Greetings!
        Thank you Allen Dick, for your comments. I was beginning to
think that the many hours of reading and writing that I have done on
this subject were for nought; that I was the only one that even cared
about this. I certainly welcome divergent points of view. I have
found that the more I look into it, the more difference of opinion I
find. If I have presented one side of the story, it's because that
may be the point of view I have the most affinity with, but each must
come to one's own conclusions.

        I obtained a copy of Wenner and Wells's book "Anatomy of a
Controversy" (1990). At the same time I obtained "Animal Minds," by
Griffin (1992).

        They write in the preface:
        "...we became embroiled in what has become one of this
century's most important controversies in biology, a controversy that
ostensibly revolves around the question of a "language" among honey
bees. However, the topic of a honey bee "language" hardly qualifies
as an important issue in science."

        Contrast Seeley:
        "...this investigation of the food-collection process in
honey bee colonies provides a paradigm of the analytic work needed to
disclose the mechanisms which integrate a group of organisms into a
functional whole."

        On the question of anthropomorphism, Wenner and Wells write:
        "At the same time that many students of animal behavior were
yielding to the spell of teleology and anthropomorphism, biochemistry
was moving in the opposite direction."

        Contrast Griffin:
        "For many years any consideration of animal consciousness was
strongly discouraged by the accusation that it was anthropomorphic.
... But the charge of anthropomorphism has been inflated to include
even the most tentative inference of the simplest kind of conscious
thoughts by animals."

Best wishes to all.


- - - - - - - - - - - -
Peter Borst
Apiary Technician
Dyce Honeybee Lab
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY  14853
[log in to unmask]
phone: 607 275 0266
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/plb6/
- - - - - - - - - - - - -