Metaphor: Heating water slowly to kill a frog (was Perplexing Proverb)

[Garson O'Toole]

Ben Zimmer wrote:
>> Perhaps we could classify this as a "frog-boiling proverb," since it
>> resembles the equally untrue cliche that a frog will allow itself to
>> be boiled if placed in a pot of gradually heated water.

I do not think that the truth or falsity of the "frog in hot water"
anecdote has been ascertained. Have modern researchers actually
attempted to replicate or debunk the earlier research that heated
water at a very slow rate? Wikipedia is of course not a reliable
reference, but volunteer editors have uncovered some intriguing
citations to research performed in the 1800s. The entry on "Boiling
frog" is worth examining:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

Here is excerpt from and pointer to a volume in 1897 titled "The New
Psychology" by E. W. Scripture:

A similar experiment showed that a live frog can actually be boiled
without a movement if the water is heated slowly enough; in one
experiment the temperature was raised at the rate of 0.0020 [degrees]
C per second, and the frog was found dead at the end of 2 1/2 hours
without having moved.

http://books.google.com/books?id=fGA1AQAAIAAJ&q=dead#v=snippet&

The Wikipedia entry includes a statement by a modern scientist that
dismisses the anecdote based on experiments that increased the
temperature at a considerably faster rate.

Snopes has an article that was updated in 2009 that claims the
anecdote is false, but it seems to rely on a scientist describing an
experiment in which the water is heated at a rate of "2 degrees
Fahrenheit per minute."

http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp

Is more known now about the truth of this metaphor?


On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 9:54 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Perplexing Proverb
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Aug 4, 2011, at 9:24 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 10:08 AM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>>>=20
>>> A reader of my weekly "column" about quotations on the Freakonomics =
> blog
>>> has asked a question that has long perplexed me.  How did the strange =
> proverb
>>> "It's always darkest just before the dawn" arise?  We all understand =
> the point of
>>> the proverbial metaphor, but such metaphors are usually based on an =
> underlying
>>> commonly accepted reality.  It's just not scientifically true that =
> it's always darkest
>>> just before the dawn.  Can anyone help me to understand this?
>>=20
>> Perhaps we could classify this as a "frog-boiling proverb," since it
>> resembles the equally untrue cliche that a frog will allow itself to
>> be boiled if placed in a pot of gradually heated water.
>>=20
>> Language Log discussion here:
>> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3D1764
>>=20
> Actually the links (especially with reference to the Goltz studies =
> reported in Beitrage zur Lehre von den Functionen der Nervencentren des =
> Frosches; Berlin: August Hirschwald, 1869) make it clear that a frog =
> will indeed allow itself to be boiled when placed in a pot of gradually =
> heated water, IF (and apparently only if) it is a decerebrated frog.  =
> And decerebrated frogs probably have an equally hard time figuring out =
> whether or not it's darkest just before the dawn.
>
> LH
>
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