Re: TRUTH AND "TRUTH"

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> Chris Brochu wrote:
>
> <<1.  We stopped worrying about Linnean ranks because they have no
> biological reality and can seriously mislead people.  They were made for a
> world view that did not account for evolution.  Good riddance to them.>>
>
> and Tom Holtz (looking forward to the Gaia paper) also wrote:
>
> <<We could take the typological approach and say "aha, this specimen does
> not fit the features required to be a carnosaur, so it has to be in some
> other category". Or we can take an evolutionary approach, sort out the
> distribution to the best of our current ability, and see what results (in
> this case, that tridactyly evolves independantly in derived carnosaurs and
> in coelurosaurs).
>
> If your goal is recovering the history of life, then I recommend using a
> repeatable scientific methodology. If your goal is nice, neat lists of
> names, then typology is fine.>>
>
> I think that here we have the best summations of why we should abandon all
> old, Linnean classifications and go with a completely evolutionary and
> scientific system.  Linnean classifications and ranks are best suited for
> the times when evolution wasn't really thought of (except by David Hume in
> the 1750's, and published in 1776, but that's a different story).

Wait a minute. Georges de Buffon had a simple theory of evolution, which was
explicitely rejected by Linné, and I've just read that Lamarck (!!!) wrote
in 1809 in his _Philosophie zoologique_:
        "Additionally, it can be stated that among all its products Nature
has never brought forth real classes, no orders, families, genera or
constant species, but only individuals, which follow one another and
resemble the ones that have produced them. These individuals belong to
infinitely diversified _races_, nuanced in all parts of their shapes, in all
aspects of organisation, and which remain constant, as long as no cause of
change has an effect on them." (emphases probably in the original)
            my translation from German out of: Olivier Rieppel: Unterwegs
zum Anfang. Geschichte und Konsequenzen der Evolutionstheorie [ = On the way
to the beginning. History and consequences of the theory of evolution], dtv
wissenschaft 1992 (the paperback edition, an older one is Artemis 1989)


> Linnean ranks are the expression that all things living and non-living
have some
> sort of cosmic rank overseen by the hand of the Almighty.  They are also
an
> extention of the ideas of Aristotle who thought that all things on the
tree
> of life are subservant to man.

To put it more simply: Linné was basically a philatelist.

> Scientifically, cladistics is on higher ground than any system founded in
an
> idea of cosmic ranking.  We can appreciate how Linnean classifications
> taught us more about life than systems that came before, but this is the
> same situation as astronomy coming from the pseudoscience of astrology.
> Sure astrology gave us the basics of our science of astronomy, but that
does
> not mean that we shall hold on the astrological principles that the
planets
> relate in some way to our futures and destinies (assuming there is a such
> thing as a "destiny").

There surely isn't, as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle strongly suggests.

[snip]

> Sometimes I wish some arch-angel will tell me the true tree for
Neognathae;
> the whole group is basically an unresolved polytomy.  Sure, galliforms and
> anseriforms probably are a seperate group from the rest of neognaths, but
> then again anseriforms could be modified shorebirds, flamingos, or storks.
> Galliforms could be more closely related to paleognaths.  Passeriforms may
> even be more basal than traditionally thought.

Is it true that among neognaths Galliformes and Anseriformes have ratite
type eggshell? This would argue strongly for them being basal, contrary to
skeletal evidence like _Presbyornis_.