Re: Strange thoughts on PN - was Re: BAD vs. BADD

[Graydon <oak@uniserve.com>]

On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 03:15:29PM +0200, Martin Baeker scripsit:
> No matter how strong the arguments for birds being dinosaurs are (and
> they are obviously overwhelming, there is no need to argue on that),
> whenever you say or hear "dinosaur", I'm quite sure your first thought
> is *not* of a bird.

This is fundamentally an argument from incredulity.

I can remember when my undersanding of birds _switched_; it changes
what the snakey-necked threat displays of swans and geese look like to
a remarkable degree.  (At least in my experience.)

So, yeah, I think of the songbirds outside my window as dinosaurs.

The new extension to the ROM -- the Royal Ontario Museum -- is planning
to mount a great blue herron skeleton next to a dromeosaur skeleton in
similar poses.  It makes it very clear that these are, across a great
gulf of time, the same kind of thing.

There are only so many such things one can see _without_ starting to
think of birds as dinosaurs, and as more and more people start to see
that many instances of such things, the categories will shift in
people's heads.

There is no such thing as an essential category anywhere *outside*
people's heads, after all.

-- Graydon