8 ms·

The concept of species is a construct of language.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lmilcin 7y ago
Not exactly. Our brains like to put things into separate categories because it makes it easier to think about things being in the same category having same properties. We do this to a fault because otherwise we would be overloaded with complexity of the Universe.
ta1234567890 7y ago
Yes, but if you look at it that way, to humans, almost everything except direct experience, is a construct of language. What's the point?
- paraschopra 7y ago
  The point is that there’s a continuum in reality. Biological tradition developed around classification of life into categories but life doesn’t come in neat packages.
  - has2k1 7y ago
    Just because there is a continuum does not mean specific points along the continuum cannot be identified and tagged as distinct from all other points. There are humans and there are dolphins two different species. It is analogous to the colour spectrum, there is red and there is blue two different colours.
    - specialist 7y ago
      Absolutely. The Smithsonian has an amazing display of skulls arranged in a grid which shows the subtle changes over time. It's amazing. (Sorry, quick search doesn't reveal a pic.) -- I'd love a layperson's identification guide. Why is a homo floresiensis (aka "hobbit") not just a small person? Surely there are people alive today that could mistaken for "hobbits". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#Anatomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#Anatomy Maybe a visual diff tool. I did just found some charts showing the evolution of select skulls. Hmmm. I guess I want more.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Neat packages of life are called "organisms". We're not all just one big undifferentiated pulsating vat full of chicken flesh. http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-her-nest-space-merchants-and.html http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-he... That’s the one great invention, I think: Chicken Little, the giant pulsing living blobs of meat that feed the planet. Pohl and Kornbluth understand the value of their own idea well enough to know that just talking about Chicken Little is not enough. They have to rig the plot so we meet it. Sensitive eaters, avert your gaze: He swung open her door. “This is her nest,” he said proudly. I looked and gulped. It was a great concrete dome, concrete-floored. Chicken Little filled most of it. She was a gray-brown, rubbery hemisphere some fifteen yards in diameter. Dozens of pipes ran into her pulsating flesh. You could see that she was alive. Herrera said to me: “All day I walk around her. I see a part growing fast, it looks good and tender, I slice.” His two-handed blade screamed again. This time it shaved off an inch-thick Chicken Little steak. (Ch. 9) http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1002 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1002 Chicken Little, a huge mass of cultured chicken breast, was kept alive by algae skimmed by nearly-slave labor from multistory towers of ponds surrounded by mirrors to focus the sunlight onto the ponds. "Scum-skimming wasn't hard to learn. You got up at dawn. You gulped a breakfast sliced not long ago from Chicken Little and washed it down with Coffiest. You put on your coveralls and took the cargo net up to your tier. In blazing noon from sunrise to sunset you walked your acres of shallow tanks crusted with algae. If you walked slowly, every thirty seconds or so you spotted a patch at maturity, bursting with yummy carbohydrates. You skimmed the patch with your skimmer and slung it down the well, where it would be baled, or processed into glucose to feed Chicken Little, who would be sliced and packed to feed people from Baffinland to Little America." -From The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl (w/CM Kornbluth). Published by St. Martin's Press in 1952.
EliRivers 7y ago
Yet if I take a penguin and an aardvark, they just won't breed. Reality must have something to do with it, surely.
- sweeneyrod 7y ago
  Not with that attitude
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 7y ago
As opposed to what concept that is concrete objective reality?
_fizz_buzz_ 7y ago
Members of the same species can procreate fertile offspring. In some edge cases this definition becomes a little fuzzy, but it is clearly more than just a linguistic construct. A mouse and an elephant won't be able to procreate even if the word "species" didn't exist.
- mikojan 7y ago
  Of course it is "just" a linguistic construct. Those distinct entities do not exist in the real world. We come up with definitions for things we experience as distinct entities. Definitions merely good enough for us to reason about their effects on the rest of the world.
- rjf72 7y ago
  It's true the same species implies fertile offspring, but it does not go the other way as you seem to be implying. In other words fertile offspring does not imply same species. For some examples, chihuahuas and wolves can produce fertile offspring, as can lions/tigers, killer whales/dolphins, and many more peculiar pairings. It's quite difficult to pin down a precise definition for species. Even genetic definitions don't work so well. Depending on how it is measured chimps hit around 99% genetic similarity with humans. Nature isn't so kind as to provide clean and concrete delineations for us, at least not that we're currently capable of measuring.
ravenstine 7y ago
It's the educated person's way of saying "This thing looks different from this other thing."
- ses1984 7y ago
  It's a bit more specific actually: this thing can't mate with that thing and produce viable offspring.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    In practice, that is often not the case. Most species haven't been tested to see whether they can produce viable offspring with each other(it's usually impractical), and there are plenty of different species known to breed successfully with one another. Mules, horse-donkey hybrids, while the vast majority of them are infertile, are considered different species. Camels and Llamas can produce viable offspring even though they evolved on two different continents.
    - ses1984 7y ago
      Most species don't really need to be tested because their chromosomes are different enough to make it obvious their offspring would be infertile, right? Of course if hybrids are infertile they would be considered different species. If hybrids are fertile, like your example of camels and llamas, then according to what reason would they be considered the same species? Did their evolution diverge and then reconverge? I guess it depends on your definition of "often".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Not exactly. Our brains like to put things into separate categories because it makes it easier to think about things being in the same category having same properties. We do this to a fault because otherwise we would be overloaded with complexity of the Universe.

