On Mon, 2 Aug 1999, Bob Keefer wrote:
> Ya know, growing up on an actual farm, I had often heard the expression
> "running around like a chicken with its head cut off," but I never took
> it to mean actual -running-, as none of the dozens (hundreds?) of
> chickens I personally chopped the heads off of -ever- ran around
<snip>
> Has anyone actually seen a headless chicken (not just a few of those
> coincidental hops I mentioned)?
>
Not this city boy. But Julien Offray de la Mettrie apparently
did, and reported on it a mere 251 years ago. Only it was a rooster,
not a chicken. He said:
"A drunken soldier cut off with one stroke of his sabre an Indian
rooster's head. The animal remained standing, then walked, and ran:
happening to run against a wall, it turned around, beat its wings
still running, and finally kept on moving."
de la Mettrie cites other gruesome observations, all intended to make
the point that humans are actually machines. How headless running
roosters proves this for humans somehow escapes me.
Is the difference between headless chicken (Bob's observation) and
headless rooster (Julien de la M's observation) significant? Surely
the topic cries out for an experiment. Where are all the drunken
soldiers with sabres when you need them?
-Stephen
Reference
de la Mettrie, J. (1748). L'Homme machine. Translated by G. Bussey and
M. Calkins in _Man a Machine_, reprinted in a source book of
Herrnstein [all the cite I have for it]
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Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470
Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661
Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lennoxville, QC
J1M 1Z7
Canada Department web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy
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