"Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer," or so wrote Voltaire. So, it seems that some memes are just too tasty and choice to be eradicated, (e.g., the great Eskimo snow hoax, or the hundredth monkey), but the one that caught my eye today was the boiling frogs metaphor. [via the original Wiki] Whit Gibbons chased down a zoologist, Dr. Victor Hutchison at the University of Oklahoma, to answer a German reporter's question about the boiling frogs meme.
Vic's answer was as follows: "The legend is entirely incorrect! The 'critical thermal maxima' of many species of frogs have been determined by several investigators. In this procedure, the water in which a frog is submerged is heated gradually at about 2 degrees Fahrenheit per minute. As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so." Naturally, if the frog were not allowed to escape it would eventually begin to show signs of heat stress, muscular spasms, heat rigor, and death.
As with many things in this world, I posit a literary origin, in this case Dante:
E come a l'orlo de l'acqua d'un fosso
stanno i ranocchi pur col muso fuori,
sì che celano i piedi e l'altro grosso,sì stavan d'ogne parte i peccatori;
ma come s'appressava Barbariccia,
così si ritraén sotto i bollori.[Dante. Inferno, xxii, 25-30]
I started with a French author, and I must end with one.
Posted by jim at June 20, 2003 09:49 AMIl ne suffit pas à un sage d'étudier la Nature et la Vérité, il doit oser la dire en faveur du petit nombre de ceux qui veulent et peuvent penser; car pour les autres, qui sont volontairement esclaves des préjugés, il ne leur est pas plus possible d'atteindre la Vérité qu'aux grenouilles de voler.
[Julian Offray de la Mettrie. 1748. L'Homme machine]