Re: Honey Bee
Posting the verses and science article links above your query, and response to your query below your it, for ease of reading: *Honey Bee* [Quran 16:68-69] 68 And inspired your Lord to the Bee that Take [second person female singular] among the mountains houses, and among the trees, and in what they construct 69 Then/ Moreover eat [second person feminine singular] from all the fruits, and follow [second person female singular imperative] ways/paths, of your Lord, made smooth. Comes forth, from her [singular feminine] bellies [plural], a drink of varying colours. In it is a healing for the mankind. Arabic grammatical form of each word: http://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp?chapter=16verse=68 http://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp?chapter=16verse=69 National Geographic: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/honeybee/ Worker honeybees are all females and are the only bees most people ever see. They forage for food and build and protect the hive, among many other societal functions. https://insects.tamu.edu/continuing_ed/bee_biology/lectures/password/Internal_Anatomy_of_Honey_Bees_PN.pdf Food enters through the esophagus and enters the crop (aka honey stomach). Most digestion and absorption occurs in the midgut (a.k.a. small intestine). The small intestine opens to the rectum through which waste is expelled. http://beeinformed.org/2011/07/from-the-flower-to-the-hive/ http://beeinformed.org/2011/07/from-the-flower-to-the-hive/slide-b/ The crop and proventriculus make up what is referred to as the fore-gut while the ventriculus (stomach) and pyloric valve constitute what is otherwise known as the mid-gut. The small intestine and rectum form the region called the hind-gut. Each organ plays an integral role in digestion, absorption, and excrement. http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/eof/4 Each lens is sensitive to ultraviolet light, which can reveal markings on flowers that are invisible to humans but inform the bees where to land in order to find nectar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_honey Health effects of honey Other links: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526216.100-honey-is-the-bees-knees-for-staying-young.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128305.200-honeybee-antiwaggle-song-tells-others-to-buzz-off.html#.U2SgFvmSw2Y On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 2:06 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: That's quite interesting. I assume Arabic is a language in which there are not normally masculine and feminine forms of nouns, since that would mean that there was a 50-50 chance of happening to get it right simply by luck. (For example, I'm sure the French would be overjoyed if all tables turned out to be female.) So I assume this is a language like English, with a non-gendered form for most things, and only gendered forms for things which are actually known to *have* genders, like animals and people. In that case it would be fairly startling if bees are specifically described as female when it would seem more natural to make them gender-neutral (as I believe they are in English). On the other hand, if Arabic commonly assigns random genders to genderless things (as French does with la table) then it would be fairly insignificant, and I would expect a detailed survey of all gender assignments to things that weren't known to have a specific gender to have a hit rate around 50%. According to Wikipedia, Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical caseshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_case (nominative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_case, accusativehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusative_case, and genitive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); threenumbershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number (singular, dual and plural); *two **genders*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_(grammar)* (masculine and feminine)*; and three states (indefinite, definite, and constructhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_constructus ). I'm not very well up on languages, and there appear to be several varieties of Arabic, but that quote certainly appears to indicate there is no neutral form, like the German das (or the English the) but that *all* nouns in Arabic are assigned a gender, as in French (le or la). That would make the fact that bees are described as female simply a linguistic artefact that happens to have come out the right way (a 50% chance, as I said) rather than any deep insight into which gender they in fact are. Since it's fairly crucial to your argument, can you explain how gender assignment works in the particular form of Arabic that is being used in this case? PS By the way, what's this? Am I missing something? Here, the bee appears to be masculine. (16:68:4) l-naḥli http://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=nHl#(16:68:4) the bee, http://corpus.quran.com/wordmorphology.jsp?location=(16:68:4) *N* – genitive masculine noun →
Re: Honey Bee
Links on Ant Communication below your comment: On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 9:42 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 May 2014 16:16, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 3:24 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider *her *ways, and be wise. [Quran 27:18] Till, when they reached the Valley of the Ants, an (female) ant exclaimed: O ants! Enter your dwellings lest Solomon and his armies crush you, unperceiving. If scientists discover that ants can speak, you will definitely be onto something! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant#Communication Ants communicate with each other using pheromones, sounds, and touch... Some ants produce sounds by stridulation, using the gaster segments and their mandibles. Sounds may be used to communicate with colony members or with other species. link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs002650050292 ... The results support the hypothesis that leaf-cutting ant workers stridulate during cutting in order to recruit nestmates, and that the observed mechanical facilitation of stridulation is an epiphenomenon of recruitment communication. Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you say Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). I believe the scriptures were revealed by Divine decree. By sharing verses of scientific relevance from the Quran, I hope to establish that it is factually correct, and without any human errors, so that anyone who wishes may include it in their quest for scientific knowledge. In my opinion we have a long way to go on this front. Do my posts give an impression of being from a man, or do you also employ the general style of the Quran, of speaking in the male tense about living things, unless specifically speaking about a female? Not that I mind, but in the interest of being factually correct, the feminine pronoun will be more appropriate when referring to Samiya :) Oops, sorry. Most of the people who post here are male (or I should say, they have male names and / or avatars :) so I tend to assume people on this forum are male unless told otherwise. (PS - You have won the Turing Test, or is it the imitation game? You probably know the one I mean?) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On 9 May 2014 23:03, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: Links on Ant Communication below your comment: On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 9:42 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 May 2014 16:16, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 3:24 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider *her *ways, and be wise. [Quran 27:18] Till, when they reached the Valley of the Ants, an (female) ant exclaimed: O ants! Enter your dwellings lest Solomon and his armies crush you, unperceiving. If scientists discover that ants can speak, you will definitely be onto something! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant#Communication Ants communicate with each other using pheromones, sounds, and touch... Some ants produce sounds by stridulation, using the gaster segments and their mandibles. Sounds may be used to communicate with colony members or with other species. link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs002650050292 ... The results support the hypothesis that leaf-cutting ant workers stridulate during cutting in order to recruit nestmates, and that the observed mechanical facilitation of stridulation is an epiphenomenon of recruitment communication. So either the original writer could understand ant communication using pheremones etc, OR they anthropomorphised the ants... hm. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
I don't have time to look into this in detail right now, but my initial feeling (I may change my mind after further consideration) is that this is probably the most important part of what Dr Khalid Zaheer has to say: However, in our keenness to find signs we should not put into the mouth of the text what it is not saying. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On 04 May 2014, at 11:34, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2014-05-04 6:24 GMT+02:00 LizR lizj...@gmail.com: On 4 May 2014 15:20, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: I have forwarded your query to an expert in Arabic Grammar. Your quote from Wikipedia is correct. What I can inform you, based on my understanding, is that the pronoun 'ha' used in the verse is for female singular with a plural masculine noun 'butuun' indicates that it is specifically about a female bee. OK. I hope you are prepared to accept that if Arabic gives genders to everything, including things which are in fact genderless (like tables), then that demolishes any claim that bees being described as female in ancient texts has any particular significance. I will look at the other claims once this one has been settled, if you don't mind. I think one at a time is best if we are attempting to establish the truth in each case. Anyway, before that, he should also show why such knowledge would have not been accessible to people of that era... because... that's what he claims. What *she* claims, I would say. Samiya seems to be a feminine name: http://www.google.be/search?q=Samiyasafe=offsource=lnmstbm=ischsa=Xei=TzhnU7qsFKSw0QXezYG4Awved=0CAYQ_AUoAQbiw=1457bih=1102 Regards, Quentin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On 05 May 2014, at 00:25, LizR wrote: PS did I get that right about the queen being fed special stuff? My knowledge is also badly informed on many things...) On 5 May 2014 10:24, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you say Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). That was a good point Liz. It illustrates how very complex is the interpretation of prose and poetry, and how easy we might draw invalid conclusions. It is nice of you trying to help Samiya in that regard. We will see if she is able to abandon *that* argument, or if she biased in favor of a theory. The existence, for a period, of muslim neoplatonism suggests to me that the Quran is agnostic on the main conceptual divide between reality conceptions (Plato or Aristotle). Not so for the bible, which seems to take for granted both a creator and a creation, and very few mystics, even among Christians, refer to it. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On 05 May 2014, at 06:16, Samiya Illias wrote: On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 3:24 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. [Quran 27:18] Till, when they reached the Valley of the Ants, an (female) ant exclaimed: O ants! Enter your dwellings lest Solomon and his armies crush you, unperceiving. Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you say Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). I believe the scriptures were revealed by Divine decree. I sincerely think that this might be a problem. Believing this might create a bias. By sharing verses of scientific relevance from the Quran, I hope to establish that it is factually correct, and without any human errors, so that anyone who wishes may include it in their quest for scientific knowledge. Do my posts give an impression of being from a man, or do you also employ the general style of the Quran, of speaking in the male tense about living things, unless specifically speaking about a female? Not that I mind, but in the interest of being factually correct, the feminine pronoun will be more appropriate when referring to Samiya :) Ah! :) Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
As Dr Seuss might have put it, Sam - I - am - not! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On 06-May-2014, at 6:20 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: As Dr Seuss might have put it, Sam - I - am - not! :) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
