convergence! I think this aspect of contingency and constraint is all-too-often forgotten in discussions of convergent evolution, so I was glad to see you mention it here.
Posted by: Laelaps | December 1, 2009 8:27 AM
Given the constraints of scales in music, I think this line of reasoning is relevant to claims of musical copyright infringement/plagiarism. Songs that sound similar to one another may lead to allegations of plagiarism, but there may need to be additional evidence that one artist heard or was influenced by the other work to prove the case.
Posted by: David Bruggeman | December 1, 2009 11:27 AM
I've very recently read an article which described the Australian adaptations(all marsupials) to animals from other parts of the globe. I was fascinated as well. Vertebrate wing structure is also very interesting. There was an illustration in another book which showed the "finger-wing," of a pterodactyl, the "arm-wing," of a bird, and the "hand-wing," of a bat. As I recall the book further described how the same gene located at different spots on the chromosome would deterimine which bones elongonated or ceased growth...HOX genes(?) had to look it up to get it. Can I trust wikipedia? At any rate the whole concept was fascinating. I lack "real" people to talk to about such issues...thus I appreciate Science blogs a great deal...Thanks for posting this!
Posted by: Mike Olson | December 1, 2009 2:18 PM
There was a very famous case of Paul McCartney telling George Harrison that a song he wrote ("My Sweet Lord") was in fact the Shondelles' "He's So Fine". George apparently dismissed it and said he would record it anyway, and Paul shrugged it off. George had a plagiarism suit brought against him for the apparent theft of the music, that he claimed he had never heard the song before.
Ultimately, George was found guilty of "subconscious plagiarism", meaning he must have at least heard it in passing and it stuck in his mind whether he remembered hearing it or not. This discussion brings a new wrinkle to this argument. Maybe George DID think up an exact same musical piece without ever having heard the original.
Years ago, I had a fraternity brother who wrote songs play an original piece for me that was hauntingly familiar. It wasn't until he realized that I wasn't getting it that he flat played out what I thought I heard all along...The Star Spangled Banner.
Posted by: Mark Proulx | December 2, 2009 9:22 AM
Excellent post, BioE!
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | December 4, 2009 1:44 PM