Re: SCIENCE AND CLASSIFICATION

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

> Please consider the idea that the vernacular and the scientific should be
> similar as much as possible.

Then we might, I fear, end up wasting everyone's time by discussing just how
wormlike arrow worms (Chaetognatha) are...

> I've read Einstein's book in which he thought he could explain relativity
to
> anyone with a grasp of high school algebra, and Freud's popularization in
> which he continuously reassures people that his theories are nothing more
> than a form of literary criticism, using, for example, Shakespeare as a
> source.

I haven't read either, but I hope Freud's popularization isn't the reason
why so many philosophers of science have considered psychoanalysis to be a
pseudoscience! :-)

> Classes are about as far as most people go with nomenclature, so if
science
> can be made user-friendly by 'those flying things that crap on my car,'
why
> not?  It is possible to be both accurate and (over)simple.

But we _want_ to discuss clades... ;.-( <sniff>

Just so that I don't build a strawman -- would you consider
*Petrolacosaurus*, *Prolacerta*, *Protorosaurus*, *Macrocnemus*,
*Varanosaurus* lizards then, or maybe sphenodonts? They certainly looked
like lizards and have no close living relatives. Or would you ignore them as
fossils?