We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we see and measure in the world is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality…The temptation to reify is powerful. The idea that we have detected something “underlying” the externalities of a large set of correlation coefficients, something perhaps more real than the superficial measurements themselves, can be intoxicating. It is Plato’s essence… ::Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man 1978: getting to grips with the All THE MAGAZINE OF GRAND OVERARCHING THEORY is a special number of Ray Finlay’s .26APA regular, STANDARD DEVIATION, and is dedicated to the sixth anniversary of the marriage between Marjory and me, an event which not one of you will remember, you drunken swine, on Saturday, April 1, 1972. If that was Saturday, this must be Saturday too. Yes, folks, by the miracle of the Gregorian calendar, I type this colophon on April Fool’s Day, 1978, under the helm of John Malcolm Fraser and his splendid band of illiberal Liberals.
