Re: Progress schmogress (was Re: competition)

[Daniel Bensen <dbensen@gotnet.net>]

>>--- ELurio@aol.com wrote:

> There are twenty thousand teleosts and two
> celocanths, which group is better
> at being fish?


Neither, since both groups are alive today.

But what has any of that to do with the notion of
evolutionary 'progress?'<<

I'd like to take this opportunity to agree with HP Oscar Quill.  There is no
way of saying that one species is quantifiably 'better' than any other
species.  You may say that species A is more numerous than species B (though
even that is difficult) or tends to grow to a larger size, or shows faster
reaction times to certain stimuli, or lives in a wider geographical range,
but none of these measurements make species A 'better' than species B, and
no broad, evolutionary trends can be found in any of them (except, perhaps,
diversity).

Dan