2014-05-04 6:24 GMT+02:00 LizR lizj...@gmail.com: On 4 May 2014 15:20, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: I have forwarded your query to an expert in Arabic Grammar. Your quote from Wikipedia is correct. What I can inform you, based on my understanding, is that the pronoun 'ha' used in the verse is for female singular with a plural masculine noun 'butuun' indicates that it is specifically about a female bee. OK. I hope you are prepared to accept that if Arabic gives genders to everything, including things which are in fact genderless (like tables), then that demolishes any claim that bees being described as female in ancient texts has any particular significance. I will look at the other claims once this one has been settled, if you don't mind. I think one at a time is best if we are attempting to establish the truth in each case. Anyway, before that, he should also show why such knowledge would have not been accessible to people of that era... because... that's what he claims. Regards, Quentin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider *her *ways, and be wise. Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you say Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
PS did I get that right about the queen being fed special stuff? My knowledge is also badly informed on many things...) On 5 May 2014 10:24, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider *her *ways, and be wise. Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you say Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On 5/4/2014 3:25 PM, LizR wrote: PS did I get that right about the queen being fed special stuff? My knowledge is also badly informed on many things...) It think she's fed the special stuff, royal jelly, as a larva; so it would be hard ascertain she started as a normal worker just by observation. Brent On 5 May 2014 10:24, LizR lizj...@gmail.com mailto:lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider *her *ways, and be wise. Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you say Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On 5 May 2014 13:21, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 5/4/2014 3:25 PM, LizR wrote: PS did I get that right about the queen being fed special stuff? My knowledge is also badly informed on many things...) It think she's fed the special stuff, royal jelly, as a larva; so it would be hard ascertain she started as a normal worker just by observation. That blows that theory out of the water. So could ancient people have known, or surmised, that worker bees were female somehow? Or should we ascribe it to divine inspiration? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On Mon, May 05, 2014 at 10:24:15AM +1200, LizR wrote: Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider *her *ways, and be wise. Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you say Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). Plus to confound things, in many languages, nouns have a gender that needn't imply anything about the gender of the referrant. For example, ant in French is la fourmi, and is referred as she/her, regardless whether it is a male or female ant you are talking about. In extreme cases, the genders do not match at all - an example in German is das Mädchen, meaning girl, a neuter noun. Perhaps we need to ask what the state of mind was when the Bible was translated into English - perhaps people knew by the 17th century when the bible was first translated into English (probably from latin, where ant is likely to be feminine) that ants were usually females. Or perhaps the gender is simply a bit of a hangover from the translation - just like we refer to ships in the feminine, even today. I have no knowledge of Arabic, but could it be that ants are feminine in Arabic? Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On 5 May 2014 14:33, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Mon, May 05, 2014 at 10:24:15AM +1200, LizR wrote: Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider *her *ways, and be wise. Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you say Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). Plus to confound things, in many languages, nouns have a gender that needn't imply anything about the gender of the referrant. For example, ant in French is la fourmi, and is referred as she/her, regardless whether it is a male or female ant you are talking about. In extreme cases, the genders do not match at all - an example in German is das Mädchen, meaning girl, a neuter noun. Perhaps we need to ask what the state of mind was when the Bible was translated into English - perhaps people knew by the 17th century when the bible was first translated into English (probably from latin, where ant is likely to be feminine) that ants were usually females. Or perhaps the gender is simply a bit of a hangover from the translation - just like we refer to ships in the feminine, even today. I have no knowledge of Arabic, but could it be that ants are feminine in Arabic? Yes indeed, that question is apparently with an expert at the moment, who is supposed to be getting back to Samiya and me on that very question. (See my earlier posts on gendered nouns in Arabic.) Good point about when the text was translated. I don't know about the Quran but I think the first Bible that wasn't in Latin was the King James? No, Wikipedia has put me right! It was an earlier one in 1535. I doubt the gender of worker ants and bees was common knowledge then. Apparently Latin also has gendered nouns, however. formica, formicaehttp://www.latin-dictionary.net/definition/20892/formica-formicae noun - declension: 1st declension - gender: feminine *Definitions:* 1. ant Apis Translation *Bee* -- *Main Forms*: Apis, Apis *Gender*: Feminine *Declension*: Third So Latin, at least, has female bees *and* ants! (So the feminisation of ant in Proverbs isn't so surprising if it went via Latin.) I suspect that people observed the queen bee / ant and thought She's obviously the boss (apparently modern genetic says otherwise) and made bees and ants female by association. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 3:24 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider *her *ways, and be wise. [Quran 27:18] Till, when they reached the Valley of the Ants, an (female) ant exclaimed: O ants! Enter your dwellings lest Solomon and his armies crush you, unperceiving. Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you say Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). I believe the scriptures were revealed by Divine decree. By sharing verses of scientific relevance from the Quran, I hope to establish that it is factually correct, and without any human errors, so that anyone who wishes may include it in their quest for scientific knowledge. Do my posts give an impression of being from a man, or do you also employ the general style of the Quran, of speaking in the male tense about living things, unless specifically speaking about a female? Not that I mind, but in the interest of being factually correct, the feminine pronoun will be more appropriate when referring to Samiya :) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On 5 May 2014 16:16, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 3:24 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that there was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. Proverbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Proverbs, Chapter 6, verse 6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider *her *ways, and be wise. [Quran 27:18] Till, when they reached the Valley of the Ants, an (female) ant exclaimed: O ants! Enter your dwellings lest Solomon and his armies crush you, unperceiving. If scientists discover that ants can speak, you will definitely be onto something! Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you say Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). I believe the scriptures were revealed by Divine decree. By sharing verses of scientific relevance from the Quran, I hope to establish that it is factually correct, and without any human errors, so that anyone who wishes may include it in their quest for scientific knowledge. In my opinion we have a long way to go on this front. Do my posts give an impression of being from a man, or do you also employ the general style of the Quran, of speaking in the male tense about living things, unless specifically speaking about a female? Not that I mind, but in the interest of being factually correct, the feminine pronoun will be more appropriate when referring to Samiya :) Oops, sorry. Most of the people who post here are male (or I should say, they have male names and / or avatars :) so I tend to assume people on this forum are male unless told otherwise. (PS - You have won the Turing Test, or is it the imitation game? You probably know the one I mean?) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
That's quite interesting. I assume Arabic is a language in which there are not normally masculine and feminine forms of nouns, since that would mean that there was a 50-50 chance of happening to get it right simply by luck. (For example, I'm sure the French would be overjoyed if all tables turned out to be female.) So I assume this is a language like English, with a non-gendered form for most things, and only gendered forms for things which are actually known to *have* genders, like animals and people. In that case it would be fairly startling if bees are specifically described as female when it would seem more natural to make them gender-neutral (as I believe they are in English). On the other hand, if Arabic commonly assigns random genders to genderless things (as French does with la table) then it would be fairly insignificant, and I would expect a detailed survey of all gender assignments to things that weren't known to have a specific gender to have a hit rate around 50%. According to Wikipedia, Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical caseshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_case (nominative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_case, accusativehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusative_case, and genitive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); threenumbershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number (singular, dual and plural); *two **genders*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_(grammar)* (masculine and feminine)*; and three states (indefinite, definite, and constructhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_constructus ). I'm not very well up on languages, and there appear to be several varieties of Arabic, but that quote certainly appears to indicate there is no neutral form, like the German das (or the English the) but that *all* nouns in Arabic are assigned a gender, as in French (le or la). That would make the fact that bees are described as female simply a linguistic artefact that happens to have come out the right way (a 50% chance, as I said) rather than any deep insight into which gender they in fact are. Since it's fairly crucial to your argument, can you explain how gender assignment works in the particular form of Arabic that is being used in this case? PS By the way, what's this? Am I missing something? Here, the bee appears to be masculine. (16:68:4) l-naḥli http://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=nHl#(16:68:4) the bee, http://corpus.quran.com/wordmorphology.jsp?location=(16:68:4)*N* – genitive masculine noun → Bee http://corpus.quran.com/concept.jsp?id=bee اسم مجرور -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On 4 May 2014 15:20, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: I have forwarded your query to an expert in Arabic Grammar. Your quote from Wikipedia is correct. What I can inform you, based on my understanding, is that the pronoun 'ha' used in the verse is for female singular with a plural masculine noun 'butuun' indicates that it is specifically about a female bee. OK. I hope you are prepared to accept that if Arabic gives genders to everything, including things which are in fact genderless (like tables), then that demolishes any claim that bees being described as female in ancient texts has any particular significance. I will look at the other claims once this one has been settled, if you don't mind. I think one at a time is best if we are attempting to establish the truth in each case. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Honey Bee
On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 9:24 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 4 May 2014 15:20, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: I have forwarded your query to an expert in Arabic Grammar. Your quote from Wikipedia is correct. What I can inform you, based on my understanding, is that the pronoun 'ha' used in the verse is for female singular with a plural masculine noun 'butuun' indicates that it is specifically about a female bee. OK. I hope you are prepared to accept that if Arabic gives genders to everything, including things which are in fact genderless (like tables), then that demolishes any claim that bees being described as female in ancient texts has any particular significance. I will look at the other claims once this one has been settled, if you don't mind. I think one at a time is best if we are attempting to establish the truth in each case. Sure, that's fine. Samiya -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
