RE: Birds and pornography and Caenagnathiformes (toothlessness)

[philidor11@snet.net]

Modifying your statement to assist in making my point: 
<The fossil record tells us that the divisions between one Cla[de] 
and the next
disappear as you go back in time.  This undermines the very concept 
of a
"Cla[de]".>
and, I agree, the clade concept is weakened by looking first 
at the smallest distinctions.
Classes are certainly more useful because they do not relay on 
retrograde analyses, but on immediate observation of clear differences. 
 They are unquestionable and essential, no doubt about it.
We know that the distinctions between birds, for instance, and 
some representatives of another large group called dinosaurs 
would disappear as we went back in time.  Therefore, we won't 
look back in time in identifying groups.  Any classifications 
based on the beginnings of distinctions could result only in 
creating problems for ourselves.  So we'll avoid that in setting 
Classes.
We'll also avoid making worms too prominent in a classification 
system.  Otherwise, you'd have to look at them more than is consistent 
with good humor.
And if some people want to be stuck in their labs all day feeling 
around bony knobs like phrenological pathologists to determine 
which small subsubsubgroup an extinct animal belongs in, okay, 
but I'd rather be out with the traveler on horseback, tromping 
worms.

Tell you what, though, I will consider clades to be the primary 
distinction when human nature changes in response to new ideas. 
 The New Soviet Man and a few other constructs assuming people 
would change their way of thinking when they hear some insights, 
all these have faded away.  I'm betting that cladistics will 
also fade long before human nature changes appreciably. 





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