Once there was a time when chicken roamed free -- but were cocks all ways
fighting with each other? This begs a question. Indeed, it _is_ a question.
An a Griceian one at that. For, to echo Grice in "The conception of
value": is 'chicken' a value-oriented word? (He notes that 'cabbage' and
'king'
are -- but then he is quoting from Lewis Carroll).
Cultural & Scientific Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions.
-- is an essay in progress by Greger Larson.
Larson, like Grice did, teaches at Oxford -- Grice adds: "For the poor;
only the poor learn at Oxford." (Grice is implicating he has read Arnold, and
this was Arnold's impression when he went there; oddly shared by Grice, who
already KNEW MOST THINGS when he went up to Oxford straight from Clifton
-- a 'Midlands scholarship boy'.
In his lectures on chicken, Larson notes,
"It looks like from all the evidence
that chickens existed for a VERY LONG
TIME [Larson empahsises in his Oxonian
accent] in association with people
and the were NOT food."
(Again, with Oxonian emphasis on 'food'.)
Students -- the "poor'uns," took notice.
Larson goes on:
"Oddly enough, it would seem that for thousands
of years, the primary ROLE or function of chickens
seems to have been in cockfighting -- or other
various rituals."
"Chickens only started to be eaten in Israel
a about 2,200 years ago, ONLY."
Larson grants that "we are still not sure
what humans did with chickens for all
that time -- or chickens with humans, if you
wish."
(The 'poor'un' students took notice.)
"In Austria, I found a cemetery," Larson adds,
"where people were buried along with their
chickens -- which is neat."
"What's more, carbon studies suggest they
-- humans and chickens --were sharing a
similar diet. This confused me at first."
He implicates "no longer."
Larson quotes from Grice, "The conception of value", where he (Grice)
provides a conceptual analysis of "Old English sheepdog". According to Grice,
this dog was not originally a sheepdog, never mind an Old English one. He was
just a dog. But with domestication, "the _conceived_ value of sheeping was
added to the 'canis familiaris'." Grice notes this poses a problem for "
those dogs that the English call 'toy dogs' and which they criticise as the
French worshipping them."
Cheers,
Speranza
References
Larson, Cultural & Scientific Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions.
Grice, The Conception of Value, Clarendon Press.