ta1234567890 7y ago

Yes, but if you look at it that way, to humans, almost everything except direct experience, is a construct of language. What's the point?

paraschopra 7y ago
The point is that there’s a continuum in reality. Biological tradition developed around classification of life into categories but life doesn’t come in neat packages.
- has2k1 7y ago
  Just because there is a continuum does not mean specific points along the continuum cannot be identified and tagged as distinct from all other points. There are humans and there are dolphins two different species. It is analogous to the colour spectrum, there is red and there is blue two different colours.
  - specialist 7y ago
    Absolutely. The Smithsonian has an amazing display of skulls arranged in a grid which shows the subtle changes over time. It's amazing. (Sorry, quick search doesn't reveal a pic.) -- I'd love a layperson's identification guide. Why is a homo floresiensis (aka "hobbit") not just a small person? Surely there are people alive today that could mistaken for "hobbits". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#Anatomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#Anatomy Maybe a visual diff tool. I did just found some charts showing the evolution of select skulls. Hmmm. I guess I want more.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Neat packages of life are called "organisms". We're not all just one big undifferentiated pulsating vat full of chicken flesh. http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-her-nest-space-merchants-and.html http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-he... That’s the one great invention, I think: Chicken Little, the giant pulsing living blobs of meat that feed the planet. Pohl and Kornbluth understand the value of their own idea well enough to know that just talking about Chicken Little is not enough. They have to rig the plot so we meet it. Sensitive eaters, avert your gaze: He swung open her door. “This is her nest,” he said proudly. I looked and gulped. It was a great concrete dome, concrete-floored. Chicken Little filled most of it. She was a gray-brown, rubbery hemisphere some fifteen yards in diameter. Dozens of pipes ran into her pulsating flesh. You could see that she was alive. Herrera said to me: “All day I walk around her. I see a part growing fast, it looks good and tender, I slice.” His two-handed blade screamed again. This time it shaved off an inch-thick Chicken Little steak. (Ch. 9) http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1002 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1002 Chicken Little, a huge mass of cultured chicken breast, was kept alive by algae skimmed by nearly-slave labor from multistory towers of ponds surrounded by mirrors to focus the sunlight onto the ponds. "Scum-skimming wasn't hard to learn. You got up at dawn. You gulped a breakfast sliced not long ago from Chicken Little and washed it down with Coffiest. You put on your coveralls and took the cargo net up to your tier. In blazing noon from sunrise to sunset you walked your acres of shallow tanks crusted with algae. If you walked slowly, every thirty seconds or so you spotted a patch at maturity, bursting with yummy carbohydrates. You skimmed the patch with your skimmer and slung it down the well, where it would be baled, or processed into glucose to feed Chicken Little, who would be sliced and packed to feed people from Baffinland to Little America." -From The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl (w/CM Kornbluth). Published by St. Martin's Press in 1952.

EliRivers 7y ago

Yet if I take a penguin and an aardvark, they just won't breed. Reality must have something to do with it, surely.

sweeneyrod 7y ago
Not with that attitude

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 7y ago

As opposed to what concept that is concrete objective reality?

_fizz_buzz_ 7y ago

Members of the same species can procreate fertile offspring. In some edge cases this definition becomes a little fuzzy, but it is clearly more than just a linguistic construct. A mouse and an elephant won't be able to procreate even if the word "species" didn't exist.

mikojan 7y ago
Of course it is "just" a linguistic construct. Those distinct entities do not exist in the real world. We come up with definitions for things we experience as distinct entities. Definitions merely good enough for us to reason about their effects on the rest of the world.
rjf72 7y ago
It's true the same species implies fertile offspring, but it does not go the other way as you seem to be implying. In other words fertile offspring does not imply same species. For some examples, chihuahuas and wolves can produce fertile offspring, as can lions/tigers, killer whales/dolphins, and many more peculiar pairings. It's quite difficult to pin down a precise definition for species. Even genetic definitions don't work so well. Depending on how it is measured chimps hit around 99% genetic similarity with humans. Nature isn't so kind as to provide clean and concrete delineations for us, at least not that we're currently capable of measuring.

ravenstine 7y ago

It's the educated person's way of saying "This thing looks different from this other thing."

ses1984 7y ago
It's a bit more specific actually: this thing can't mate with that thing and produce viable offspring.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  In practice, that is often not the case. Most species haven't been tested to see whether they can produce viable offspring with each other(it's usually impractical), and there are plenty of different species known to breed successfully with one another. Mules, horse-donkey hybrids, while the vast majority of them are infertile, are considered different species. Camels and Llamas can produce viable offspring even though they evolved on two different continents.
  - ses1984 7y ago
    Most species don't really need to be tested because their chromosomes are different enough to make it obvious their offspring would be infertile, right? Of course if hybrids are infertile they would be considered different species. If hybrids are fertile, like your example of camels and llamas, then according to what reason would they be considered the same species? Did their evolution diverge and then reconverge? I guess it depends on your definition of "often".