Entelechy: Online journal of ideas with an evolutionary flavor
![[Image]](http://www.entelechyjournal.com/httpdocs/ninashengoldreview1.gif "Review of Entelechy")
SUNY New Paltz Psychology department faculty member Alice Andrews is the editor and publisher of an online journal, Entelechy: Mind and Culture. Entelechy (see review at left) publishes an eclectic mix of poetry, short fiction, essays, and visual art and makes for stimulating browsing. Evolutionary biology is a central theme. The “about“ page describes it as follows.
Concerned with ideas — psychological, philosophical, spiritual, scientific, political, mathematical, semiotic, memetic, postmodern, evolutionary, and revolutionary.
Darwin-touched — Evolutionary fiction and biofiction; Darwinian literary criticism; as well as essays, art, poems, and reviews with evolutionary themes.
Visionary — e.g., work by artists and writers who want to connect with their audience; who are driven to heal or raise the consciousness of their audience (i.e., who are compelled to affect their audience emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, aesthetically, morally); who are fearless in style and content.
3rd-culture —i.e., work which attempts to bridge the arts and humanities with science. Work, then, by artistic and literary scientists; as well as scientific/science-interested writers and artists, and anything in-between and beyond.
Many contributions highlight sexuality, attraction, romance, and beauty, enlightening them as lived experiences of human relationship, expressions of desire—and as an element of human biology, and so, a product of our evolution.
Andrews has explored this area in a novel, Trine Erotic, described at Amazon.com as follows:
[P]erhaps the first novel to explore evolutionary psychology (the new ’science of the mind’). This ‘novel of ideas’ — what author Andrews calls ‘evolutionary fiction,’biofiction,’ and ‘meta-seductive fiction’– also explores why we write: to seduce (as mating strategy), to process, to heal ourselves and ultimately readers, to find meaning.
The latest issue on the web site is Fall 2009, issue #9, and a message on the home page states that the journal is not accepting new submissions. There is plenty of browsing still to be had. It would be unfortunate if the publication were closing down for good.
Andrews is helping to set up an Evolutionary Studies program at New Paltz, on the model created by David Sloane Wilson and colleagues at SUNY Binghamton. Best luck, Alice, in your efforts!
Graphviz: There’s an app for that!
The iPhone and the iPad touch have, admittedly, proven to be amusing. With the release of Instaviz, an implementation of Graphviz, it turns out that they can really be useful. At $9.99, Instaviz is one of the more expensive applications, but it is more than worth it. Graphs are created by tracing out shapes and connecting them by tracing out a line between them. Nodes of various shapes can be drawn, just as in the dot language. The app is remarkably good at determining what shape the user intends to draw, but will sometimes interpret what is intended to be a circle or ellipse as a diamond or record style. Node label, font, color, border, thickness, corner style, and fill color can be adjusted for each node. Misinterpretation of the the intended shape can be remedied using the formatting tools. Rendering of the graphs is animated (fun to watch!). Selecting a node by tapping it and shaking the iPod Touch/iPhone will delete a node. Graphs can be exported by email in a variety of formats, including Graphviz GV, PNG, PDF, Visio VDX, and—according to the documentation on the web site—can be imported from the Internet, and exported to Mac and Windows machines using the Instavue tool.
Drawing graphs is easier than doing so in OmniGraffle—which uses Graphviz to lay out directed graphs—or coding in dot, and I use it like a notepad for sketching graphs while writing or brainstorming using pen and paper or my laptop. It’s easy enough to draw, format, and revise graphs while standing on a crowded NYC subway, the ultimate test of usability for an iPod Touch/iPhone app.
