Re: Birds and pornography

[philidor11@snet.net]

<I don't want to need to discuss whether an organism whose
position in the tree is _known_ should be _regarded_ as e. g. 
a bird or not.>

You're stuck with arguing about classification if you're looking 
at Clades.
Your job is much easier if you look at Classes.
Does it have feathers?  Bird.  (True, in the past non-birds may 
have had feathers.  Some animal not closely related to modern 
birds at all may have had feathers.  So what?  Exceptions are 
made to be ratiocinated.)
You can now distinguish birds from dinosaurs from reptiles without 
agonizing over it.

As you said:
<Of course phylogenetic _taxonomy_ is not a science.>
Your next sentence says names assigned to animals are useful 
to understanding a science...  We won't go there, but this here 
is a definite insight.
Taxonomy is a naming convention.  Its purpose is ease of communication.
To both scientists and the public.
Nice work!



 


= = = Original message = = =

> < However, _Archaeopteryx_ "looks" strikingly similar to _Deinonychus_...>
> True:  go far enough back into the ancestry to creatures never 
seen alive,

Some animals have been seen alive, and we know less about them 
than about
several well-preserved fossils. I'm not referring to cryptozoology, 
but e.
g. to many species of beaked whales or the new deep-sea squid.

> and you can find animals so like two groups that classification 
is
> arbitrary.  So drop clades; why bother with them?  Classifying 
animals
near
> the base can be considered a pedantic exercise.

Hey. This is our _interest_ on this list, animals around the 
bases of
something. If _all paleontology_ is a pedantic exercise, then 
so be it, but
we'll nevertheless _have to_ classify said animals, and plants 
and others,
somehow.

> In Jefferson's wonderful phrasing, groups should be distinguishable 
at a
> glance by a traveler on horseback.

Maybe they should. Too bad, often they simply aren't. Remember 
what I wrote
last time? Vermes! Vermes! :-)

> He had real doubts about whether
> skeletal information should be used in distinguishing groups,

Well, Linnaean taxonomy is (or originally was, before 1859) nothing 
else
than finding the most beautiful set of boxes and drawers to pigeonhole 
every
living being in. People were able to discuss which set of characters 
(such
as fur color, hooves, skeleton, etc.) was more beautiful to give 
a beautiful
classification. I write "beautiful" all the time because taxonomy 
was an
_art_, not a _science_.
        Meanwhile we've discovered _evolution_, means, the fact 
that there
is something that connects all organisms in a certain pattern. 
Too bad for
Jefferson, in all respect. :-| We don't need to choose which 
characters we
like most anymore. We have found something much more objective 
to do. (Mind
the comparative.) Now we want to find out the shape of the tree, 
and, so
that we can talk about it, to put names on certain branches of 
the tree, not
to make the most beautiful system of how to collect stamps, er, 
organisms,
and that by testable, scientific means. Of course phylogenetic 
_taxonomy_ is
not a science. But it produces names useful for the understanding 
of the
science of phylogenetic _systematics_.

> These contradictory conclusions aside, I can acknowledge your 
point, right
> up until you make the assertion that any view different from 
your own must
> be antiscientific because inherently based on obsolete notions 
of
progress,
> superiority and inferiority.

I think HP Tim Williams did that to show the _origin_ of the 
rank system,
not the beliefs of those that still use it.

> If you want to argue in favor of basing classification on current,
tentative
> guesses rather than hard observations of extant animals, I 
will consider
> anything you say respectfully.

What about hard observations on (hard :-P ) fossils? What about 
hypotheses
and theories? Science, after all, doesn't just mean to describe 
what is, but
also to make testable hypotheses about why.

> Just please don't assert that the alternative is only wrong-headed
> philosophical mush.  Doesn't seem very persuasive to me.

Well, there are 2 alternatives. One is phenetics, which has self-destructed
for several good reasons. The other is the art of Linnaean taxonomy. 
I don't
like either. I don't want to need to discuss whether an organism 
whose
position in the tree is _known_ should be _regarded_ as e. g. 
a bird or not.


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