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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 pac

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.

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.