[dalke]

"puritanical" is an adjective, not a noun. :)

I also noticed that you referred to an "addict gene" as a 19th century notion, but the term "gene" wasn't coined until the 20th century.

In any case, no I wasn't aware of a 19th century Sweden based on strict religious ideas. Could you tell me more? My understanding is that the state was working to suppress Pietism in the Lutheran church, and persist with rationalism.

Pietism and Puritanism are similar, and Pietism is a forerunner to the modern evangelical movement in the US, which is why I didn't think that 1800s Sweden had those same sorts of strict religious ideas about one's daily life.

Rather, there were strict religious laws, yes, but they were strict in asserting how Lutheranism was the official church and that there is no other church. Quoting Wikipedia:

In order to curb Pietism several Royal Decrees and Acts of Parliament were proclaimed in the 18th century, which forbid Swedish citizens to practice any religion besides mandatory Lutheran Sunday Mass attendance and daily family devotions. Without the presence of a Lutheran clergyman public religious gatherings were forbidden. It remained illegal until 1860 for Lutheran Swedes to convert to another confession or religion. From then, and unto 1951, it was legal to leave the Church of Sweden for the purpose of becoming a member of another officially recognised religious denomination.

I'm interested in Swedish history, though I don't know all that much about it, so I look forward to your explanation.

[gnerd]

Yes, puritanical is an adjective but the Puritan movement is a proper noun as it is the name of a movement. That is the point I was making. In English the phrase 'proper noun' does not mean I was implying the word puritanical was a noun, it means I was saying it is not a name (which we capitalize and call proper nouns), and therefore I was using it as an adjective. I hope that clears up your confusion.

As for the "addict gene", again, this was supposed to be a synonym phrase for a notion of hereditary weakness, I was not implying it has a genetic basis or that genetics was known before Crick. The phrase "addict gene" was quoted because I have heard it in Sweden (in modern times) when discussing these issues.

I'm hardly an expert on Swedish history, just a person who asks questions when I travel. What I know of Swedish history could be written on the back of a postage stamp. I'm afraid I wasted more time on Roman history in school (as you can imagine, Swedish history doesn't come up very often).

[dalke]

Genetics was most certainly known before Crick. Indeed, the terms "genetics" and "gene" were coined over a decade before Crick was born, and the first research was by Mendel about 50 years before Crick's birth.

I have not heard of a specifically Swedish addict gene, and I've lived in Sweden for over 6 years. Searching now, I found no mention of that concept, including searching for "missbrukare gen". Surely some may have said it, but it's not a widely held belief that's part of the debate on substance abuse.

And of course this part of the thread started because you made a statement about puritanical Swedish religious beliefs of the 1800s, when it appears that religious beliefs in Sweden during that time were decidedly anti-pietism/anti-puritanical.

What I conclude from all this is that you feel that your generalizations are correct, even though your details are not, and you make statements without worrying about checking those facts, or feeling that you need to explain the reasoning behind your generalizations.

Perfectly fine for you do to that, but it's not the conversation I wanted, or want, to have.

[gnerd]

What I conclude from this is you don't know what a proper noun is in English and you are offended at conclusions drawn from my experience in Sweden, which are of course anecdotal and therefor not applicable to everyone in Sweden, why would you assume I was asserting the opposite?

I guess you didn't do much searching if you couldn't find this study[1] from Lund University or this study[2] from Gothenburg University.

From your sophmoric questioning and pedantic ramblings it seems your mind was made up before you even heard the answer.

> Perfectly fine for you do to that, but it's not the conversation I wanted, or want, to have.

Well to be fair I wasn't trying to have a conversation with you, and again, to be fair, you didn't do anything to add something to the general conversation besides your mild nationalism. Classy.

[1] http://www.research.med.lu.se/en_projektdetaljer.php?Proj=65...

[2] http://www.psy.gu.se/english/current/news/newsdetail//gene-i...