Here’s the .gv code and the graph it generated, which I exported by email. Multiple formats can be emailed at once; the graph and code below were sent in a single email.
digraph "" {
graph [layout=dot, IVFileName="Graph", bb="0 0 82 260", IVLastNodeNumber=6, IVLastNodeChangeForDiamond="\"style\" = \"rounded\"; ", IVScale="1.344304", IVContentOffset="0.000000,0.000000"];
node [label="\N"];
graph [IVFileName="Graph 2"];
"EF25C82B-1C2D-4522-9C04-44398A56A51C" [label=1, IVPosition="20,159", shape=circle];
"49973C53-DFEE-4B54-B3B1-4B0CC2FCF66B" [label=3, IVPosition="112,-27", shape=ellipse];
"E4C0BEAD-41FE-44E5-9EAF-19E4A46896F9" [label=4, IVPosition="223,7", shape=ellipse];
"2067E4D4-502B-426C-85F7-1F26B8193D2B" [label=6, IVPosition="117,46", shape=ellipse];
"E4C0BEAD-41FE-44E5-9EAF-19E4A46896F9" -> "EF25C82B-1C2D-4522-9C04-44398A56A51C";
"49973C53-DFEE-4B54-B3B1-4B0CC2FCF66B" -> "EF25C82B-1C2D-4522-9C04-44398A56A51C";
"49973C53-DFEE-4B54-B3B1-4B0CC2FCF66B" -> "E4C0BEAD-41FE-44E5-9EAF-19E4A46896F9";
"2067E4D4-502B-426C-85F7-1F26B8193D2B" -> "49973C53-DFEE-4B54-B3B1-4B0CC2FCF66B";
}
Reading “Books” on the iPad and Kindle
The introduction of “wireless reading devices,” first, Amazon.com’s Kindle and Kindle DX, and now, Apple’s iPad—which is intended for more than reading—has created speculation and some worry and sadness, about the the demise of those other “wireless reading devices” with which we are all familiar—the printed book. Perhaps indeed Amazon and Apple are hastening the end of the printed book’s life. Nonetheless, there is at least one important sense in which the kindle, for its part, extends the influence of the printed book: essential elements of the experience of reading print are reproduced on the Kindle, and presumably, will be on the iPad as well.
The page layout of a good printed book is designed for readability. Traditionally, printed books are formatted with wide margins, a relatively narrow single column of text, single spaced, and justified. Variations on this theme—marginal notes, illumination and rubrication, and the like—are intended to mark a deviation from it, and reflect the author’s intention to influence the reader’s reception of the work. Some variations result from publishers’ need to keep costs down. A cheap paperback has narrow margins, using less paper. Most readers find this hard to hold without obscuring some of the text. It is difficult to find studies reported in the social science literature about why the standard page layout is especially readable. Part of the explanation is probably familiarity. Readers are accustomed to the standard layout. Single spacing, narrow columns, and justified margins may ease the burden on the eye by fixing the size and shape of the block of text it must scan.
The kindle, and most probably, whatever e-Book format is adopted for use with the iPad, preserve this basic layout design. The Kindle’s screen is designed to reproduce the experience of reading a printed book. The screen “reads like real paper,” and the controls for moving through an e-Book are labeled “next page” and “previous page,” and one display’s worth of content is labeled “page X of Y,” this label appearing on each “page” much in the same way it would on a printed page or a print book. One commenter on the Amazon.com web site remarks:
Overall, the DX feels more like text and less like device and comes closer to the stated goal of the Kindle: for the device to disappear, leaving only the joy of reading.
There are important senses in which e-Book readers and the Internet more generally have changed the way we read. One the one hand, the standard page layout is especially well-suited for reading extended passages of text, requiring concentration and a sense of continuity. Digital texts have capabilities not possessed by print books, including hypertext linking. Digital texts can be distributed to vastly more people than can print texts. Until no one reads in the manner in which printed books were intended, e-Books will continue to present text in the same way it is presented now, using the standard, traditional page layout design. Typography and layout of text on the Kindle is relatively primitive; fonts do not have ligatures, and they still appear blocky and angular, in contrast to the gorgeous and subtle characters produced even in Gutenberg’s own time. As e-Books develop, these visual elements will be developed, bringing the e-reading experience that much closer to the experience of reading a printed book.
Some of these remarks have appeared previously in “Print reference sources about evolution,” Evolution: Education & Outreach 2, 2009.
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